|
Post by no d in u on Jan 1, 2012 6:33:21 GMT -8
Mysterious "white web" found growing on nuclear waste Dec 16, 2011 2:50 PM This is as fascinating as it is unsettling. Scientists at the Department of Energy's Savannah River Site — a nuclear reservation in South Carolina — have identified a strange, cob-web like "growth" (their word, not ours) on the racks of the facility's spent nuclear fuel assemblies. According to a report filed by the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board, "the growth, which resembles a spider web, has yet to be characterized, but may be biological in nature." The Augusta Chronicle reported today that the "white, string-like" material was discovered amidst thousands of the spent fuel assemblies, which are submerged in deep nuclear storage pools within SRS's L Area Complex. (The image up top is of a similar nuclear storage pool at Italy's Caorso Nuclear Power Plant, which was decommissioned in 1990.) io9.com/5868883/mysterious-white-webs-found-growing-on-nuclear-waste
|
|
|
Post by no d in u on Jan 1, 2012 6:36:04 GMT -8
|
|
|
Post by no d in u on Jan 1, 2012 6:41:38 GMT -8
Wiki: Depleted uranium (DU; also referred to in the past as Q-metal, depletalloy, or D-38) is uranium with a lower content of the fissile isotope U-235 than natural uranium (natural uranium is about 99.27% uranium-238 (U-238), 0.72% U-235, and 0.0055% U-234). Uses of DU take advantage of its very high density of 19.1 g/cm3 (68.4% denser than lead). Civilian uses include counterweights in aircraft, radiation shielding in medical radiation therapy and industrial radiography equipment, and containers used to transport radioactive materials. Military uses include defensive armor plating and armor-piercing projectiles. Most depleted uranium arises as a byproduct of the production of enriched uranium for use in nuclear reactors and in the manufacture of nuclear weapons. Enrichment processes generate from the uranium feed a small fraction of uranium with a higher-than-natural concentration of lower-mass uranium isotopes (in particular U-235, which is the uranium isotope supporting the fission chain reaction) with the bulk of the feed ending up as depleted uranium, in some cases with mass fractions of U-235 and U-234 less than a third of those in natural uranium.[2] U-238 has a much longer halflife than the lighter isotopes, and DU therefore emits less alpha radiation than the same mass of natural uranium: the US Defense Department states DU used in US munitions has 60% the radioactivity of natural uranium.[3] en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Depleted_uranium
|
|
|
Post by no d in u on Jan 1, 2012 6:43:56 GMT -8
Converted Radioactive Waste Used to Fertilize in Oklahoma By KEITH SCHNEIDER, Special to the New York Times Published: November 16, 1987 The Kerr-McGee Corporation, after years of tests and studies, is spraying thousands of acres of pastureland in eastern Oklahoma with a fertilizer recycled from radioactive wastes. The corporation says extensive studies of water, soil, hay, vegetation and cattle in areas sprayed with the fertilizer over the last decade show it is harmless. But the spraying program has alarmed hundreds of people who believe the substance is threatening their health and environment. The fertilizer, which the company describes as treated raffinate, is processed from wastes at Kerr-McGee's Sequoyah Fuels Facility here, one of two plants in the United States that purify milled uranium, a step in the process of making nuclear fuel rods for power plants. According to chemical analyses by the company, treated raffinate contains nitrogen, trace amounts of radioactive uranium, radium and thorium, some toxic solvents and at least 18 potentially poisonous heavy metals, including arsenic, lead, mercury, molybdenum, nickel, cobalt and cadmium. www.nytimes.com/1987/11/16/us/converted-radioactive-waste-used-to-fertilize-in-oklahoma.html?pagewanted=all
|
|
|
Post by no d in u on Jan 1, 2012 6:48:46 GMT -8
Fukushima's Spent Fuel Rods Pose Grave Danger March 15, 2011 Unlike the reactors, spent fuel pools are not—repeat not—housed in any sort of hardened or sealed containment structures. Rather, the fuel rods are packed tightly together in pools of water that are often several stories above ground. “With damaged [fuel rod] pools, we are talking about things that were never considered a credible threat,” said Alvarez. Aileen Mioko Smith, director of Green Action Kyoto, met Fukushima plant and government officials in August 2010. “At the plant they seemed to dismiss our concerns about spent fuel pools,” said Mioko Smith. “At the prefecture, they were very worried but had no plan for how to deal with it.” www.thenation.com/article/159234/fukushimas-spent-fuel-rods-pose-grave-danger
