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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.
NUCLEAR POWER SEEKS BOYSCOUT IMAGE AS WORLD SAVIOR FROM GLOBAL WARMING. Wherever he can, Hans Blix, chief of the United Nations' nuclear agency, is spreading the message that governments will soon realize they must embark on "the era of expanded nuclear power." President Clinton's science advisors have recommended tripling the budget for nuclear-energy research. In Japan, too, powerful interests are rallying to make nuclear power its main source of energy. China alone may spend $50 billion on nuclear-power technology in coming years, including big purchases from the U.S. (Seattle Times, 11/30/97) CONSUMER, ENVIRONMENTAL, AND ENERGY GROUPS URGE PRESIDENT TO BACK STRONG ACTION TO REDUCE GREENHOUSE GAS EMISSIONS AND TO OPPOSE USING NUCLEAR POWER FOR THE TASK. The groups, including the Sierra Club, cite (1) the poor economics of nuclear power, including the $150 billion plus bailout the industry is asking for its expensive nuclear plants. (2) An unacceptable trade off, replacing one serious environmental problem with another one. No solution exists for the disposition of nuclear waste, a radioactive poison which will be deadly for thousands of years. (3) Better economic and environmental choices exist: for every $100 invested in nuclear CO2 abatement, one ton of CO2 is released into the earth's atmosphere that could have been avoided, had that $100 been put into increasing energy efficiency. (4) Subsidizing existing old and dangerous reactors: the aging nuclear industry claims such subsidizing must be included in its effort to reduce greenhouse missions: such repairs can be compared to making patchwork repairs on a dangerously damaged junk car. At some point, repairs cost too much and the old car goes to the junk yard. Nuclear power is not a solution for climate change; instead, that claim is a misguided attempt to save the struggling nuclear power industry. (Public Citizen's Critical Mass Energy Project, 12/12/97) NUCLEAR TESTING BY ANOTHER NAME: STOCKPILE STEWARDSHIP AND MANAGEMENT. To cost $45 billion over ten years, the program depends on computer simulation and experiments with subcritical mini-explosions to maintain the nuclear weapons stockpile. The new National Ignition Facility in Livermore, Calif., is designed to use precisely tailored laser light to compress a droplet of nuclear materials, creating a tiny fusion explosion that can be closely studied. The New York Times (NY Times) editorializes that while the country will need a new generation of weapons scientists if the test-ban treaty breaks down, the stewardship program must not subsidize unrelated experimentation or allow any effort to design and build more advanced weapons. (NY Times, 11/30/97) Ed. Note: All this while we wait for Congress to ratify the CTB Treaty. FRENCH STUDY SHOWS LOW DOSE RADIATION EXPOSURES CAN BE HARMFUL, ESPECIALLY TO CHILDREN. Published in the January 11, 1997 issue of the British Medical Journal, the study explored risk factors associated with 27 cases of leukemia among residents of Beaumont, France, under 25 who had lived within a 20-mile radius of the Cogema La Hague nuclear reprocessing factory. At the time of diagnosis, ten of the victims were age four or younger, eleven were between four and l4, and six were between 15 and 24. Twenty had acute lymphoid leukemia, five had acute myeloid leukemia and two had chronic myeloid leukemia. One child also had Down's syndrome. More than half have died since completion of the study. In examining risk factors, the victims were compared with a control group of 192 similar but healthy children. The study found that the risk of contracting leukemia was three times higher than the background risk if a child visited the beach near Beaumont more than once a month. (PSR Health Research Bulletin, Fall 1997) DEBATE RAGES OVER COMMUNITY STOCKING OF ANTI-RADIATION DRUG. Although anxiety about the lack of potassium iodide availability in communities neighboring nuclear power plants began within hours after the Three Mile Island accident, today most communities around the nation's 107 nuclear power plants still have no potassium iodide stocks. The compound can prevent thyroid cancer in people exposed to radiation. In June the Nuclear Regulatory Commission agreed to buy it for any state that wants to store it, but only three states now have stockpiling plans: Alabama, Maine and Tennessee. Only a few tablets of potassium iodide keeps the thyroid from absorbing radioactive iodine, significantly reducing its risk but not protecting against other effects of radiation, which is tied to everything from leukemia to skin cancer. (USA TODAY, 11/21/97) DOE WEIGHS FATE OF RADIOACTIVE CAPSULES SENT AROUND THE COUNTRY in effort to find industrial use for radioactive materials. All were recalled to Richland, Wash., because of a serious leak in a capsule at a plant near Atlanta. The idea was to use the radiation for sterilizing food or medical instruments. DOE (Dept. of Energy) is reluctant to call the material waste, a classification that would require the department to develop a disposal plan. It is supposed to decide the