FSIN opposes nuclear waste site
The StarPhoenix (Saskatoon)
Saturday, November 5, 2005
Page: A7
Section: Local
Byline: Daniel Jungwirth
Source: The StarPhoenix
The Federation of Saskatchewan Indian Nations (FSIN) announced its
opposition to storing nuclear waste in the province Friday, but left the
option open for interested communities.
Vice-chief Delbert Wapass said the FSIN did not have the resources
to independently study the potential for nuclear waste in Saskatchewan.
"All we know really is what we're reading from other scientists that
have been employed by the people who produce nuclear waste," said Wapass.
"We know the containers do leak, we know the effects and more importantly,
there's still unfinished business in the mines that need to be decommissioned."
Wapass said the federation hasn't done any analysis on the economic
opportunity this may have for First Nations communities, but said the communities
have the ability to make decisions on their own behalf.
"However if a First Nation decides to pursue this, I would encourage
them to ensure they completely understand the short-, medium- and very
long-term issues that need to be examined regarding the storage of nuclear
waste."
He said First Nations have a role of stewardship, protecting the land.
A youth assembly held in Yorkton Aug. 19 resolved that the FSIN should
work with the federal and provincial governments to develop an environmental
protection strategy on the importation of waste from outside Canada and
develop policy and legislation for waste storage.
The Nuclear Waste Management Organization (NWMO) recommended in a final
report Thursday that a disposal site for waste should be chosen in 30 years
with possible locations including Saskatchewan, Ontario, Quebec and New
Brunswick.
The NWMO is a federally appointed panel made up of representatives
from the nuclear industry.
Nuke storage idea has few fans in NWO By BRYAN MEADOWS Nov 4, 2005, 00:17
The Canadian Shield is suitable for nuclear waste disposal, says a new study by the Nuclear Waste Management Organization. But there likely won’t be many Northwestern Ontario communities eager to have such waste buried nearby. In its final report submitted to the federal government Thursday, the industry-led group recommends radioactive waste produced by the country’s nuclear reactors be buried deep underground in mausoleum caverns of hard rock. It has proposed a multi-year management system which would include periodic evaluations and citizen input on whether to proceed, stop or reverse the process. The $24-billion master plan calls for the containment of used nuclear fuel deep underground in the granite-bound rock of the Canadian Shield, or in sedimentary Ordovician rock (in areas west and north of Hamilton and Toronto) that also has a low risk of fractures and underground water seepage. Through three implementation stages, lasting perhaps 300 years or more, the waste would be monitored and remain retrievable. A proposed mausoleum would not actually be built for roughly 60 years. If the proposal is approved by the Ottawa, the NWMO will begin a siting process for a central facility to store Canada’s two million bundles of spent nuclear fuel. Officials said the organization would not force any area to take the waste. “We intend to seek an informed, willing community to host the central facilities,” NWMO president Elizabeth Dowdeswell said. She told The Canadian Press “the issue that really gets people excited is where it’s going to happen.” Dowdeswell said it’s reasonable to expect to find a community willing to host a central mausoleum because that’s happened in Finland and Sweden. That may be so, but the Seaborn Report of 1998 found little public acceptance of the disposal idea. Opposition has been expressed by several municipal leaders in the Northwest. Some communities like Thunder Bay have proclaimed their territories nuclear-waste-free zones. Atikokan passed a nuclear-free resolution in 1990, but that was long before the provincial government announced it was going to close the nearby coal-fired power plant in 2007. Some wonder if the community will bite now. There would have to be “a complete community decision” to participate in the siting process, Mayor Dennis Brown said Thursday. “I certainly won’t be bringing that forward,” he said, adding that council also hasn’t discussed the issue. While “nothing is carved in stone,” Brown said “the only way” he’d be in favour of looking at the concept was after all the information was provided, and after everyone in the community voted in favour of it. In the early 1980s, Atomic Energy of Canada Ltd. conducted drilling tests in the Atikokan area, and community information meetings were held. The community eventually rejected the concept of burying nuclear waste in the area. Nishnawbe Aski Nation Grand Chief Stan Beardy said community leaders in member First Nations haven’t taken a definitive stance on nuclear waste storage. But “we’re very strict in protecting the natural environment,” he added. Beardy said he plans to bring up the topic at NAN’s next Assembly of Chiefs meeting in January. At an Assembly of First Nations meeting in Regina this week, Union of Ontario Indians Grand Chief John Beaucage said he would advise any reserve on the Canadian Shield not to store nuclear waste on its territory. Beaucage said promises of large amounts of money may be enticing for poorer communities, but the long-term impact should be considered. “It might look good in the short term, but when you’re talking about nuclear waste there’s no such thing as short-term,” he said. The NWMO report says Canadians want a system for future management of nuclear waste put in place that “is safe, secure and fair.” The used fuel is currently safely stored on an interim basis in licensed facilities at the reactor sites where it is produced. “Our recommendation is firmly rooted in values that Canadians hold dear,” said Dowdeswell. “It commits this generation to take first steps now to manage used nuclear fuel we have created. And it is flexible, allowing for the ongoing involvement of citizens in decision-making about how it is implemented.” The NWMO will focus its siting efforts in Ontario, Quebec, New Brunswick and Saskatchewan — provinces with nuclear power plants. Communities in other regions which express an interest will be considered. NWMO’s Choosing a Way Forward report can be downloaded at www.nwmo.ca. © Copyright by Chronicle journal.com
TIVERTON - Ontario Power Generation has hired an Ottawa
consultant to conduct detailed scientific testing for proposed
underground storage of low- and medium-level nuclear waste at the
Bruce Nuclear Power Development.
The hiring of INTERA Engineering Ltd. for an expected four year study
of the proposal comes a year after the provincial utility and the
municipality of Kincardine signed a controversial agreement covering
the facility.
Ontario Power Generation owns the Bruce site and has proposed a
$900 million plan for long-term burial of low- and intermediate-level
waste in caverns 600 metres below the surface. INTERA's
investigation of the site's suitability is to begin in 2006, OPG
spokesperson Marie Wilson said, Monday.
Seismology to examine the stability of underground rock formations is
among seven subjects to be addressed, INTERA president Ken Raven
said in an OPG statement.
On Oct. 21, an earthquake centred in Georgian Bay north of Thornbury
was measured at 4.2 on the Richter scale. University of Western
Ontario researcher David Eaton said the quake may have been the
biggest ever in southwestern Ontario. It was certainly the biggest
quake in southern Ontario in at least 20 years, he said.
Raven said the INTERA research will add significantly to the
geoscience of sedimentary rock formations in southern Ontario. In
addition to seismology, INTER's research is to focus on geochemistry,
borehole hydraulic testing, geomechanics, geophysics, data
management and mathematical modeling, the OPG statement says.
The company announced a three-person expert review group. Derek
Martin of Alberta, Joseph Pearson of North Carolina and Andreas
Gautschi of Switzerland are to advise researchers and review their
work.
The panelists offer expertise in areas of rock engineering, groundwater
geochemistry and sedimentary rock formations. They combine recent
international experience in nuclear waste projects in Canada, Finland,
France and Switzerland.
OPG owns eight power reactors at Bruce operated by Bruce Power. Its
western waste management facility for low-and medium-level nuclear
waste at Bruce is also the largest of 10 nuclear waste management
sites in Canada.
It receives waste from Bruce Power and from other reactors operated
in Ontario by OPG. It currently holds about 62,000 cubic metres of
material, much of it used reactor parts, tools, cleaning equipment
and
supplies.
OPG has already applied to the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission
for expanded, above-ground storage facilities to store such wastes,
which accumulate at the rate of about 2,000 cubic metres annually.
In January, safety commission officials issued environmental
assessment guidelines for above ground expansion of waste storage
at Bruce.
OPG expects to submit a formal project description for environmental
assessment of the underground waste storage proposal by early next
year, Wilson said, Monday.
Under federal law, both the draft environmental assessment guidelines
and any final report on the environmental impact of the project are
subject to public hearings.
Environmental groups and some area residents expressed objections
to the project after it was proposed a year ago. Some have said
storage of low- and intermediate-level wastes clears the way for long-
term storage or disposal of high level reactor fuel waste.
Wanted A community in Ontario, Quebec, New Brunswick or Saskatchewan willing to store millions of bundles of highly radioactive waste fuel from the country's 22 nuclear reactors. Forever.
The nuclear waste would be buried at this central site in mausoleum caverns up to a kilometre underground in hard rock, concludes a three-year study by experts submitted today to the federal government.
The study was carried out by the Nuclear Waste Management Organization, an industry-led group specially created by federal law.
The proposed mausoleum would not actually be built for roughly 60 years, according to the study's master plan. It also could remain unsealed for centuries while scientists search for a better way to deal with radioactive waste, says the report.
A decision on a site is unlikely for at least a couple of years, according to officials here.
The final waste management plan contains no significant changes from draft proposals reported exclusively by the Star in May.
The federal government has been anticipating the recommendations as a way to help defuse public opposition to new nuclear power plants being considered to reduce emissions of carbon dioxide, the leading greenhouse gas formed by burning coal and oil to make electricity.
Anti-nuclear campaigner David Martin of Greenpeace said polls suggest many Canadians instead want nuclear power phased out, a move that would stop the steady rise in nuclear waste that must be managed.
"I think the federal government is setting the scene for a huge social confrontation on nuclear waste disposal," Martin said in an interview.
Two earlier federal waste disposal studies rated the granite- bound Canadian Shield as the only geological formation stable enough for millennia of storage. But the organization report says other parts of the country could host a nuclear mausoleum because they are located on sedimentary Ordovician rock that is also low-risk for fractures and underground water seepage.
Extending the geological criteria brings in non-Shield areas in Ontario including London, Hamilton-Niagara, Windsor-Sarnia and a swath from Kitchener-Waterloo up to Barrie.
Almost 90 per cent of Canada's nearly two million bundles of waste nuclear fuel is currently stored at Ontario's Pickering, Darlington and Bruce power stations, mostly in concrete and metal casks inside ordinary sheds. The master plan says the waste will remain at these sites for at least the next 30 years. Depending on public opinion, the bundles then might be moved to temporary storage in a centralized shallow facility for the following 30 years.
Spent fuel, expected to double over the 40-year reactor lifetimes, is dangerously radioactive for dozens of centuries.
Federal law forces Ontario Power Generation, Quebec Hydro and other producers of waste fuel to make annual contributions to a fund to cover the costs of long-term radioactive waste management, estimated at $24 billion in the study. The fund now contains $770 million.
The federal government must respond to the master plan for a drawn-out approach the organization calls Adaptive Waste Management. Ottawa can still opt for other ideas the report rejects, including leaving the waste dispersed at reactor sites, or building a central repository on the surface.
Once the federal government makes its choice, the organization will search for an eventual site or sites.
"In the interests of fairness, we intend to focus within the provinces that are directly involved in the nuclear fuel cycle - Ontario, New Brunswick, Quebec and Saskatchewan (where uranium is mined)," the report says.
Organization president Elizabeth Dowdeswell, former head of the United Nations environment program, said yesterday, "The issue that really gets people excited is where it's going to happen."
She said it is reasonable to expect to find a community willing to host a central mausoleum because that's happened in Finland and Sweden.
In the mausoleum that's proposed, steel-and-copper capsules would each
hold 324 bundles of waste fuel. The containers would be designed to last
at least 100,000 years and be sealed in underground caverns behind water-resistant
clay barriers.
The StarPhoenix (Saskatoon) Thursday, November 3, 2005 Page: A4 Section: News Byline: James Wood Dateline: REGINA Source:
The StarPhoenix REGINA -- A day after seeming to leave the door open for a *nuclear* *waste* facility in Saskatchewan, Premier Lorne Calvert slammed it shut on Wednesday.
"Let me say today definitively, the answer is no. Under my leadership in this province there will not be in Saskatchewan a *nuclear* *waste* disposal facility," he told reporters.
"The people of Saskatchewan I believe have said to me, in my conversations with them, it's not something they want to pursue. It's not something my government wants to pursue."
The issue arose after Calvert was questioned at a press conference Tuesday marking his return from the Team Saskatchewan trade mission to Asia.
After speaking of the province's desire to sell its uranium to China, where more than 30 new nuclear reactors are being planned, Calvert did not rule out a *nuclear* *waste* dump for the province when questioned by reporters.
He said the government would consider the business case for a nuclear reactor or waste dump but said any proposal for a dump would prompt an intense testing and review process.
The premier said Wednesday his remarks from a day earlier had been misinterpreted. "They could come, I would consider it and I would say no," he said of any proposal for a site in the province. Disposal of waste from nuclear reactors is a major environmental issue because the waste remains highly radioactive -- and dangerous -- for thousands of years.
On Nov. 15, the industry-led *Nuclear* *Waste* Management Organization will present a report to the federal government on its long-term plan for waste disposal.
A draft report released in May recommended a $24-billion underground mausoleum for waste and said Ontario, Quebec and Saskatchewan are suitable sites for such a facility.
However, it is expected the report will recommend continuing with the system of storing waste at nuclear reactors for the next 60 years.
A review process to pick a site for a new facility in the Canadian Shield is expected to take 18 years. Victor Lau, leader of the province's Green party, said he's not surprised Calvert appeared to struggle to define his stance on a waste dump in Saskatchewan.
Uranium and nuclear issues have been contentious within the NDP, which has pro- and anti-uranium factions within the party, said the former NDP activist. In the 1980s, party policy called for the phasing out of uranium mining in the province. That stance was reversed in the early 1990s and the NDP government recently formally backed the development of uranium processing in Saskatchewan.
"The war will begin if the NDP government ever moves towards accepting a nuclear reactor or *nuclear* *waste* disposal. I think there's a lot of people in the NDP still who are very environmental," Lau said in an interview Wednesday.
While former NDP deputy premier turned Nexen executive Dwain Lingenfelter has recently been touting the development of a nuclear reactor in Saskatchewan to provide energy for the oilsands projects in Alberta, Calvert said the economics and infrastructure of such a project doesn't make any sense.
"Mr. Lingenfelter speaks for himself or for his oil company, I don't know which. But he's certainly not speaking for the government of Saskatchewan or the New Democratic Party."
"There are places in this globe that may have no other choice but to use the nuclear generation of electricity. In this province we have such a broad diversity of energy potential it is not an option I think we need to pursue," he said.
The Opposition Saskatchewan Party is interested in the prospects of nuclear energy development in the province, but leader Brad Wall said Wednesday a *nuclear* *waste* dump is not on his party's agenda.
The provincial Liberal party will consider a resolution at this weekend's convention that would see it advocating the development of small nuclear power systems in the province. Lau said there seems to be a groundswell of debate on uranium and nuclear issues in Saskatchewan.
"We're the only party really hard against it," he said. "It's certainly drawn the lines very clear."
Chiefs warn of nuclear waste plans for native territory
Some are worried at possible moves to bury spent fuel in the Canadian Shield
By BILL CURRY
Wednesday, November 2, 2005 Posted at 1:24 PM EST
REGINA -- Aboriginal chiefs gathered from across the country are being put on notice that plans are afoot to bury nuclear waste in their traditional territory.
Outside the Regina convention room where more than 600 chiefs of the Assembly of First Nations are gathered this week, the AFN has set up a large display, complete with pictures, of how nuclear waste could be buried inside the Canadian Shield in the coming decades.
"Yikes," said one woman at the convention as she scanned the display outlining the AFN's "Nuclear Waste Dialogue."
David Gorman, one of the AFN's four co-ordinators for the dialogue, has been visiting reserves to let chiefs and tribal council members know that key decisions are being made about storing nuclear waste that could affect native reserves in the coming decades.
"I'll talk about radiation and a little bit of the science. I'll talk about the proposed options for economic opportunities for regions," Mr. Gorman said, in describing his presentations.
"I would just say, 'Be aware that industry might approach [your community] to build a facility on your territory and they might sweeten the deal with economic opportunities and money.' "
The issue is being driven by the impact of the federal Nuclear Fuel Waste Act, passed by Parliament in 2002. The law created a new Nuclear Waste Management Organization, led by representatives of Canada's nuclear industry. The organization is scheduled to report in two weeks on its long-term plan for storing nuclear waste.
Mr. Gorman said earlier reports from the organization suggest it will likely propose that the current system of storing waste at the site of nuclear reactors should be continued for the next 60 years, after which deep storage facilities in the Canadian Shield should be ready for use.
The Canadian Shield is the deep rock bed that lies underneath most of Quebec and Northern Ontario. Parts of Saskatchewan are also being considered as potential locations for nuclear deep storage.
The AFN's nuclear dialogue is being paid for with money from the nuclear organization and Natural Resources Canada.
Mr. Gorman would not say how much money the AFN received from the nuclear organization, but the AFN's own summary report of its dialogue reveals the funding arrangement doesn't sit well with some.
"Some participants expressed discomfort at the idea that the AFN was there to promote the [nuclear organization's] objectives and obtain 'buy in' to the current process," says the summary report from the AFN to Elizabeth Dowdeswell, the nuclear organization's president.
John Beaucage, the grand council chief for the Union of Ontario Indians, which represents several native reserves on the Canadian Shield, said he would advise any community not to store nuclear waste on its territory.
Mr. Beaucage said promises of large amounts of money may be enticing for poorer communities, but the long-term impact should be considered.
"It might look good in the short term but when you're talking about nuclear waste, there's no such thing as short-term," he said. "It's just a very, very scary thought."
While reserves are relatively small and it would be highly unlikely that such facilities would be built on reserve land, each aboriginal community considers the broader surrounding area to be part of its "traditional territory," which may also be specifically defined by treaties.
Such land is also owned by the Crown, creating the possibility that such facilities could be built against the wishes of the closest reserve.
Mr. Gorman said that, so far, no community has volunteered to work with the nuclear industry.
He said his presentation is normally met with "a sense of shock" given there is little knowledge of nuclear-waste issues or that a plan is in the works that could involve traditional lands.
The debate comes as the Ontario government has signalled it will become more dependent on nuclear energy as it phases out coal power.
As chiefs wandered by the AFN display, Mr. Gorman said he has been told of many negative experiences that reserves have had with the uranium-mining industry.
One aboriginal community in the Northwest Territories, for example,
used to be referred to as the Village of Widows after most of the men in
the area died because they were hired to carry uranium from a local mine
without any protection.
*
© Copyright 2005 Bell Globemedia Publishing Inc. All Rights Reserved.
TIVERTON - Ontario Power Generation has hired an Ottawa
consultant to conduct detailed scientific testing for proposed
underground storage of low- and medium-level nuclear waste at the
Bruce Nuclear Power Development.
The hiring of INTERA Engineering Ltd. for an expected four year study
of the proposal comes a year after the provincial utility and the
municipality of Kincardine signed a controversial agreement covering
the facility.
Ontario Power Generation owns the Bruce site and has proposed a
$900 million plan for long-term burial of low- and intermediate-level
waste in caverns 600 metres below the surface. INTERA's
investigation of the site's suitability is to begin in 2006, OPG
spokesperson Marie Wilson said, Monday.
Seismology to examine the stability of underground rock formations is
among seven subjects to be addressed, INTERA president Ken Raven
said in an OPG statement.
On Oct. 21, an earthquake centred in Georgian Bay north of Thornbury
was measured at 4.2 on the Richter scale. University of Western
Ontario researcher David Eaton said the quake may have been the
biggest ever in southwestern Ontario. It was certainly the biggest
quake in southern Ontario in at least 20 years, he said.
Raven said the INTERA research will add significantly to the
geoscience of sedimentary rock formations in southern Ontario. In
addition to seismology, INTER's research is to focus on geochemistry,
borehole hydraulic testing, geomechanics, geophysics, data
management and mathematical modeling, the OPG statement says.
The company announced a three-person expert review group. Derek
Martin of Alberta, Joseph Pearson of North Carolina and Andreas
Gautschi of Switzerland are to advise researchers and review their
work.
