Archive for the ‘Nukes’ Category
DOE: Could Be 3 Years to Fully Reopen NM Nuke Dump
May 9, 2014
By SUSAN MONTOYA BRYAN
Associated Press
The head of the recovery effort at the federal government’s nuclear waste repository in southern New Mexico said Thursday it could be up to three years before full operations resume at the underground facility.
Recovery manager Jim Blankenhorn made the announcement when answering questions from the public during a weekly meeting in Carlsbad. He said the timeline continues to be a moving target, but full operations are expected to resume no earlier than 18 months from now.
Crews continue investigating the cause of a radiation release at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant near Carlsbad that exposed some workers and halted operations in February.
Specially trained workers have been making trips into the repository in an effort to pinpoint the source of the release. Based on those trips, the focus has turned to a set of waste drums that came from Los Alamos National Laboratory.
Officials at the meeting reiterated the possibility that there may have been a chemical reaction inside the drums. They were then questioned about what would happen to that waste if it’s deemed unsafe to store.
"If we find a problem with this waste stream, it’s a chemistry problem," Blankenhorn said. The Los Alamos lab has "some of the best scientists in the world. It would be up to them to develop a path forward to give us treated, safe waste."
New Mexico Environment Secretary Ryan Flynn said the theory of a chemical reaction is based on limited knowledge, and he urged officials during the meeting not to withhold any information. Flynn said he’s concerned the public will lose faith if federal officials change their story every couple of weeks about what might have happened.
"We need to know what happened. We absolutely need to know," he said. "But we need to make decisions based on facts."
WIPP and Department of Energy officials vowed to continue to update the public on the recovery process and to keep the safety of their workers and the public in the forefront.
Officials have pointed to safety as the reason they decided earlier this month to halt shipments from Los Alamos to a temporary storage facility in West Texas. The shipments had been going on for about a month due to the closure of the plant.
Los Alamos is under a tight deadline to get the plutonium-contaminated waste off its northern New Mexico campus before wildfire season peaks. The state of New Mexico pressured the lab to hasten the cleanup after a massive wildfire in 2011 lapped at the edges of lab property.
Lab Director Charlie McMillan said Thursday during a news conference in Albuquerque that the recent developments "are very much a cause for concern." But he said it was too soon to tell if they will have any effect on the lab’s ability to meet the state’s deadline.
This document contains copyrighted material whose use has not been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. SEED Coalition is making this article available in our efforts to advance understanding of ecological sustainability, human rights, economic democracy and social justice issues. We believe that this constitutes a "fair use" of the copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright Law. If you wish to use this copyrighted material for purposes of your own that go beyond "fair use", you must obtain permission from the copyright owner.
Toshiba writes down value of stake in Texas nuclear project
May 7, 2014
Reporting by Aaron Sheldrick
Reuters
May 7 (Reuters) – Toshiba Corp said on Wednesday it wrote down by more than $300 million the value of its stake in a company planning to extend a nuclear power plant in Texas, amid uncertainty over the award of licenses for reactors in the U.S.
Toshiba had only last month scored a victory in a dispute with the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission over foreign ownership rules, when the watchdog’s judicial arm ruled in the Japanese company’s favour.
But the NRC also said it will not make any final reactor license decisions anywhere in the U.S. until late 2014 at the earliest due to issues surrounding the long-term storage of spent nuclear fuel.
Japan’s Fukushima nuclear disaster in 2011 has forced a reassessment of atomic power, and cheap shale gas and coal has led to the closure of several older plants in the U.S.
Nuclear Innovation North America, which is 90 percent owned by New Jersey-based NRG Energy Inc and 10 percent owned by Toshiba, wants to build two new reactors at the South Texas nuclear power plant.
"Toshiba has undertaken a conservative reassessment of asset value of Nuclear Innovation North America … and recognised an operating loss of 31 billion yen ($305 million)," the Japanese company said in a statement.
The South Texas plant has two 1,280-megawatt reactors. In 2007, the plant’s owners applied to the NRC to add two Toshiba 1,350 MW Advanced Boiling Water Reactors at a cost of at least $17 billion.
($1 = 101.5550 Japanese Yen) (Reporting by Aaron Sheldrick)
This document contains copyrighted material whose use has not been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. SEED Coalition is making this article available in our efforts to advance understanding of ecological sustainability, human rights, economic democracy and social justice issues. We believe that this constitutes a "fair use" of the copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright Law. If you wish to use this copyrighted material for purposes of your own that go beyond "fair use", you must obtain permission from the copyright owner.
