There are many sites around the world contaminated by radioactive materials. Some sites such as the Hanford Nuclear Reservation in Washington State were dedicated to nuclear weapons production and little regard was given to safely disposing of radioactive materials. Some sites such as the Nevada Test Site were used to test nuclear weapons before a treaty banned above ground and atmospheric tests. Some sites such as Fukushima were contaminated by accidents at nuclear power plants. There are millions of tons of soil around the world contaminated by radioactive materials that can threaten the environment and public health.
Last November, Japan’s Fukushima Prefecture and France’s Alternative Energies and Atomic Energy Commission (CEA) carried out a successful test of a new process for decontaminating radioactive soil.
The French Demeterres project was launched in 2013 for the purpose of developing bio- and eco-technology that could decontaminated soil and effluents for post-nuclear accident remediation. Twenty-three million dollars was allocated for the five-year project involving CEA, Orano, Veolia, the Institute for Radiological Protection and Nuclear Safety (IRSN), the National Institute for Agricultural Research (INRA), and the French Agricultural Research Centre for International Development (CIRAD).
One of the physiochemical processes that was developed by the Demeterres project utilizes particulate floatation foams. Soil contaminated with cesium is mixed with water to create a suspension. This mixture is injected into the middle of a floatation column. Air is pumped into the bottom of the floatation column to create bubbles. The contaminated soil particles adhere to the surface of the bubbles of air which rise to the surface of the column. Uncontaminated soil particles sink to the bottom of the column. The first test of the system took place in 2016 when uncontaminated soil was run through the column to gather data on the process.
After the March 2011 nuclear disaster at Fukushima, about twenty-nine million cubic yards of soil were removed. They wanted evacuees to be able to move back into their homes as quickly as possible. The contaminated soil was placed in huge storage bags and stored at several dedicated sites. The Japanese government is looking for the best way to reduce or remove the radioactivity in the soil.
In April of 2017, Japan’s Ministry of the Environment put out a call for demonstrations of decontamination techniques. The froth floatation process was one of ten techniques that were selected for demonstration out of a total of nineteen submissions.
The froth floatation process was tested on about six hundred pounds of contaminated soil at Okuma in Fukushima Prefecture between November 13 and November 17 of 2017. The radioactivity of the soil samples was cut to between one third and one half of the original contamination level. As a result of the tests, pretreatment of soil through drying, crumbling, pre-sifting and/or dispersion in water were suggested to improve the process.
A spokesperson for CEA said, “If the technology presented is selected by the Japanese authorities, the next stage will be to develop the process on a larger scale so that it can be used in the Japanese municipalities that house storage centers.”
There is an eight hundred and ninety square mile Federal site in the desert in southeastern Idaho which includes that Idaho National Laboratory, the nation’s leading federal nuclear research lab. The site is located about fifty miles west of the city of Idaho Falls. It has been used by the U.S. government for storage and disposal of nuclear waste from nuclear weapons development and research since the 1950s. There have been a series of court battles between the State of Idaho and the Federal government over the cleanup of the site. Idaho officials were fearful that Idaho was becoming a national nuclear waste dump.
The Radioactive Waste Management complex occupies seventy-seven acres of the remote desert site. It includes an administration area, the Subsurface Disposal Area and the Transuranic Storage Area. Fluor Idaho is a contractor for the DoE who is employing more than seven hundred people to clean up the site
The Subsurface Disposal Area occupies ninety-seven acres of the site. It has been used for disposing of low-level hazardous and transuranic waste which includes such items as work clothing, rags, machine parts and tools that have been contaminated by uranium, plutonium, americium and other radioactive elements. Most of the transuranic waste in the Subsurface Disposal Area was generated during nuclear weapons production at the Rocky Flats Plant near Denver, Colorado.
The Transuranic Storage Area occupies about fifty-six acres. Containers of transuranic waste sit on asphalt pads and are covered by an earth berm. Workers are retrieving eighty-five thousand cubic yards of waste that is being prepared for shipment to the U.S. geological repository at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant near Carlsbad, New Mexico.
Yesterday, Federal officials activated an Emergency Operations center. Crews were sent to investigate an incident that was reported at the site. The U.S. Department of Energy announced that it is gathering information about the incident.
A fifty-five gallon barrel of radioactive sludge cracked open at the complex. A fire alarm was triggered which resulted in the arrival of three Idaho National Laboratory firefighters who extinguished the smoldering barrel and removed it from proximity to a dozen other barrels nearby. The current theory of what caused the barrel to rupture is that the waste in the barrel heated it and ignited particles of uranium.
Emergency workers detected a small amount of radioactivity on the skins of the firefighters after they dealt with the ruptured barrel. The firefighters were taken to a medical facility and the radioactive material on their skin was washed off. Fortunately, they did not inhale any radioactive material because they were protected by their suits. No radioactive material was detected outside the building. The officials said that there was no danger to the public.
Federal officials said that this was the first case of a barrel rupturing but there might be more. Bad record keeping at the complex means that they are not sure exactly what is in the barrels of fluids and solvents left over from nuclear weapons production.
The DoE said that it was their standard practice to activate the Emergency Operations Center to coordinate incident responders when there is a report of an incident. State, county and tribal officials were notified of the incident by the DoE.
India has very serious shortages of electricity. About two hundred million people out of India’s one billion three hundred million citizens do not have any access to electricity. Much of the rest of the country does not have reliable sources of electricity. In July of 2012, India experienced the biggest electrical blackout in world history. About six hundred and seventy million Indian’s had no electricity for three days. This is about half of India’s population. Future growth in the economy and population of India are going to require a major expansion of electrical generation.
Currently, nuclear energy provides less than four percent of the electricity for India. India has been planning to build seventy six new nuclear power reactors that will generate sixty-three megawatts worth of nuclear power. That would provide about twenty-five percent of their electricity.
India had an ambitious three phase plan for the development of nuclear power. The first phase would be the construction of conventional power reactors. The second phase would begin with the construction of four fast breeder reactors to generate plutonium to fuel a fleet of fast breeder reactors. The third phase would be the development of thorium reactors. India has large deposits of thorium.
The Indian Department of Nuclear Energy (DNE) has just announced that they are cutting way back on their nuclear ambitions. Fifty-seven reactor projects are going to be cancelled leaving only nineteen reactor construction projects. This means that instead of twenty-five percent of electricity being nuclear by 2032, only about ten percent will be nuclear by that date.
The Indian DNE which made the announcement of the cancellations did not give any reason for the decision. Analysts say that it is probably a combination of reasons such as a lack of funding, the absence of a reliable supply chain that could cope with such a huge increase in reactor construction and the lack of a trained workforce to construct and maintain the nuclear reactors.
One major roadblock for India’s nuclear projects has been the fact that India has very stringent supplier liability laws. This is a result of the horrible Bhopal disaster in central India in 1984. Foreign nuclear technology firms are afraid that a nuclear disaster in India could bankrupt them.
Another problem for India is the fact that they have not signed the international treaty to prevent proliferation of nuclear weapons. They are not part of the international organization of nuclear technology suppliers because of the fear that dual use technologies that are sold for the development of nuclear power could be repurposed for the creation of nuclear weapons.
India will rely of coal fired power plants to replace the cancelled nuclear projects. India has huge deposits of coal and is the third largest exporter of coal in the world. This will impact India’s attempts to fight climate change. India’s carbon dioxide emissions rose almost five percent in 2016 as opposed to the drop-in emissions recorded by other nations which are major sources of carbon dioxide.
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