issue by the end of this year. (NY Times, 9/28/97) NATIONAL CANCER INSTITUTE (NCI) FAILS TO TELL WHOLE TRUTH ABOUT NEVADA TEST SITE. Commissioned by Congress in 1982 to estimate the radiation exposures to the public on a county-by-county basis from the 1950's above ground nuclear bomb blasts, the study, which found hot spots across the country, fails to tell the whole story about the total exposure from all domestic military nuclear releases. Among exposures not included were those from under ground tests on the Nevada Test Site continuing into the early 1990's. (INEEL NEWS, 11/97) IEER QUESTIONS MEASUREMENT OF RADIATION IN BOMB WORK. In the first 45 years of U.S. nuclear weapons production, the Government failed to properly track the radiation exposure of thousands of bomb workers, according to Arjun Makhijani, President of the Institute for Energy and Environmental Research. Instead of properly analyzing the effect of radioactive materials that these workers inhaled or swallowed, the Government tracked only radiation doses from sources outside the human body, usually by requiring workers to wear badges made of photographic-type film, the cloudiness of which was measured to determine exposure to radiation. Urine samples were also taken but measurements of the intake and ingestion were not combined with information about the external doses to calculate a total exposure rate. A study at the Fernald Feed Materials Center, in which Dr. Makhijani participated, showed that throughout the 1950's "more than 50 percent of the workers were overxposed in every year but one" through internal doses. Peter N. Brush, DOE's acting Assistant Secretary for Environment, Safety and Health, said that Dr. Makhijani was correct that the combined doses had not been calculated. He said that until the late 1980's, it was not universal practice to do so. The radiation in question includes subatomic particles or energy waves emitted by radioactive substances. When these are swallowed or inhaled, they can lodge in the body and deliver large doses directly to small amounts of tissue inside the body which causes cancer. (NY Times, 11/9/1997) KAZAKHASTAN ONLY NOW BEGINNING TO UNDERSTAND NUCLEAR TEST DAMAGE. One of every three children born in the eastern region of Semey has mental or physical defects. Anemia is rampant, cancer deaths increased seven-fold in the 1980's and half the population suffers from immune system deficiencies. About 1.2 million people in at least 711 towns and villages were exposed to dangerous levels of radiation, according to government data. (Washington Post Foreign Service, 11/7/07. US NUCLEAR INDUSTRY BANKS ON CHINA'S DEMAND. To the faltering American nuclear reactor industry the road to survival runs through China, recently certified for US nuclear exports. Beijing has embarked on a mammoth nuclear-power expansion program worth an estimated $50 billion, with Canadian, Russian, and French companies ahead in the race for contracts. All this as DOE projects a global slump in nuclear power production due to a slowdown in plant construction and retirements of aging reactors. Only in East Asia are governments pursuing major long-term nuclear power programs, none bigger than that planned by China. (Christian Science Monitor, 10/28 and 10/30, 1997) POSTER CHILD FOR NUCLEAR CLEAN-UP TURNS INTO NIGHTMARE FOR LOCKHEED-MARTIN, contractor to clean up a football field-size hole filled with deadly radioactive waste in Idaho Falls. Described by the General Accounting Office as "clearly a failure" the clean up effort was planned by DOE as a model in its $100 billion-plus program to "privatize" federal cleanup of nuclear waste sites by hiring private firms. The contract gave the government an ironclad guarantee that Lockheed-Martin would do the job for $179 million--or lose money if it cost more. Now Lockheed-Martin says Pit 9 cleanup will cost as much as $600 million, and that's just a start. Surrounding Pit 9 in the sprawling Idaho National Engineering and Environmental Laboratory (INEEL) are 57 other equally befouled nuclear waste trenches. (Washington Post National Weekly Edition, 10/13/97) STATE STUDY ON PANTEX AS SITE FOR MAKING FUEL RODS FOR US REACTORS finds no more risks than already exist at the site, but Don Moniak, project director for Serious Texans Against Nuclear Dumping, stated at a briefing that Pantex has never worked with plutonium in powdered form, so comparing it with existing missions is "almost irrelevant." He added that the essential question is whether the Panhandle should risk impacts to agriculture, water and resources from an experimental technology involving about 200 jobs that will be gone in 10 to 15 years. Pantex is one of four sites being considered by the U.S. Department of Energy for the new program. Other proposed sites include the Savannah River Site in South Carolina, the Hanford site in Washington, and the Idaho National Engineering and Environmental Laboratory. (Amarillo Globe-News, 11/14/97) COMMONWEALTH EDISON'S ZION PLANT NEAR CHICAGO SHOWS SERIOUS WEAKNESSES in safety management and "a complete lack of progress" in addressing its problems. Shirley Jackson, Chair of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC), told