Strontium reaches 500 Billion Bq/m³ in basements at Fukushima. enenews.com
Construction remains on track at Missouri’s Callaway nuclear plant to complete an underground spent fuel storage facility in January. nuclearstreet.com
Blog
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Radioactive Waste 81 – Update on the Recent Accident at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant 6
One of the purposes of my blog is to cover breaking stories that have to do with nuclear problems. Some of these posts deal with specific events that can be covered in a single post. Others are more complex and require several posts. In still other situations, there is an ongoing story where new information keeps emerging as the situation evolves. The repercussions of the radiation release at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) near Carlsbad, New Mexico are an example of the third kind of story. I have already posted several times about WIPP as more and more information emerges. They are still not sure that they understand how the radiation was released.
My last post had to do with the theory that a new absorbent was added to drums of transuranic waste from Los Alamos National Laboratory. (LANL) The new absorbent did not perform as well as the old absorbent to solidify liquid waste in the drums and lock up ammonium nitrates. This may have led to nitrate salts precipitating out of solution and crystallizing. Such nitrate salts are unstable and generate heat which may have ruptured a drum to release radiation. There are hundreds of drums with the new absorbent at WIPP that may be at risk. A hundred of these drums from LANL are in temporary storage in Texas. If any of them rupture, the release of radiation could be much worse than occured at WIPP.
Now a new theory is emerging from LANL emails. A LANL contractor requested permission to use new chemicals to neutralize the pH in the drums. One chemical reacted with acids in the drums and the other reacted with bases. The contractor explicitly states in the email that he is not an expert on safety issues and he requests that LANL experts review the safety of the new chemicals. It is unknown at this time if anyone at LANL did, in fact, check to see if the use of the new chemicals would be safe. Some scientists say that the new chemicals are known to cause oxidation reactions that generate heat when combined with some of the substances in the drums. This may have been what ruptured the drum at WIPP.
Now we have two different possible reasons that a the contents of a drum would heat up and cause it to rupture. In both cases, a new substance was added to these drums of plutonium waste from nuclear weapons production. Over five hundred drums of their waste contain these new chemical and are a risk. Because of the radiation release and the uncertainty over the cause, WIPP is closed. There are estimates that it may take as much as two years to seal off the dangerous drums before the facility can reopen. In the meantime, more waste is piling up at LANL which will cause it to fail to meet a deadline for waste disposal. It is still an open question as to whether or not anyone with the necessary expertise actually investigated to find out whether these new chemicals could cause problems. At the very least, this is serious negligence on the part of LANL.
Diagram of Waste Isolation Pilot Plant:
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Radiation News Roundup June 2, 2014
TEPCO is going to start building the frozen water underground wall on 6/2/2014. fukushima-diary.com
TEPCO measured 2.4 Sieverts/hour on the basement floor of the destroyed Unit 1 reactor. fukushima-diary.com
Argentina’s newest nuclear power reactor, Atucha 2, is expected to reach criticality and be connected to the grid within sixty days. world-nuclear-news.org
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Geiger Readings for June 2, 2014
Latitude 47.704656 Longitude -122.318745Ambient office = 67 nanosieverts per hourAmbient outside = 102 nanosieverts per hourSoil exposed to rain water = 101 nanosieverts per hourRaw peanuts in shell from Top Foods = 79 nanosieverts per hourTap water = 111 nanosieverts per hourFiltered water = 87 nanosieverts per hour -
Radiation News Roundup June 1, 2014
Official in Fukushima says that hot particles of melted fuel are inhaled by children every day. enenews.com
Matsudo city government tell people not to go close to the river because the radiation level is dangerously high. fukushima-diary.com
Protestors interrupted a public meeting with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission in Brattleboro, Vermont Wednesday night. digital.vpr.net
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Geiger Readings for June 1, 2014
Ambient office = 102 nanosieverts per hourAmbient outside = 71 nanosieverts per hourSoil exposed to rain water = 63 nanosieverts per hourBanana from QFC = 71 nanosieverts per hourTap water = 107 nanosieverts per hourFiltered water = 77 nanosieverts per hour -
Geiger Readings for May 31, 2014
Ambient office = 123 nanosieverts per hourAmbient outside = 54 nanosieverts per hourSoil exposed to rain water = 64 nanosieverts per hourFiber One dry cereral from Safeway = 80 nanosieverts per hourTap water = 95 nanosieverts per hourFiltered water = 83 nanosieverts per hourHalibut – Caught in Canada = 108 nanosieverts per hour -
Nuclear Reactors 127 – Nuclear Regulatory Commission Votes to Ignore Need to Move Spent Fuel to Dry Casks
I have mentioned before that the spent fuel pools at U.S. nuclear reactors are rapidly filling up and will all be full within five years if none of the spent fuel assemblies are removed. Currently, the spent fuel pools hold about five times as many fuel assemblies as the cores of operating reactors. Unless some of the spent fuel assemblies are removed soon, it will not be possible to refuel reactors and they will need to be shut down.
The U.S. government promised that there would be a permanent geological repository for spent fuel assemblies by 1999. Yucca Mountain in Nevada had been selected for such a repository and much preliminary work had been done when the project was cancelled in 2009. There is no current project to site and build a permanent repository. The best estimates are that there will be no permanent repository until 2050 at the earliest.
Spent fuel pools are especially vulnerable to accidents or terrorist attacks. A recent NRC study that evaluated the possible consequences of a fire at a nuclear power plant in Pennsylvania where spent fuel rods burned concluded that such a fire would lead to forty thousand additional cancer deaths, almost a thousand square miles of evacuated territory and more than four million people being displaced.
There has been a push in the nuclear industry and the U.S. government to move some of the spent fuel assemblies from the spent fuel pool to steel and concrete dry casks on site. The study mentioned above found that if the spent fuel assemblies older than five years in the pools were moved to dry cask, the repercussions of such a fire would be greatly reduced.
Aside from the considerable cost of this alternative, there are problems with the current dry cask designs. Chemical reactions can produce gas in the casks which could lead to explosions and fires. New cask designs are being developed but prototypes will not be available until 2017 at the earliest. So storage is filling up and time is running out to find alternatives.
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission just met and voted on whether or not to mandate on site dry cask storage. The vote was four to one against accelerating the transfer of spent fuel assemblies to dry cask storage. The Commission also voted that “no further generic assessments be pursued related to possible regulatory actions to require the expedited transfer of spent fuel to dry cask storage.”
Given that the spent fuel pools are filling up and there is no permanent geological repository, this would seem to be strange policy vote on the part of the NRC. The reason for the decision was apparently that although such a fire would be catastrophic, the probability of such a fire was very small so no action needed to be taken. Unfortunately, the NRC study did not include the possibility of a terrorist attack. Given that an terrorist attack on a spent fuel pool could be devastating, spent fuel pools would be a prime target for terrorists. In Ukraine, there have already concerns that an escalating military confrontation could lead to deliberate attacks on Ukraine nuclear power plants.
Deliberately disregarding terrorist attacks in consideration of moving spent fuel assemblies to dry casks is a glaring omission in the NRC study and decision. The NRC has not taken important action to insure the safety of U.S. citizens from the disastrous releases of radioactive materials from nuclear power plants.
Spent Fuel Pool:
