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A quarterly newsletter for Sierrans interested in problems posed by the escalating accumulation of nuclear waste. Compiled, condensed, and edited by Ellen Winchester for the Sierra Club National Nuclear Waste Task Force, tel. 850-576-0954
THE U.S. ANNOUNCES PLANS BOTH TO IMMOBILIZE PU IN GLASS AND PROCESS IT INTO MOX even
though it is well known that MOX (mixed plutonium and uranium) spent fuel contains half
the plutonium that went into the mix AND that with some tinkering the reprocessed
plutonium can be used in weapons, making it a proliferation risk, contrary to the claims
of the nuclear industry. Reprocessing also abundantly creates nuclear wastes other than
plutonium. (Mary Olson, NIRS, 3/20/98) The Sierra Club policy opposing reprocessing dates
back to 1977. U.S. REACTOR MANAGEMENT WON'T SOLVE SPENT FUEL STORAGE PROBLEMS by sending it to Europe. An unidentified U.S. entity asked British Nuclear Fuels to put together a proposal for helping the U.S. nuclear power industry in cases where there is an extreme shortage of storage space in the U.S. Now the Brits and other Europeans have decided to pass up the opportunity. (Tom Clements, Mark Johnston, Greenpeace, 2/4/98) USGS SAYS BEATTY, NV, TRITIUM CONTAMINATION WORSE THAN THOUGHT. Beatty is important as a comparison site to Ward Valley, CA, because of their similar geology. Closed in 1992, the site now shows contamination is at deeper levels than previously measured and is approaching the water table. In addition, tritium vapors were detected in the air above a creosote bush, presumably released from vegetation absorbing the soil contaminants. (News from Congressman George Miller, 3/9/98) NUKE WASTE TECHNICAL REVIEW BOARD WILL REVISIT THEORY OF FORMER D0E SCIENTIST JERRY SZYMANSKI regarding risks associated with the proposed Yucca Mt. repository. Szymanski found crystals that could only have been created by super-heated groundwater periodically forced up into the level of the proposed repository. They could not have been formed by water dripping down from the surface because of certain gases trapped in interior microscopic bubbles and because of the presence of minerals that are not soluble in rainwater. (James Quinn, Citizen Alert, 1/6/98) NRC TO START NEW RULEMAKING ON UNLOADING OLD DRY CASK STORAGE. At the behest of the Prairie Island Coalition (PIC), the new rules will address the delicate problems of moving still hot spent fuel while preventing it from melting and keeping pressurized the helium gas needed to prevent zircaloy cladding from oxidizing--thus starting a chain reaction. The Northern States Power Company is allowed by the Minnesota Legislature to store spent fuel in dry casks on several conditions, one of which is that the storage is temporary and that the fuel will be removed from the island after a few years. The PIC is asking licensees to demonstrate safe cask unloading ability before a cask may be used at an Independent Spent Fuel Storage Installation. (Bruce Drew, NUCLEAR-WASTE list) ZION NUCLEAR PLANT SHUT DOWN FOR MAINTENANCE, MAY NEVER RUN AGAIN. On 12/16 Illinois Gov. Jim Edgar signed an electricity deregulation law that guarantees Commonwealth Edison recovery of billions invested in its six nuclear power plants, whether they run or not. (Chicago Tribune, 12/18/97) UTAH SENATE MAJORITY LEADER CRAIG PETERSON SPONSORING REGULATION to prevent Minneapolis based Private Fuel Storage, a consortium of eight public utilities, from temporarily storing up to 40,000 metric tons of spent fuel on the Skull Valley Goshute Indian Reservation 40 miles from Salt Lake City. "Everything we're doing is constitutionally defensible," Senator Peterson said. "We wanted to push the limit as far as we could go." (Deseret News, 2/14/98) FLAGSTAFF BECOMES A NUCLEAR FREE ZONE ON MARCH 17. The city council action responded to the threat of high level waste going to Yucca Mt. on the I-40 corridor through northern Arizona and New Mexico. (Sue Maret, Nuclear Waste Task Force, 3/23/98) NRC ISSUES INDEFINITE STAY AGAINST URANIUM MINING IN NEW MEXICO near Church Rock. The mining operation would contaminate the sole drinking water source for about 10,000 people, most of them Navajos. (Don Hancock, Southwest Research, (1/25/98) PRECONDITIONS FOR NEW GENERATION OF REACTORS IS ALREADY IN PLACE. (1) Restructuring laws grant utilities massive bailouts in "stranded" costs. (2) Price-Anderson Nuclear Insurance Law relieves reactor owners of liability in the event of catastrophic accident. (3) NRC's 1997 License Termination Rule relaxes residual radiation requirements, leaves