The panelists offer expertise in areas of rock engineering, groundwater
geochemistry and sedimentary rock formations. They combine recent
international experience in nuclear waste projects in Canada, Finland,
France and Switzerland.
OPG owns eight power reactors at Bruce operated by Bruce Power. Its
western waste management facility for low-and medium-level nuclear
waste at Bruce is also the largest of 10 nuclear waste management
sites in Canada.
It receives waste from Bruce Power and from other reactors operated
in Ontario by OPG. It currently holds about 62,000 cubic metres of
material, much of it used reactor parts, tools, cleaning equipment
and
supplies.
OPG has already applied to the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission
for expanded, above-ground storage facilities to store such wastes,
which accumulate at the rate of about 2,000 cubic metres annually.
In January, safety commission officials issued environmental
assessment guidelines for above ground expansion of waste storage
at Bruce.
OPG expects to submit a formal project description for environmental
assessment of the underground waste storage proposal by early next
year, Wilson said, Monday.
Under federal law, both the draft environmental assessment guidelines
and any final report on the environmental impact of the project are
subject to public hearings.
Environmental groups and some area residents expressed objections
to the project after it was proposed a year ago. Some have said
storage of low- and intermediate-level wastes clears the way for long-
term storage or disposal of high level reactor fuel waste.
Many Aboriginal communities in Canada refuse explicitly to endorse the consultation procedures and political directionchartedthus far by the highly controversial Nuclear Waste Management Organization (NWMO). NWMO’s failure to win an audience with Aboriginal peoples clashes with the intent of recent legislation that established NWMO, and therefore jeopardizes the efforts of successive Canadian governments to contrive socially acceptable nuclear waste solutions under the political leadership of the nuclear-electric industry.
This consideration may distress the Canadian Nuclear Society, whose March 2000 CNS Bulletin review of the major Canadian book on nuclear fuel waste estimated that the likely disposal sites for this waste “are expected to lie within lands occupied by Aboriginal communities.”
In Canada, “nuclear fuel waste” usually means irradiated uranium fuel discharged from the reactors of three nuclear utilities and Atomic Energy of Canada Limited.
The 2002 Nuclear Fuel Waste Act requires NWMO to notify the Canadian Government within its impending triennial report, expected by 15 November 2005, the comments received during NWMO “consultations” with Canadians including Aboriginal communities.
In its May 2005 draft version of the anticipated recommendation, NWMO revealed: “The Assembly of First Nations, Congress of Aboriginal Peoples, Ontario Aboriginal Métis Association, the East Coast First People’s Alliance, the Western Indian Treaty Alliance, and the Atlantic Policy Conference of First Nation Chiefs all argue that our Aboriginal Dialogues do not consist of ‘consultation’ as required by their interpretation of the law.”
On 9 June, Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami ( www.itk.ca ) reinforced earlier Inuit public positions by resolving “complete opposition to the storage/ disposal and transport of nuclear fuel waste in the Canadian Arctic [including] marine areas and aerospace.”
The ITK resolution resonates with Inuit Circumpolar Conference Resolution 77- 11 demanding rigorous prohibition of nuclear, chemical and biological wastes, weapons and weapon testing in the Arctic Circumpolar Zone.
Assembly of First Nations chief Phil Fontaine warned the 1989-1999 Nuclear Fuel Waste Management and Disposal Concept Environmental Assessment Panel that Aboriginal communities may contest burial of nuclear fuel waste: “Our people are not opposed to developments in our traditional lands. But if the process fails to address our vital concerns and our fundamental rights in a full and fair way, then First Nations will oppose it.”
Another chief told the Panel that he represented fifty First Nation communities including two-thirds of Ontario’s total land area, and none was prepared to accept nuclear waste.
Chief Peter Kelly of the Saugkeeng First Nation of southeastern Manitoba predicted militantly to the Panel on 16 January 1997: “You have taken our land, trees, water and pelts, and now you want to take our rocks. But we will not let you take our rocks.”
Panel member Lois Wilson, feminist theologian and past president of the Canadian Council of Churches and the World Council of Churches deplored in Nuclear Waste: Exploring the Ethical Dilemmas (Toronto: United Church of Canada, 2000) that “Health Canada does not have much data on the effects of radiation specifically on Aboriginal people nor on breast cancer in women of the north. Some of this is planned for future research!” (page 60)
In rejecting the nuclear industry’s deep geological repository concept, the Panel concluded that a nuclear fuel waste disposal concept that lacks the support of Aboriginal peoples is unacceptable for Canada.
This finding and the chilly reception evidently extended to NWMO emissaries thus far by Aboriginal communities will probably prevent NWMO from fulfilling the tasks reiterated in its advance draft. These undertakings include recruitment of “willing communities” to host away- from- reactor waste storage and disposal facilities; and “implementing” a NWMO scenario for nuclear fuel waste acceptance by those communities and for the hazardous transportation of fuel waste convoys by road, rail, ship or barge.
The Nuclear Fuel Waste Act does not mandate NWMO to examine Canada’s energy and nuclear policies. The same exclusion fettered the blue- ribbon Panel, whose chair Blair Seaborn petitioned successive Canadian energy ministers for such a broad review mandate (Wilson, page 108).
Mistrustful of Ottawa’s intent thus far to exclude policy concerns from environmental mandates,NuclearWaste Watch, a sharply adversarial coalition of leading environmental non governmental organizations nonetheless insists that waste reduction at source is the ideal nuclear fuel waste management option, requiring the orderly phase out of Canada’s nuclear power reactors, as already legislated in Sweden, Belgium and Germany.
Watch representative Brennain Lloyd, who intervened decisively at the Seaborn Panel (Wilson page 17) termed the “Adaptive Phased Management” approach to nuclear fuel waste proposed in NWMO’s draft “the worst of all worlds it combines all the serious problems of at-reactor site storage of the waste, ‘centralized’ storage and deep rock disposal of the waste”
Lloyd’s coalition seeks a radically new federal-provincial environmental assessment panel on the full range of nuclear waste options following the anticipated NWMO recommendation. “The federal government should guarantee a full parliamentary debate and free vote on the recommendations of the NWMO and of the federal-provincial panel we are urging,” argue the environmentalists.
Parliamentary parties must soon decide whether and how to detach from the nuclear industry-NWMO approach to nuclear waste, and at last start respecting Canada’s Aboriginal communities who live on lands earmarked for nuclear waste disposal, and their allies in Canada’s nuclear concern coalition.
Gilles Duceppe, Stephen Harper and Jack Layton: This is your chance to oppose unpopular policies for nuclear waste management.
Stephen Salaff is a Toronto-based freelance energy and environment writer. Salaff publishes regularly on intractable nuclear waste problems with industry and popular periodicals in Canada and internationally.
The provincial and federal governments strategy of doing little to stop
“the perfect storm” facing the forest industry, or pushing for the closure
of coal-fired power plants, may have some interesting nuclear fallout.
While there’s no clear evidence of a co-ordinated plan yet, perhaps
if enough Northern Ontario communities are eventually wiped out economically,
the prospect of becoming a nuclear waste dump may be the only life-line
left for some.
It’s not just peanuts we’re talking about here.
For a community like Kenora, Nipigon or Atikokan facing mill and power
plant closures — $24 billion in investment for a nuclear waste disposal
site — is a very difficult economic initiative to ignore. Even with the
ongoing not-in-my-backyard mentality that creeps into the debate on radioactive
waste dumps.
And if crippling communities like Atikokan wasn’t bad enough, the Liberukes
are preparing to create even more of the radioactive waste.
Approval of a deal this week between the province and Bruce Power,
to restore two idled nuclear units at the Bruce generating station off
the shores of Lake Huron, will only add to the growing stockpile of waste,
currently at about two million used nuclear fuel bundles.
That’s enough to fill five hockey rinks from the surface to the top
of the boards.
While nuclear waste doesn’t create smog days, Canada’s output of 100,000
used fuel bundles a year (of which Ontario is a major contributor) will
remain potentially lethal for tens of thousands of years.
Unfortunately, by closing coal-fired plants across Ontario and rejuvenating
the costly nuclear industry, the province is just replacing a short-term
air-pollution problem for another more potentially deadly and long-term
one of radioactive waste.
But that’s something our children can deal with — right.
Meanwhile, the tonnes of nuclear waste will have to be stored somewhere.
Why not Northern Ontario, where there’s lots of room and rock to bury
stuff, few people and starving communities needing a new economic engine.
The Nuclear Waste Management Organization, an independent agency looking
for a long-term solution to managing waste from nuclear reactors, has already
proposed the eventual containment of used nuclear fuel deep underground
in suitable rock formations, possibly in the Canadian Shield. (That’s where
we live.) Its final report will be presented to the federal government
next month.
While officials have stated “we're not going to force any area to take
the waste . . . we're seeking a volunteer site,” what choice will some
Northern Ontario communities have facing an already bleak future?
With the current industry climate, Northern Ontario may yet become
a mecca for parks and nuclear waste storage, a place where guided tours
of abandoned paper mills and coal-fired power plants are commonplace.
© Copyright by Chronicle journal.com
Wednesday, October 19, 2005
OTTAWA - Canada's environmental performance ranks almost dead last among major industrialized countries, according to a sweeping new study.
The report, prepared by Simon Fraser University and published Tuesday by the David Suzuki Foundation, puts Canada 28th among 30 Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development countries.
Turkey, Switzerland and Denmark took top honours. Only Belgium and the United States performed worse than Canada.
Researchers looked at 29 environmental indicators to make their determinations, placing Canada 26th or lower in 12 categories.
It ranked Canada dead last in the production of nuclear waste, carbon monoxide and volatile organic compounds. It was 29th in per-capita water consumption, sulphur oxide emissions and energy use.
Suzuki, the high-profile scientist and broadcast personality said: "I think (the report) is going to come as a shock to Canadians who think that we're world leaders in environmental protection," he said.
Suzuki called the idea that environmental measures hurt the economy "a myth," adding Canada is far behind European countries on sustainable development.
He called on the government to implement a national sustainability act that would give the country hard pollution-reduction targets, timelines to reach them and a method to monitor progress.
Suzuki added citizens have a duty to dump "so-called" political leaders who don't make the environment a priority.
Environment Minister Stephane Dion dismissed the study Tuesday, suggesting the David Suzuki Foundation was slagging Canada with fuzzy science.
"Who can give a lot of confidence in a study that said the country that had the best performance regarding the environment is Turkey," he asked in mock amazement. "Mexico is 13th ... Mexico! Would you drink Mexico City water from the tap?"
He pointed out a number of other studies by the likes of the World Economic Forum and Conference Board of Canada that have ranked this country in the middle of industrialized nations, and one put it as high as second.
"I'm not saying we're second, I'm saying we are better than Mexico," Dion said.
He admitted "the bottom line is we need to do much more -- we need to have a greener economy, a greener Canada, more energy efficiency," but argued Canada is aggressively pursuing environmental protection through the Kyoto accord.
Some other findings of the report, which was endorsed by all three federal opposition parties:
- Canada did not finish first in any environmental performance category and got failing grades in 24 of 29 indicators.
- Its best ranking was second in the volume of timber harvested per square kilometre and fifth in the ratio of timber harvest to forest growth.
- Canada has not improved its environmental performance relative to other OECD countries since 1992, when it was also 28th.
"Canada's poor environmental performance could be caused by a number of factors including geography, climate, economic structure, and poor public policy," said the report.
The study highlighted poor public policy. It said there is a wide disparity between Canadian values and the country's environmental performance. It said Canadians have the strongest environmental values in the OECD.
It's time they made their values better known to government, officials told a news conference.
On the issue of climate change alone, Canada is "lethargic, sluggish, asleep at the wheel, in the ditch, haywire, incontinent," said Jim Fulton, executive director of the Suzuki foundation.
Suzuki said North Americans tend to take their natural resources for granted while most European countries faced environmental crises years ago.
Until now, he said, Canada has been able to use non-sustainable methods of extracting its vast natural resources with few apparent consequences.
"Europeans have filled up their land long ago. They've had to, of necessity, develop ways of being much more sustainable."
The Suzuki report had a handful of positive rankings for Canada in areas such as use of renewable energy (fifth), timber-harvesting rates (second) and per capita pesticide use (second).
That wasn't enough to satisfy opposition politicians, however.
Conservative member of Parliament Bob Mills reminded a press conference that Canada's environment commissioner recently chastised the government for making big announcements, and then ditching them "as soon as the confetti hits the ground.
"I agree totally we have been misled in terms of our environmental integrity," he said, while simultaneously promoting his party's environmental plan.
Mills argued better co-operation with the provinces, providing more incentives to the private sector instead of compliance programs and committing more funding to science and technology would be more effective than the government's current Kyoto path.
NDP environment critic Nathan Cullen said the report showed "integrity and authenticity.
"We should not be at this point in the list," he said. "After 12 years with the Liberals, we're still stuck at the bottom."
SHADES OF GREEN
Environmental performance rank of Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development nations, according to the David Suzuki Foundation:
1. Turkey
2. Switzerland
3. Denmark
4. Poland
5. Slovak Republic
6. Germany
7. Austria
8. Sweden
9. Italy
10. Netherlands
11. Portugal
12. Czech Republic
13. Mexico
T-14. Norway
T-14. Hungary
16. Japan
17. Finland
T-18. France
T-18. United Kingdom
20. Greece
21. Spain
22. Luxembourg
23. Korea
24. Iceland
T-25. New Zealand
T-25. Australia
27. Ireland
28. Canada
29. Belgium
30. United States
Ran with fact box "Shades Of Green", which has been appendedto this story.
© The Edmonton Journal 2005
THOMAS WALKOM
Dalton McGuinty struggles to keep Ontario's lights burning. His government
would like private companies to build the plants needed to generate the
province's electricity but whoops the private companies aren't sure
they want to.
Too risky, too risky.
So the government helps out. It chips in.
It lends a hand.
Yesterday, the government announced plans to lend a hand in a big way.
It's going to give the private sector firm Bruce Power a set of lucrative
new inducements to start up two dilapidated reactors at the company's Lake
Huron nuclear plant near Kincardine.
The consortium says it will pay $4.25 billion to refurbish the two-mothballed
reactors and fix up two others at the so-called Bruce A portion of its
plant.
It says that when the two-mothballed reactors are back in operation,
by 2009 or so, they'll be supplying the province with an additional 1,550
megawatts or about enough electricity to power roughly a third of Toronto.
And, says Bruce Power President Duncan Hawthorne, the company will pay
the entire $4.25 billion itself without burdening the taxpayers of Ontario.
Of course, there's a catch. Or, to be more precise, there are at least
two catches.
First, the province's Ontario Power Authority has agreed to buy all
the output from all four Bruce A reactors including two that are already
operating at a guaranteed minimum price of 6.3 cents a kilowatt-hour.
That's about half a cent less than the current so-called spot price
of electricity the price paid to the highest-cost generator serving the
Ontario market.
But it's considerably more than the government's own electricity company,
Ontario Power Generation, receives for the nuclear and hydro power that
it produces about 40 per cent more.
Ontario Power Generation supplies the vast bulk of all the electricity
used in the province.
It's also more than Bruce Power is getting now for the power it currently
generates.
Hawthorne won't say how much more. But he did note that last year, his
company received an average of 5.1 cents a kilowatt hour for its electricity.
This price will escalate automatically with the cost of living each
year. In addition the government has agreed to fully cover any increases
in the price of uranium fuel.
So that's the first helping hand. Queen's Park has promised it will
pay Bruce Power a handsome price for its power for 29 years.
Or, to be more precise, the government has promised that electricity
consumers will guarantee this price. Ontario households and most businesses
currently pay between 5 and 5.8 cents a kilowatt hour for electricity.
But under the complex formula used to set rates, they are supposed to ultimately
pay the full cost of the power they use.
The second helping hand kicks in if the actual cost of refurbishing
Bruce exceeds $4.25 billion.
Here, depending on the circumstances, the government is responsible
for covering anywhere from 25 to 75 per cent of any cost overruns.
In short, this is not your normal commercial deal.
But then electrical generation has never been a normal commercial operation
in Ontario.
From the 1920s on, it has been marked by inflated expectations and even
more inflated costs.
Perhaps most notorious was the Darlington nuclear plant east of Toronto.
Originally budgeted at about $4 billion, it eventually cost three times
that when it started up in the 1990s.
In 1997 and 1998, government-run nuclear facilities were deemed to be
so badly run that eight reactors including four at Bruce were shut
down indefinitely.
In 2000, the government of former Conservative premier Mike Harris brought
in the private company British Energy to run Bruce.
At the time, the Liberal opposition criticized the Bruce leasing arrangement
as far too sweet. But the government insisted that, as part of the deal,
British Energy would eventually refurbish and restart the four mothballed
reactors known collectively as Bruce A.
Two years later, British Energy went bankrupt and the Bruce operation
taken over by a different group of companies. This Bruce Power consortium
did start up two of the Bruce A reactors in 2003. But it said the remaining
two needed more time and money to fix.
That was around the time that experts were predicting electricity shortfalls
for Ontario. It was also the year the McGuinty Liberals swept to power
promising, among other things, to rid the province of polluting coal-fired
generating plants and replace them with something else.
The problem with the promise was that the Liberals couldn't say what
that something else would be.
All of this gave the Bruce Power consortium considerable bargaining
clout. It controlled two potentially lucrative reactors that it wanted
to fix. But it didn't want to bear all of the risk and cost involved.
The government, for its part, desperately wanted more electricity generated.
But it didn't want to be seen throwing money at the discredited nuclear
industry.
Politically, the final deal seemed ideal. The government would get its
electricity. Bruce Power would get its subsidy albeit from citizens in
their role as ratepayers rather than taxpayers.
And even if the government does end up having to spend billions on cost
overruns well, that probably won't happen until after the next election.
In providing his strongest indication yet that he might look to nuclear
energy to meet Ontario’s long-term electricity supply concerns, McGuinty
said he’s prepared to agree on construction of multibillion-dollar nuclear
plants if that’s what it takes to quench the province’s increasing thirst
for energy.
The premier said he’s awaiting a Dec. 1 report from the newly created
Ontario Power Authority, which is reviewing what needs to be done to address
concerns about the province’s energy supply.
“Should the OPA recommend nuclear as being an indispensable part of
a diverse supply of electricity, then we will build new nuclear in this
province,” McGuinty said.
McGuinty was speaking from Niagara Falls, where he attended a ground-breaking
ceremony for Ontario Power Generation’s construction of a 10-kilometre
tunnel. The tunnel will divert more hydroelectric power from the waters
around Canada’s honeymoon capital to a power station further up the Niagara
River.
The premier said it’s an example of how the government is addressing
concerns about the energy supply in the short-term, especially in light
of extreme heat in Ontario this summer.
But he said that over the longer term, larger projects will be needed,
even if it means expanding the use of controversial nuclear energy.
Proponents of nuclear power say it’s the cleanest and safest
way to add significant power to the province’s electricity system.
Critics say nuclear plants cost billions of dollars to construct, take
10 years or more to build and raise environmental concerns about radioactive
waste.
The Toronto Environmental Alliance said it was “appalled” to hear McGuinty
open the door to more nuclear plants, which it warned would leave a huge
financial and environmental debt.
“We’re very concerned because the (electricity) system is still very
much in the hands of the people who built our last nuclear plants, and
got us into the mess we’re in today,” said alliance spokesman Keith Stewart.
“The McGuinty government should not be repeating the mistakes of the
previous provincial government, which put us massively in debt, and left
us with nuclear plants that don’t work very well and we’re all paying for
right now.”
Even after the OPA report is completed, Energy Minister Dwight Duncan
noted that months of review will be necessary before the province gives
the go-ahead to any nuclear projects.
“There are going to be a series of other questions after (the report
is released), starting with private versus public, starting with OPG’s
role, and then doing all the calculations and arithmetic around what projects
would and wouldn’t be feasible,” Duncan said.