the New York Times that the company was "in a deep hole" with four of its reactors shut and more in danger of shutdowns. Commonwealth Edison serves 3.4 million customers in Illinois in an area with a population of about 8 million people. (NY Times, 11/27/97) NORTHEAST UTILITIES OF CONNECTICUT TO PAY $2.1 MILLION FINE, the largest ever imposed by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. The fine stems from a host of violations of Federal regulations at the three reactors at the Millstone Nuclear Power Station in Waterford. (NY Times, 12/11/97) Dangerous, Expensive, Senseless THAT'S MOX -- a plan to mix uranium and plutonium oxides into a fuel to be used by civilian reactors. DOE is promoting it to "dispose of" (as in get rid of) surplus plutonium. Not only does it not get rid of the plutonium, it creates more nuclear waste, is vulnerable to diversion for violent purposes, reduces reactor controllability, requires BIG BUCKS government subsidization to use it, and supports the wishful Russian view that all the money they put into producing plutonium for military purposes can be recovered as electricity. (Reprocessing, Project for Participatory Democracy, The Tides Center, San Francisco, CA; Mary Olson in Nuke Watch, spring 1997, and many others) ENGLAND'S SELLAFIELD PLANS INCREASED PRODUCTION OF MOX from eight to 120 tons. The increase will lead to unacceptable safety risks, including the possibility that the fuel could be used in the manufacture of nuclear weapons, according to the International MOX Assessment. (The Irish Times, ll/28/97) COGEMA, SIEMENS, MINATOM PLAN RUSSIAN MOX FUEL FABRICATION PLANT dedicated to using weapons-grade plutonium. Europe has 22 reactors presently using MOX fuel, but Europe also has problems with MOX: Germany's Hanau plant is not in operation, and the French Super Phoenix - the world's largest fast-breeder--no longer has a commercial license. Russia has experimented with plutonium fuel in research reactors since the 1950's. (Uranium Institute Information Service, 1997 Symposium) SHOWDOWN! HOUSE OKS MOBILE CHERNOBYL ACT BY HUGE MARGIN; CLINTON again promises veto. The vote on HR 1270 was 307-120, 26 votes fewer than needed to sustain a Presidential veto. A House-Senate conference will be appointed probably shortly after Congress resumes work early in 1998. The House and Senate must approve the conference committee version, which will then be sent to President Clinton. Next comes the crucial vote on whether to override the veto. The nuclear power industry has engaged in its most expensive and determined lobbying effort ever to convince Congress that it is somehow a good idea to transport tens of thousands of high level radioactive waste casks through cities, farms, and across the front yards of Middle America to a site riddled with earthquake faults where radioactive isotopes from nuclear weapons testing have found their way deep into the mountain. (The Nuclear Monitor, 11/97) NUCLEAR WASTE SHIPMENTS DELAYED BY APPEALS COURT REFUSAL TO FORCE the government to start taking them. The Department of Energy is required by law to begin picking up the spent fuel by Jan. 31 but does not have a place to store it. Although the Appeals Court rejected the department's claim that its delay is unavoidable, the court said that there was no need to require the department to take the waste since the utilities contracts with the Government provided for payment of damages if the deadline was missed. (NY Times, 11/16/97) EPA APPROVES PERMIT FOR PLUTONIUM DUMP IN NEW MEXICO. Wilting from political pressure, the Environmental Protection Agency approved the DOE's 100,000 page permit for the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP). The DOE must prove that the $20 billion underground New Mexico dump would isolate its plutonium waste from the rest of the environment for 10,000 years (despite the fact that the waste will remain dangerous for over a quarter million years). The WIPP site still faces strong legal challenges, including one from New Mexico's Attorney General. WIPP is where much of Idaho's already stored above ground plutonium-contaminated waste is slated to be buried. (Snake River Alliance Newsletter, Holidays 1997) TEXAS SENATORS PRESS DOE TO PERMIT UNLICENSED LOW LEVEL N-WASTE DUMP IN ANDREWS COUNTY, Texas, near the Texas-New Mexico state line. Waste Control Specialists (WCS) is attempting to get DOE to use the Atomic Energy Act as authorization of the dump, which would not be subject to any local or state regulation. No other waste dump in the country is regulated only by DOE. (David Culp, Plutonium Challenge, 11/3/97) NUCLEAR WASTE FROM HANFORD UNDERGROUND TANKS REACHES GROUND WATER 230 feet below the tanks. Hanford officials believed the contamination from the reservation's 177 underground waste tanks (67 of which are suspected to be leaking) was soaked up by the area's dry soil, suspending pollution far above the aquifer. A $29.5 billion project is under way to clean up the tanks by sluicing them with water. Groundwater beneath the tanks already contains contaminants from more than 300 billion gallons of waste water that was pumped into the ground at Hanford from 1945 