a dirtier site and lowers decommissioning costs. (4) Much low-activity rad waste is now incinerated, reducing cost of disposal. (5) EPA is considering promulgating public exposure standards for deregulation, release, recycle, refabrication, and reuse of contaminated scrap into consumer products. (6) Disposal of high level waste is DOE's responsibility, paid for by ratepayers and taxpayers. (7) NRC deregulatory philosophy is "performance-based, risk-informed with greater reliance on licensee self-regulation." (8) NRC recently certified "advanced" reactor designs which vendors are selling in Asia, and the U.S. now allows sale of nuclear technology to China, which plans 30-50 new reactors, keeping the industry profitable until new generating capacity is needed here. (9) New utility restructuring laws fail to assure fair, competitive positions for conservation, efficiency, and alternative renewable sources. (10) Global warming is used by nuclear proponents to justify more reactors, despite knowledge that high levels of CO2 are released over the continuum from uranium mining to electricity production and distribution. (Dr. Judith Johnsrud, Nuclear Waste Task Force, 3/23/98) ACCELERATOR-BASED OPERATION OF A SUBCRITICAL REACTOR WON'T WORK for high burn-up of a hundred tons fissionable surplus weapons plutonium, while producing electric energy. Too much reactor power output must be diverted to feed the accelerator, pushing costs too high. The same staggering costs would apply to accelerator-driven disposal of all plutonium, now amounting to more than a thousand tons. (Wolfgang Panofsky, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, March/April 1998) ARE SURPLUS NUCLEAR WEAPONS A WASTE? OR ARE THEY A MILITARY RESOURCE? Surely a waste, according to U.S. government statements. The Department of Defense is working to downsize our stockpiles of nuclear weapons, declare their plutonium and highly enriched uranium as surplus, and destroy these fissile ingredients by transmuting them in nuclear reactors as mixed oxide (MOX) fuel or by sealing them in glass (vitrification) for eventual burial. The U.S. has advocated a worldwide ban on any future nuclear weapons testing by blasts underground or anywhere, and by a Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT). However, less known to the public is our Stockpile Stewardship Program, a virtual nuclear testing regime whereby we maintain our existing nuclear weapons capability until downsizing treaties, such as START 2, are fully implemented. In this program we employ high-tech methods, using supercomputers and laser test equipment, which can validate any change in nuclear weapons design without actual field tests by underground blasts. Program managers assure us that no new weapons will be developed while existing weapons are maintained in working condition. However, author Brian Hall describes what seems a new weapon in disguise, the earth penetrating bomb B-62-11, developed in spite of the above treaties, and others appearing to conform with Ronald Reagan's 1981 National Security Decision 13 which would develop and maintain the capacity to prevail in a protracted nuclear war with the Soviet Union. The U.S. seems not to be relegating our nuclear weapons stockpiles to the waste heap but keeping them as a resource for use in some future conflict, a course of action Generals Butler and Arkin consider counter productive. (Brian Hall, New York Times Magazine, 3/15/98) DOE SUBCRITICAL NUCLEAR EXPERIMENT AT NEVADA TEST SITE ULA COMPLEX on March 25 involved chemical high explosives to generate high pressures that are applied to weapons materials, plutonium, in particular. Subcritical experiments support DOE's Science Based Stockpile Stewardship Program to maintain the safety and reliability of the U.S. nuclear weapons stockpile without underground testing. (DOE Press Release, 3/19/98) But after President Clinton signed the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty on 9/24/96, John Holum, Director of the U.S. Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, stated that "if a country signs the CTBT, it is legally bound not to test, whether or not it has been ratified and whether or not the Treaty is in force." The CTBT is understood to ban nuclear explosions with measurable nuclear yields. (Western States Legal Foundation, 3/11/98) DOE DECIDES TO PURSUE A DUAL-TRACK APPROACH ON THE TWO MOST PROMISING TRITIUM SUPPLY ALTERNATIVES: (1) to initiate purchase of an existing commercial reactor and (2) to design, build, and test critical components of an accelerator system for tritium production. Tritium is now being produced in a confirmatory test at the Watts Bar Nuclear Plan. (1/16/98) MEANWHILE U.S. HAS ACQUIRED THEORETICAL FIRST STRIKE CAPABILITY, something neither Russia or the U.S. actually had before. Using it is hard for us to imagine but probably easier for Russians nervous about NATO on their borders and ratifying START II. (March/April Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists) WATCHDOG GROUP QUESTIONS SAFETY OF PANTEX PLUTONIUM STORAGE. Pantex, about 17 miles northeast of Amarillo, stores about 10,000 plutonium pits and is the nation's primary nuclear weapons dismantlement site. Nuclear weapons design labs say no pits should be stored long term in the AL-R8 metal drums currently used at Pantex because moisture and chlorides can corrode and form powdery oxides that can contaminate workers and the environment. In September workers began repackaging pits into new drums but the program proved costly and slow moving because DOE planned to certify the drums for both shipping and storage. DOE is now examining three modified versions of the AL-R8 drums that would address worker safety issues and be cheaper. (Amarillo Globe-News, 3/3/98) HANFORD CLEANUP THREATENED BY PROPOSAL TO AMEND CLEANUP AGREEMENT. DOE is keeping the Fast Flux Test Facility at Hanford on "Hot Standby" using $32 million a year of cleanup funds to do so. They would now like to amend the Hanford Tri-Party cleanup agreement to exempt the FFTF from it and restart it to make tritium. This means importing additional dangerous plutonium to Hanford and creating more radioactive waste. (Doris Cellarius, Nuclear Waste Task Force, 1/6/98. For additional information call 1-800-24 CLEAN) SRS MUST START OVER ON WASTE TREATMENT AFTER ONE BILLION DOLLARS and fifteen years already spent. For now 30 million gallons of highly radioactive waste are stuck in aging underground waste tanks at the Savannah River Site. In 1989 a manager at the site wrote that the waste treatment system "has transformed itself into a management mindset of making a process work, no matter the cost." (The Augusta Chronicle, 3/1/98) PUBLIC INTEREST GROUPS EXPRESS STRONG OPPOSITION TO OPENING WIPP, the waste isolation plant built in a salt formation near Carlsbad, New Mexico. The groups, mostly from Colorado, protested that disposal of waste at WIPP is a dangerous proposition for both current and future generations. It was pointed out that in addition to the threat to present public safety caused by the transport of nuclear waste to the WIPP site, future human intrusion is a real possibility. There has been considerable mining for potash and drilling for oil and gas in the area. (Sue Maret, S.C. Nuclear Waste Task Force, 3/8/98) "CONTINUING THE COLD WAR MESS" STUDIES THREE PROBLEMS: TRU waste management, high level waste tank farms at Hanford, and radium and thorium contaminated waste at Fernald. The IEER study asserts that despite about $40 billion in expenditures since 1989, DOE does not have a sound direction, plan, priorities, or implementation strategy for dealing with remediation and waste management problems. (Science for Democratic Action, 11/97) FRENCH SPENT FUEL GOING THROUGH PANAMA CANAL? AP said the shipment of glass encased waste from nuclear reprocessing in Europe would leave France on Jan. 23 bound for Japan. Both Greenpeace and the Nuclear Control Institute have protested the shipment but NCI president Paul Leventhal said it looks as though the U.S. is looking the other way. Two previous shipments from reprocessing in Britain and France were forced to take much longer routes around South America and around Africa. The planned shipment (see below?) involves 60 containers of high-level nuclear waste left over from reprocessing spent fuel that originally came from Japanese reactors. (Tom Clements, Greenpeace, 1/14/98) JAPANESE OFFICIAL CLOSES PORT TO BRITISH SHIP CARRYING 30 TONS OF VITRIFIED N-WASTE produced in Japan but reprocessed in France. Japan has no reprocessing facility. The goal of a two month trip is the village of Rokkasho in Amori Prefecture, on the north end of the main island of Honshu. The waste will be stored there for 30 to 50 years before being transferred to a permanent underground site. Before permitting the ship to enter the port, the governor of the prefecture, Morio Kimura, demanded that Prime Minister Hashimoto meet with him to explain the government's nuclear policy. This is the third such shipment from France to Japan and the second the governor has protested. While the ship waited, some 100 protestors staged a rally near the port carrying banners which read: "Don't produce it, Don't