The Conservatives and New Democrats said McGuinty is taking too long
to make up his mind on an energy strategy two years into his mandate.
“They don’t seem to have a plan for replacing the generation that they’ve
committed to shutting down,” Tory energy critic John Yakabuski said, referring
to the premier’s promise to close coal-fired plants, which has been delayed.
Yakabuski said Ontario manufacturers won’t invest more in the
province until they’re sure the energy supply is reliable.
NDP Leader Howard Hampton said the province should look to ways
of encouraging better energy conservation.
Hampton estimated a new nuclear plant could cost as much as $10 billion
to construct and noted that the Darlington nuclear plant cost nearly three
times as much to build than originally anticipated.
“We can get further with energy efficiency . . . it will be cheaper
than building $10-billion nuclear plants.”
At a speech to the Ontario Energy Association in Niagara Falls, McGuinty
said he’s willing to take a political hit for building nuclear plants even
if they prove unpopular. He accused previous governments of having delayed
dealing with the nuclear issue.
“We won’t gamble away Ontario’s future prosperity because of what the
next poll might or might not say,” he told industry officials.
Murray Elston, president of the Canadian Nuclear Association, said
costs to build a nuclear plant can be kept under control as long as there’s
a firm commitment to construct them, and no starts and stops.
“The one thing which is absolutely key for our industry is that once
the decision is taken that we get on with putting the projects in the ground,”
Elston said.
The Toronto Star
Nuclear plants needed: Duncan
Buying CANDU not a certainty
Energy report set for December
RICHARD BRENNAN
QUEEN'S PARK BUREAU
Ontario needs more nuclear power plants and will soon have to decide
how many and where new reactors should be built, Energy Minister
Dwight Duncan says.
"I think the people of Ontario need to know that that decision is coming
quickly ... clearly we have to look seriously at nuclear. There is
no
doubt it," he told the Toronto Star yesterday.
Duncan said the existing nuclear reactors, which produce about 50 per
cent of the province's power, will reach the end of their life expectancy
by 2020, putting Ontario's energy future even further into question.
And since it takes 12 to 15 years to complete a nuclear facility, costing
billions of dollars, time is of the essence, the minister said.
Ontario Power Generation owns 15 operating reactors in the province,
with the newest being Darlington, completed in 1993.
Duncan said the province needs to have a larger base of generating
power to meet its needs, "and nuclear is an important component of
that."
It was Duncan's strongest statement yet on the need for nuclear
power. Before he would say only that Ontario is looking at a mix of
power that could include nuclear.
Duncan said he realizes nuclear power is "very controversial" given
the
history of huge cost overruns and the obvious environmental concerns.
However, an Ipsos-Reid national opinion poll commissioned last year
by the Canadian Nuclear Association, a non-profit industry
organization, found support in Ontario for atomic power to be 64 per
cent of 800 people surveyed, the highest in the country.
Duncan did stress the province must first make the best of hydro
electricity, renewable forms of energy generation as well as
conservation, "but there are clear limitations about what we can do
(in
these areas)."
The Ontario Power Authority, which has been directed to come up with
an integrated system plan to ensure long-term supply, is to report
to
the government this December. The OPA is to hold public consultation
throughout the fall. "Should the province decide to go ahead with new
nuclear, the bigger and tougher questions are where do they go, how
many, who owns them, who operates them ... and the final question —
what technology do we used," the energy minister said.
Other sources have said there is no guarantee that Ontario will go for
the Canadian-made CANDU reactors, and privately OPG says it would
rather go for anything but. The CANDU nuclear reactor is Atomic
Energy of Canada Ltd.'s flagship product.
"We really look forward to being part of the process in Ontario as the
province looks at its mix of generating types. We obviously supported
the concept of nuclear being part of that," said Pat Tighe, AECL's
vice-
president of marketing and business development, adding the
company is ready to take on the competition.
Duncan has hinted many times, as has Premier Dalton McGuinty, that
more nuclear plants are a possibility, but Duncan said it's more like
a
probability if the province is going to be able to meet its energy
needs.
Recently speaking to reporters in Banff, Alta., McGuinty said: "We
are
not ruling out new nuclear, but we are ruling out uneconomical old
nuclear wherever we find it."
While this notion will not sit sell well with a lot of environmentalists,
NDP Leader Howard Hampton said the Liberal government is at least
finally coming clean on nuclear power.
"This is where they have been headed all along. They deliberately
avoided an energy efficiency strategy," Hampton said, accusing the
government of making a "token" effort on conservation and developing
renewable forms of energy.
Hampton said it would cost about "$8 billion a pop" to build a nuclear
power plant big enough to produce significant amounts of electricity.
"What we need is a province-wide energy efficiency strategy,
something the government could have started two years ago."
Dave Martin, energy co-ordinator for Greenpeace Canada, said
nuclear power in Ontario has been an "unmitigated disaster" because
he says the plants are costly and unreliable, noting that at one point
seven of Ontario's 20 reactors were shut down.
"It was the largest shutdown of nuclear plants in world history," he said.
Martin said throwing more money into nuclear power will inevitably
mean less money spent on conservation and renewable forms of
energy.
When the Darlington nuclear complex was completed in 1993, it was
about 10 years overdue and $12 billion over budget. It would take two
3,500 megawatt facilities the size of Darlington to replace the power
now being generated by coal-fired plants slated to close by 2009.
Martin accused the government, OPG and Independent Electricity
System Operator (IESO) of being part of a conspiracy to overstate
Ontario's energy crunch in order to justify building more nuclear
reactors.
Ontario has been struggling at times to keep the lights on this summer.
On high demand days, the province needs 25,000 megawatts of
power, of which 3,000 megawatts are likely to be imported, mostly
from the U.S.
And because of the strain on the system several times this summer,
supplies have been so tight power system operators imposed
brownouts to avert the need for rolling blackouts.
The situation took a turn for the worse when OPG recently announced
that two nuclear reactors at the Pickering A generating station —
mothballed in the 1990s — weren't worth fixing, scratching more than
1,000 megawatts of generating capacity off its list of potential power
sources.
OPG has already spent $2.6 billion restoring Units One and Four to
service at Pickering; Unit Four is operating, and Unit One is expected
back in service by October. OPG's board originally thought it would
cost $1.3 million to return all four reactors to service.
OPG is also set to enter into a contract of more than $2 billion to
restart two idle reactors with a combined capacity of more than 1,500
megawatts at the Bruce nuclear station near Kincardine, operated by
privately owned Bruce Power.
Tom Adams, of Energy Probe, an industry watchdog, accused the
Liberal government of being "detached from reality."
"This (nuclear) is not a solution to their problem ... it's not the
way to
go," he said.
Conservative MPP John Baird (Nepean-Carleton) said the government
seems to have forgotten about the "culture of conservation they talked
about ... they have been dithering for two years.
Ontario Power Generation has dropped plans to refurbish two dormant
reactors at its nuclear power plant in Pickering, the utility said
Friday.
Instead, OPG will "devote its resources and expertise to maximizing
the performance of its 10 existing nuclear units," OPG said in a
statement.
"For several months we have studied the economics of the Pickering A
Units 2 and 3 [returning] to service, including third-party reviews,"
said
president and chief executive Jim Hankinson.
"Our mandate is to operate our assets as efficiently and as cost-
effectively as possible. We don't see a sound business case for
returning Units 2 and 3 to service."
OPG restarted one of four closed units at its Pickering A station 2003
following a refurbishment project.
A second unit at the plant is set to come back online in October,
following upgrades costing approximately $1 billion.
Harkinson said OPG has concluded that doing similar work on the
remaining units at Pickering A was simply not a good use of the utility's
resources.
"The expertise in nuclear operations and the knowledge gained by
returning Units 4 and 1 to service can be used best in maximizing the
performance of these two units, and the other eight units at our
Pickering and Darlington stations," he said.
"OPG's decision on Units 2 and 3 is financially prudent and reflects
our
objective of keeping our costs as low as possible."
The two reactors in question have been shut down since December
1997.
OPG said they would be decommissioned over the next two years, and
left in what it called "a long-term layup state."
The utility said nuclear power accounted for 40 per cent of its total
electricity production in 2004.
The McGuinty government has put the wheels in motion to produce well over 9,000 megawatts of diversified generating capacity. In fact, between 2004 and 2007, Ontario will secure more new generating capacity than any other jurisdiction in all of North America. This includes:
Pickering A Unit 1 Return to Service – 515 megawatts
Clean Energy Supply and Demand Side Projects – 2,235 megawatts
Niagara Tunnel – 200 megawatts
Renewables 1 RFP – 395 megawatts
Renewables 2 RFP – 1,000 megawatts
Renewables 3 RFP – 200 megawatts
Replacement of Thunder Bay Generating Station with Gas-Fired Generation
– 310 megawatts
Co-generation – 1,000 megawatts
Downtown Toronto – 500 megawatts
West GTA – 1,000 megawatts
Demand-Side Management and Demand-Response – 250 megawatts
Tentative agreement with Bruce Power for refurbishment of Bruce A 1
and 2 – 1540 megawatts
Additional capacity that has been brought online since October 2003
includes:
October 2003, Bruce Power Unit 4 -750 megawatts
January 2004, Bruce Power Unit 3 – 750 megawatts
June 2004, Imperial Oil Co-Generation – 98 megawatts
July 2004, Brighton Beach gas-fired facility - 580 megawatts
July 2004, Northland Power Kirkland gas-fired facility – 32 megawatts
The government has placed particular emphasis on expanding renewable generation, and is well on its way to meeting its target of adding five per cent, or 1,350 megawatts of new renewable generating capacity by 2007. By the end of 2007, it is expected Ontario will see a 75-fold increase in its wind capacity alone. In addition, we’ve directed the OPA to oversee the 250 megawatt RFP for demand-side management and demand response initiatives. We have also made it possible for local distribution companies to invest over $160 million in conservation in their local communities in the next three years. As well, the new Chief Energy Conservation Officer is currently developing conservation programs to be announced in due course.
- 30 -
For consumer information call 1 888 668 4636
July 28, 2005
Nuke association fires up campaign
By ALAN FINDLAY , Toronto Sun
The Canadian Nuclear Association has launched a province-wide ad campaign while the province considers spending billions on nuke plants.
The association, whose members include provincially owned Ontario Power Generation and plant-makers Atomic Energy of Canada, began airing ads last week that promote nuclear power as clean, cheap and reliable.
Association president Murray Elston said the campaign is intended to inform people of the benefits of nuclear power as the discussion of its future in the province gets under way.
"We believe nuclear offers Ontario some big relief on the nagging prospects of what we call the supply gap."
The campaign comes as the province is debating spending billions more on refurbishments at the Pickering and Bruce nuclear plants.
Energy Minister Dwight Duncan has also launched a broader examination on the future of nuclear power and whether new plants are worth their huge construction costs.
New Democrat MPP Marilyn Churley said it's already clear the province is preparing to pump billions into nuclear power.
"Ontario Power Generation
and the Liberal government are in bed with the nuclear industry."
Premier mulls storage solutions for nuclear
waste
Thursday, July 28, 2005
Byline: April Lindgren Dateline: KITCHENER, Ont.
Source: CanWest News Service
KITCHENER, Ont. - Premier Dalton McGuinty said Wednesday that Ontario needs a long-term storage solution for nuclear waste and refused to rule out a proposal by the provincial power company to build a deep rock repository on the shores of Lake Huron.
"We have an obligation to look at longer-term solutions to our nuclear waste," McGuinty told reporters when asked about Ontario Power Generation's plans to store low- and intermediate-level nuclear waste in deep caverns to be built at the Bruce nuclear station in Kincardine, Ont.
"But we have to be very, very certain that any proposed storage is indeed safe in the long term."
McGuinty was noncommittal when asked about the impact of building North America's first deep-rock repository in the midst of a renowned beach area that draws thousands of tourists and cottagers.
"I would want to listen to the local community and find out about their concerns with respect to the impact it might have on tourism," he said.
OPG's plan for the repository includes digging 660 metres down into limestone and carving out 38 caverns, each of them as long as football field, up to eight metres wide and 6.6 metres high. Waste would begin going into the caverns beginning in 2017.
The Bruce station has been the storage site for low- and intermediate-level waste from all of Ontario's reactors since the early 1970s. Right now, low-level waste, made up of minimally radioactive materials such as mop heads, protective clothing and floor sweepings, is placed in above-ground concrete warehouse- type structures.
Intermediate-level waste such as used reactor components, resins and filters are stored mainly in steel-lined concrete containers that have been set into the ground.
Ontario pays towns to take nuclear waste
- Lake Huron municipalities to get $35M, told not to criticize plan
April Lindgren
The Ottawa Citizen
July 27, 2005
TORONTO - Government-owned
Ontario Power Generation paid more than $3 million to municipalities on
the shores of Lake Huron this spring as part of a deal clearing the way
for construction of North America's first deep rock nuclear
waste storage facility.
The cash, which some critics have decried as hush money aimed at silencing opposition, is the first instalment of a "hosting agreement" that will see the utility pay the Ontario communities of Kincardine, Saugeen Shores, Huron-inloss, Arran-Elderslie and Brockton $35.7 million over the next 30 years.
In return, the five municipal councils have embraced OPG's plan to store low-and intermediate-level nuclear waste in a deep rock geologic repository at the Bruce nuclear plant in picturesque Kincardine.
The plan for the repository includes digging 660 metres down into limestone nd carving out 38 caverns, each as long as a football field, up to eight metres wide and 6.6 metres high.
While the project is massive and involves radioactive waste that will remain ccontaminated for thousands of years, the proposal has attracted scant attention in province that was in an uproar five years ago over Toronto's plans to dump ity garbage into an old iron ore mine in Northern Ontario.
"Our municipal council volunteered us as the site for this, which is almost unheard of in the world," says Jennifer Heisz, a critic of the scheme who lives one kilometre from the Bruce station. "OPG has not based this on health and afety considerations or the suitability of the site. It's based on our councillors volunteering the site in exchange for $35 million."
Ms. Heisz questioned whether it was appropriate for OPG to pay for municipal council members to visit nuclear waste storage sites in Europe and the United States. She says many council members are less-than-objective decision-makers ecause they have relatives who work for the Bruce nuclear station or are themselves current or former employees or contractors who did business with the facility. She insists there should have been a formal referendum on a matter that will affect the community for years to come.
And she railed against provisions in the formal agreement that allow OPG to cancel payments to the municipalities if there is any opposition to the deal. "The gag order aspect of this is terrible," Ms. Heisz said. "It stifles open debate. It has intimidated a lot of public representatives into not being able to represent the public for fear the town will lose the money."
The 20-page agreement states early on that payments to Kincardine and the neighbouring communities can be halted if any or all of them "have failed to exercise best efforts to support the construction of (the) deep geologic epository."
High-level waste -- used nuclear fuel -- is stored at the nuclear power station where it is generated and that will continue, said OPG spokesman John Earl.
The Bruce station, however, has been the storage site for low- and intermediate-evel waste from all of Ontario's reactors since 1974.
Low-level waste, made up of minimally radioactive materials such as mopheads, protective clothing and floor sweepings, is placed in above-ground oncrete warehouse-type structures.
Intermediate-level waste, such as used reactor components, resins and filters, is stored mainly in steel-lined concrete containers that have been set into the ground.
Mr. Earl said the Bruce site has been selected for the repository because "the community came and asked us to look at what the options are for the future and to look at deep geologic repository as the one that they considered to be the best technology available."
The utility, he insisted, will "work diligently to meet the needs and satisfy the concerns of the community as we move this forward."
Kincardine Mayor Glenn Sutton also makes no apologies for the money-for- waste deal he and the council signed with OPG last fall.
"There has been extensive consultation," including a public opinion survey that found 60 per cent of residents support the project, Mr. Sutton noted. Seventy per cent of Kincardine's approximately 8,319 adult residents were contacted for the poll. When respondents who were neutral or refused to answer were excluded from the total, the approval rating climbed to 73 per cent.
As the actual host community for the OPG project, Kincardine will receive the lion's share of the OPG money over the next three decades. The $2.94 million paid earlier this year has been used for park projects and a reserve fund for a possible hospital expansion.
Mr. Sutton rejects suggestions the community has been bought off. "We did a survey of other jurisdictions across the world and the amounts paid as a hosting fee are consistent with other jurisdictions in Western Europe and the United States."
He also disputes suggestions that becoming a major nuclear waste repository will put off the tourists and cottagers who flock to Lake Huron's beaches each year.
"We've had a low-level waste storage site for the Bruce and Pickering and other nuclear plants for more than 30 years and it's been a very safe storage procedure and we've had basically no reaction."
Indeed, OPG is currently seeking permission to triple the size of its current surface storage facility for low and intermediate nuclear waste to accommodate contaminated materials generated by the refurbishment of its aging nuclear reactors.
About 60,000 cubic metres are stored at the Bruce site, which is equipped to handle 72,000 cubic metres. OPG wants to begin site preparation in December to expand that capacity to 212,000 cubic metres.
The schedule for the deep geologic repository is also ambitious. The utility aims to launch an environmental assessment of the proposal by 2007 and to complete that process by 2010.
The Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission would then be asked to issue the necessary licences so construction could begin by 2013. The goal is to begin storing waste in the caverns beginning in 2017.
William Fyfe, a retired University of Western Ontario professor who is Canada's foremost Earth scientist and an international consultant on nuclear waste issues, attacked OPG's plans yesterday.
"You do not put nuclear waste near things like the Great Lakes or the great rivers in case there's a leakage that you haven't expected," he said. "The Earth hanges ... and nuclear waste is dangerous for at least one million years.
"It wasn't that many thousands of years ago when we had ice on top of southern Ontario. That could happen again and when that happens, you get all sorts of new cracks and things formed."
Mr. Fyfe, who has been a consultant to Switzerland and Sweden on nuclear waste, said it should be buried in areas where naturally occurring materials that are easily corroded or soluble have survived unscathed for millions of years. This indicates the geology is stable.
"In Canada, we have a lot of these in old mining areas," he said, citing Sudbury as one example.
Mr. Fyfe said OPG should consult experts, including the Swedes, who are burying their nuclear waste deep under the Baltic Sea, before pushing ahead with the Bruce project.
The Swedes "are going underground more than a kilometre and if there ever was leakage, before the stuff gets into the sea, it has to go through a lot of clay sediments and things that accumulate from erosion on the ocean bottom that is very good at absorbing stuff. It is a perfect barrier."
Norm Rubin, the director of nuclear research for the watchdog group Energy Probe, suggested that the number of jobs and economic activity generated in the Kincardine area by the Bruce station are factors in how the story is unfolding.
"If you start making decisions during a short-term period when everybody and their brother-in-law is working for the company, and you make decisions that are irreversible, then you stand a really good chance of making a really regrettable decision.
The Ottawa Citizen
2005
Wednesday June 01,
Kincardine News, By Marie
Wilson
After two and a half years
of research and dialogue with over 15,000
Canadians, the Nuclear Waste
Management Organization (NWMO) is
recommending CanadaÆs
spent fuel - presently numbered at 1.9 million fuel
bundles - be buried in a
centralized deep geologic repository in a
community, which agrees
to be a willing host.
The cost of such a venture
is estimated at $24.4 billion.
The NWMO came into being
with Bill C-27 - the Nuclear Fuel Waste Act -
which was passed in November
2002. The organization, with a board of
directors and an advisory
council, under the leadership of Elizabeth
Dowdeswell, was charged
with providing the federal government with
recommendations for developing
a strategy for managing the used nuclear
fuel from Canada's 22 reactors.
Its draft recommendation
for an ôadaptive phased managementö released on
May 24, 2005 is the result
of that process.
Under Bill C-27, three options
- deep geological disposal in the Canadian
Shield, storage at nuclear
sites and centralized storage either above or
below ground - were to be
studied as to their suitability. However, in
the report by the NWMO,
a fourth option has been chosen - adaptive phased
management.
