My Geiger counter is in the shop for maintenance.
Blog
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Nuclear Weapons 88 – Recent Nuclear Accord Between U.S. and Russia in Jeopardy over Crimea
Following the end of the Cold War and the collapse of the Soviet Union, there has been cooperation between the United States and Russia in reducing their nuclear arsenals. The nuclear power reactors in the U.S. have been burning diluted Russian nuclear materials from nuclear warheads left over from the Soviet Era. U.S. scientists helped clean up the area in Kazakhstan where the Soviet Union tested nuclear weapons. These are only two out of a number of examples of cooperation between the U.S. and Russia in dealing with problems involving nuclear materials and issues. For over two decades, scientists in the U.S. and Russia have worked together to evaluate each other’s nuclear research establishments. One great benefit of this cooperation was the reduction of the possibility of deadly miscalculations and technological surprises.
About a year ago, the U.S. Secretary of Energy traveled to Vienna to sign a new agreement called the Agreement between the Government of the United States of America and the Government of the Russian Federation on Cooperation in Nuclear- and Energy-Related Scientific Research and Development. The Russian Energy Secretary signed for Russia. The agreement would have allowed Russian nuclear scientists to visit U.S. nuclear laboratories and U.S. scientists would have been allowed to visit Russian nuclear laboratories. This reciprocal sharing agreement extended to very sensitive sites where nuclear weapons were developed. The agreement also mentioned the possibility of U.S. and Russian nuclear scientists repurposing nuclear warheads to alter the course of or destroy an asteroid that is headed for collision with the Earth.
The confrontation between Russia and the U.S. over Ukraine is threatening the recent agreement between the two countries that would have brought the most comprehensive collaboration to date between nuclear scientists in the two countries. I have blogged about the missiles being tested by the Russians that the U.S. government claims violates the terms of one of the nuclear disarmaments treaties that the U.S. and Russia have signed. There are people in the government and armament industries in the U.S. that are lobbying for the U.S. to develop a missile that would definitely violate the same treaty.
Now the U.S. has cancelled nuclear conferences, nuclear symposia and visits to nuclear labs because of the cooling relations between the U.S. and Russia. The U.S. Deputy Secretary of Energy explicitly stated that the reason for the cancellations could be traced directly to Russia’s recent annexation of the Crimea. He did say that cooperation between the U.S. and Russia would continue with respect to insuring the security of nuclear materials. The U.S. and Russia are still cooperating on the negotiations with Iran over its nuclear program. The U.S. has been relying on Russian rockets to carry U.S. astronauts to the International Space Station. The U.S. is currently buying Russian engines to install in U.S. rockets.
It is of great concern that the two nuclear superpowers on Earth are slipping back into a posture of hostility. The U.S. and Russia each have enough nuclear warheads to destroy human civilization many times over. U.S. missiles are pointed at Russia and can launch in minutes. Russia has their missiles pointed at the U.S. and ready to launch. Any program that increases cooperation and understanding between the U.S. and Russia moves the world away from nuclear war. And the loss of any such program moves the world closer to nuclear war.
Signing the agreement:
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Geiger Readings for August 5, 2014
My Geiger counter is in the shop for maintenance.
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Nuclear Reactors 153 – Proposals to Clean Up Reactor F at Hanford
The United States developed and manufactured nuclear weapons at the Hanford Nuclear Reservation in South Central Washington State from 1942 to 1987. The B Reactor, the first full sized plutonium reactor ever built, generated plutonium for the test of the first nuclear bomb and the bomb that was dropped on Nagasaki, Japan at the end of World War II. Eventually a total of nine nuclear reactors and five plutonium processing facilities. The early safety procedures and waste disposal procedures were not sufficient. Radioactive materials were released into the atmosphere and the Columbia River and are still threatening the ecosystem and the population in the vicinity of the Reservation. After decades of plutonium manufacture, fifty three million gallons of liquid high level nuclear waste, twenty five million cubic feet of solid radioactive waste and two hundred square miles of ground water contamination were left behind. This represents two-thirds of the volume of nuclear waste in the entire country. It is the most contaminated site in the U.S. and clean up efforts are still going on after twenty seven years.
Now the U.S. Department of Energy (DoE) has released a final draft of its proposed plan for the cleanup of the F Reactor and nearby ground. If the plan is adopted, it might serve as a template for the cleanup of the other eight plutonium production reactors along the Columbia at Hanford. The DoE has decided that the best approach for cleaning up the F Reactor is something called natural attenuation. This process includes biological processes that bind up buried radioactive materials, the dispersion of radioactive materials over a wider area reducing the level of contamination, the dilution of radioactive materials in the waters of the Columbia River and radioactive decay which will reduce the intensity of the radiation. The DoE say that allowing a natural reduction in the concentration of radioactive contaminants will not threaten human health or the environment. DoE says that the removal of two million tons of contaminated soil removed from the F Reactor site will reduce or eliminate any significant contribution to the radioactive plume in the Columbia River. The plan also has the benefit of being cheaper than other alternatives.
The claims being made for the new plan include the following. The strontium 90 at the F Reactor site would take one hundred and fifty years to reach a safe level. The nitrates produced by animals used in tests would be at safe levels in eighty years. Tricloroethene, one of the first chemicals outlawed by the EPA, would be safe in ten years and chromium would be safe in thirty five years. New monitoring wells would have to be drilled to track the progress of the natural processes. In all, the estimated cost of the DoE plan would be about thirty million dollars.
The Hanford Advisory Board composed of a wide cross-section of local government, environmental, health and worker concerns is not impressed with the DoE plan for Reactor F. They are concerned that the DoE plan will not be “dependable, protective, defensible or well supported.” They would prefer that DoE consider a plan to pump water from the entire twenty six thousand acre area currently generating a nitrate plume. This plan would reduce the nitrates in twenty five years, the chromium in ten years and the tricloroethene in ten years. It would cost an estimated one hundred and ninety four million dollars. The plan would also inject chemicals into the soil to bind the strontium so it will not leach out into the Columbia.
Given the record of incompetence, lying, chronically low estimates of eventual clean up costs and claims of safety that are unfounded on the part of DoE in the past at Hanford, I would prefer that they seriously consider the plan proposed by the Advisory Board.
Reactor F:
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Radiation News Roundup August 4, 2014
Physician charges that the United Nation is whitewashing the Fukushima catastrophe. enenews.com
Experts say that Fukushima ‘globally enhanced’ the cesium-137 levels in the atmosphere by 2 to 3 orders of magnitude. enenews.com
A demonstration high-temperature gas-cooled reactor (HTGR) could be constructed in Indonesia following the signing of a cooperation agreement between Japan and Indonesia on developing such reactors. world-nuclear-news.com
A land swap proposed by the Army Corps of Engineers could provide room for a fourth reactor at the PSEG-operated Artificial Island complex in New Jersey. nuclearstreet.com
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Geiger Readings for August 4, 2014
My Geiger counter is in the shop for maintenance.
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Geiger Readings for August 3, 2014
My Geiger counter is in the shop for maintenance.
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Radiation News Roundup August 2, 2014
The government of the Australian state of Queensland says it is now ready to accept applications for uranium mining projects following its announcement of a new regulatory framework. world-nuclear-news.org
Entergy has set a target date for the closure of its Vermont Yankee nuclear plant. nuclearstreet.com