What Could Go Wrong?
Deadly High-Level Radioactive Waste: Health and Safety Concerns About Storage and Disposal
April 30, 2014
For Immediate Release
Contact:
Karen Hadden, SEED Coalition, 512-797-8481
Tom "Smitty" Smith, Public Citizen 512-477-1155
Download press release in pdf format for printing
Austin, TX – A nuclear expert, a medical doctor, and an attorney joined public interest advocates to address the health and safety risks of bringing the hottest of nuclear reactor waste, the spent nuclear fuel rods, to Waste Control Specialists’ (WCS) dump in Andrews County, Texas or another Texas site. The legal issues involved were discussed as well.
Governor Perry and Speaker Straus are pushing consideration of importing dangerous radioactive waste for storage and possibly disposal in Texas, and the House Environmental Regulation Committee will hold a hearing on the issue in the near future.
The Interim Committee charge is to "study the rules, laws, and regulations pertaining to the disposal of high-level radioactive waste in Texas and determine the potential economic impact of permitting a facility in Texas," said Rep. Lon Burnam, of District 90, Ft. Worth. "Examining the risks of importing exceedingly dangerous high-level radioactive waste into Texas seems to have been left out, but is very important for protecting our health and safety."
"High level radioactive waste can be a major threat to health and well-being. Obviously the effects are dependent on the quantity, the strength of the radioactivity, and the length of exposure that occurs. As with many health threats, growing children and babies in the womb are particularly at risk and vulnerable," said Dr. Elliot Trester, of Texas Physicians for Social Responsibility. The effects of radioactivity can be immediate and have long term consequences as well. The fact that the nuclear components of spent fuel rods can last for centuries and still be lethal is particularly disturbing."
According to a new report by the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality, an unshielded person a meter away from high-level radioactive waste would receive a lethal dose and die within a week and the waste Legislators are considering bringing to Texas for is four times hotter than this in terms of radioactivity.
"Used nuclear fuel rods contain plutonium and uranium isotopes, many of which have long-half lives and remain dangerous for thousands of years or longer," said Dr. Arjun Makhijani, president of the Institute for Energy and Environmental Research. Reprocessing of this waste is expensive and not a viable solution. In general, the best approach for now is to move as much spent fuel as possible out of spent fuel pools and store it in dry casks on site. Moving spent fuel needlessly increases risks."
"Science, not politics, must come first. Extensive research is needed and the right combination of geologic setting, engineered barriers, and repository sealing and closure systems is crucial for long-term disposal and should be done before site selection starts. The standard setting process for the failed Yucca Mountain repository was poor. When the site didn’t meet the proposed standard, a new standard was mandated, instead of a new site. Public health protection standards should be set before site selection begins," said Makhijani. An independent institution, apart from the Department of Energy, is needed if effective oversight is to be achieved.
"The nuclear industry and its numerous political and government apologists refused to listen to common sense for decades and continued to generate spent nuclear reactor fuel as though we had disposal all figured out. True to history, the industry targets areas for dumps that lack political clout, like West Texas, the next proposed nuclear sacrifice zone," said attorney Robert Eye.
For decades it was believed that much commercial nuclear power waste would be reprocessed and that a disposal site would become available for high-level radioactive waste. A long, expensive series of failures showed these assumptions to be false. The Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1982 and amendment in 1987 made the federal government the regulator of spent nuclear fuel, with a repository to be developed by the DOE and licensed by the NRC.
Federal and private efforts to construct an interim storage site failed and Nevada fought efforts to make Yucca Mountain the nation’s geologic repository. Faulty science, and legal and political battles led to DOE spending nearly $15 billion on the site, which hasn’t been constructed. Funding was halted in 2011.
The US Government disposes of high-level radioactive waste at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant, near Carlsbad, New Mexico. The site had recently been considered as a possible location for high-level commercial waste, but it has closed following both an underground fire and an airborne release of plutonium. The site’s future is un\certain.