"The approach builds on the
best features of the three approaches
outlined in the NFWA (Nuclear
Fuel Waste Act), and implements them in a
stage or phased manner over
time," states the report.
Phase one of three, expected
to last about 30 years, is a period of
preparation, and calls for
the continued storage and monitoring of used
fuel at existing nuclear
reactor sites. During this phase, the siting
would begin (expected to
last about 20 years) to find a central site with
rock formations suitable
for shallow underground storage, an underground
research laboratory and
a deep geologic repository. A program of research
and demonstration is expected
to continue in each of the three phases to
ensure the technology is
appropriate.
Although Bill C-27 originally
recommended examination of the Canadian
Shield with its crystalline
rock as a possible destination for used fuel,
the report has expanded
that to include Ordovician sedimentary rock
basins, found in just about
all of Ontario. In fact, there are 11
economic regions identified
in Ontario, which, at first glance, are
geologically suitable for
the site, including the Stratford - Bruce
Peninsula area.
When asked why the criteria
was expanded to include sedimentary rock
basins, Michael Krizanc,
NWMO spokesperson, said upon consultation and
further research with scientists
and specialists, it was determined that
sedimentary rock is also
suitable for long term storage.
"Its use has been studied
in other countries such as Japan, France, Spain
and Switzerland," he said.
According to the report,
"site selection will focus on provinces, which
currently benefit from the
nuclear fuel cycle" (Ontario, New Brunswick,
Quebec and Saskatchewan),
although expressions of interest from willing
hosts in other provinces
would also be considered.
Although the option of storing
the fuel at reactor sites where it's
generated has been ruled
out in the report, that doesn't mean a willing
nuclear host community couldn't
apply to host the centralized site.
"We are not engaged in site
selection and no site has either been
selected or ruled out,"
Krizanc said.
If a decision is made in
conjunction with the necessary regulatory
licensing requirements,
to proceed with the construction of an interim
shallow underground storage
facility during phase one, fuel could be
moved to the central site
for interim storage in phase two, expected to
last another 30 years, of
the project.
The purpose of phase two
is to primarily confirm the suitability of the
chosen sight through research
and to complete the final design and safety
analysis needed for licensing
the deep repository and its associated
facilities.
It should be noted that "through
three envisaged implementation phases,
lasting up to 300 years
or more, the waste would be monitored and remain
retrievable." Phase three
expected to begin at around year 60 could last
for several hundred years.
Used fuel would be placed within the
repository and monitored
until closure.
The decision to close the
repository and what kind of post-closure
monitoring would be required,
would be left up to the society of the
day.
In her document entitled
Choosing A Way Forward, Dowdeswell notes that
"We do not know what technologies
may be available to succeeding
generations. Nor do we know
what use, if any, they may have for the used
fuel we have generated."
In her report, Dowdeswell
also states that "at each stage, options are
evaluated and decisions
are made on whether and how to modify the
management plan before proceeding
to the next phase. Each decision point
requires integration of
the results of monitoring, continuous learning
and research and development."
Kincardine mayor Glenn R.
Sutton said, in his personal opinion, the
recommendations in the draft
report are "reasonable."
"I like the idea that they
recommend removing the waste from existing
sites to an underground
repository and I also like the idea that it's
retrievable and will be
monitored," he said.
Noting that the report states
it is seeking a willing host community
where all technical and
scientific criteria are met, and the social,e
economic and cultural aspirations
of people respected, Sutton said that
should be to rest any fears
people have that a centralized facility for
spent fuel could be imposed
upon the area.
Sutton also stressed the
fact that he believes the waste should be buried
in the Canadian Shield as
opposed to sedimentary rock.
The NWMO will be seeking
further input from many of those it has already
consulted with in various
public spheres over the summer, and then its
final report will be submitted
to the federal government in
November.
Krizanc said he expects the
NWMO will have some interaction with nuclear
host communities, including
Kincardine, over the draft report, but he
isn't certain what form
that dialogue will take.
Last updated May 26 2005
08:36 AM MDT
CBC News
IQALUIT – Residents of the
northern territories shouldn't be concerned they might become host to nuclear
waste.
The Nuclear Waste Management Organization has come up with its short list of potential candidate regions for storing the country's nuclear waste, and none of the territories is a front-runner.
Canada-wide public consultations were held on the subject last year.
The meetings prompted an outcry in Nunavut from residents who didn't want the waste coming there.
FROM NOV. 17, 2004: Inuit
to be consulted on nuclear waste storage options for Arctic
The organization, which
released its draft report of recommendations Wednesday, recommends other
southern jurisdictions be the first to be considered for a nuclear waste
site.
"The NWMO has said that it would initially focus its search for a site on the four provinces that currently benefit from the nuclear fuel cycle," says Mike Krizanc, a spokesman for the organization.
"Those are Saskatchewan, Ontario, New Brunswick, and Quebec. It's felt that they benefit from the nuclear fuel cycle and probably have a greater responsibility to help manage waste.
"That doesn't rule out other municipalities or other communities from coming forward."
Krizanc says building a nuclear waste site is still decades away.
The public can comment on the draft recommendations by visiting the Nuclear Waste Management Organization's website.
By MURRAY CAMPBELL
Globe and Mail
Wednesday, May 25, 2005, Page A8
Canada's problem with nuclear waste is more easily defined than solved. A lot more easily. The harvest of the past four decades of nuclear power doesn't seem that large -- all the spent fuel rods would fill five hockey rinks to the level of the boards -- but nobody has a clue what to do with the toxic stuff.
Wednesday, May 25, 2005
TORONTO -- Ontario's energy minister says the hardest part about dealing with Canada's nuclear waste is yet to come.
Dwight Duncan says the major challenge will be choosing a site to handle spent nuclear fuel from Canada's nuclear reactors.
It's been a controversial topic for years.
An interim report by the Nuclear Waste Management Organization outlines a $24-billion process to bury Canada's spent nuclear fuel.
The group wants to bury it deep underground.
But it will be years before the organization, which reports to the federal government, starts looking for such a site.
The report says the organization will look for a community that's willing to host such a site.
The report says selection of a site will focus on Ontario, Quebec, New Brunswick and Saskatchewan, since that's where most spent nuclear fuel is produced.
© 2005
Idea of storing nuclear waste finds little
favour in northern Ontario
BYLINE: GILLIAN LIVINGSTON
TORONTO (CP) _ The idea of building an underground home for Canada's spent nuclear fuel won't find much favour in northern Ontario, even though such a project would be a financial boon worth billions to the economically ravaged region, a longtime proponent said Tuesday.
Gary Scripnick, a businessman and city councillor in the town of Timmins, Ont., has been trying for years to convince his neighbours and fellow politicians of the merits of the idea, which has the support of Canada's Nuclear Waste Management Organization.
But Scripnick just couldn't make it work.
``There are so many things that people don't want in their backyard and this is one of them _ even though there are huge benefits that would come with it,'' he said, citing billions of dollars worth of investment, government funding and jobs.
But ``nuclear material is scary for the people that don't know much about it.''
Scripnick polarized the town 115 kilometres north of Sudbury last year when he invited the NWMO _ the body commissioned by the federal government to come up with a plan to deal with Canada's nuclear waste _ to come to town.
On Tuesday, the organization released an interim report that suggested the best solution is a long-term $24.4-billion plan to bury radioactive waste deep in the earth, preferably somewhere in the Canadian Shield, predominant in northern Ontario and Quebec.
Scripnick said he wanted Timmins residents to have an open mind to the idea, but encountered fierce community and political backlash to the idea of having nuclear waste stored in the town's back yard.
About 90 per cent of Canada's spent nuclear fuel is currently stored at Ontario's three nuclear power plants, with the rest at facilities in Quebec and New Brunswick.
The report says the organization needs a ``willing host community'' that meets the technical and scientific requirements for the project, which is likely still decades away.
The search will focus on Ontario, Quebec, New Brunswick and Saskatchewan, all of which either use or mine uranium, the report says, although proposals from other provinces would also be welcome.
And while Ontario will have its own views about where the site should be, the ultimate decision will rest with Ottawa, said Dwight Duncan, the province's energy minister.
``The biggest challenge will come when they select a site,'' he said.
The next one will be who pays for it _ and that issue is informing energy-hungry Ontario's pending decision about whether to refurbish its current fleet of aging nuclear reactors or build new plants to meet escalating demand for power.
``The cost is significant,'' Duncan said. ``Ultimately, the ratepayer pays for it.''
Ontario Power Generation, the province's principal power producer, owns all three of the province's three nuclear plants but leases one to a private operator. It sets aside about $400 million a year in a fund to deal with the costs of nuclear waste, said spokesman John Earl.
As of the end of 2004, the Crown corporation had set aside $8.3 billion, he said.
Since most of Canada's nuclear waste is produced and already stored in Ontario, that's the most likely location for a storage facility, said David Martin, energy co-ordinator with Greenpeace Canada.
``It's not too likely there's going to be a voluntary candidate to accept all the waste that has been produced in Ontario.''
Kincardine, Ont., 160 kilometres north of London, has signed a $35-million, 30- year deal to host a $1-billion underground facility that would house Ontario Power Generation's low-level nuclear waste. That facility, however, would not be equipped to handle spent fuel.
Another economically troubled
mining town in northern Ontario, Kirkland Lake, made headlines several
years ago with its willingness to store Toronto's garbage in a nearby open-pit
mine, but it's not willing to store nuclear waste, Mayor Bill Enouy said
Tuesday.
NB Power could be on the
hook for about $300 million under a proposed new long-
term strategy by the country's
nuclear industry to bury its radioactive waste fuel in a
central disposal site.
The Nuclear Waste Management
Organization (NWMO) has released a $6.1-billion
draft plan for the deep
geological disposal of the equivalent of five hockey rinks of
irradiated nuclear fuel
that includes radioactive waste currently stored on-site at New
Brunswick's Point Lepreau
power plant.
Senior NB Power officials
insisted when the NWMO was first formed almost three
years ago that financing
the waste disposal from nuclear power generation would not
result in higher electric
bills in the province. But a spokeswoman for the utility could not
confirm the impact of the
new plan released Tuesday.
"We have received the draft
recommendations and we will be reviewing them," NB
Power Nuclear's Pamela McKay
said in a telephone interview.
NB Power has already contributed
$28 million toward an existing industry-sponsored
$770-million trust fund
to finance the disposal work, which would eventually cost $24.4
billion and take 60 years
before the first waste is ever buried at a yet-to-be- determined
site.
Liz Dowdeswell, president
of the NWMO, wrote in a statement posted on the
organization's website Tuesday
that the proposed system for phasing in and adapting
the management of the waste
will allow this generation of Canadians to take immediate
responsibility for the spent
nuclear fuel while keeping other disposal options open for
future innovations.
"We are advocating realistic,
manageable phases - each marked by explicit decision
points and continuing participation
of interested Canadians," Ms. Dowdeswell wrote.
Under the potential plan,
NWMO would take up to 30 years to prepare for the eventual
disposal, including the
selection of a willing host community and the building of an
underground research laboratory.
Another 30 years could then
be needed to confirm the suitability of the site and the
technology for a deep repository.
Environmental groups have
been quick to dismiss the new plan as a re-hash of a
similar proposal rejected
by a federal environmental assessment review panel in the
1990s.
"It sounds like something
out of the past. In fact it is," said David Coon, policy director
with the New Brunswick Conservation
Council.
"Our sense has always been
that this whole process they are engaged in right now
was to circumvent the recommendations
of the environmental review panel," Mr. Coon
added. "It didn't give them
the answer they wanted, and now we are back to where we
started."
He said a more appropriate
approach would be to phase out nuclear energy while
making certain improvements
to NB Power's current method of dry storing its existing
radioactive waste fuel in
concrete casks.
"I can't think of too many
other activities that are allowed when the wastes produced
are so toxic that we don't
know how to neutralize or destroy them," Mr. Coon said.
It's estimated that nuclear
waste can remain dangerously radioactive for up to 100
centuries.
Under the NWMO's plan, the
nuclear waste would be stored in underground
mausoleums kept open for
up to two centuries to allow Canada to rethink its options in
case there is a change of
heart or new technologies emerge for better dealing with the
waste.
"This is a possible model,
and Canadians will have a big say in how it actually rolls
out," said NWMO spokesman
Mike Krizanc.
"That's the big thing about
adaptive phase management, people are involved all along
the way."
The NWMO has until Nov. 15
to submit its final report to Natural Resources Minister
John Efford. The organization
plans to use the summer consulting with Canadians.
Reach our reporter
tjotta@nb.aibn.com
Nuclear burial site urged
Federal review urges $24 billion underground mausoleum
Next question: Who wants
radioactive dump in backyard?
PETER CALAMAI, SCIENCE REPORTER
OTTAWA——Millions of bundles
of highly radioactive waste fuel should be moved from nuclear power stations,
mostly in Ontario, and be buried in a deep underground mausoleum, an exhaustive
federal review will recommend today.
This deep geological disposal,
at a still undetermined location, will eventually cost $24 billion and
require 60 years of further study and construction before the first bundle
is buried, concludes the report by the industry-led Nuclear Waste Management
Organization.
Even after all the waste
is underground, the NWMO report recommends that the nuclear mausoleum be
kept open for two more centuries in case Canadians change their minds or
new technology emerges that makes better use of spent fuel.
"People told us this generation
had a responsibility to deal with the waste but they didn't want to commit
future generations by taking irreversible decisions," said NWMO president
Elizabeth Dowdeswell, a former head of the U.N.'s environment program.
The draft of the organization's
final recommendations says the emphasis should be on finding a "willing
community" to play host to the mausoleum, which would consist of caverns
excavated up to a kilometre below ground.
Initially, the organization
identifies about 40 "economic regions" in Ontario, Quebec, and Saskatchewan
as geologically suitable for the mausoleum. The federal government divides
the country into 76 economic regions, which range from individual cities
like Toronto to entire territories such as Nunavut.
Because those three provinces
are geologically suitable and among those that have benefited from nuclear
power and uranium mining, they "have a greater responsibility than do other
provinces and territories to manage the waste stream arising from the nuclear
process," the report says.
Yet communities elsewhere could offer to host the waste facility.
Anti-nuclear environmental
groups slammed the report for not recommending the phase-out of nuclear
power entirely.
"Nobody wants a radioactive
waste dump in their backyard," David Martin, energy co-ordinator for Greenpeace
Canada, said in a statement.
Brennain Lloyd of Northwatch,
a regional coalition of environmental and social development groups in
northeastern Ontario, dismissed the report as "just a repackaged version
of the standard nuclear industry options."
More than 1.9 million bundles of waste fuel are now stored at Canada's 22 existing nuclear reactors, mostly in concrete casks kept inside ordinary metal sheds out in the open. The amount of waste fuel is expected to reach at least 3.7 million bundles during the 40-year reactor lifetimes. The waste remains dangerously radioactive for 100 centuries.
"This is a clear signal to
communities near nuclear reactors of the intent to move the waste away
from those sites," said Dowdeswell.
Dowdeswell said her organization
would hold public meetings over the summer before submitting a final recommendation
on waste storage to the federal government by a Nov. 15 deadline.
The hearings could lead to fine-tuning the timetable and stages of the "adaptive phased management" detailed in today's lengthy report, Dowdeswell said. But she did not expect the fundamental approach to change.
Her organization issued two previous discussion papers and held meetings attended by about 12,000 people over the past three years. But many of the meetings, especially in bigger centres, drew only a few dozen participants.
NWMO was set up under federal law to recommend the best long-term management of the waste fuel, almost 90 per cent of it stored at the Pickering, Darlington and Bruce power stations in Ontario.
The underground repository option chosen by NWMO relies on steel-and- copper capsules each holding 324 bundles of waste nuclear fuel. The containers would be designed to last at least 100,000 years and be sealed inside the underground caverns behind water-resistant clay barriers.
Natural and engineered barriers
will protect the used fuel "from natural events such as climate change
or future glaciations," the report says.
Other schemes studied and
rejected by the organization involved leaving the waste dispersed at the
reactor sites or building a central repository on or near the surface.
Under federal legislation, Ontario Power Generation and utilities in Quebec and New Brunswick must pay the $24 billion cost of the long-term waste management.
Dowdeswell agreed that many Canadians will likely get interested in the nuclear waste issue only after her organization recommends a site for the repository. That site selection process won't begin until the federal government passes judgment on the recommended storage method, which could be as long as a year after this November's formal report submission.
The report signalled that the NWMO is looking at potential disposal in regions beyond the granite-bound Canadian Shield. Earlier studies by Atomic Energy of Canada Ltd. and a federal environmental panel rated the shield as the only geological formation stable enough for millennia of storage.
But NWMO now says other parts of the country could also host the nuclear mausoleum since they are located on a sedimentary rock called Ordovician that is also low-risk for fractures and underground water seepage.
Although Toronto is on the Ordovician sedimentary foundation, it would almost certainly not meet an NWMO requirement that any potential disposal site have a large open space.
Extending the geological
criteria now encompasses areas in Ontario such as London, Hamilton-
Niagara, Windsor-Sarnia
and a swath stretching from Kitchener-Waterloo up to Barrie.
Most of the rest of Ontario
already qualified as a possible site for a nuclear mausoleum because it
is within the Canadian Shield.
Decades of controversy and
legal battles surrounded the U.S. government's bid to dig a central nuclear
repository into Yucca Mountain in Nevada. But Dowdeswell said selecting
a Canadian site need not follow the American example.
She noted the Finnish parliament
approved a waste burial site four years ago and a test facility is now
under construction. And in Sweden, authorities are studying two sites and
expect to ask for regulatory approval by 2010.
Residents of Saugeen Shores will have the opportunity to have their say about the proposed deep geologic nuclear waste facility at Ontario Power in Kincardine during the environmental assessment process.
By Jane Cunningham
Wednesday February 02, 2005
Shoreline Beacon — Residents
of Saugeen Shores will have the opportunity to have their say about the
proposed deep geologic nuclear waste facility at Ontario Power in Kincardine
during the environmental assessment process.
However, this won’t begin
for another year, said Terry Squire of OPG communications.
Right now, the the results
of the community polling in Kincardine taking place between Jan. 3 and
Feb. 9. will be announced at Kincardine council Feb. 16.
Then, if the word from the community is that the project should go ahead, OPG will write up a project description which will be submitted to the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission.
If the project is accepted
by the CNSC, the commission will draw up the guidelines for the environmental
assessment.
“And that is at least a
year away,” Squire said. “We’ve been talking about it for two-and-a-half
years, but we’re still in the planning stage.”
The environmental assessment will be a time for input from the surrounding areas, Ontario, and the rest of Canada.
Public involvement is encouraged at this stage in the process, and there is even funding available to assist organizations in their research according to the Canadian Environmental Assessment Agency’s website.
Saugeen Shores has not been involved so far because the initial memorandum of understanding regarding the proposal is between OPG and Kincardine as the host.
OPG did a presentation to
Saugeen Shores council and answered questions last year, but no formal
support of the project was offered.
When Kincardine Council
passed the bylaw to accept the agreement for a deep geologic repository
at the the Western Waste Management Facility adjacent to the Bruce Power
nuclear facility on Oct. 13, it knew that Kincardine and surrounding communities
would receive a benefit package worth in excess of $49,820,000 over the
next 30 years.
The NWMO is conducting a nationwide study on what Canadians think should be done to manage used fuel. It will present the findings to the Federal Government, the discussion was met with plenty of concern from local residents.
The Nuclear Waste Management Organization is on its last leg of a 35 city tour. They hope to help Canadians understand the options that exist when it comes to the future management of used nuclear fuel.
The fuel is currently placed in wet and dry storage at the power plants but Krazank says these facilities were never meant for long term use. He says nuclear fuel can be harmful to humans and the environment. Krazank says the majority of people they've heard from want safety and security put first.
