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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.
URGENT POLITICAL ACTION NEEDED: S1271 has been kept off the floor by the failure of its proponents to produce the votes needed to cut off debate. It's not expected to reach a vote until June 3, after the Memorial Day recess. So until then there is time for you to contact your senators (Capitol Switchboard: 202-224-3121) to oppose this NEPA defying, nuclear industry inspired, so-called interim waste bill that would leave the waste more or less at the foot of Yucca Mt. until a permanent repository is opened. (Nuclear Information and Resource Service, 5/22/96) SUMMIT MAKES SMALL STEP TOWARD BANNING NUCLEAR EXPLOSIONS FOREVER. Meeting in Moscow ten years after Chernobyl, the eight leaders representing Russia, the U.S., Britain, Canada, Italy, Japan, France, and Germany reaffirmed their countries' commitment to a nuclear test ban by declaring that one should be negotiated by September. They agreed the CTB ban should include small experiments in which only tens of pounds of nuclear power are released in so-called "peaceful" nuclear explosions but did not discuss the larger sizes favored by the Chinese. The leaders promised to start talks immediately on banning production of weapons-grade materials and placing dismantled warheads under international monitoring. Unfortunately they did not demand a shutdown of aging, mostly Soviet designed nuclear reactors, saying these might be upgraded to meet acceptable safety standards, and they did say they are committed to keeping nuclear power as an important energy source through the 21st century. Environmental experts praised progress on the test ban, radwaste management conventions and anti-smuggling cooperation, but were skeptical as they assessed the entire summit enterprise. (NY Times, 4/21/96 and Associated Press, 4/21/96) TIME MAGAZINE BLOWS THE WHISTLE ON NRC ENFORCEMENT OF POWER PLANT REGULATION. The eight page cover story in the March 4 issue outlines a whistleblower's struggle to have safety problems addressed at the Millstone Unit l, Northeast Utilities nuclear plant. Since 1992 NU engineer George Galatis has criticized the plant for offloading its entire component of fuel--580 spent fuel assemblages--in a pool authorized to hold only one-third that amount. When he took the case to the NRC, he discovered officials there had known about the procedure for a decade without moving to stop it. Ultimately NRC found NU had conducted improper full-core offloads for 20 years. Time concluded "Millstone is merely the latest in a long string of cases in which the NRC bungled its mandate and overlooked serious safety problems until whistleblowers came forward," and reported that the nuclear industry vetoes NRC nominees it deems too hostile and "agency officials enjoy a revolving door to good jobs at nuclear companies." Sen. Joseph Biden is calling for a federal investigation of NRC effectiveness. (Greenwire, 2/26/96) CHERNOBYL TYPE DISASTERS COULD HAPPEN HERE DESPITE INDUSTRY DISCLAIMERS. While there are no Soviet designed reactors in the U.S., nuclear accidents with comparable consequences are possible. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission testified before Congress that there is about a 45% chance of a core melt accident somewhere in the US in the next 20 years. The theory of pressure containment on which the Chernobyl containment design was based is also the concept used in nearly half the reactors in the U.S., 38 designed by General Electric and 9 designed by Westinghouse. According to the NRC, GE Mark I designs have a 90% chance of containment failure during a core melt accident. (James Riccio, staff attorney for Public Citizen's Critical Mass Energy Project) STOCKPILING POTASSIUM IODIDE IS STANDARD PRACTICE IN THE DEVELOPED WORLD--except in the U.S. With an epidemic of childhood thyroid cancer marking the area most affected by fallout from Chernobyl, NRC lawyer Peter Crane thinks it is time for the U.S. to change its policy that potassium iodide is not cost-effective, "because nuclear accidents are very rare and treating any resulting thyroid disease would be relatively easy." Crane writes in the NYT, 4/5/96, that in 1994 the NRC staff, citing recommendations from the American Thyroid Association and W.H.O., advised the agency's commissioners that it would be prudent to buy the drug and distribute it to the states. They calculated that it would be cheaper to buy it--estimated cost a few hundred thousand dollars--than to go on studying whether to do so. But representatives of the nuclear power industry contended that any change in policy could affect public confidence in the technology. The commissioners ultimately divided, 2-2, on the staff's proposal, which meant a rejection. 