|
|
|
Post by no d in u on Jan 1, 2012 6:51:15 GMT -8
Great Lakes nuclear shipment further delayed Last Updated: May 17, 2011 8:35 PM ET Bruce Power has withdrawn its request to U.S. authorities to transport **16 decommissioned nuclear steam generators** through the Great Lakes and St. Lawrence Seaway to Sweden for recycling. The Ontario private nuclear generating company needs permission from both Canada and the U.S. before proceeding. www.cbc.ca/news/canada/windsor/story/2011/05/17/wdr-bruce-power-application-withdrawn.html
|
|
|
Post by clone on Jan 7, 2012 23:16:55 GMT -8
APTN Investigates Nuclear Waste January 6, 2012 www.youtube.com/watch?v=HcOvW7xhilUDesperate for economic development opportunities, some remote First Nations and Metis communities are thinking about hosting an underground nuclear waste repository to create jobs and make money for the community. But opponents say the environmental and human risks are just too huge and it’s not worth it. APTN Investigates’ Melissa Ridgen explores all sides of the debate.
|
|
|
Post by clone on May 20, 2012 20:34:16 GMT -8
WHAT DO WE KNOW ABOUT HIGH LEVEL NUCLEAR WASTE ? May 2010 By Dr. Bill Adamson ChemistryFission of uranium fuel rods in a nuclear reactor splits atoms and releases tremendous heat and radiation. The heat boils water, makes steam, and turns the turbines generating electricity. In the process, the molecules of the fuel rods are re-configured thereby forming 211 different chemicals—some of them not even found in nature. These waste materials are very radioactive and toxic. Several of them retain their radioactivity for thousands of years. For instance, Plutonium –239 has a "half--life" of 24,000 years, Uranium –235 has a half-- life of 700 million years, Cesium has a half--life of 2,300,000 years, Thorium has a half--life of 77,000 years. (1) The waste material is so radioactive that if a human were to hold a handful at arm’s length, he or she would be dead in less than 5 minutes. That is why nuclear waste must be handled with robotic machinery. In order to avoid further combustion or explosion, nuclear waste is kept under 20 feet of water in giant swimming pools for 7 years to keep it cooled down. After that, it is stored in giant cement and steel casks in large factory-like buildings for years and years. QuantitiesNuclear reactors have been storing these hazardous wastes "on-site" for over 60 years. In Canada we have stored up to 2 million fuel bundles or 40,000 tonnes of nuclear waste, enough to fill a skating rink level with the boards. That is a lot of poison! In the USA the authorities have stored up to 70,000 tonnes of radioactive waste from 104 operating nuclear reactors—enough to cover a football field 20 feet deep. (2) Remedial ActionsWhy do we in Saskatchewan keep mining uranium and exporting it to nuclear reactors around the world? Well, we make a lot of money selling it to others, regardless of the consequences! When the nasty problem of waste disposal reared its head back in the 1940’s, the authorities said that scientists would soon come up with a solution to the problem. That has not happened in over 60 years! Not very promising! Then some have reneged on finding a satisfactory disposal solution because perhaps the wastes could be re-processed to gain even more energy, and to gain more plutonium, which also makes good bomb material. The USA has made 8 major attempts to find a satisfactory procedure for disposing of dangerous waste, and each time failed. The centralized Yucca Mountain Repository was the major hope for years. Now, after working on the project for 20 years, and spending over $9 billion dollars, President Obama cancelled the Project and appointed a brand new Committee to research the problem again. (3) In Canada, there have been 6 major Studies or Reports regarding nuclear power and nuclear wastes—but without a satisfactory method of dealing with the problem. (4) Germany pdf 6pp, The Inter-Church Uranium Committee Educational Co-operative (ICUCEC). Saskatoon, SK. www.icucec.org/files/What%20do%20we%20Know%20about%20High%20Level%20Nuclear%20Waste_0.pdf