The NRC’s Waste Confidence Rule arose from their decision not to "continue to license reactors if it did not have reasonable confidence that the wastes can and will in due course be disposed of safely," said Bob Eye. "This rule is used in reviewing new reactor licenses and license renewals. The timeframe for getting disposal capacity in place is slipping dramatically. Several states and environmental groups petitioned for review of the rule. The NRC halted licensing decisions until they complete a Generic Environmental Impact Statement (GEIS) and revise federal code, which is scheduled for completion by September 2014." The rule change would allow spent nuclear fuel to be stored for 60 years after reactor shutdown.
Obama’s Blue Ribbon Commission said that a pilot interim storage facility could be in place by 2021, a larger storage facility by 2025, and a geologic repository by 2048. The Government Accountability Office says that several decades would be needed to transport of the spent nuclear fuel to a geologic repository and they anticipate that most US reactors closing by 2040.
"We don’t need or want this deadly, dangerous waste which every other state has rejected, or the risks it poses to our health and safety," said Tom "Smitty" Smith, director of Public Citizen’s Texas Office. "The Blue Ribbon Commission said that high-level waste storage or disposal isn’t likely to happen without state and local support. Unfortunately, Governor Perry and some Texas Legislators actually think dumping this waste on Texans is a good idea. Our fear is that the Legislature will pass resolutions asking Congress to designate our state for the unnecessary storage or disposal of spent nuclear fuel. We will fight this horrible idea."
"We don’t need our rivers and land poisoned by some of the deadliest contaminants on Earth. We don’t need children threatened by radiation poisoning, from leaks or transportation accidents. It’s time to stop producing these deadly materials and to prevent their importation," said Karen Hadden, director of the SEED Coalition. "We should reduce threats from crowding in existing spent fuel pools, where critical reactions can occur and lead to nuclear meltdowns, by moving spent fuel into dry casks and storing it onsite."
For more information:
Examining the fallout from Texas nuclear waste proposal
April 19, 2014
By Joseph Baucum
Reporting Texas
Austin American-Statesman
Texas House Speaker Joe Straus recently raised eyebrows among environmentalists and individuals connected to the nuclear waste industry. Unexpectedly opening the possibility of making Texas home to America’s supply of high-level radioactive waste will do that.
The United States lacks a permanent disposal site for 68,000 metric tons of spent nuclear fuel after the Obama administration decided in 2010 to halt funding for the multimillion-dollar Yucca Mountain geologic repository in Nevada. Straus has instructed legislators to determine whether Texas can be the answer and "make specific recommendations on the state and federal actions necessary to permit a high-level radioactive waste disposal or interim storage facility in Texas."
Gov. Rick Perry has endorsed the idea as well. "I believe it is time to act," he said in a March 28 letter to Straus and Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst.
In an effort to avoid a replay of the decades-long controversy over Yucca Mountain, where the federal government imposed the site on unwilling local interests, the onus is ostensibly on local communities to step forward to host the nation’s most hazardous nuclear waste. The consensus-based approach is designed to be more democratic, but with millions of dollars potentially at stake for the state and officials tied to the waste industry, critics say determining Texas’ future in high-level waste could be politics as usual.
A new bottom-up approach was one of several recommendations from a 2012 Blue Commission Report to the Department of Energy. Former U.S. Rep. Lee Hamilton, D-Ind., was co-chair.
"We think that looking at siting decisions not only in our country, but across the world, it’s a very complex set of negotiations that have to take place among a lot of actors at the local, state and federal level," Hamilton said in an interview.
In the consent-based approach, state and local governments would encourage communities to volunteer as host sites, instead of the top-down model employed at Yucca Mountain.
Hamilton said any area serving as the nation’s disposal site would benefit from jobs generated during construction and subsequent operations. A substantial amount of money for the project would come from a $30 billion nuclear waste fund, which is fed by fees the federal government has collected from nuclear power plants since 1983. The plants now store spent fuel on site.
Texas environmental groups including the Sierra Club, Public Citizen and the SEED Coalition oppose the idea of Texas taking on high-level nuclear waste.
Waste Control Specialists, which operates a low-level waste facility in Andrews County, west of Midland on the New Mexico border, would like to be involved if lawmakers vote to move forward. WCS, based in Dallas, is the only company in Texas handling low-level waste disposal. It’s also the only destination for some of the most radioactive low-level waste in America.
The House Committee on Environmental Regulation will carry out Straus’ instructions. Six of the nine members are Republicans. Through a spokesperson, chair Patricia Harless, R-Spring, declined to comment on whether the committee would use the consent-based methodology recommended by the commission report. The report was the primary influence on Straus’ decision to add the issue to the committee’s agenda before the Legislature convenes again in 2015, a spokesperson for the speaker said.