carry it and Don't throw it away here." As of March 12, still saying he will not allow the HLW to be unloaded, the Governor allowed the ship to enter port "for the sake of the crew." (AP and Tom Clements, Greenpeace, 3/12/98) REVIEW OF NORTH KOREAN FACILITIES DELAYS TAIPOWER PLAN TO SHIP nuclear waste to the secretive state. The nuclear power news agency NucNet has reported that Taipower would propose a new site on Taiwan for low level waste. (Tom Clements, Greenpeace, 1/8/98) U.K., U.S., AND FRANCE TO PARTICIPATE IN PERMANENT FORUM ON NUCLEAR WEAPONS ISSUES. On the agenda will be accounting methods, doctrinal concerns (in particular NATO's concerns about Russian moves towards forward basing of tactical nuclear weapons), transparency, and safety and security, including transport and storage. According to a briefing by Secretary Cohen, right now "there is not even agreement as to how to count tactical nuclear weapons." (Basic Reports, 5/12/97) BRITAIN'S NUCLEAR DUSTBIN--The Royal Society early in February called on the government to develop a long term plan for managing Britain's growing stockpile of plutonium, set to almost double to 100 tonnes by 2010 as a result of reprocessing by British Nuclear Fuels. The Royal Society called for an independent review of the issue that should consider options ranging from burning MOX to deep geological storage. Officials say ministers might call a public inquiry into BNF plans to increase some radioactive emissions from Sellafield reprocessing which would fly in the face of an international commitment to reduce them. (Tom Clements, Greenpeace, 2/4/98) ROYAL SOCIETY REPORT BIASED AGAINST VITRIFICATION OF HLW also states that the storage of separated (pre-immobilisation) Pu is "economic" when actually one of the arguments against storage of separated Pu is the high cost, and one of the arguments in favor of vitrification with HLW is the significantly reduced storage cost of the product. (Fred Barker, NUKE-WASTE list) EURATOM TO ALLOW RECYCLING OF LOW LEVEL RADIOACTIVE MATERIALS BY 2000, permitting their use in a wide range of consumer products--cars, bicycles, appliances, furniture, etc.--just not in food, jewelry, toys or cosmetics. When the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission proposed a similar dispensation for "Materials below Regulatory Concern" some years ago, it was withdrawn after widespread protests. (The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, January/February 1998) CANADIAN FEDERAL PANEL SAVES NORTHERN ONTARIO FROM NUCLEAR WASTE DUMP FOR NOW. The panel recommended that an independent body be established for the management of nuclear waste, that the nuclear industries pay for management and research programs, that there be full public and aboriginal participation in future decision-making, and that no selection of a long-term management option should be done until a public review of the Atomic Energy Control Board's regulations is completed. Only if the AECL concept is demonstrated socially and technically acceptable could a site selection process begin. (Click here for the complete panel report or from the Canadian Environmental Assessment Agency, tel 819 997 1000) ATOMIC APATHY HITS RUSSIA THROUGH OVEREXPOSURE TO NUCLEAR TERROR. A World Paper reporter considers Soviet citizens victims of A-bombs detonated in the Urals in 1954 in simulated nuclear warfare. A participant of one such event says the forest, machinery, animals, and the ground were ablaze. Other nuclear catastrophes include stored wastes going critical, waste discharged from subs and ships directly into the sea, testing in Kazakhstan, where "during several decades nuclear weapons with a total TNT equivalent equal to 20,000 Hiroshima bombs were exploded above the ground in close vicinity of cities and villages," and the Kyshtym tragedy in the secret atom-city of Chelyabinsk. Now Russians want to forget all that. (Alexander Pumpianski, editor of Novoe Vremia and The World Paper's Associate Editor for Russia, 2/98) BUT UNAPATHETIC RUSSIANS WARN AGAINST THE RUSSIAN/U.S. MOX PLAN to turn weapons-grade plutonium into commercial nuclear fuel. At a Moscow meeting on March 16 environmentalist Alexei Yablokov said the plan is fraught with environmental, economic and political risks. Don Moniak, spokesman for Serious Texans Against Nuclear Dumping (STAND), asserts MOX does not have the Russian support that many proponents claim. Instead, public referendums on new nuclear developments in Russia have been turned down repeatedly in the last five years. (Amarillo Globe News, 3/17/98) RUSSIA PLANS TO SELL REACTORS TO IRAN DESPITE