Elizabeth Arthur attended NWMO discussions held in Thunder Bay last February and says most people want the fuel kept where it's produced.
The NWMO is expected to make a recommendation to the Federal Government by November 2005.
18 June 2005
Rob Edwards
New Scientist - Magazine issue 2504
Secrecy and political interference ensured that the UK's plans for waste disposal ended in failure, according to a new report. That is the verdict of a soul-searching report by Nirex, the government agency reponsible. It was published last week in response to a request under the Freedom of Information Act made by New Scientist and others.
"We made a tremendous number of mistakes," confesses Chris Murray, the managing director of Nirex. "We were told in no uncertain terms that we were extremely arrogant, we were working too fast and we weren't listening to people who had an interest."
Radioactive waste remains dangerous for tens of thousands of years. Most countries concluded long ago that disposal deep underground in stable geological formations is the best option. The US already operates a waste isolation pilot plant in salt mines 650 metres beneath the Chihuahuan Desert near Carlsbad, New Mexico. Deep underground repositories are also ...
By ERICA WERNER
The Associated Press
Tuesday, June 14, 2005;
5:51 PM
WASHINGTON -- Senators struck a blow for the proposed Yucca Mountain nuclear waste dump Tuesday as a spending panel rebuffed a House effort to establish temporary storage sites as a backup.
A leading Yucca Mountain supporter, Republican Pete Domenici of New Mexico, joined with a leading opponent, Democrat Harry Reid of Nevada, to criticize the House plan. Domenici called it "totally inadequate," and Reid said it was "half-baked."
The House measure, passed last month as part of a spending bill, called on the Energy Department to produce a plan for aboveground storage for spent reactor fuel from commercial nuclear power plants within four months at one or more federal sites. It also set October 2006 as the date to begin accepting waste and provided $10 million for the program.
The Senate Appropriations subcommittee that funds energy and water projects passed a $31 billion spending bill on a voice vote Tuesday with no money for interim storage. Domenici chairs the panel and Reid is the top-ranking Democrat.
The bill funds the Yucca Mountain project in Nevada at $577 million for 2006, which is the same as the 2005 level but less than President Bush's budget request of $651 million, which the House met.
"We have kept it going," Domenici said of the project.
Domenici told reporters later that while he supports looking for new solutions for nuclear waste disposal, he doesn't like the plan championed by Rep. David Hobson, R-Ohio, chairman of the House Appropriations energy subcommittee.
"It's totally inadequate. You can't start a program of that importance with $10 million and a paragraph," he said. "I'm willing to look at a whole new policy which could involve interim storage, but not this way."
Reid, who supports leaving commercial nuclear waste at reactor sites in more than 30 states, voiced similar criticism.
"All the House has done has been to stir up members in an unproductive way," he said.
Some lawmakers worry that temporary storage could become permanent, and opposition in the House came from lawmakers representing sites mentioned in a report accompanying the House bill. Those included the Hanford complex in Washington state and the Idaho National Laboratory.
Yucca Mountain, approved by President Bush in 2002, is planned as a national repository for 77,000 tons of defense and commercial nuclear waste, to be buried for 10,000 years and beyond in the desert 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas. A string of recent setbacks has put the program in doubt.
A federal appeals court rejected the proposed radiation protection plans for the Yucca facility. In March, documents surfaced that alleged that government workers on the project falsified data. The chairman of the House Government Reform committee issued a subpoena Tuesday for testimony from one of those workers.
Yucca Mountain is now projected not to be finished until 2012 and could be delayed further.
Nuclear waste: the 1,000-year fudge
By Geoffrey Lean, Environment
Editor
U.K. The Independent On-line
Edition
12 June 2005
Secret plans to postpone solving Britain's nuclear waste crisis for up to 1,000 years are being drawn up by the nuclear industry, The Independent on Sunday can reveal.
The government-owned British Nuclear Fuels is developing a scheme for indefinitely storing the intensely dangerous material in giant "millennium domes" around Britain, leaving it for generations far into the future to work out what to do with it.
The scheme - to be floated at a closed meeting of nuclear experts and local authority officials in London this week - runs counter to conventional wisdom. Most experts insist that the safest way of dealing with highly radioactive wastes is to bury them at least 900 feet underground. Storing them increases the chances that they will leak out, leading to health risks and making them vulnerable to terrorists.
But the idea is gaining support in Whitehall, following 30 years of failure to find a disposal site in Britain. Ministers insist that plans for dealing with the waste must be agreed before any more nuclear power stations are built.
Last week, Nirex, Britain's independent nuclear waste agency, published a shortlist of 12 locations drawn up for the last attempt to solve the problem, which ended in failure in 1997 when the then Secretary of State for the Environment, John Gummer, rejected the favoured site near the Sellafield nuclear complex. Ministers are due to launch a new search next year.
The BNFL scheme is likely to prove even more controversial. It envisages building several concrete domes in different regions of the country for so-called "interim long-term storage" of the wastes. The domes would be designed to last up to 1,000 years and would be buried just under the surface of the ground under a layer of rubble or earth. They could be built almost anywhere, though would most likely be sited at existing nuclear power plants.
"They look exactly like the Millennium Dome," said one top official who has seen the plans. "And they seem just as bad an idea."
Proponents of storing waste say that we do not yet know enough about how to dispose of it safely deep in the ground, and that future generations are likely to be able to do it better.
France, Finland, Sweden, Switzerland and Belgium are all following the traditional strategy by investigating sites for deep burial.
British Nuclear Fuels said that the scheme was the result of "looking at new, innovative ways of doing things" as part of drawing up "a broad range of options".
Sellafield leak casts doubt on nuclear expansion, says minister
The leak of tens of thousands of litres of spent fuel at Sellafield is preventing ministers from making the case for new nuclear power stations, Alan Johnson has told The Independent on Sunday.
The new Trade Secretary says the official investigation into the incident, in which nuclear liquid gushed unnoticed from a broken pipe for nine months, will be "very important" in deciding whether to press ahead with plans for up to 20 new plants.
In an interview with this newspaper, Mr Johnson gave a clear signal that he is increasingly reluctant to make the case for nuclear power, preferring instead to stress the potential of renewable energy sources.
"The Prime Minister has said we will make a decision within the lifetime of this Parliament on whether we go any further down the nuclear road."
The Nuclear Installations Inspectorate is expected to decide this week whether to press for a criminal prosecution after completing a preliminary investigation into the Sellafield incident.
Mr Johnson also has a tough
message for those who are pressing for carbon-free energy sources but object
to new wind farms. "These aesthetic issues are very proper considerations,
but people can't both want to head down the renewable track and then oppose
its results."
12 June 2005
Nuclear waste agency selected dumps on
the basis of political expediency
By Rob Edwards, Environment
Editor
Scotland Sunday Herald
FROM the window of his home
on Barra, Donald Manford can see the small island of Fuday across the water.
On Friday evening, he said, it was looking “peaceful and unperturbed –
quite unaware of all the controversy that has been going on about it”.
Fuday, just 250 hectares
of rough grazing land, shot into the headlines last week after it was outed
as one of five sites in Scotland shortlisted as a potential dump for all
Britain’s nuclear waste. Unknown to anyone, the UK radioactive waste agency,
Nirex, had planned to dig 26 huge caverns 500 metres under the island,
along with a new harbour and causeway.
Unluckily for Barra and its 1000-plus inhabitants, Nirex also had similar, secret plans for the island of Sandray just to the south, costing £1.8 billion over 50 years. “People are appalled that such things were considered,” said Manford, who is the local councillor.
“That this organisation could talk about these things, organising, planning and plotting with people’s lives without telling them – I think it is obscene.”
At six o’clock on Friday morning, Nirex released the sins of its past onto its website for all to see. In belated response to a freedom of information request lodged by the Sunday Herald and others in January, it published comprehensive details of all the potential nuclear waste sites kept secret by the government for more than 15 years.
On the shortlist, as well as Fuday and Sandray, there was the Dounreay nuclear plant and Altnabreac in Caithness and a site somewhere under the sea off Hunterston in North Ayrshire. In England, there were another seven potential dump sites: two in Essex, two at the Sellafield nuclear plant in Cumbria, one in Norfolk, one in South Humberside and one under the sea off Redcar in Yorkshire.
At all these sites, Nirex had made advanced plans in the 1980s for constructing underground waste repositories without telling anyone locally. The idea was to leave the large volumes of waste created by half a century of nuclear power and nuclear weapons deep in a geologically stable rock formation.
The latest official inventory of UK nuclear waste stocks in 2001 showed that there were more than 92,000 cubic metres stored at 34 locations around the UK. This is set to rise five times in volume over the next 100 years, even assuming no new nuclear power stations are built.
The waste contains a massive amount of radioactivity – many times more than was released by the world’s worst nuclear accident at Chernobyl in Ukraine in 1986. It includes some very long-lived radioisotopes, such as plutonium, and will remain lethal for maybe a quarter of a million years.
The information released by Nirex shows that the shortlist of 12 sites was selected from a long list of 537 sites, of which 159 were in Scotland. Most of the Scottish sites were in Highland region (45) and Strathclyde (40), followed by Western Isles (21), Shetland (17) and Orkney (15).
Much of the list reads like a roll call of Scotland’s famous islands. It included Iona, Islay, Jura, Canna, Eigg, Muck, Coll, Gigha, Colonsay, Tiree, Ulva, Raasay, Rhum, St Kilda, Foula, Ailsa Craig, the Summer Isles and the Isle of May in the Firth of Forth.
There were also plenty of military bases and training areas, such as Lossiemouth, Kinloss, Leuchars, Rosyth, Machrihanish, Barry Buddon and Cape Wrath. Even Redford Barracks in Edinburgh was regarded by Nirex as a potential waste dump. As many as 33 sites in Scotland made it past the third stage of Nirex’s six-stage sorting process (see map, right).
Just as fascinating as the long list of sites is the process that was used to sift them. On Friday, Nirex also published a report which for the first time lays bare the nakedly political criteria that were adopted, alongside geological considerations.
First, places where lots of people lived were ruled out. Using guidance from the government’s Health and Safety Executive on the siting of nuclear power stations, Nirex devised “a population density criterion which excluded more highly populated parts of the country”.
Then it restricted sites to those that were owned by the government or the nuclear industry, or where private landowners had offered their land (as happened at Altnabreac in Caithness). Next, it entirely omitted Northern Ireland “because of the political situation”.
Finally, Nirex excluded a large proportion of the potential sites in Wales, particularly those owned by the Forestry Commission. This was because, in previous site selection exercises, “personal threats were received by staff involved in the consideration of such sites”.
“The list shows that site selection in the past has been done on purely political grounds – where they think they can get away with it,” said the Green MSP, Chris Ballance.
He pointed out that nearly a third of the 537 sites in the UK were in Scotland. “They seem to have chosen every uninhabited Scottish island they could find a name for on the map. Low population and low public opposition was a more important factor than geological and scientific suitability.”
The only sites to which Nirex has previously admitted were at Sellafield and Dounreay in Caithness, which were both investigated with test bores in 1989. A farm near Sellafield was chosen as the preferred site, but this was rejected by the government as scientifically flawed in 1997.
If the full list had been published at the time, Sellafield would never have been “catapulted into the winning place”, argued Stuart Haszeldine , a geology professor at Edinburgh University. “The technical and social merits of the different sites could have been compared, and we may well have saved the country a lot of time and expense,” he said.
The list has only been forced into the open by the Freedom of Information Act and the Environmental Information Regulations. The Sunday Herald, along with nuclear-free local authorities and other media organisations, lodged a formal request for it when the new legislation came into force at the start of January.
Since then, Nirex – instructed, it says, by government ministers – has twice refused to provide the list. It was very anxious not to release it in the run-up to the general election for fear of the political controversy it could generate around the selected sites.
Nevertheless, some time after Nirex changed its shareholding to become a creature of government rather than of the nuclear industry in April, a decision was taken in favour of a “managed release” of the information. The release was originally planned for this coming Wednesday, but it was hurriedly brought forward last week following rumours of a leak to a Sunday newspaper.
Nirex admits that it made many mistakes in the past. It shouldn’t have been secretive, its process shouldn’t have been so political and it should have involved local communities. It promises it won’t make the same mistakes again.
Chris Murray, Nirex’s managing director, has also been stressing that the list is historic. “This old list will not form the starting point of any new site selection process,” he said, pointing out that geological understanding has greatly improved over the past 20 years.
Unfortunately, this has been spun further by the environment minister, Ross Finnie, in a letter to every MSP last week. He said the list was “purely of historic interest” and was “of little relevance to current UK policy”.
This is not the whole truth, however. Nirex’s own briefing to MSPs concludes by pointing out that the geology of the selected sites has not changed. “Sites that were considered to be potentially suitable previously, on geological grounds, could be considered suitable in a future site selection process,” it states.
Most experts agree. “It is possible that some of the areas that they identified could appear again in the future, but the local communities must be involved this time,” said Phil Richardson, a nuclear waste specialist with Enviros Consulting.
The government is expecting recommendations on the best methods for disposing of the waste from its Committee on Radioactive Waste Management in July 2006. The committee is currently considering four main options, involving various combinations of deep, shallow and surface stores.
The next stage will be for the government to launch a new site selection exercise. Nobody can predict for certain what locations it will consider, but it is a good bet that Sellafield will be included, as it is still regarded as a prime site by Nirex.
If Scotland is to take responsibility for its own waste, some people assume that Dounreay would be the favoured location. Nirex insiders, however, suggest that previous geological investigations showed the underground rocks there to be too cracked and leaky to be safe.
That would mean that the other places on Nirex’s old shortlist could come back into the frame – like Sandray and Fuday around Barra. If this happened, promises Donald Manford, all hell would break loose. “We would resist it in every possible way,” he said.
Secret sites for Britain's nuclear waste revealed
By Sam Knight, Times Online
Fifteen years ago, the British
nuclear industry was proposing to dump radioactive waste just five miles
from the day-tripper's paradise of Southend on Sea in Essex, a secret list
published today shows.
Potton Island, a marshy spot just north of Southend owned by the Ministry of Defence, was on a shortlist of 12 sites identified without public consultation as suitable for the dumping of radioactive waste in the 1980s.
The other locations, five more in England, four in Scotland and two under the sea, were a closely guarded state secret for more than 15 years before a Freedom of Information request, filed by The New Scientist magazine and others, prompted their disclosure today.
The sites, which are mostly either remote or next to power stations, were chosen by Nirex, the agency responsible for the disposal of Britain's nuclear waste, in the late 1980's. The twelve sites were a shortlist from a total of 537 sites that were considered by the agency.
The dumping programme was abandoned in 1997 after an attempt to use one of the sites, at the Sellafield nuclear plant in Cumbria, showed that the science Nirex had relied on to choose the sites was faulty.
Publishing the list, Nirex today said that there was no current search for other sites and that the list would not form the starting point of any future dumping programme.
Chris Murray, Nirex's managing director, said: "We hope that the publication of the list... will help to move the debate away from past attempts to tackle this issue and on to the new process, led by the Committee on Radioactive Waste Management (CoRWM), in which we would encourage everyone to get involved."
The Committee on Radioactive Waste Management is due to report to Parliament in July 2006 on the question of whether nuclear waste should be stored at the surface or buried deep underground.
Mr Murray seemed to suggest that future dumping programmes for radioactive waste will be conducted more openly:
"Dealing with the waste is as much an ethical and social issue as a scientific and technical one," he said. "This is the key lesson we have learned from the past. Openness and transparency must underpin everything that is done in this area."
Although Nirex was at pains today to insist that the list was historic and that any new search for sites would be based on a different set of criteria, such as rising sea levels, the agency conceded:
"The geology in the UK has not changed, so sites that were considered to be potentially suitable previously on geological grounds could be considered suitable in a future site selection process."
Publication of the list prompted anger today among politicians and environmentalists, who were dismayed that the list of sites had been drawn up in secret and then kept hidden from the public. Britain still has no clear plan for how it deals with the radioactive waste produced by its 16 nuclear stations.
Lord Hanningfield, the Conservative leader of Essex County Council, spoke of his surprise that Southend on Sea was so close to one of the sites.
"I am obviously very concerned that such a study was undertaken in absolute secrecy and without any involvement from the affected community," he said.
"However, I am pleased both
that this previously secret historic data has finally been published and
that Nirex have committed themselves to a much more open public consultation
when they launch any future search for sites... Given that south Essex
is now a major growth area, I cannot believe that these sites would be
identified in any future exercise."
Norman Baker, the Liberal Democrat environment spokesman, said that the ongoing struggle to find suitable sites to dispose of the waste "shows that nuclear power generation is essentially unsustainable and should not form part of any future power generation mix in this country."
The list in full (as published in The New Scientist):
Adjacent to Bradwell nuclear
power station in Essex
Ministry of Defence land
on Potton Island, 8 km from Southend on Sea. Essex
Under the North Sea, accessed
from the port at Redcar, Yorkshire
Under the sea between the
Inner Hebrides and Northern Ireland, accessed from the port at Hunterston
in North Ayrshire
Killingholme, South Humberside
Ministry of Defence training
area, Stanford, Norfolk
Adjacent to Dounreay nuclear
plant in Caithness
Two sites near the Sellafield
nuclear plant in Cumbria
Altnabreac in Caithness
18 km south of Dounreay
Fuday, small, uninhabited
island north of Barra in the Western Isles
Sandray, small, uninhabited
island south of Barra in the Western Isles
ABC Online
Tuesday, June 7, 2005. 9:31am
NT Senator branded 'liar' over nuclear waste plan
Northern Territory politicians have broken into a lather of accusations over an impending Federal Cabinet decision on what to do with the Commonwealth's nuclear waste.
Federal Environment Minister Ian Campbell said yesterday that if Cabinet discusses the issue today, he cannot rule anything in or out regarding nuclear waste.
Facing a NT election in less than two weeks, both Chief Minister Clare Martin and the Opposition Leader Denis Burke have said they will fiercely oppose any move to create a nuclear waste facility in the Northern Territory.
Labor's Member for Lingiari Warren Snowdon says the Federal Government is ready to break an election promise.
Mr Snowdon says the Federal Government has always intended to dump its nuclear waste in the Territory.
He says Senator Campbell has gone back on promises he made before last year's federal election.
"I don't think they were ever serious about an offshore nuclear waste dump," he said.
"It was all an exercise to try and get through the last federal election and to con the Northern Territory community and indeed the Australian community, that no state or territory would be used as a nuclear waste dump for the Commonwealth. Clearly they were lying to us.
"Ian Campbell's a liar. He gave a categorical guarantee that there'd be no deposit place on the mainland prior to the last election.
"The fact is it's clearly on the Commonwealth's agenda and the CLP know it," he said.
CLP Member for Solomon Dave Tollner says there has been no change in the Government's position.
"There's not going to be a national nuclear waste facility in the Northern Territory," he said.
"That was the commitment undertaken in the lead-up to the federal election and I haven't heard anything apart from that view expressed since that election," he said.
He says storing the waste offshore remains the Commonwealth's first choice.
After South Australia was successful in a High Court challenge against nuclear waste, the Commonwealth raised the possibility of an offshore site.
Queensland and Western Australia have spoken strongly against the idea, but Greens MP Ian Cohen believes NSW is high on the list, with nine areas including Wagga, Nowra and the Hunter deemed suitable in a Federal Government report.
With NSW Premier Bob Carr calling for debate on nuclear power last week, Mr Cohen says it may be an attempt to legitimise it.
"We're hearing from other Government's throughout Australia saying no to the imposition of nuclear technology and yet New South Wales and Bob Carr have been very strangely silent," he said.
New South Wales Premier Bob Carr says the Federal Government should not look to his state for somewhere to dump nuclear waste.
Mr Carr says a dump would contravene New South Wales laws.
"The Federal Government is
responsible for this, the Federal Government's got to take account of all
the concerns that were made during the parliamentary inquiry we established,"
he said.