Between legislative sessions, the speaker customarily instructs the various House committees to explore and report on a set of issues. The interim charges, as they are called, signal his priorities for the next Legislature.
Billionaire Harold Simmons, who died in December, owned WCS, and a Simmons family trust now owns a majority of the stock. Simmons was one of the nation’s most generous Republican political contributors, donating more than $25 million to Republican super PACs in the 2012 presidential election, according to Forbes.
Simmons donated $2,500 to Perry during his failed bid in the last presidential election. Contran Corp., another Simmons business, donated $1 million — more than any other contributor — to Make Us Great Again, a super PAC that supported Perry’s campaign, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.
Straus has received $100,000 since 2011 from WCS-Texas Solution, a political action committee run by WCS. Seven members of the environmental regulation committee have received $42,000 from WCS-Texas Solution in that time period. Their total contributions in the same period from all sources were nearly $3.5 million.
WCS has generated $16 million in revenue for the state since beginning disposal of low-level waste in July 2012, according to the company’s website. Texas receives 25 percent of the facility’s gross disposal fees. WCS does not disclose financial reports, but spokesman Chuck McDonald estimates the company’s revenues at $40 million annually.
McDonald says the company did not speak with Straus’ office about the committee charge but would like to be considered, if Andrews County and the state are amenable. He says community leaders would need to show interest before WCS pursued anything.
"We have been in dialogue with the community, and we’ll continue to be," said McDonald. "If our host community says, ‘This is something we’re interested in and this is something we’re comfortable with,’ WCS would like to be part of the solution."
Austin-based AFCI Texas is also interested in whether the committee identifies any communities that would be receptive to a disposal site. The company has been in talks with several West Texas counties about building an interim storage facility for spent fuel now held at the Comanche Peak nuclear power plant in Somervell County and the South Texas Project in Matagorda County, according to AFCI co-owners Bill Jones and Monty Humble.
AFCI would need federal approval to store the used nuclear fuel as well as a license for transporting it to the site, but the company is interested in the House committee’s findings to gauge Texans’ level of comfort with the idea.
"I don’t want to sound so arrogant as to suggest that if the state were fundamentally opposed to it that we’d still be enthusiastic about pursuing it," said Humble. "I don’t think we would."
The legislative committee hasn’t scheduled any hearings, but the panel will hold public hearings and take testimony from anyone interested in the issue, a spokesperson for Harless said.
In the past, the committee has sided with industry, according to Cyrus Reed, conservation director of the Texas chapter of the Sierra Club. He points to its failure to pass measures including stricter regulation of coal plant emissions and improving awareness on mercury emissions. Harless’ office declined to respond to his comments.
"Generally, the committee is not going to pass something that industry is very opposed to," said Reed. "They’ll look more for solutions that industry can live with."
Reed said he doesn’t think current committee members are closed to environmentalists’ concerns, however. He cites compromises the committee struck during the 2013 Legislature when it allowed WCS to accept low-level waste from out of state but gave permission to handle less than it had wanted.
The main concern, according to Reed, is what legislation could come out of Straus’ charge.
"Once you put out an idea, it can gather its own steam," Reed said. "There’s a concern from our point of view that you start putting out there that we’re studying it, and suddenly everybody says, ‘Texas is going to step up to the plate and provide these services. We better write legislation so we can make that happen.’ "
McDonald, the WCS spokesman, said he thinks the process will be fair. He noted that the legislation authorizing the company to accept waste from other states passed by a 131 to 10 vote, with 70 percent of Democrats voting yes.
"There have always been changes and compromises made to the legislation," said McDonald. "I think it’s fair to say that what has emerged has been, legitimately, consensus legislation. That’s why it’s had strong bipartisan support."
About this story
Reporting Texas is a news website produced by the University of Texas School of Journalism. For more, go to reportingtexas.com.
This document contains copyrighted material whose use has not been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. SEED Coalition is making this article available in our efforts to advance understanding of ecological sustainability, human rights, economic democracy and social justice issues. We believe that this constitutes a "fair use" of the copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright Law. If you wish to use this copyrighted material for purposes of your own that go beyond "fair use", you must obtain permission from the copyright owner.