until recently. (Christian Science Monitor, 11/26/97) TVA BEGAN TRITIUM TEST AT ITS WATTS BAR REACTOR ON OCTOBER 20 when it refueled the reactor and inserted 32 12 foot target rods which are expected to produce an ounce of tritium over the next 18 months. DOE claims the tritium is needed to keep the US nuclear arsenal operative well into the twentieth century. (Tom Clements, Greenpeace,10/30/97) GOOD NEWS!: NUCLEAR WASTE DECLINE MAY CUT WARD VALLEY DUMP NEED. A steady, 16 year decline in the quantity of low-level radioactive waste disposed of in the U.S. is prompting officials in several states to question the need for a new generation of commercial nuclear waste dumps, the first of which would be in California's Ward Valley if proponents succeed in getting it up and running. The volume of radwaste going to disposal sites today is a fraction of what it was in 1980, when the law calling for states to cooperate in the construction of about a dozen new dumps was passed. (Los Angeles Times, 12/3/97) RUSSIA CALLS ON NATO TO HELP ASSESS PROBLEMS POSED BY 156 RETIRED, RUSTING NUCLEAR SUBMARINES. Russian Academician Ashot Sarkisov, addressing a submarine-dismantling seminar organized with NATO's help, said "Our economy is ill, and our leaders clearly downplay the potential danger." He said the Russian government is providing only 10% of dismantling costs expected to reach hundreds of millions of dollars. Norway has promised $35 million to help clean up Arctic and Far East naval bases, and the U.S. is helping build a waste disposal plant in Murmansk. But Russia still lacks capabilities to simply unload spent fuel from sub reactors and has only four railway cars capable of carrying radioactive waste. As a result more than 60% of mothballed submarines still have fuel in their reactors, making them particularly prone to accidents. (AP, 11/28/97) INTERNATIONAL PACT REACHED ON MOVING NUCLEAR FUEL AND WASTE. On Sept. 5 nations represented at the International Atomic Energy Agency adopted the first convention on how to insure that radioactive material is protected against potential risks while it is being transported. The vote was 62 to 2 with three abstentions. New Zealand, Turkey, Brazil and Morocco urged that countries at least be informed about radioactive material being transported through their territory. Others, including France, Britain and Japan said such notification should not be part of a binding agreement. China, Russia and India did not make such a commitment. (NY Times, 9/06/97) U.S. AND RUSSIANS AGREE TO PUT OFF DEADLINE ON NUCLEAR ARMS. The package of arms control agreements signed on Sept. 26 would give Russia until the end of 2007 to dismantle launching systems---missile silos, bombers and submarines--as required by the second strategic arms reduction treaty, or Start 2, which Yeltsin insists he needs time to win approval of in Russia's parliament. The systems must still be disabled by 2003. US officials say the new agreements clear the way for new talks to negotiate further cuts in nuclear weapons in both the U.S. and Russia. (NY Times, 9/27/97) CANADIANS EXPORT A TYPE OF REACTOR THEY CLOSED DOWN. In China workers are excavating a site, 60 miles south of Shanghai, for two Canadian reactors similar to four in Lake Ontario that are being shut down because they cannot be safely run by one of the largest utility companies in North America. The reactors are simpler to build than American type reactors, but they are far more complex to keep running safely. Around the world countries that for forty years bought the same type Canadian reactor, which is a heavy producer of plutonium that can be extracted secretly, are struggling to keep their operation safe. That Ontario Hydro has itself closed 7 of its 19 operating reactors raises questions about Canada's policy of aggressively exporting them to other countries. (NY Times, 12/03/97) THE STICKY SIDE OF PRIVATIZATION--Washington has already incorporated into the budget the billions it expects to bank when the United States Enrichment Corporation is sold to private investors early next year, the largest divestiture of a Federal production operation ever attempted. A half dozen big American corporations with experience in nuclear power are reportedly pondering bids, but the most unusual possible bidder is the Pleiades Group, a consortium headed by former Commerce Secretary Robert A. Mosbacher; advised by a former Secretary of State, James A. Baker 3rd, and provided legal counsel by Mr. Baker's son, Jamie. The Pleiades chief executive, a Russian American named Alexander Shusterovich, acknowledges his close working relationship with Viktor Mikhailov, the head of Minatom. USEC serves as the "executive agent" for the 1993 deal in which Washington agreed to buy 500 tons of bomb-grade uranium from Minatom after it has been blended down for use as commercial reactor fuel. (NY Times, 8/30/97) HOW'S THAT AGAIN? RUSSIANS NOW WANT TO SCRAP ABOVE DEAL TO SELL uranium from dismantled weapons to US Enrichment Corp. The decision could increase Russia's revenues by $300 million to $500 million but the West would have less control over the sale of commercial-grade uranium. (NY Times, 12/12/97). Up to Top |
