A couple of days ago, I blogged about problems at Handford with the handling of two glove boxes by a Department of Energy contractor named Permafix. The boxes were moved from Hanford to Permafix through Richland with parade permits which were not appropriate for such a shipment. When the two glove boxes reached Permafix, there was radiation found on the outside of the plastic wrapped boxes and they were not handled properly when they were moved off the truck.

         Coincidentally, the next day I heard a report on the radio that the Environmental Protection Agency was fining the DOE because the DOE and its contractors  mishandled radioactive Hanford lab waste by transporting it without proper permits and dumping some of it into a landfill without proper processing. The EPA looked at records between the 1980s and 2011 and concluded that there was a consistent pattern of misbehavior. They levied a fine of $136,000 against the DOE. They admitted that the fine was small considering the severity of the problem but explained that if they raised the fine and/or the DOE contested the fine in court, it would take money away from the amount available to DOE to clean up the mess. I almost drove off the road! This would be like a prosecutor deciding not to fine a bank too much because the bank had to give money back to the people they had cheated and a big fine or expensive lawsuit would reduce the money available to pay back to the victims.

         The idea of one department of the U.S. Executive Branch fining another department of the Executive Branch is a little odd. The issue of possible law suits between the EPA and the DOE was also raised. That also is a little odd. That would be like fines and lawsuits between departments of a corporation. It doesn’t really make sense to me. It would seem that if there were problems in the Executive Branch, there would be investigations and then some sort of action might be taken such as firing people and/or changing procedures. Any expenses that resulted from the problems should be taken care of in the budget for the department that is cleaning up the mess.

         One of the reasons given for the small fine was that the DOE promised to deal with the problem and the EPA though that that was sufficient. Well, excuse me, but the incident that I blogged about two days ago where there were not proper permits and the contractor mishandled the glove boxes suggests to me that DOE and its contractors didn’t really take their promise to fix things very seriously. A slap on the wrist like the small fine is obviously not sufficient. People need to lose their jobs and the whole mess needs to be publicized. There are serious problems with the way that DOE and its contractors are handling the Hanford cleanup and something needs to be done to impress upon them the need for real change.

Shocking plane radiation was measured
on flight from Chile to U.S. rense.com

Radiation fears should not hold back Mars colonization. space.com

The Davis-Besse Nuclear Power Station remained shut down Sunday after one of its four reactor coolant pumps experienced trouble.  enenews.com

Ghana’s nuclear plans are taking shape.  topix.com

Latitude 47.704656 Longitude -122.318745

Geiger Counter Readings in Seattle, WA on July 02, 2013

Ambient office = .123 microsieverts per hour

Ambient outside = .102 microsieverts per hour

Soil exposed to rain water = .077 microsieverts per hour

Mango from local produce stand =  .120 microsieverts per hour

Tap water = .082 microsieverts per hour

Filtered water = .073 microsieverts per hour

           I have already blogged about the issue of the accumulating spent nuclear fuel rods at U.S. reactors. It is estimated that at the current rate, the spent fuel pools at the operating reactors in the U.S. will be full in five years. The old style casks that have been used for the temporary storage of spent fuel at operating reactors have been found to be inadequate. Some are leaking and others may be in the process of building up hydrogen gas which could explode. The new design for spent fuel casks won’t even be tested for four years. With no permanent storage for spent nuclear fuel until 2048 at the earliest, the problem of dealing with spent nuclear fuel is becoming very serious very quickly.

            In addition to the problem with spent nuclear fuel at operating reactors sites, there have recently been articles about problems with closed reactors. When a reactor is shut down, everything is disassembled in a process known as decommissioning. This includes the spent fuel pools. Currently, the spent fuel from decommissioned reactors is stored on site in the old style, unsafe dry casks rated for a twenty year lifespan.