By Rob Edwards, Environment
Editor
NEWLY released files revealing the “shambles” of the nuclear industry’s investigations into radioactive waste dumping in the 1990s have sparked fears that current decisions about nuclear power will be marred by incompetence.
According to secret government documents made public last week under the Freedom of Information (Scotland) Act, two successive secretaries of state for Scotland, Malcolm Rifkind and Ian Lang, gave the go-ahead to controversial research on nuclear waste, despite doubts about the professionalism of the industry.
Critics warn that the same pattern of industry incompetence and government compliance could plague today’s renewed arguments over how to dispose of Britain’s growing mountain of nuclear waste.
“The nuclear industry keeps behaving like a three-year-old screaming at the supermarket checkout, and successive governments keep giving it sweeties,” alleged Lorraine Mann, from Scotland Against Nuclear Dumping.
The remarkable inside story of how ministers and senior officials struggled to deal with one of the most sensitive of political issues is disclosed in a series of “confidential” papers made available by the Scottish Executive at the National Archives of Scotland in Edinburgh. The documents chart some of the key events which led to the demise of Dounreay as the nuclear industry’s hope for the future.
In 1990, when John Major was Prime Minister, Britain got caught up in a heated argument over where to build a deep underground repository for the nation’s medium-level radioactive waste. Two candidates had emerged as possibilities: a farm near the Sellafield nuclear complex in Cumbria and land near the Dounreay nuclear plant in Caithness.
In May that year, the then Scottish secretary, Rifkind, gave the go-ahead to the UK Atomic Energy Authority (UKAEA) to drill two deep boreholes at Dounreay. The aim was to study whether underground rock would be stable enough to store waste safely .
The application had been opposed by Highland Regional Council, and by three-quarters of the people of Caithness in a referendum. But despite the controversy, civil servants failed to consult Rifkind on the timing of his announcement.
As a result it took ministers by surprise and gave them “some concern”, according to a memo from a senior official. “I very much regret any embarrassment that this has caused,” he wrote.
Just a few days after approving the UKAEA’s application , Rifkind discovered that the industry’s nuclear waste agency, Nirex, had put in another application for up to 6000 more holes over 1350 hectares near Dounreay.
Angry, he considered revoking planning consent, but was advised that this would be “legally very dubious”. In July 1990, after talking to the UKAEA and Nirex, a senior official told Rifkind that there was also the possibility of a third planning application for a further 10 deep boreholes. “After the shambles that they have made of the planning aspects of phase one, the UKAEA are clearly anxious to handle phase two more professionally,” the official stated in a memo.
The Scottish Office was trying to ensure that both Nirex and the UKAEA handled planning “more competently than they have hitherto”.
In order not to prejudice Rifkind’s impartiality, the official added, “we shall accordingly be circumspect, as well as constructive, in our dealing with nuclear bodies.” This memo prompted a caustic response from Rifkind’s political adviser, Graeme Carter. He welcomed the UKAEA’s “new-found professionalism” but expressed “very grave concerns” about the application for up to 6000 holes, fearing “a major political row” from which the government could not be “protected”.
By November 1990, the month that Rifkind was replaced by Lang as secretary of state for Scotland, Nirex had let it be known that Sellafield was the “clear frontrunner” for the nuclear waste research. That effectively let both ministers off the hook.
Nevertheless, in April 1991 Lang gave the go-ahead to the 6000-hole application, though again confusion surrounded the announcement. A hand-written ministerial note in the margin of a memo demanded to know why it had been announced “without warning, without agreement and without the preparation of defensive briefing for ministers and for the PM”.
In 1997, the government abandoned plans to investigate land near Sellafield as a potential underground waste repository, after it was rejected by a public inquiry. Now ministers are awaiting new advice on how best to dispose of the waste from an expert committee.
Pete Roche, a consultant to Greenpeace, argued that Britain’s plans for nuclear waste were still a shambles. “With Nirex and secrecy, it’s a bit like Groundhog Day,” he said. “Only the public has got more sophisticated over the years, so has enjoyed the farce less.”
Nirex, whose shares were transferred from the nuclear industry to the government in April, is planning to publish a long-secret list of potential waste dumps within the next two or three weeks. It declined to comment on what had happened in the 1990s, as it hadn’t seen the newly released files.
Dounreay’s spokesman, Colin Punler, confirmed that the UKAEA had worked with Nirex to investigate the disposal of radioactive waste in the past. “We are no longer involved in any waste disposal proposals of that kind,” he said.
“Our job today is to get the waste into a form that makes it suitable for deep disposal. It is up to society to decide how it should be managed in the long term.”
Australia May House Nuke Waste Dump
06 10:10
AAP
The federal government may reverse its plan to send nuclear waste offshore due to security fears and transport difficulties.
Prime Minister John Howard suggested shipping the radioactive material to a remote offshore post 11 months ago, but is thought to again be considering the merits of a mainland site.
Options could include disused defence land in the Northern Territory.
With cabinet set to meet this week, Resources Minister Ian Macfarlane declined on Monday to comment on the matter, but called for a fresh debate state premiers, indicating the issue could be on the agenda.
"I haven't been prepared
to comment on that before and I'm not going to now," Mr Macfarlane told
ABC Radio.
"The reality is that Australia needs to find a site -- a very safe repository -- for its own nuclear waste and we'll be working towards that. And I only hope we have the support of the premiers in a sensible debate this time around."
Mr Macfarlane accused NSW Premier Bob Carr of hypocrisy following Mr Carr's comments that nuclear power could act as a bridge between coal-fired power and a new era of renewable energy.
Mr Carr last night renewed his call for a national debate after riling environmentalists with the suggestion last week.
He believes the world could face a global warming crisis if developing countries such as India and China rely on coal-fired power stations to meet their energy needs in coming years.
Mr Macfarlane said demand on Australian exports could quadruple in the next five years and that Mr Carr should reverse his ban on uranium mining in NSW.
"Both India and China will increase their nuclear generation and it is important that Australia exports to those opportunities," Mr Macfarlane said.
"The biggest priority for Bob Carr is to lift the ban that he's got on uranium mining in New South Wales.
"I was surprised last week by his comments, in so far as while he seems to be advocating a debate on nuclear energy, he is yet to have a realistic debate about mining uranium in his own state."
Queensland Premier Peter Beattie has said there's no need to consider upping the reliance on nuclear power while his state has a 300-year supply of coal.
West Australian Premier Geoff
Gallop is also opposed to uranium mining, which is currently allowed in
South Australia and the Northern Territory.
- Matthew L. Wald, New York
Times
Sunday, June 5, 2005
Washington -- As the Energy Department falters in its effort to bury nuclear waste at Yucca Mountain in Nevada, the nuclear industry and Congress are taking steps toward a radically different storage strategy: putting the waste in huge casks that could be parked in a handful of high-security lots around the country for decades.
That idea advanced on two fronts last month. A panel of judges at the Nuclear Regulatory Commission recommended May 24 that a private utility consortium be allowed to open a lot to store 4,000 casks of waste on an Indian reservation west of Salt Lake City. On the same day, the House voted to order the Energy Department to establish similar storage areas, providing $10 million for the project.
In the Senate, Pete Domenici, R-N.M., who is chairman of the Energy Committee, has expressed interest in the concept. And the Energy Department itself has opened the door to considering an alternative to what has long been the favored strategy of deep burial of nuclear wastes.
But even if President Bush receives and signs legislation, it may be years before the Energy Department sets up any lots. The proposal already has encountered opposition from elected officials whose districts include potential storage lots.
Laying out the rationale for the new approach, Rep. David Hobson, R-Ohio, chairman of the House Energy and Water Development Committee, said: "If we want to build a new generation of nuclear reactors in this country, we need to demonstrate to Wall Street that the federal government will live up to its responsibilities under the Nuclear Waste Policy Act to take title to commercial spent nuclear fuel."
Since the act was passed in 1982, the Energy Department has focused on deep burial of nuclear waste, and the government has signed contracts with reactor owners guaranteeing that it would take the waste. Congress later voted to make Yucca Mountain, about 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas, the prime storage site. The Energy Department was supposed to have the site ready by 1998, but the effort has stumbled, and it is now unclear whether it will open.
When it became obvious, more than a decade ago, that the government would not fulfill its obligations on time, reactor owners built steel casks to put the waste in, filled them with inert gas to inhibit rust and loaded them into concrete silos.
Storage overdue
The Yucca project is now so far behind schedule that some of the reactors have been retired and torn down, leaving nothing but a field of storage casks.
An Energy Department spokeswoman, Anne Womack Kolton, suggested this week that federal officials would consider the storage lots as an interim solution. "The administration believes that permanent storage at a geologic repository is the appropriate approach, Yucca Mountain is the place to accomplish that, and we are moving forward with that goal," Kolton said.
But she added: "Yucca Mountain's capacity is currently limited by statute, and therefore, we are studying Chairman Hobson's proposal."
Domenici, a strong supporter of nuclear power, said in a statement that he believed that the Yucca Mountain project should proceed but that the spent fuel should be kept on the surface to allow reprocessing to recover its plutonium, which can be used as reactor fuel. "Interim storage is a key component of that," he said.
A utility consortium, Private Fuel Storage, has negotiated a 50-year lease with the Skull Valley Band of Goshute Indians for a storage site on 840 acres of the tribe's reservation about 50 miles southwest of Salt Lake City. The group has applied to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission for a license. In May, a panel of administrative law judges appointed by the commission rejected the last technical objection, an argument raised by Utah that a plane from a nearby Air Force base could crash into the silos and release radiation. The state will appeal to the full five-member commission and plans a variety of other challenges, including trying to block the transportation routes.
Members of the commission said they would not talk about Skull Valley before they had voted. But the chairman, Nils Diaz, was asked in a public appearance in March if the commission could back such a project, because it conflicts with a 23-year-old federal policy to focus on deep burial.
He replied, "This is an issue of the law. The Atomic Energy Act asks us to proceed with certain types of actions, including license applications, that meet the qualification of protection of public health and safety."
Interim solution helpful
Many reactor sites have casks, usually a few dozen, and unless Yucca Mountain opens for burials or unless big surface storage sites like Skull Valley are established, the nation could eventually have more than 60 of these sites.
The casks are licensed by the regulatory commission for 20 years, but the licenses can be renewed. Nuclear engineers said they could last a century or more, a tiny fraction of the time it would take the radioactivity to die away. If burial plans eventually go forward, experts say, it will be easier to handle fuel that has been stored in casks and that no longer generates as much heat.
For the commission, one problem is a decades-old policy stating that building reactors was environmentally sound because there would be a waste solution in place by 2025. A century of interim storage could sidestep the problem.
Another problem is money. Every reactor operator has sued the Energy Department for failure to accept the waste on time. The department, the courts have ruled, must pay storage costs beyond the date when it was supposed to accept the fuel.
"The Department of Energy recognizes that the only way to mitigate its damages is to find someplace to put this material, to get it off the utilities' hands, so they can get out of these lawsuits," said Joe Egan, a lawyer for the state of Nevada, which opposes construction at Yucca Mountain.
©2005 San Francisco Chronicle
A 1980 referendum held in the country decided nuclear power should be phased out. The first reactor came offline in 1999, the second this week. The remaining 10 reactors will all be shut down in the next few years, bringing to an end 40 years of nuclear history.
'Safe for 100,000 years'
Some 60m under the sea outside the Forsmark nuclear power plant just north of Stockholm, I am shown into a complex network of tunnels. This is where contaminated equipment and clothing from the nearby power plant is stored. But it is also a showroom for what the industry hopes can be a final solution for a much bigger problem: the highly radioactive spent fuel.
Kai Ahlbom heads the geological research of the bedrock here, which he thinks would be suitable for permanent storage of the world's most toxic waste.
"This rock is 1,800 million years old. Not much has happened to this bedrock during that time," Mr Ahlbom explains. He is confident this geology will not change much for at least another 100,000 years.
That is how long spent nuclear fuel remains dangerous to the environment. It is the responsibility of the nuclear power plant operators here to make sure their waste remains safe until it is no longer radioactive.
Digging it down
The plan is to construct a deposit some 500m underground, where the fuel can be permanently stored. Today, spent nuclear fuel sits in temporary storage in the south of the country.
"We will encase the waste in 5cm-thick copper canisters, to protect against corrosion," Mr Ahlbom says.
"Then, we want to encase the cylinders in bentonite clay. It's basically like cat sand; it absorbs humidity very efficiently, and swells when wet."
After all nuclear waste has been stored, the site would be filled in, and safe enough to be left without human intervention until the radiation risk has gone, Mr Ahlbom believes.
'Old technology'
But environmentalists are not happy with the solution. Kenneth Gunnarsson, from the Swedish NGO Office for Nuclear Waste Review, told the BBC News website the waste problem was far from being solved.
"No one in the world has a solution. And the Swedish nuclear industry's solution is an old one they came up with in the 1970s. This is old technology," he says.
The president of Sweden's Society for Nature Conservation, Mikael Karlsson, agrees, and says the industry for too long has concentrated on one solution, and has made compromises on safety when its model has run into problems.
"Swedish legislation requires an assessment of alternative methods and locations, and that is something which the operators have not conducted yet.
"So they won't get any permits from the government for storing the waste according to their present proposals, if the legislation is to be followed," he said.
But while environmentalists
are critical of the industry's failure to come up with alternative storage
solutions, they have yet to present any alternatives themselves. And time
is running out.
The temporary storage for
spent nuclear fuel was designed to operate for 40 years. It is already
half way through its lifespan
The World Health Organization (WHO) condemned the disposal of nuclear waste by Israeli authorities in the occupied Palestinian territories and demanded Israel refrain from such actions, during its 58th Assembly that is held between May 15 and 26, 2005.
WHO approved, during its Assembly at the Palais des Nations in Geneva, a draft resolution circulated by the Palestinian Authority and supported by the participating Arab, Islamic and some European delegations.
The resolution demanded a fact-finding committee be sent to the occupied Palestinian territories (oPt) to analyze the radiation near border crossings, and inspect the Israeli waste dumps in the Palestinian territories and the Golan Heights. It also asked Israel to ensure the freedom of movement for medical teams, ambulances, patients and medical supplies, during and after the purported withdrawal from Gaza Strip, while maintaining open border crossings to ensure a steady economic and trade movement.
Some of the main European delegations, such as France, Germany, England, Luxemburg and most EU members were in favor of the resolution.
Meanwhile, the Minister of Health, Dr. Thohni Al Wuheidi, described the resolution as a victory for the Palestinian and Arab delegations, as well as for the Palestinian people. He expressed gratitude to the Secretary General of WHO and the delegations that voted and supported this resolution.
This is the first time a resolution is passed by a UN agency while Israel is defined in it as an Occupying Power. It is also the first time such a resolution was approved by all European countries, including England, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Switzerland, Luxemburg, Norway, Sweden and Denmark.
The Palestinian delegation to WHO's Assembly was headed by Dr. Wuheidi, escorted by the Deputy Minister Dr. Anan Al Masri, and Assistant Deputy Minister Dr. Emad Taraweh, as well as the director of International Cooperation Department at the Ministry, Walid Shaqqoura.
Dr. Wuheidi had accused the Israeli authorities four days ago of burying 80 tons of nuclear waste 300 meters off the city of Nablus.
According to the Minister, Israeli nuclear waste disposal operations are being concluded in the rest of the cities in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, especially near cities with high populations such as Nablus, Hebron and Gaza, which would ruin the environment of the area and pollute the aquifer water resources.
May 18 2005
icWales
The nuclear industry is guilty of "plain misinformation" over the issue of disposal of radioactive waste, an AM has claimed.
Deputy Health spokesman John Griffiths said that around the issue of nuclear waste there were, "no convincing answers to the many questions posed and the nuclear industry has been characterised by a lack of transparency and openness and indeed sometimes plain misinformation."
Environment Minister Carwyn Jones said: "There has probably been no more debated form of energy. It is right to say that there are some significant drawbacks. One of which is of course finding some where to put nuclear waste."
He told AMs that alternative forms of energy were being developed to replace the 25% of energy currently provided by nuclear power stations.
He added that it was "quite difficult to give any opinion in terms of what might be proposed in the future. But I am sure the matter will be discussed at great length in this Assembly if there are firm proposals in the future."
In January Mr Jones said Wales was unlikely to have any working nuclear power stations by 2010,
One of country's two nuclear power plants, Wylfa on Anglesey, is due to close in 2010 and there were no plans to build new nuclear stations or sites to store the waste, he said.
An ICM poll for Newsnight this weeks showed that more than half of people (52%) questioned believed it was wrong for the government to consider nuclear power as an energy source for the future.
THERE is a huge propaganda push by the nuclear industry to justify nuclear power as a panacea for the reduction of global-warming gases.
In fact Leslie Kemeny on
these pages two weeks ago (HES, March 30) suggested that courses on nuclear
science and engineering be included in tertiary level institutions in Australia.
I agree. But I would suggest
that all the relevant facts be taught to students. Mandatory courses in
medical schools should embrace the short and long-term biological, genetic
and medical dangers associated with the nuclear fuel cycle. Business students
should examine the true costs associated with the production of nuclear
power. Engineering students should become familiar with the profound problems
associated with the storage of long-lived radioactive waste, the human
fallibilities that have created the most serious nuclear accidents in history
and the ongoing history of near-misses and near-meltdowns in the industry.
At present there are 442 nuclear reactors in operation around the world. If, as the nuclear industry suggests, nuclear power were to replace fossil fuels on a large scale, it would be necessary to build 2000 large, 1000-megawatt reactors. Considering that no new nuclear plant has been ordered in the US since 1978, this proposal is less than practical. Furthermore, even if we decided today to replace all fossil-fuel-generated electricity with nuclear power, there would only be enough economically viable uranium to fuel the reactors for three to four years.
The true economies of the nuclear industry are never fully accounted for. The cost of uranium enrichment is subsidised by the US government. The true cost of the industry's liability in the case of an accident in the US is estimated to be $US560billion ($726billion), but the industry pays only $US9.1billion - 98per cent of the insurance liability is covered by the US federal government. The cost of decommissioning all the existing US nuclear reactors is estimated to be $US33billion. These costs - plus the enormous expense involved in the storage of radioactive waste for a quarter of a million years - are not now included in the economic assessments of nuclear electricity.
It is said that nuclear power is emission-free. The truth is very different.
In the US, where much of the world's uranium is enriched, including Australia's, the enrichment facility at Paducah, Kentucky, requires the electrical output of two 1000-megawatt coal-fired plants, which emit large quantities of carbon dioxide, the gas responsible for 50per cent of global warming.
Also, this enrichment facility and another at Portsmouth, Ohio, release from leaky pipes 93per cent of the chlorofluorocarbon gas emitted yearly in the US. The production and release of CFC gas is now banned internationally by the Montreal Protocol because it is the main culprit responsible for stratospheric ozone depletion. But CFC is also a global warmer, 10,000 to 20,000 times more potent than carbon dioxide.
In fact, the nuclear fuel cycle utilises large quantities of fossil fuel at all of its stages - the mining and milling of uranium, the construction of the nuclear reactor and cooling towers, robotic decommissioning of the intensely radioactive reactor at the end of its 20 to 40-year operating lifetime, and transportation and long-term storage of massive quantities of radioactive waste.
In summary, nuclear power produces, according to a 2004 study by Jan Willem Storm van Leeuwen and Philip Smith, only three times fewer greenhouse gases than modern natural-gas power stations.
Contrary to the nuclear industry's propaganda, nuclear power is therefore not green and it is certainly not clean. Nuclear reactors consistently release millions of curies of radioactive isotopes into the air and water each year. These releases are unregulated because the nuclear industry considers these particular radioactive elements to be biologically inconsequential. This is not so.