|
|
|
Post by clone on May 20, 2012 20:41:12 GMT -8
Energy Northwest to buy $711M of nuclear fuel Posted: 12:00am on May 11, 2012; Modified: 7:21pm on May 11, 2012 A long robotic arm reaches down through 70-feet of water to move a spent nuclear fuel bundle inside the open core of the reactor at Energy Northwest's Columbia Generating Station during a shutdown for refueling and maintenance. The Energy Northwest Executive Board decided Thursday to spend $711 million to buy fuel for the plant near Richland.DOE approached Energy Northwest about the deal, said executive board Chairman Sid Morrison. Energy Secretary Steven Chu plans to defend it vigorously, Atkinson said. The purchase is contingent on the Tennessee Valley Authority, which has seven nuclear power reactors, agreeing to a deal under negotiation that would reduce the risk to Energy Northwest. DOE proposed the deal to help keep a gaseous diffusion plant in Paducah, Ky., operating. The plant is in danger of shutting down this year because its technology is outdated, but DOE lacks the budget for decommissioning it, according to the board's discussion. The Paducah gaseous diffusion plant, owned by DOE and operated by U.S. Enrichment Corp., enriches uranium to produce a product that can be fabricated into fuel for use in nuclear power plants. Instead of using newly mined uranium, DOE's leftover depleted uranium, also known as "tails" would be used for the Energy Northwest fuel. The tails are a byproduct of enriching uranium and would be recycled to get a second round of enriched uranium. Read more here: www.bellinghamherald.com/2012/05/11/2517801/energy-northwest-to-buy-711m-of.html
|
|
|
Post by clone on May 21, 2012 17:06:57 GMT -8
Update, May 18, 2012. The vote on the Markey-Pearce amendment took place this morning; unfortunately it was defeated 299-122. Apparently all those Reps who hate government spending don't really hate it when it comes to bailing out out the nuclear power industry (we're looking at you, Speaker Boehner....) May 17, 2012 The fiscal year 2013 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) currently includes a $150 million taxpayer bailout for the U.S. Enrichment Corporation, which operates a uranium enrichment plant at Paducah, KY and wants to build a new plant in Portsmouth, OH. USEC is a failing corporation. Its stock prices are trading at less than $1 per share, causing the New York Stock Exchange earlier this week to threaten to delist it. Its bond rating is at junk bond status. The entire company may not be worth even the $150 million. Yet this bailout would be only the first step; USEC is also trying to get a $2 Billion taxpayer loan for the Portsmouth project, which already has been fraught with problems. Reps. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) and Steve Pearce (R-NM) have teamed up to offer an amendment that would strip this $150 million bailout from the NDAA bill. It will be voted on by the full House late today or tomorrow. www.nirs.org/home.htm
|
|
|
Post by fukushima4plus on Jun 13, 2012 15:34:53 GMT -8
"It's important to know now that Fukushima had dry cask storage [for spent fuels]. . . . They [dry casks] were hit by the tsunami, they got wet, they got muddy, but they didn't melt, and they didn't explode, and they are still there today essentially intact. The lesson here . . . is to get as much of the nuclear fuel out of the fuel pool and into dry cask storage where they are much safer." -- Arnie Gundersen ________________________________ The Worst Yet to Come? Why Nuclear Experts Are Calling Fukushima a Ticking Time-Bomb * But nuclear waste experts say the Japanese are literally playing with fire in the way nuclear spent fuel continues to be stored onsite, especially in reactor 4, which contains the most irradiated fuel -- 10 times the deadly cesium-137 released during the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear accident. Reactor 4: The Most Imminent Threat The spent fuel in the hobbled unit 4 at Fukushima Daiichi not only sits in an elevated pool outside the reactor core's reinforced containment, in a high-consequence earthquake zone adjacent to the ocean -- just as nearly all the spent fuel at the nuclear site is stored -- but it's also open to the elements because a hydrogen explosion