50,000 COLORADANS JOIN $550 MILLION CLASS ACTION LAWSUIT AGAINST ROCKWELL INTERNATIONAL AND DOW CHEMICAL, contractors who ran Rocky Flats during the Cold War. They are seeking compensation for diminished property values and money to set up a medical monitoring fund for neighbors of Rocky Flats. The former nuclear-weapons manufacturing complex--16 miles northwest of Denver-- houses 14.2 tons of plutonium and is said to be the greatest threat to public safety of any US Department of Energy facility in the nation. Pending are similar law suits by neighbors of the DOE Oak Ridge plant in Tennessee, the Hanford plant in Washington, and the Mound plant in Ohio. The community around the Fernald plant in Ohio received $78 million from the government in 1990. In 1989 Rocky Flats operator Rockwell was fined $18.5 million for alleged environmental crimes. (Christian Science Monitor, 5/02/96) SIERRA CLUB SIX YEAR ROCKY FLATS LAWSUIT FINALLY CLOSED SUCCESSFULLY. After many tries, DOE received a Resource Conservation and Recovery Act permit to store mixed radioactive and hazardous waste from the Colorado Department of Public Health and the Environment. This means that 600 cubic yards of waste are stored in a building that meets minimum safety requirements and that it is stored and inspected in a way the regulators consider to be safe. The lawsuit did not cover all the wastes at the plant--see below. (Eugene DeMayo, Peak and Prairie, February/March 1996) LATEST DOE CLEAN UP PLAN FOR ROCKY FLATS NOT A CLEANUP AT ALL. The DOE Nov. 1995 "Draft Conceptual Vision" for the Rocky Flats Environmental Technology Site (formerly the Rocky Flats Nuclear Weapons Plant) is a sketch of what DOE, EPA, and the Colorado Dept. of Public Health and the Environment will be willing to accept for the final cleanup of the heavily polluted plant site and its surrounding properties. Problems abound: 1) Limiting the budget for cleanup by the expectation Congress will cut it when the budget should not be limited by the current political climate. 2) Leaving radioactive surface soil contamination in place without plans for future remediation when better technology may be developed. 3) On-site disposal of radioactive and hazardous wastes, including contaminated buildings. The best plan for the waste is to store it in a manner that allows careful monitoring and retrieval when it leaks and to develop better waste treatment technologies. 4) Contrary to the Vision plan to release and reuse the buffer zone, it should be maintained for security and protection, with no regular public access, as long as any plutonium or radioactive wastes are stored at Rocky Flats. (Eugene DeMayo, Peak and Prairie, February/March) HOUSE SCIENCE SUBCOMMITTEE GETS NEGATIVE FEEDBACK ON FUNDING FOR ALWR PROGRAM. Critics called the Advanced Light Water Reactor a "textbook example of corporate welfare." DOE and even the Nuclear Energy Institute acknowledged there was little domestic utility interest in new nuclear reactors. According to Critical Mass, the ALWR program has been transformed from helping domestic industry develop reactors into an export assistance effort, with vendors looking to East Asia and other foreign markets. Last October Senators McCain, Feingold, Thompson and Kerry introduced a bipartisan corporate welfare elimination packet that included the ALWR. Subcommittee Chair Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA) intends to have a bill ready for markup on May 15. (Critical Mass Energy Project 5/01/96) LAWRENCE LIVERMORE LAB LOSES 12 POUNDS OF PLUTONIUM, 2-3 BOMB'S WORTH. Lab officials say it's a "measurement" problem, the cumulative tally of thousands of differing measurements taken over three decades. Jackie Cabasso, of the Western States Legal Foundation, says "If it's a bookkeeping error, that doesn't inspire confidence in the way these incredibly dangerous substances are being handled at the lab." (Tallahassee Democrat, 2/11/96--from the San Jose News) DOE REVEALS US SHIPPED ALMOST A TON OF PLUTONIUM TO 39 COUNTRIES. In what weapons expert Leonard S. Spector called "a more innocent time when people thought you could assist civilian nuclear programs without contributing to a weapons potential," the US shipped out for peacetime use 0.7 metric tons (1,651 pounds) of plutonium. (A nuclear weapon uses between 2 and 4 kilograms.) The practice ended in 1991, as did US acquisition of 5.7 metric tons from foreign countries. These numbers have come to light as part of DOE's public accounting of all the plutonium that ever passed through Federal hands, including the 99.5 metric tons that President Clinton last year declared unneeded for national security. (New York Times 2/6/96) NRC PANEL DOUBTS RADWASTE HEAT CAN DEFER YUCCA MT WASTE PACKAGE CORROSION AND FAILURE. NRC's Advisory Committee on Nuclear Waste says "There is little experience or understanding of governing processes and the behavior of fluids in fractures and faults" in the unsaturated zone at Yucca Mountain. (Steve Frishman, Nevada Agency for Nuclear Projects, Science Letters, 2/2/96) AFTER 23 YEARS OF CONSTRUCTION AND DELAYS WATTS BAR GETS OPERATING LICENSE TO 2035. Located on the Tennessee River and long targeted by protestors who claim it is unsafe and too costly, the plant could be in operation by spring. It becomes the 110th commercial nuclear reactor in the US and the last of the current generation of nuclear power plants. (Greenwire, Boston Globe, 2/7/96) DOE PLANS SELF REGULATED MULTI-BILLION-DOLLAR STOCKPILE PROGRAM. Under a regime of self regulation left over from Atomic Energy Commission Cold War days, DOE will test nuclear weapons components in ways that include imploding radioactive and chemically hazardous materials in the open air, imploding plutonium in steel containers [see CTB agreement discussed above], and manufacturing small lots of weapon components, including plutonium triggers. It may run [reprocessing] facilities that create new high-level radioactive wastes like those in Hanford tanks. All of these activities will take place on top of environmental clean-up activities that have their own important health, safety, and environmental implications. Congress should act to end DOE's self regulation of its nuclear-related activities and substitute meaningful, accountable external regulation. (Andrew P. Caputo, attorney with Natural Resources Defense Council) U.S. DELAYS OPENING SITE FOR DUMPING LOW LEVEL WASTE IN WARD VALLEY. The decision puts off construction on the site for at least a year, until a study of tritium seepage is conducted by Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and a new environmental impact report is completed. Deputy Interior Secretary John Garamendi said fears that radioactive materials could migrate from the planned site into the water table and eventually contaminate the Colorado River, an irreplaceable water source for at least 15 million Southern Californians, had prompted the additional geologic tests. (NY Times, 2/16/96) TEXAS NATURAL RESOURCE CONSERVATION COMMISSION RECOMMENDS LICENSING LOW LEVEL WASTE DUMP IN SIERRA BLANCA, TEXAS. A binational day of opposition was co-sponsored by the cities of Del Rio and Acuna, Coahuila, together with the Border Coalition Against Radiation Dumping, Greenpeace and other groups. (Patricia Salas, 4/16/96) FORD, WASHINGTON, TO BUILD NATIONAL LOW LEVEL RADWASTE DUMP AT MINE SITE. Faced with a $20 million mine reclamation bill that it can't pay, Dawn Mining Co. is following a practice growing across the American West where mining companies leaving a legacy of polluted lakes and toxic dump sites transfer clean up responsibility to the government. In the belief the pit will be capped sooner under the landfill plan, residents of Ford opted to support it rather than to sue Dawn to clean up the site. But many residents say the plan amounts to nothing more than "corporate welfare and blackmail." (Greenwire, Boston Globe, 3/1/96) DOE PLANS REPROCESSING DESPITE PRESIDENT CLINTON'S AFFIRMATION OF TOTAL SHUTDOWN POLICY OF PRESIDENT BUSH. Four previous presidents called for shut down of commercial reprocessing. Yet the March 15 Environmental Bulletin from the Savannah River Site relates "DOE's decision to process Mark-16 and Mark-22 