U.S. PROTESTS. The news came out as the U.S. signed an agreement in Kiev under which Ukraine would withdraw from the Russian program to build a reactor at Bushire, Iran. Russian officials insisted Moscow can complete the reactor on its own and if Iran is following international monitoring, Moscow will consider building a second reactor for it. American officials say the reactors would enable Iran to develop the expertise it needs to begin a clandestine weapons program and could be used by Teheran to mask illicit purchases of nuclear technology. (New York Times, 3/7/98) NATO AND RUSSIAN NUCLEAR EXPERTS TO DISCUSS WEAPONS ISSUES. For the first time the United Kingdom and France will particpate alongside the U.S. and Russia in a permanent forum for discussion of nuclear weapons issues. Three items will be on the initial agenda: tactical nuclear weapons, including accounting methods, doctrinal concerns (in particular Russian moves towards forward basing of tactical nuclear weapons) tranparency and safety and security (including transport and storage). (Basic Reports, British American Security Information Council, 12/97) RUSSIAN INABILITY TO PROCESS SUBS' LIQUID WASTE BOTTLENECKS implementing the START I Treaty. Currently many years worth of the waste are held in temporary storage on ships and ashore awaiting processing. Without it, Russia has indicated it may have to continue to dump LLRW in Arctic seas. Meanwhile EPA, using Russian technicians and technology, has had a great success in developing a program with Norway to help Russia build and operate a facility to process the huge backlog. ( Defense Monitor, 12/97) But what will be done with the waste resulting from the processing? RUSSIAN, U.S. NUCLEAR SOCIETIES SPONSOR YOUTH & PLUTONIUM CHALLENGE conference in Obninsk, Russia July 5-10. Glenn Seaborg is honorary chairman. Discussion will cover "the whole complex of questions connected with the accumulation of large amounts of weapons grade and commercial trade plutonium from both the nuclear weapons complex and civilian nuclear power production. Deadline for submission of 500 word summaries of papers and 1,000 word summaries of lectures is May 1. For more info contact Alexandre Tsyboulia or tsib@ippe.rssi.rusi.ru (Don Moniak, STAND of Amarillo, 2/20/98) BRAIN DRAIN DRAWING RUSSIAN SCIENTISTS IN MANY DIRECTIONS. They are going both to other republics and to private corporations that work in scientific and arms markets. A senior staffer at the National Security Council says that everything that upgrades the nuclear, chemical, and biological programs of nations with proliferation goals is a threat to the security of the United States and the world. (Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, 3/4/98) RUSSIAN ANTI-MOX SCIENTIST SAYS PU PROCESSING WORKERS FACE RISKS much higher than personnel at uranium-fuel manufacturing facilities and making MOX creates proliferation threat because of 1) more numerous processes involving more workers 2) increased vulnerability during transport of spent fuel; and 3) the spent fuel will still contain half the plutonium loaded into the core, from which bombs can be made. (Lydia Popova, Russian Center for Nuclear Ecology and Energy Policy, 3/9/98) MALE MICE EXPOSED TO RADIATION HAND DOWN DETRIMENTAL EFFECTS NOT ONLY TO CHILDREN but also to grandchildren and even great grandchildren. UC Davis scientist Lynn Wiley used amounts of radiation that compare to amounts used in radiation therapy. She says her results are controversial but so far nobody has been able to shoot them down. (UC Davis News, 11/2/97 STUDY SAYS 400,000 HAD CONTACT WITH URANIUM FROM U.S. WEAPONS. The National Gulf War Resource Center estimates at least that many service men and women were exposed to depleted uranium, DU, either during combat, while recovering contaminated weapons or while visiting the battleground after the conflict. Depleted uranium is a metal residue left when natural uranium is refined. So much is stored in the U.S., 1.1 billion pounds, that producers give it away free to companies that make tank and artillery shells, anti-tank missiles and other weapons. Radioactive dust from a depleted uranium shell explosion can be toxic to humans. (AP, 3/3/98) And if we permit it, so could exposure to DU in commercial products such as cars and kitchen equipment. (Ed.) CANCER, BIRTH DEFECTS RISING THREE-FOLD IN IRAQ AFTER GULF WAR. Scientists investigating the ailments suffered by Gulf War veterans say the previously unpublished Iraqi data may shed new light on U.S. veterans' health problems. (Knight Ridder Washington Bureau, 3/19/98) Up to Top |