blew off the roof during the early days of the accident and sent the building into a list. * As opposed to units 1-3 at Fukushima Daiichi, where the meltdowns occurred, unit 4's reactor core, like units 5 and 6, was not in operation when the earthquake struck last year. But unlike units 5 and 6, it had recently uploaded highly radioactive spent fuel into its storage pool before the disaster struck. * What he [Robert Alvarez] found, which has been corroborated by other experts interviewed by AlterNet, is an astounding amount of vulnerably stored spent fuel, also known as irradiated fuel, at the Fukushima Daiichi site. His immediate focus is on the fuel stored in the damaged unit 4's pool, which contains the single largest inventory of highly radioactive spent fuel of any of the pools in the damaged reactors. * Alvarez warns that if there is another large earthquake or event that causes this pool to drain of water, which keeps the fuel rods from overheating and igniting, it could cause a catastrophic fire releasing 10 times more cesium-137 than was released at Chernobyl. The Threat Not Just to Japan But to the U.S. and the World An even more catastrophic worst-case scenario follows that a fire in the pool at unit 4 could then spread, igniting the irradiated fuel throughout the nuclear site and releasing an amount of cesium-137 equaling a doomsday-like load, roughly 85 times more than the release at Chernobyl.It's a scenario that would literally threaten Japan's annihilation and civilization at large, with widespread worldwide environmental radioactive contamination.* Kamps noted that these pool fires were the beginning of the worst-case analysis envisioned by the Japanese government in the early days of the disaster, as reported by the New York Times in February. * But he said that privately "they're probably more scared shitless about the pools than they are about the cores. They know they're really risky and dangerous." "It is true that in May and June the floor of the U4 SFP [spent fuel pool] was 'reinforced,' but not as strong as it was originally," Gundersen noted in an email to AlterNet. "The entire building however has not been reinforced and is damaged by the explosion in both 4 and 3. So structurally U4 is not as strong as its original design required." Alvarez said that even if the unit 4 structure has been tentatively stabilized, it doesn't change the fact "it sits in a structurally damaged building, is about 100 feet above the ground and is exposed to the atmosphere, in a high-consequence earthquake zone."
He also said that the urgency of the situation is underscored by the ongoing seismic activity around northeast Japan, in which 13 earthquakes of magnitude 4.0 to 5.7 have occurred off the northeast coast of Honshu between April 14 and April 17.
"This has been the norm since 3/11/11 and larger quakes are expected closer to the power plant," Alvarez added.
A recent study published in the journal Solid Earth, which used data from over 6,000 earthquakes, confirms the expectation of larger quakes in closer proximity to the Fukushima Daiichi site. In part, this conclusion is predicated on the discovery that the earthquake that initiated last year's disaster caused a seismic fault close to the nuclear plant to reactivate.* In a statement released by his office, Wyden replied, "The radiation caused by the failure of the spent fuel pools in the event of another earthquake could reach the West Coast within days. That absolutely makes the safe containment and protection of this spent fuel a security issue for the United States." Yet Tepco's current plans are to hold the majority of this spent fuel onsite for years in the same elevated, uncontained storage pools, only transferring some of the fuel into more secure, hardened dry casks when the common pool reaches capacity.* For the moment, though, and for the foreseeable future -- unless the international community substantively comes to Japan's aid -- Tepco couldn't transfer the irradiated fuel from the damaged reactor units into dry cask storage even if it wanted to because the equipment to do so, such as the crane support infrastructure, was destroyed during the initial disaster. "That's kind of shocking," said Paul Gunter of Beyond Nuclear. "But that's why we're still sitting on this gamble that there won't be another earthquake that could topple a very precarious unit 4."