fuels and blend the uranium down to low-enriched uranium, using the SRS canyon facilities. DOE has also decided to process other aluminum clad targets using a canyon facility and send the resulting solutions to SRS high-level waste tanks for glassification in the Defense Waste Processing Facility." Presumably the 22,700 aluminum clad foreign research reactor spent fuel elements SRS expects to receive for management will also be reprocessed. The Presidential decision against reprocessing was intended to discourage international trade in plutonium for use as a nuclear power plant fuel (MOX), with its vulnerability to diversion for nuclear weapons or terrorist purposes. DOE use stopped completely in 1992. Now the Draft EIS on Storage and Disposition of Fissile Materials indicates DOE is also planning plutonium separation by other processes, such as pyroprocessing--budgeted for $50 million in 1997. Kenneth R. Timmerman, director of the Middle East Data Project, a research group that tracks nuclear proliferation, writes in the 2/28 NYT that President Clinton told Congress he hoped a new treaty granting the members of Euratom the right to sell plutonium they have extracted (by reprocessing) from spent U.S. nuclear fuel would "insure the continuation and, I hope, growth of U.S. civil nuclear exports to Euratom member states." Timmerman observes that the Administration seems to be pushing exports with one hand while trying to restrain nuclear proliferation with the other. DOE OFFICIALS SAY VITRIFYING HLW STORED AT SRS SITE WILL TAKE 25 YEARS. The purpose of vitrification is to make high level liquids more stable and easier to handle, not to make them less radioactive. In fact "when the cylinders are filled, so much radiation will penetrate the steel that a person next to one would accumulate a lethal dose in minutes." The technical challenges involved in designing and building the necessarily automated plant appear to have been heroic, with three years work remaining on safe handling of a thick, brown sludge at the bottom of the waste tanks. While the search goes on for a safe place to isolate the stainless steel cylinders of vitrified waste for the long term, they will stay at DOE's Savannah River site. (NY Times, 3/13/96) SIX OR SEVEN RUSSIAN NUCLEAR SUBS ARE AS QUIET OR QUIETER THAN THE BEST U.S. SUBS. Navy experts say two new, expensive and controversial submarine programs, the Seawolf class and a new attack submarine, will solve this problem, but others say the next Russian attack sub will be better. The whole question puts the powerful Office of Naval Reactors on the defensive. Supporters say any criticism must be tempered with acknowledgment of the office's unmatched safety and submarine performance record. Naval Reactors recently reminded Senators in a letter, "The Navy will have nuclear ships for 50 more years, even if no more are authorized." (Navy Times, 3/4/96) And the Cold War is said to be over! DEPLETED URANIUM HEXAFLUORIDE IS NUCLEAR WASTE THAT SELDOM HITS THE FRONT PAGES. DOE has responsibility for 560,000 metric tons of this left-over from uranium enrichment. It is stored at three sites--Paducah, Kentucky, Portsmouth, Ohio, and Oak Ridge, Tennessee--as a solid in a partial vacuum in large steel cylinders weighing up to 14 tons each. The January Fed Reg announcing a PEIS concerning the waste's future had one use to suggest: radiation shielding after conversion to metal or an oxide. Unfortunately the conversion process would generate other kinds of waste. DOE is currently proposing to renovate existing storage yards at the Paducah Gaseous Diffusion Plant and to construct a new one to accommodate restacking approximately 19,000 of the cylinders. (Federal Register: May 3, 1996 Volume 61, Number 87, Notices page 19917) WISCONSIN ELECTRIC POWER COMPANY'S STORAGE CASK PLAN NIXED IN WISCONSIN COURT. The Company's plan to store high level nuclear waste in concrete silos at its Point Beach nuclear reactor was declared illegal last December by Wisconsin Circuit Court Judge Mark A. Frankel. The ruling came one week after the utility had already loaded one of the casks with spent fuel rods. The judge said that 1) the EIS inadequately analyzed the time the waste would be "temporarily" stored in the casks, and 2) the EIS did not adequately describe energy alternatives to shutting down the plant. The