These unregulated isotopes include the noble gases krypton, xenon and argon, which are fat-soluble and if inhaled by persons living near a nuclear reactor, are absorbed through the lungs, migrating to the fatty tissues of the body, including the abdominal fat pad and upper thighs, near the reproductive organs. These radioactive elements, which emit high-energy gamma radiation, can mutate the genes in the eggs and sperm and cause genetic disease.
Tritium, another biologically significant gas, is also routinely emitted from nuclear reactors. Tritium is composed of three atoms of hydrogen, which combine with oxygen, forming radioactive water, which is absorbed through the skin, lungs and digestive system. It is incorporated into the DNA molecule, where it is mutagenic.
The dire subject of massive quantities of radioactive waste accruing at the 442 nuclear reactors across the world is also rarely, if ever, addressed by the nuclear industry. Each typical 1000-megawatt nuclear reactor manufactures 33tonnes of thermally hot, intensely radioactive waste per year.
Already more than 80,000 tonnes of highly radioactive waste sits in cooling pools next to the 103 US nuclear power plants, awaiting transportation to a storage facility yet to be found. This dangerous material will be an attractive target for terrorist sabotage as it travels through 39 states on roads and railway lines for the next 25 years.
But the long-term storage of radioactive waste continues to pose a problem. The US Congress in 1987 chose Yucca Mountain in Nevada, 150km northwest of Las Vegas, as a repository for America's high-level waste. But Yucca Mountain has subsequently been found to be unsuitable for the long-term storage of high-level waste because it is a volcanic mountain made of permeable pumice stone and it is transected by 32 earthquake faults. Last week a congressional committee discovered fabricated data about water infiltration and cask corrosion in Yucca Mountain that had been produced by personnel in the US Geological Survey. These startling revelations, according to most experts, have almost disqualified Yucca Mountain as a waste repository, meaning that the US now has nowhere to deposit its expanding nuclear waste inventory.
To make matters worse, a study released last week by the National Academy of Sciences shows that the cooling pools at nuclear reactors, which store 10 to 30 times more radioactive material than that contained in the reactor core, are subject to catastrophic attacks by terrorists, which could unleash an inferno and release massive quantities of deadly radiation -- significantly worse than the radiation released by Chernobyl, according to some scientists.
This vulnerable high-level nuclear waste contained in the cooling pools at 103 nuclear power plants in the US includes hundreds of radioactive elements that have different biological impacts in the human body, the most important being cancer and genetic diseases.
The incubation time for cancer is five to 50 years following exposure to radiation. It is important to note that children, old people and immuno-compromised individuals are many times more sensitive to the malignant effects of radiation than other people.
I will describe four of the most dangerous elements made in nuclear power plants.
Iodine 131, which was released at the nuclear accidents at Sellafield in Britain, Chernobyl in Ukraine and Three Mile Island in the US, is radioactive for only six weeks and it bio-concentrates in leafy vegetables and milk. When it enters the human body via the gut and the lung, it migrates to the thyroid gland in the neck, where it can later induce thyroid cancer. In Belarus more than 2000 children have had their thyroids removed for thyroid cancer, a situation never before recorded in pediatric literature.
Strontium 90 lasts for 600 years. As a calcium analogue, it concentrates in cow and goat milk. It accumulates in the human breast during lactation, and in bone, where it can later induce breast cancer, bone cancer and leukemia.
Cesium 137, which also lasts for 600 years, concentrates in the food chain, particularly meat. On entering the human body, it locates in muscle, where it can induce a malignant muscle cancer called a sarcoma.
Plutonium 239, one of the most dangerous elements known to humans, is so toxic that one-millionth of a gram is carcinogenic. More than 200kg is made annually in each 1000-megawatt nuclear power plant. Plutonium is handled like iron in the body, and is therefore stored in the liver, where it causes liver cancer, and in the bone, where it can induce bone cancer and blood malignancies. On inhalation it causes lung cancer. It also crosses the placenta, where, like the drug thalidomide, it can cause severe congenital deformities. Plutonium has a predisposition for the testicle, where it can cause testicular cancer and induce genetic diseases in future generations. Plutonium lasts for 500,000 years, living on to induce cancer and genetic diseases in future generations of plants, animals and humans.
Plutonium is also the fuel for nuclear weapons -- only 5kg is necessary to make a bomb and each reactor makes more than 200kg per year. Therefore any country with a nuclear power plant can theoretically manufacture 40 bombs a year.
Because nuclear power leaves a toxic legacy to all future generations, because it produces global warming gases, because it is far more expensive than any other form of electricity generation, and because it can trigger proliferation of nuclear weapons, these topics need urgently to be introduced into the tertiary educational system of Australia, which is host to 30 per cent to 40 per cent of the world's richest uranium.
Helen Caldicott is an anti-nuclear
campaigner and founder and president of the Nuclear Policy Research Institute,
which warns of the danger of nuclear energy.
Warning on nuclear waste disposal
Proposals to send Britain's
nuclear waste into space or to the bottom of the sea are impractical, a
government advisory committee has warned.
The Committee on Radioactive
Waste Management (CORWM) recommends waste be either buried underground
or stored temporarily in facilities above ground.
Nuclear power plants and weapons have left the UK with a radioactive legacy which presently has nowhere to go.
There will be yet more waste when nuclear stations are decommissioned.
Locations undecided
The committee has consulted experts and the public over the past 18 months, and has come up with four options which it considers viable.
They are: deep disposal,
phased deep disposal, shallow burial of short-lived waste and interim storage.
Deep disposal is the process
of permanently burying the waste between 300m (980ft) and 2km (1.2 miles)
underground in an area of suitable geology; where the rocks act as a protective
chamber.
Phased deep disposal is
the same process except the waste will be retrievable.
Shallow burial of short-lived
waste refers to burying waste that is radioactive only for a short time
just below the surface.
Interim storage is a temporary
management solution. Waste could be stored above the ground or just below
the surface but it must be outside the biosphere.
There is no recommendation
on where the sites should be located.
Alternatively, the waste
could be put in secure storage above ground until better technologies become
available.
These options will now go for further consultation.
But the committee excluded from its shortlist blasting waste into space, storing it on ice sheets or below the sea.
The total volume of nuclear waste in the UK is 470,000 cubic metres when conditioned and packaged - enough to fill the Albert Hall five times over.
This includes waste that will arise in the next 100 years from existing nuclear power stations and their decomissioning.
Debate re-opened
The final CORWM report will be submitted next summer to the UK government, as well as authorities in Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland.
Committee chairman Gordon
MacKerron commented: "We want to listen to everyone's thoughts - be they
members of the public, environmental groups, local authorities, waste managers
or regulators.
"Now we can start to focus on the best options and see which will work and which won't."
However, Friends of the Earth warned against making an irreversible decision on nuclear disposal.
Campaigner Roger Higman said: "The simple, most important thing we have been calling for is for whatever we do to be retrievable and reversible.
"The most radioactive waste
is going to be high level in a thousand years' time so whatever happens,
we have got a problem.
UK NUCLEAR WASTE VOLUMES
High-level waste - 2,000
cubic metres
Intermediate-level waste
- 350,000 cubic metres
Low-level waste - 30,000
cubic metres
Spent fuel - 10,000 cubic
metres
Plutonium - 4,300 cubic
metres
Uranium - 75,000 cubic metres
Doug Abrahms
Gannett News Service
4/2/2005 11:15 pm
PHOTO: A pickup passes
an anti-nuclear waste sign along Utah 186 leading to the Goshute Indian
Reservation in Skull Valley, Utah, in this April 18, 2002, file photo.
Plans are moving forward to build a privately owned nuclear waste storage
site on the reservation, about 50 miles west of Salt Lake City, despite
state opposition. ]
WASHINGTON — The fates of proposed nuclear waste dumps in Nevada and Utah are heading in opposite directions.
The Yucca Mountain project 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas is already years behind schedule. And this week, a House oversight panel will hold a hearing on allegations of falsified scientific data on the project, which could further delay it.
Meanwhile, an arm of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission has already approved a plan to temporarily store nuclear waste on an Indian reservation about 50 miles west of Salt Lake City. Utah officials will appeal that decision next week, but experts expect the Private Fuel Storage project to win final approval and start operating by 2007.
“I am nervous about what’s happening right now,” said U.S. Rep. Jim Matheson, R-Utah. “I think once (nuclear waste) gets here, it will be very tough to get rid of.”
Two different projects
The projects at Yucca Mountain in Nevada and the Skull Valley Band of Goshute Indians reservation in Utah are vastly different.
Yucca Mountain is a federal project designed to bury 77,000 tons of nuclear waste from around the country in deep underground storage forever.
The Skull Valley site, which is privately owned, will house about 44,000 tons of atomic reactor rods on a concrete pad above ground and only has a 25-year lease.
Many in the industry saw Private Fuel Storage, a project funded by several large utilities, as a way station for nuclear waste between power plants in the East and Yucca Mountain.
“That’s always been the concept of this facility,” Private Fuel Storage spokeswoman Sue Martin said. “The utilities could see by the early ’90s that Yucca Mountain wasn’t going to be finished by 1998,” its initial target date.
The Utah project was approved in February by the Atomic Safety and Licensing Board, an arm of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. But it still needs full NRC approval and Bureau of Land Management permission to build a rail spur to the waste site.
The Energy Department and industry representatives say Yucca Mountain remains their long-term solution to store nuclear waste despite the investigation into potentially falsified U.S. Geological Survey data and an appeals court ruling that Yucca Mountain’s radiation standards weren’t stringent enough.
“Right now, we are moving forward with Yucca Mountain,” said Anne Womack-Kolton, an Energy Department spokeswoman. “We continue to believe that a permanent geologic repository is necessary.”
No opening date for Yucca
Yucca Mountain was supposed to start receiving spent nuclear fuel for permanent storage in 2010, but Energy Department officials in February pushed that back to 2012 and Womack-Kolton won’t give an official opening date at this time.
The project is moving forward, although more slowly than industry officials would like, said Steve Kerekes, a spokesman for the Nuclear Energy Institute, which represents electric companies. The federal government is obligated to take possession of the nuclear waste produced by atomic reactors, he said.
“We fully expect the government to meet its obligation one way or another,” he said. “(Yucca Mountain) is the plan on the table. On that basis, we’re not looking for a Plan B.”
However, Nevada officials point to the growing list of court decisions, ballooning costs and, most recently, false documents as evidence that the Yucca Mountain project is falling off the tracks.
“Clearly, there’s a growing loss of confidence in Congress as well as the utilities as to whether this thing works out,” said Bob Loux, executive director of Nevada’s Agency for Nuclear Projects, which opposes Yucca Mountain. “Now, it is no longer a question of whether Yucca Mountain will crumble, but when.”
Loux together with U.S. Sens. Harry Reid and John Ensign of Nevada and Gov. Kenny Guinn will testify against the project at a House Government Reform Committee hearing Tuesday on the falsified documents.
Utah still fighting dump
Utah lawmakers are still pursuing their own avenues to stop the nuclear waste project at Skull Valley. U.S. Rep. Rob Bishop, R-Utah, will introduce a bill to convert federal land next to the reservation into a wilderness area to prevent a rail spur from being built.
Matheson, the only Utah lawmaker to vote against Yucca Mountain, opposes nuclear waste being shipped to the West.
When Congress passed the Nuclear Waste Policy Act in 1982, he said, there were to be sites in the East and West. But in 2005, both sites for a nuclear waste dump are in the West, he said.
“It tells you the politics
are driving this more than the science perspective,” Matheson said. “I
think this was a clear case of the East dumping its waste on the West.”
Copyright © 2005 The
Reno Gazette-Journal
- By ERICA WERNER, Associated
Press Writer
Friday, March 25, 2005
(03-25) 13:13 PST WASHINGTON
(AP) --
As problems mount with the
government's plan to open a national nuclear waste dump in Nevada, lawmakers
and industry officials are increasingly pushing for a Plan B.
After the most recent setback
for Yucca Mountain — a revelation last week that government workers on
the planned dump may have falsified documents — a key House Republican
urged the Energy Department to look at temporary waste storage solutions.
And Senate Energy Committee
Chairman Pete Domenici, R-N.M., is promoting talk of alternatives to Yucca
Mountain, while nuclear utilities are already looking into other options.
Many have begun building onsite storage for spent fuel and moving forward
with plans for a private waste dump in Utah. They also are pursuing lawsuits
against the government, seeking reimbursement for the cost of temporary
waste storage.
While the Energy Department
remains committed to Yucca Mountain, there's a growing consensus that the
dump — scheduled until recently to open in 2010 but now delayed indefinitely
— can no longer be considered the only answer for disposing of the nation's
nuclear waste.
"What matters is getting
rid of the fuel," said attorney Jerry Stouck, who represents nuclear utilities
in lawsuits against the government. "I don't think Yucca Mountain is so
important as a solution."
Yucca Mountain, approved
by Congress in 2002, is planned as a repository for 77,000 tons of defense
waste and used reactor fuel from commercial power plants. The material
is supposed to be buried for at least 10,000 years beneath the desert 90
miles northwest of Las Vegas.
But the project has suffered
serious setbacks, including funding problems and an appeals court decision
last summer that's forcing a rewrite of radiation exposure limits for the
site.
Some 55,000 tons of commercial
reactor fuel and 16,000 tons of high-level defense waste are already waiting
at sites in 39 states. The government, which originally promised nuclear
utilities it would begin accepting their spent fuel in 1998, is facing
billions of dollars in lawsuits for failing to make good on that pledge.
That mounting liability prompted
Rep. David Hobson, R-Ohio, last week to urge the Energy Department official
in charge of Yucca — Theodore Garrish — to start looking at alternatives.
Hobson, chairman of the House
Appropriations Committee panel that oversees the project, proposed an interim,
aboveground storage facility at the Nevada Test Site or elsewhere to accept
waste for up to 500 years, giving scientists time to develop new disposal
solutions.
"It doesn't take brain science
to think that we could save money in the long run to get this stuff out
of where it is and live up to an obligation, a contractual obligation,"
Hobson told Garrish at a hearing.
He also suggested another
look at reprocessing used reactor fuel.
Garrish said the Energy Department
remained "100 percent committed" to Yucca, but said he understood Hobson's
complaints.
Hobson's ideas aren't new.
The Energy Department pursued interim "monitored retrievable storage" facilities
in the late 1980s and early 1990s before abandoning the idea. The Bush
administration has also proposed reviving reprocessing, which the United
States abandoned in the 1970s over fears the resulting plutonium could
be seized by terrorists or a rogue state.
Yucca Mountain's chronic
delays are forcing the ideas to the surface again, even from supporters.
"There has been a sea change
in the way the nuclear community looks at Yucca Mountain," said Marnie
Funk, spokeswoman for Domenici, the Energy Committee chairman who is a
Yucca backer but nonetheless is open to such discussions. "People are no
longer saying Yucca Mountain has to be finished in order for the nuclear
industry to have a revival in this country. You can still have a nuclear
renaissance without Yucca Mountain, but that would mean at some point other
options have to be discussed."
The Justice Department settled
a suit with Chicago-based electric utility Exelon Corp. last August for
a sum that could rise to $600 million if Yucca Mountain doesn't open until
2015. Other suits are moving forward, including one by the Sacramento Municipal
Utility District that began this week in the U.S. Court of Federal Claims.
Damages against the government
are estimated at $2 billion to $3 billion if Yucca Mountain opens in 2010,
12 years after the government's contractual obligation to start storing
the nation's nuclear waste, Garrish told lawmakers. Damages could be $1
billion a year after that, meaning the project's annual liability costs
would nearly match its projected budget needs.
The Energy Department has
estimated the total cost of the project at $58 billion, but critics say
it could rise much higher. In recognition of the delays, President Bush's
2006 budget request for the project was $651 million, about half what the
Energy Department originally envisioned.
Meanwhile, a group of eight
utility companies is moving forward with plans for a private, aboveground
dump on an Indian reservation in Utah. That won approval in February from
a licensing board and is awaiting final Nuclear Regulatory Commission approval.
Utah's congressional delegation
opposes the project just as strenuously as Nevada lawmakers — including
Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid — oppose Yucca Mountain. Now, many Utah
officials say they're beginning to agree with Nevadans, who favor leaving
the waste permanently at utility sites. The nuclear industry and the Energy
Department oppose that idea.
"Pretty much the whole Utah delegation voted to do Yucca Mountain, and the premise there was we want that finished so it's not stuck in Utah," said Rep. Chris Cannon, R-Utah. "But since that vote the world has changed a lot. It just sees to me that the transition has been such that it now becomes reasonable to say not Utah, not Nevada, nowhere."
The New York Times
Tuesday, March 22,
2005
Those who believe, as we
do, that the best way to get rid of nuclear waste is to bury it deep underground
must be discouraged by the latest revelation rocking the effort to create
a burial site at Yucca Mountain in Nevada. Two U.S. agencies are investigating
whether a government scientist falsified documents for a license to build
the depository. It is unclear whether the falsification involves trivial
issues that can easily be rectified or strikes a deeper blow at the validity
of data designed to prove the site would be safe. Any falsification would
throw yet another cloud over a project that has been repeatedly staggered
by technical problems, political opposition and adverse court decisions.
.
The Energy Department said
that an employee of the U.S. Geological Survey sent several e-mail messages
from May 1998 to March 2000 indicating that he fabricated some records
relating to water infiltration and climate at Yucca. If the falsification
turns out to be a relatively minor issue, the Energy Department needs to
press ahead vigorously to submit a licensing application to the Nuclear
Regulatory Commission so that we can know, once and for all, whether the
Yucca site will be suitable. But if, alas, the falsification turns out
to be deep and fundamental, the administration and Congress will need to
give serious thought to two backup alternatives - leaving spent fuel at
the reactor sites where it is accumulating for many more years or decades,
or moving it to a temporary storage facility above ground. Neither would
be a permanent solution for disposing of nuclear waste, so the quest for
a burial site at Yucca or elsewhere would have to continue.
.
Those who believe, as we
do, that the best way to get rid of nuclear waste is to bury it deep underground
must be discouraged by the latest revelation rocking the effort to create
a burial site at Yucca Mountain in Nevada. Two U.S. agencies are investigating
whether a government scientist falsified documents for a license to build
the depository. It is unclear whether the falsification involves trivial
issues that can easily be rectified or strikes a deeper blow at the validity
of data designed to prove the site would be safe. Any falsification would
throw yet another cloud over a project that has been repeatedly staggered
by technical problems, political opposition and adverse court decisions.
.
The Energy Department said
that an employee of the U.S. Geological Survey sent several e-mail messages
from May 1998 to March 2000 indicating that he fabricated some records
relating to water infiltration and climate at Yucca. If the falsification
turns out to be a relatively minor issue, the Energy Department needs to
press ahead vigorously to submit a licensing application to the Nuclear
Regulatory Commission so that we can know, once and for all, whether the
Yucca site will be suitable. But if, alas, the falsification turns out
to be deep and fundamental, the administration and Congress will need to
give serious thought to two backup alternatives - leaving spent fuel at
the reactor sites where it is accumulating for many more years or decades,
or moving it to a temporary storage facility above ground. Neither would
be a permanent solution for disposing of nuclear waste, so the quest for
a burial site at Yucca or elsewhere would have to continue.
.
.
Headline News
National Academies advise on nuclear waste
source: www.lamonitor.com
ROGER SNODGRASS, roger@lamonitor.com, Monitor Assistant Editor
Panels of scientists have suggested greater flexibility in addressing the Department of Energy's radioactive waste problems over the next 20 years.
Two new reports commissioned by the DOE's Office of Environmental Management were published earlier this month by the National Academies with findings and recommendations.
"Given the controversy surrounding this issue and the reality that not all of the waste will, or can, be recovered and disposed of off-site, the country needs a structured, well-thought-out way to determine which wastes can stay," said David E. Daniel in a prepared statement. Daniel is chair of the committee that wrote one of the reports and dean, College of Engineering, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign.