Gunter is concerned that even a minor earthquake or a subsidence in the earth under unit 4 could cause its collapse.
"I think we're all on pins and needles every day with regard to unit 4," he said. "I mean there's any number of things that could happen. Nobody really knows."
Gunter added, "Right now its seismic rating should be zero."Same Spent Fuel Pool Designs at Dozens of U.S. Nuclear Sites So why isn't the NRC and the Obama administration doing more to shed light on the extreme vulnerability of these irradiated fuel pools at Fukushima Daiichi, which threaten not only Japan but the U.S. and the world? Nuclear waste experts say it would expose the fact that the same design flaw lies in wait -- and has been for decades -- at dozens of U.S. nuclear facilities. And that's not something the NRC, which is routinely accused of promoting the nuclear industry rather than adequately regulating it, nor the pro-nuclear Obama administration, want to broadcast to the American public. more: www.fairewinds.org/content/worst-yet-come-why-nuclear-experts-are-calling-fukushima-ticking-time-bomb
|
|
nippon 7910 fuel rods
Guest
|
Post by nippon 7910 fuel rods on Jun 13, 2012 15:56:19 GMT -8
Tepco couldn't transfer the irradiated fuel from the damaged reactor units into dry cask storage even if it wanted to because the equipment to do so, such as the crane support infrastructure, was destroyed during the initial disaster. Speaking at a public hearing of the Budgetary Committee of the House of Councilors on March 22, 2012, Murata warned that “if the crippled building of reactor unit 4 – with **1,535 fuel rods** in the spent fuel pool 100 feet (30 meters) above the ground – collapses, not only will it cause a shutdown of all six reactors but will also affect the common spent fuel pool containing **6,375 fuel rods** located some 50 meters from reactor 4,” writes Matsumura.
|
|
|
Post by oh look on Jun 16, 2012 22:10:18 GMT -8
|
|
|
Post by NWMO on Nov 1, 2012 18:37:18 GMT -8
Nuclear waste storage proposal sparks protest - Published on: 12/21/2011 11:22:19 AM A proposal to develop a permanent nuclear waste storage facility on the north shore of Lake Huron is causing controversy amongst the area's First Nations communities. www.northernontariobusiness.com/Industry-News/aboriginal-businesses/Nuclear-waste-storage-proposal-sparks-protest.aspxNuclear waste seeks a home - Published on Saturday September 01, 2012 The impending cut-off is ratcheting up the pressure on the technocrats charged with selecting a site; on the boosters who want to snare the multi-billion-dollar repository for their community; on the activists who harbour deep suspicions about safety; and on the aboriginal leaders who say they’ve been cut out of the process. Adding urgency is another nuclear decision hanging over Ontario: Whether to proceed with building two big new reactors at the Darlington nuclear station. www.thestar.com/business/article/1250109--nuclear-waste-seeks-a-home
|
|
|
Post by clone on Feb 12, 2013 7:19:51 GMT -8
UK -- Prosecution over radioactive waste going to landfill | 12 February 2013 | The operators of the Sellafield nuclear facility have admitted sending bags of radioactive waste to landfill. The company was prosecuted by the Environment Agency (EA) and the Office for Nuclear Regulation after four bags of mixed general waste were sent to Lillyhall landfill site, in Workington. The EA said the bags should have been sent to the low level waste repository, at Drigg, Cumbria, which treats and stores low level radioactive waste consignments. www.mrw.co.uk/news/prosecution-over-radioactive-waste-going-to-landfill/8642571.articleUSA -- Nuclear Weapons Waste in Your Silverware, Pants Zipper, Baby Toys? The Department of Energy wants to mix radioactive metal from nuclear weapons factories with clean recycled metal and let it enter into general commerce--where it could be used for any purpose. www.nirs.org/
|
|