court's decision was the result of an appeal filed last year by the Lake Michigan Federation, the Citizens' Utility Board, and the Lake Michigan Coalition. Meanwhile Michigan's Consumers Power Company had begun building and loading the 100 ton concrete casks even before NRC approved the design. The utility later found welding flaws in the casks, which can each hold 14 tons of radioactive waste, and it is unable to unload waste from one defective cask without risking a new type of nuclear accident. (Radioactive Waste Bulletin, Spring, 1996) CHERNOBYL RESEARCH BECOMES INTERNATIONAL GROWTH INDUSTRY ANSWERING QUESTIONS ABOUT LOW DOSE EXPOSURES, particularly to the very young. Studies have been hampered by initial Soviet lack of cooperation, local suspicion, and lack of funds. However, after the collapse of the Soviet Union, outside collaborators and money poured into the three republics, western Russia, Belarus, and Ukraine. The European Commission has spent $27 million to fund pilot projects on health effects, environmental impact and emergency management issues. The World Health Organization (WHO) has spent $20 million, mostly from Japan, and Japan's Sasakawa Foundation has spent $50 million on measurement of radiation doses of children. The U.S. National Cancer Institute, Nuclear Regulatory Commission and Department of Energy have all signed bilateral collaborative agreements with the three republics, but their spending is embarrassingly low, $1.8 million for 1996 to be reduced to $l.2 in 1997. (SCIENCE, 4/19/96) GENETIC DAMAGE IS FOUND IN CHERNOBYL AREA CHILDREN OF PARENTS EXPOSED TO FALLOUT. A study published in NATURE says children born in 1994 in Belarus to parents who lived there in 1986 had twice the normal rate of a certain type of mutation. The damage took the form of so-called germline mutations: changes in DNA in sperm and eggs. Such mutations are passed on from generation to generation. (NY Times, 4/25/96) CESIUM AND STRONTIUM FROM PRIPYAT RIVER LEAKING INTO DNIPRO, RUNNING LENGTH OF UKRAINE. The Pripyat is located next to the Chernobyl plant. Two thirds of Ukraine's 52 million population get drinking water from the Dnipro (Dnieper). (Tallahassee Democrat, 3/20/96) WASTE PONDS AT CHELYABINSK CONTAINING 300,000 CURIES THREATEN OVERFLOW. Artificial ponds, channels, and dams built in the 1950s and 1960s to protect the Techa River and hold wastes from the power plant could contaminate large inhabited areas. Created in the late 1940's to make plutonium for the first Soviet atomic bombs, the plant (also known as the Mayak plant) has released at least 1 billion curies of radiation into the environment. (Tallahassee Democrat, 4/12/96) ARMENIA RESTARTS REACTOR DESPITE WESTERN OBJECTIONS ABOUT EARTHQUAKE DANGER. The upheaval of its seven-year, undeclared war with Azerbaijan has combined with post-Soviet economic chaos to close most Armenian factories, ravage living standards, and reduce its population by 20 to 30 percent. In turning to the 407 megawatt Metzamor reactor as a savior, Armenia will rely on a Soviet design that Washington considers among the world's most dangerous. Six such plants are in operation; the others are in Bulgaria, Russia, and Slovakia. Washington has refused economic aid to upgrade Metzamor and is pushing to close all six plants permanently. (NY Times, 10/24/95) IS RUSSIA DELIVERING ON URANIUM DISARMAMENT DEAL WITH THE UNITED STATES? Although no evidence exists that the Russians are not dismantling weapons or are supplying uranium from other sources, like naval reactors or continued production, reservations about compliance are worrying the administration into trying to negotiate better verification procedures. The purpose of the deal, arranged under the Bush administration, was to aid the Russian economy and lower the risks of nuclear war, accidents and theft, with the cost recouped by selling the uranium to electric utilities. By January the Russians had delivered reactor grade fuel representing six metric tons of highly enriched uranium, enough for about 300 nuclear warheads. Progress on getting Russian permission for US inspectors to enter their plants and check up on the fuel's origin has been stalled by their insistence on reciprocal access to sensitive American sites. An agreement is under negotiation in Geneva. (NY Times, 1/29/96) U.S. INVESTIGATORS SAY