Among the issues raised by the reports and examined from several sides, if not always answered, were: How to resolve exceptional bottlenecks. How clean is clean. What to do with one-of-a-kind situations. And how to make best use of available resources and facilities.
Realism and proportionate measures were the basic tools recommended to tackle what may be the nation's toughest restoration project, legacy wastes from the Cold War nuclear buildup.
"These are technically difficult cleanup problems being addressed in a complex political and social environment," wrote the authors of the study on using risk to inform decisions.
They suggested an exemption process involving a new and credible national board that could review particular situations and allow exemptions in what the researchers assume would be relatively few cases.
Many recommendations in the study parallel an ill-fated attempt by DOE to promote a new waste management philosophy early last year, known as "risk-based end states" (RBES).
The latest study on risk was dismissed by Nuclear Watch of New Mexico, a public interest group, for many of the same reasons that RBES was rejected.
"We believe no laws, regulations or agreements should be broken to make cleanup faster," said Scott Kovac, the group's operations and research director.
The report by the National Academies alluded to the failure of RBES, owing in part to DOE itself.
"It appears that institutional factors both inside and outside DOE have impeded attempts to implement risk-informed approaches," the study observed.
"These factors include a tradition of internal rather than open decision making, incentive structures that favor distorting or ignoring risk, and a public wariness or mistrust of DOE's use of risk assessment to justify proposed actions."
Released at the same time was a report on "improving the characterization and treatment of radioactive wastes for DOE's accelerated site clean-up program."
The study focuses on waste and storage at DOE sites in Idaho, South Carolina, Washington and Tennessee, and does not mention Los Alamos National Laboratory.
In 1995, according to an Inspector General Report, DOE committed to stabilizing all of LANL's "fissionable materials" by 2002.
In 2002, with little visible progress having been achieved, LANL signed an agreement with the State of New Mexico that called for an accelerated disposal of over 40,0000 drums of waste. A new date of 2012 was set.
In February, the Inspector General reported that the program was well behind schedule, in part because DOE had not provided promised characterization equipment.
"(DOE)...is unlikely to complete removal of the legacy transuranic waste before 2014," wrote the Inspector General in the report on Feb. 10.
Transuranic waste is generally described as contaminated tools, clothing, and other debris related to nuclear weapons production, with long-lasting but lower levels of radioactivity than High Level Waste, which are largely nuclear fuel rods.
The second Research Council report advises DOE to consider extending the life of facilities used to treat and process radioactive waste.
The study recommended declassifying contaminated equipment from the earliest days of the atomic era and prioritizing decontaminating targets according to risk.
The characterization committee recognized that some wastes would be left in place and recommended a "cocooning" approach involving stabilizing and monitoring wastes, while awaiting new knowledge.
Too many activities related
to shipping transuranic waste to the Waste Isolation Pilot Project in Carlsbad,
the report concluded, are conducted for regulatory compliance, without
reducing risk. Such delays could be reduced by simplifying and standardizing
the requirements for characterizing the waste.
Officials visiting homeowners along Nevada nuclear waste route
ASSOCIATED PRESS
LAS VEGAS (AP) - Federal and Nye County officials have been making door-to-door visits in parts of Nevada where a proposed rail line would be built to haul radioactive waste to a national nuclear waste dump at Yucca Mountain.
Energy Department officials have been to about 35 homes since June to explain the plan to transport highly radioactive waste through their backyards, officials and residents said.
Reactions at kitchen tables have included shock, anger and cautious curiosity, said Susan Moore, an official with the Nye County Department of natural resources and federal facilities.
"The biggest concerns I have are that they don't seem to have any plans for informing people if there is an accident, or creating an evacuation plan," said Kevin Emmerich, whose property near Beatty is about 2.5 miles from the planned rail line.
Energy Department and Yucca contractor Bechtel SAIC representatives told him Jan. 24 that trains traveling up to 59 mph would pass three to four times a week, at any time of the day or night, Emmerich said. At least one highway overpass might be built to accommodate the trains, the officials told him, and a bad-weather protocol will be developed.
Rancher Joe Fellini, who has grazing rights to a large areas of Nye County, said the train route would limit access to about 20 of his springs and wells.
"They don't care," said Fellini, who said he was considering a lawsuit. "They're going to do whatever they want."
More visits are planned with many of the 100 or so residents, ranchers and mining companies that own land affected by the proposed mile-wide rail corridor, said Moore, who helped organize the field trips.
Energy Department spokesman Allen Benson said the officials who made the visits would not be available for comment.
Calls to Bechtel SAIC were referred to the Energy Department.
Some Nye County residents support Yucca development, and some county officials want to negotiate for economic benefits.
"There are a lot of people who look at this from an economic development point of view," Benson said. "And there are a lot of people who have questions about safety. That's why we are spending a lot of time there."
Despite budget shortfalls and other setbacks, the Energy Department is continuing with its plan to entomb at Yucca Mountain some 77,000 tons of radioactive waste now being stored at nuclear reactors and U.S. defense sites in 39 states.
With recent delays, Energy Department officials say the repository won't open until at least 2012. Some program critics say it would be 2015 at the earliest.
One hurdle is construction of a $1 billion, 319-mile rail route through Lincoln and Nye Counties to ship waste from a railhead near the Utah-Nevada state line.
Energy Department officials have said construction won't be difficult, while critics say the route is across rugged terrain prone to occasional flooding.
Benson said the Energy Department will provide full details about a shipping campaign well before trains begin hauling waste to Yucca, and emergency responders will be trained about three years in advance of the shipments.
He said public hearings will be held this year along the proposed route.
---
On the Net:
Yucca Mountain project: http://www.ymp.gov
WASHINGTON - A significant
amount of radioactive waste from Cold War bomb-making should remain at
former production sites, and several locations should be kept open longer
than planned to treat waste from elsewhere, scientists recommended this
week.
Reports by two panels of
the National Academies urged the Energy Department to revamp its massive
$140 billion clean-up plans for defense nuclear waste with the goal of
transporting less of it to a central facility.
This would allow clean-up
activities to be completed sooner and cost less, the panels said. The current
clean-up schedule, involving dozens of sites, envisions most waste treatment
and disposal to be finished in 20 years.
But the scientists also
called for greater involvement outside of the Energy Department in determining
what wastes should be left in place and what should be transported to a
geological repository. The report said the department's credibility on
decisions involving waste disposal is hampered because the DOE both proposes
and approves waste disposition plans.
''DOE should not attempt
to adopt these changes unilaterally,'' said the panel, suggesting the Environmental
Protection Agency or Nuclear Regulatory Commission and perhaps an independent
group of experts get involved in assessing how radioactive wastes should
be treated.
This approach was applauded
by some environmentalists Tuesday, who have argued that DOE has too much
power in making waste disposal decisions. The report ''clearly sent a message
that Congress must rein in DOE and address the mess that it has made of
nuclear waste clean-up policy,'' said Geoff Fettus, a lawyer for the Natural
Resources Defense Council.
States with some of the
biggest clean-up challenges - including Washington, Idaho and South Carolina
- and have argued that high-level defense nuclear waste should be taken
away for deep geological burial.
But a National Research
Council panel, asked to review the government program, concluded that the
''recovery of every last gram'' of such waste ''will be technically impractical
and unnecessary.''
In some cases removing waste
could lead to increased human exposures to radiation, the panel said. It
also said the expense associated with retrieval, immobilization and disposition
of some of the waste in a central repository ''may be out of proportion
with the risk reduction achieved, if any.''
An attempt to recover all
of this waste - such as the hardened ''heel'' waste attached to the inside
of buried tanks at the Hanford site in Washington state - could lead to
more contamination than if it were left in place, the report said.
February 16, 2005
By Jung Sung-ki
Staff Reporter
The government and ruling
Uri Party agreed yesterday to finalize the selection of a site to build
a nuclear waste dump by July, government officials said.
In a joint meeting at the National Assembly, the two sides agreed to pass a special bill to provide 300 billion won ($290 million) in a subsidy to a local government to house the waste dump during the current extraordinary National Assembly session.
The government will receive applications from townships across the country from next month, the officials said.
``We will carefully review all candidate sites from the beginning,'' Rep. Kim Tae-hong of the ruling Uri Party said. The government will provide sufficient information and stage promotional campaigns regarding nuclear waste disposal to residents from applicable regions to avoid repeating confrontation as the candidate site of Wido in Puan County, North Cholla Province, he added.
The government has failed to name a site to build a nuclear waste disposal facility due to strong resistance over the past year and a half in all designated regions. The latest attempt to build the facility in Wido, an islet off the coast of Puan County, was also frustrated last year as more than half of the residents backed by environmental activists opposed the plan. The residents staged violent demonstrations for months in 2003, demanding that the bid forwarded by the county mayor be scrapped.
The majority of Puan residents expressed opposition to the facility through a poll conducted last year, while there are still residents who favor the project because of its economic potential. The results of the survey showed that some 90 percent of the polled opposed the plan. However, the government said the vote was invalid as residents, not the local government, organized it.
``A legitimate poll is the only answer to the issue (of building a waste dump),'' said Lee Young-taek, head of a local organization in favor of the project. ``The construction of the facility can be the growth engine for North Cholla provinces.''
Lee said the safety of the
nuclear dump has been proved by a series of on-site studies, in which some
10,000 residents participated. The organization will continue to collect
signatures of approval for the project from 20,000 residents, he added.
gallantjung@koreatimes.co.kr
Federal authorities found a large piece of radioactive material in Boston last Thursday, lost last December by Texas-based Halliburton Energy Services.
According to Nuclear Regulatory Commission spokeswoman Diane Screnci, "19-and-a-half Torrs" of radioactive Americium went missing upon shipment from Russia to Houston, Texas and was accidentally labeled for delivery to Boston. Halliburton originally intended for the package to be delivered to a freight facility in Newark, N.J., before getting shipped to Houston.
The package of Americium appeared untampered when Homeland Security and FBI officials found it at the Forward Freight facilities in Boston.
"It was packaged in a shipping container that was designed to transport this material and it's designed to protect," Screnci said.
The Americium's packaging prevented any possible danger of exposure to the public, Halliburton's Director of Communications Wendy Hall said.
Halliburton contacted the shipping company multiple times after the package left Russia and was told the shipment was in progress to Houston, Hall said.
"The shipping company that was responsible for the shipment made a mistake and sent the material to the wrong location," she said.
Halliburton informed the NRC last Thursday of the missing material, triggering a massive investigation that lasted less than 24 hours.
"We notified NRC immediately when we found out it was missing," Hall said.
The NRC allows a company a reasonable grace period to determine exactly what is missing before requiring a report, Screnci said.
Currently, the material is en route to its original destination.
According to Screnci, incidents of missing radioactive material like this one have prompted the NRC to reform their policies, including the implementation of a new tracking system by 2007.
"We have taken steps toward developing a cradle-to-grave tracking system," Screnci said, "from the beginning of when it starts as a source to when it becomes waste."
Halliburton uses the material to provide data from wells, Hall said.
Both Texas and federal la1w enforcement authorities are involved in an investigation of the incident. Halliburton will conduct its own internal investigation, Hall said.
Source: Reuters
ROME, Feb 14 (Reuters) - Anti-nuclear campaigners chained themselves to railway tracks in the early hours of Monday to try to prevent two trainloads of radioactive waste leaving Italy for Britain's Sellafield reprocessing plant, police said.
Environmental campaign group Greenpeace organised the protest near Turin to publicise that the waste -- the last of 13 convoys -- would eventually return to Italy. They say the government has no policy on what to do with it.
"The attempt to export spent nuclear fuel abroad is a way of playing for time, a subterfuge to leave for the next generation the burden of taking decisions which are morally and politically beyond the wit of the current governing class," a Greenpeace statement said.
Officers removed protesters from the tracks after cutting them free with bolt cutters. The protest delayed a train -- carrying 53 tonnes of spent nuclear fuel -- from departing northern Italy for several hours.
Environmentalists want countries to stop sending spent fuel to reprocessing plants in Britain and France.
Eventually, the waste must return to the country of origin, which has the legal duty to store it safely. But environmentalists say no European country has yet decided how to deal with it effectively.
Italy closed its nuclear power stations in the 1980s after Italians voted to go nuclear-free, but the country is still dealing with waste from old plants.
Italian environmentalists fear they could face another battle if the country's politicians are successful at restarting Italy's mothballed nuclear programme.
Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi
has said Italy should rethink its no-nuclear policy because it has no significant
reserves of conventional energy and is a net importer of nuclear-generated
electricity from neighbouring countries.
NUCLEAR WASTE: GREENPEACE
BLOCKS TRAIN CONVOY
(AGI) - Turin, Italy, Feb
14 - A train convoy leaving Vercelli with a freight of nuclear waste canisters,
headed for Sellafield in the UK, is currently blocked at Chivasso station
outside Turin, after Greenpeace activists blocked it at 0100 hours today.
"The train is blocked in Chivassso - says Greenpeace's Roberto Ferrigno
- but we're working on it returning to Vercelli. A train carrying a freight
of nuclear waste cannot be parked in open air and we're doing our utmost
for authorities to act on it". Tonight's protest Ferrigno added is against
"the transport of nuclear waste towards England where it causes cancer
and radioactive contamination. Italy is abetting nuclear contamination
worldwide". (AGI) .
141149 FEB 05
COPYRIGHTS 2002-2005 AGI
S.p.A.
DOE unveils plan for aboveground nuclear waste storage
ASSOCIATED PRESS
LAS VEGAS (AP) - The Energy Department unveiled plans Friday for an aboveground site to receive highly radioactive waste destined for storage at a national nuclear waste dump in southern Nevada.
Plans call for a 500-by-500-foot facility the department dubbed an "aging pad" that could hold up to 46.3 million pounds, or about one-third of the highly radioactive waste on its way to underground storage at the Yucca Mountain repository.
The department scaled back plans for building a facility to hold almost twice as much waste, Energy Department repository systems engineer Paul Harrington said at a nuclear waste issues conference in Washington, D.C.
The pad could be surrounded by a 300-foot barrier. Harrington declined Friday to provide details about security at the site, 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas.
"There would be security, certainly," he said.
Nevada lawmakers have fought proposals for temporary aboveground storage at the Nevada Test Site, which encompasses the Yucca site. Critics note that federal law prohibits interim storage in Nevada if the state is to be home to a national permanent waste repository.
The state's top anti-Yucca administrator said the state will challenge the aboveground pad and will call for the Energy Department to seek a separate Nuclear Regulatory Commission license before building it.
"We think that a facility that holds that quantity of waste is an independent fuel storage facility," said Bob Loux, executive director of the Nevada Nuclear Projects Agency.
Harrington said the pad was not defined as a temporary storage facility because the waste would be awaiting placement in the permanent repository.
The Energy Department has long planned to build an aboveground collection station with about 2,000 casks containing nuclear waste shipped to Yucca from 39 states around the country.
The pad would allow for sorting and cooling of intensely hot radioactive waste destined for entombment in tunnels 1,000 feet below ground. Some casks could remain above ground for up to 15 years, Harrington said.
The pad would be used for about 50 years, or about the time project planners say it will take to fill the underground repository.
The Energy Department wants to open Yucca in 2010 and fill it with up to 144 million pounds of radioactive waste. But the department missed a self-imposed Dec. 30 deadline to submit a license application to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
The application is expected to undergo several years of review.
US nuclear dump won't fix
problem
Amanda Hodge
January 22, 2005
THE US offer to take Australia's spent nuclear fuel for the next decade does not solve the problem of where to dump the radioactive waste in the longer term.
The agreement between the US and Australia drew criticism yesterday from the NSW Government, conservationists and the federal Opposition, who all called for a debate about future plans for the storage and transportation of nuclear waste.
Under the US deal, about 800 spent nuclear fuel elements from a replacement nuclear reactor at Sydney's Lucas Heights will be transported to the US between now and 2016 in four shipments.
However, NSW Environment Minister Bob Debus said the arrangement failed to address how the waste would be safely stored in the interim and then transported.
The NSW Government opposes
the storage and transport of radioactive waste within its borders, as do
all other states and territories.
"The state, and particularly the people of southern Sydney, remain in the dark about how long the waste will continue to be stored in NSW and how the commonwealth will ensure it's safe to transport to a secure port," Mr Debus said yesterday.
"We're not talking about low-level nuclear waste used in hospitals -- some of this material is highly dangerous.
"The NSW Government has repeatedly requested the federal Government to take an open approach on this, and instead we hear of a quick-fix, backroom deal devoid of detail."
The Australian Conservation Foundation said the deal did nothing to minimise the risk of storing large volumes of nuclear waste at Lucas Heights, in the middle of a heavily populated suburb, and failed to explain what would be done with the estimated 1500 cubic metres of long-lasting nuclear waste already accumulated at Lucas Heights. "The commonwealth is only talking about spent fuel but there's a whole lot of other waste that reactors produce," ACF spokesman David Noonan said.
State and territory governments mutinied last year after a federal government shortlist of potential dump sites across the nation was leaked to the media. Commonwealth land in Puckapunyal in Victoria and Jervis Bay in NSW were among the locations on the list, which emerged just weeks after John Howard backed down in his tussle with South Australia to locate the dump at Woomera in the state's north.
The Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation believes the US deal removes the need for the federal Government to find a dump location before an operator's licence is granted for the replacement research reactor.
But the federal Opposition and the Australian Democrats said the question remained of what to do with the nuclear waste due for return from reprocessing in France in 2015, as well as the waste generated from the new Lucas Heights reactor, once the deal with the US ended.
Myrtle Beach Sun Times
Posted on Thu, Jan. 20, 2005
EDITORIALS
Nuclear Doomsday Scenario?
The toxic nuclear waste created
in S.C. will stay in S.C. for many more years
South Carolinians rely heavily on nuclear power and rarely have reason to think about what that means. Nuclear plants don't get blamed for mercury pollution in wetland and waterways, as coal-fired plants do. And they don't get reviled for driving up retail power rates, as natural-gas-fired plants do when wholesale gas prices are high.
But as residents were reminded recently when the federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission renewed their operating licenses for at least 30 years, the state's seven nuclear power plants are far from the perfect electricity source their proponents make them out to be. The cost of the power they produce may not fluctuate because the cost of the uranium-based fuel rods they rely on to convert water to steam is constant and relatively cheap. But those fuel rods, once spent, devolve into highly toxic nuclear waste. And nuclear power facilities such as Santee Cooper's V.C. Summer plant near Columbia must store spent rods on site because there's no place else to put them.
Across the state, then, the plants are home to tons and tons of highly radioactive spent fuel rods, some stored above ground in high-tech canisters, others stored in cooling ponds. During the next three decades, the newly relicensed plants will create many, many tons more toxic nuclear waste.
It wasn't supposed to be this way. The utility companies that own the plants have contributed millions toward the federal long-term, high-level nuclear waste storage facility supposedly under preparation in the Nevada hills near Las Vegas. But the so-called Yucca Flats repository is years away from opening - mainly because of understandable continued political resistance from Nevadans. It's hard to blame Nevadans for resisting the repository, even though the facility supposedly is geologically safe enough for storage of high-level radioactive waste for eons to come.
The waste that S.C. plants generate, therefore, is likely to remain in South Carolina for most, if not all, of their license-renewal periods. There's no other place to send it.
The good news is that, statewide and nationally, on-site nuclear storage has worked relatively well. But canister-clad stored fuel rods will remain a tempting target for terrorists until the federal or state governments find the political will - and the money - to secure them. And there's always the possibility that an accident can render the terrain around the plants a no man's land for eons.
So how could federal nuclear regulatory commissioners and staff even think about allowing our plants here another three decades of life, let alone approve it? Like the rest of us, they prefer to think that past safety in handling one of the most dangerous substances on the planet is a predictor of future safety success. And like the rest of us, they prefer not to think about the astronomical power rates that would ensue if they ordered the nuclear plants offline. They know we'll pretend it's OK - and maybe it really will be OK.
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