Texas Nuclear Reactor Restarts, Four Months After Fire
April 23, 2013
by Kate Galbraith
Texas Tribune
![STP](http://nukefreetexas.org/images/STP_project_topview.jpg)
Four months after a fire in January, one of Texas’ four nuclear reactor units is being restarted, bringing to an end the unit’s second prolonged shutdown in two years.
"We’re bringing the unit back up," said Buddy Eller, a spokesman for the South Texas Project, the enormous Bay City nuclear plant where the problems have occurred. The 1,350-megawatt reactor unit, known as STP Unit 2, should be producing 100 percent power by sometime Tuesday, according to Eller, who spoke with the Tribune on Monday afternoon.
The fire in January occurred at a transformer in the electrical switchyard outside the reactor. The fire was fueled by oil, lasted about 10 minutes and was immediately put out by the plant’s fire brigade, Eller said.
The fire department in Bay City headed to the scene, but plant officials turned them back, saying they had the fire under control and did not need additional help, according to a representative of the Bay City Police Department.
No one was injured in the fire, according to Eller, who said that reports of 50-foot flames were "incorrect."
The cause of the fire is still under investigation, according to both the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and STP. However, Eller said it was safe to turn the unit back on.
"Our focus is to ensure that we put safety over [power] production," he said, adding that the outage had given the company time to perform additional maintenance tasks. The turbine blades and bearings were damaged when the reactor shut down quickly during the fire, he said.
It was the second major incident for STP 2 in two years. In November 2011, the reactor went down for five months after it tripped, or shut down, while it was at 100 percent power, according to an NRC web report. The cause was a malfunction of the main generator, due to a ground fault.
In neither incident was there any danger of radioactive material leaking, Eller said.
The South Texas Project plant, which began operating in the 1980s, is jointly owned by NRG Energy, which has a 44 percent stake, and two municipal utilities. CPS Energy, the San Antonio electric utility, owns 40 percent, and Austin Energy owns 16 percent. Texas’ other nuclear plant, the two-reactor Comanche Peak facility, is located in Glen Rose, near Fort Worth. The two are among the youngest nuclear plants in the country.
Environmentalists concerned about nuclear power say that the fire, in addition to the generator problem in 2011-12, has created concerns about the plant’s ability to operate safely. The federal licenses for the STP reactors expire in 2027 and 2028. Public hearings on the license extension took place in Bay City in January, just days after the fire.
"Relicensing should be halted while a serious, in-depth examination occurs," said Karen Hadden, executive director of the Austin-based SEED coalition, which advocates for sustainable energy. "I think it’s becoming increasingly unreliable, and it’s costing us money to fix it." She said it was difficult to get information about the plant’s problems.
Eller would not provide an estimate of the cost of fixing the plant. He said the plant was working through the process with its insurance company. NRG Energy said it would not discuss the cost of buying replacement power during the months that the unit was shut down, as such information is proprietary. Efforts Monday afternoon to glean cost figures from the plant’s municipal-utility owners, CPS Energy and Austin Energy, were unsuccessful.
Over the past four months, STP has taken apart the turbine generator and inspected it thoroughly, Eller said. The generator — which had been refurbished in 2012 — was fine, he said, but "we had to replace a number of the turbine blades." The two incidents were not causally connected, he said.
The NRC provided little information on the cause of the January fire; Lara Uselding, a spokeswoman, would say only that it was an "internal electrical fault on the main transformer on Unit 2." The NRC will issue a quarterly inspection report, which is publicly available, "in the May timeframe," she said. Meanwhile, "inspectors will continue their review of the root cause and would take any regulatory action if warranted," she said.
If the reactor restart is successful, it will be online in time to provide electricity during Texas’ most crucial season — the summer, when heavy air-conditioning use sends up power consumption.
"We are expecting to have STP 2 capacity available for summer needs," said Robbie Searcy, a spokeswoman for ERCOT, the Texas grid operator.
Editor’s note: An earlier version of this story said that NRG Energy operates the STP plant, in addition to owning 44 percent of it. In fact, the South Texas Project Nuclear Operating Company operates the plant. The story has been corrected.
This document contains copyrighted material whose use has not been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. SEED Coalition is making this article available in our efforts to advance understanding of ecological sustainability, human rights, economic democracy and social justice issues. We believe that this constitutes a "fair use" of the copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright Law. If you wish to use this copyrighted material for purposes of your own that go beyond "fair use", you must obtain permission from the copyright owner.