LAX SECURITY MAKES FORMER SOVIET NUCLEAR MATERIAL EASY TO STEAL. It's an easy target at scores of civilian and military nuclear sites. The republics of the former Soviet Union cannot account for a large share of the hundreds of tons of bomb-grade uranium and plutonium once listed in their stock piles, creating a "primary national security concern for the United States." Investigators for the General Accounting Office said they had been able to wander into one prominent nuclear storage site in Moscow, the Kurchatov institute, without showing identification and that it had been guarded by a single unarmed policeman. The report suggested that social and economic tensions in former Soviet republics had created new opportunities for nuclear thieves and terrorists. "The challenge is to insure that the former Soviet Union does not become a vast supermarket for the most deadly instruments known to man," said Senator Sam Nunn. (NY Times 3/13/96) The Pentagon has asked for $372 million in the Defense Department's budget request for Cooperative Threat Reduction activities in Russia, Belarus, Ukraine and Kazakhstan. (Navy Times, 1/1/96) INDIAN COURT BANS IMPORT OF TOXIC WASTE FOR REPROCESSING AND DUMPING. Instead of reprocessing their own waste, many foreign companies ship it to India and other Asian countries where environmental standards and enforcement are more relaxed. Environmentalists say all kinds of waste, including radioactive waste, comes to India from the United States, Germany, Britain and Canada. (Virginia Pilot, 4/11/96) NORTH KOREA BEGINS PUTTING SPENT FUEL IN STEEL CANISTERS FOR SAFER STORAGE. But the International Atomic Energy Agency says reactor operators still won't allow experts to sample the uranium rods to learn if any material was used to make bombs. The spent fuel was extracted from North Korea's only working nuclear plant two years ago. Still no word about how they manage the high level waste resulting from fuel manufacture. (NY Times, 5/03/96) IRISH PROTEST ENGLISH FLUSHING OF NUCLEAR WASTE INTO THE IRISH SEA. The waste comes from Sellafield, the nuclear-energy complex on the coast in northern England. Nobody denies that radiation is reaching Irish shores, but the government says it is a tiny proportion of background radiation and too little to cause harm. Still, many people in Drogheda, Ireland, are convinced that cases of leukemia and cancer in the area have been caused by waste emissions from Sellafield into the sea and air. They also see Sellafield as a potential Chernobyl. Four area residents are suing the Irish Government for not protecting them against the dangers of the British complex. Ireland is committed to a non-nuclear energy policy, relying on oil, natural gas, coal and peat for its energy. (NY Times, 4/24/96) PLAN TO USE PLUTONIUM TO FUEL CANADIAN NUCLEAR POWER PLANT STIRS ALARM. Canada's nuclear industry is pushing the government to permit plutonium extracted from American and Russian missile warheads to be used in commercial nuclear reactors in Canada, Canadian and US experts say. "We're very concerned about the precedent it would set for the rest of the world if Canada gives its stamp of approval for plutonium use," says Steven Dolley, research director of the Nuclear Control Institute, a Washington think tank. "We don't want to see it used in civilian reactors because we think it impossible to safeguard." Canada has proposed to DOE that mixed oxide plutonium fuel (MOX) be packaged into fuel rods in the US and shipped 54 times a year to the Bruce A nuclear station in Ontario, 180 miles northeast of Detroit on the shore of Lake Huron. Company spokesmen in a draft EIS DOE released in March said use of the fuel in Canada's heavy water reactors "should not create any new environmental, safety, or health concerns in Canada." Environmental groups in Canada do not agree. (The Christian Science Monitor, 4/5/96) THREE THOUSAND IN GERMANY FIGHT RUNNING BATTLES WITH POLICE TO PROTEST NUCLEAR WASTE SHIPMENT. Brought by rail from France, a 120 ton container of waste reprocessed from German spent fuel was off loaded onto a flat bed truck in Dannenberg. Thousands of police used water cannons, tear gas and baton charges to clear the 12 miles of road to the Gorleben storage depot of protesters throwing rocks, steel ball bearings, and flares. (NY Times, 5/9/96) Up to Top |