           When everything at the reactor is decommissioned, this included all the equipment for handling radioactive materials. In order to move the spent fuel to new casks for storage on site or transport, the new casks must be constructed and equipment will have to be brought to the site to handle the spent fuel.  This will be an expensive and time consuming process as the old casks continue to deteriorate. Some of the casks contain a newer type of fuel known as high burnup fuel is disintegrating faster than the older type of fuel which will make handling the contents of those casks even more difficult than the casks with the older fuel.

           If and when the new casks are constructed and filled with the old fuel, the next problem is what to do with them. Many of the old closed reactors are in highly populated urban areas with dense traffic. Recently the United States Department of Energy was caught using parade permits with lax safety rules to transport radioactive materials from the Hanford Nuclear Reservation through the town of Richland, Washington to a contractor’s facility. Can we trust them to be more conscientious in the transportations of thousands of casks of spent fuel from decommissioned reactors sites?

           Since Yucca Mountain was ruled out as a permanent repository, the new plan at DOE is to create several regional repositories. This will be a difficult and time consuming process because any potential site will require extensive evaluation and there will be political resistance to any potential site.

           This is a very important topic that must have a full debate in the public arena. As more and more reactors are passing their original intended lifespans, there will be more and more spent fuel that will have to be dealt with. So far all we have are some half formulated possible ways of dealing with this serious situation. Whatever plan is eventually chosen, you can guarantee that the U.S. taxpayer will be expected to shoulder a lot of the burden of cleaning up this nuclear waste nightmare.

Reactor pressure vessel being carted away from closed reactor site:

Tokyo Electric Power Co. said Saturday it has detected high levels of radioactive substances, including strontium, emitting beta rays in groundwater taken from a well at the Fukushima nuclear plant that is about twenty feet from the sea . japantimes.co.jp

Construction of an incinerator is underway at the Fukushima Daiichi plant to burn the low-level waste (LLW) being generated from the clean-up and decommissioning of the site. world-nuclear-news.org

Holtec formally applied for the Department of Energy’s funding for small modular reactor development today after announcing an agreement with URS Corp. to help engineer the 160 megawatt plant. nuclearstreet.com

Three advanced reactors moved forward in Canada’s process for approving new nuclear plant designs last week, including the Westinghouse AP1000 and Candu EC6 designs under consideration for the Darlington site. nuclearstreet.com

Geiger Counter Readings in Seattle, WA on July 01, 2013

Ambient office = .117 microsieverts per hour

Ambient outside = .106 microsieverts per hour

Soil exposed to rain water = .121 microsieverts per hour

Mango from local produce stand =  .127 microsieverts per hour

Tap water = .135 microsieverts per hour

Filtered water = .121 microsieverts per hour

 I have posted a number of articles about the Hanford Nuclear Reservation. The radioactive waste left over from the development of the U.S. nuclear arsenal is still causing a lot of problems. Waste buried in single wall tanks has been leaking into the ground water and the Columbia River. Some waste was moved to double walled tanks which we were assured would not leak but now one of those tanks is leaking. Attempts to build a plant to turn waste into glass logs for disposal has been halted because of design problems. Now comes a report about another way in which radioactivity has been escaping Hanford.

          On June 19, 2013, two glove boxes that were used by Hanford workers to handle plutonium were shipped a short distance from the Reservation to Permafix, a private contractor that disassembles material from Hanford and repackages it for disposal. Workers at the contractor detected radiation on the outside of one of the glove boxes. Representative of Permafix said that at no time was there any danger to the workers at their facility or the general public. They said that no radiation escaped from the truck loading bay where the glove boxes were delivered. Permafix reported the incident to the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) and the Washington State Department of Health (WSDOH as required by regulations.

           DOE stated that it was not responsible for radiation found at private contractors and refused to become involved. The Washington State Department of Ecology (WSDOE) said that the case falls under the jurisdiction of the WADOH and they would not get involved. The Department of Health staffers who were dispatched to investigate found that there was radiation where it should not be. They found radiation on the equipment used to unload the glove boxes and on a forklift that was used to move the boxes. They found that the workers handling the glove boxes were not wearing protective gear. WSDOH criticized Permafix for opening Hanford shipping containers outside of their facility and then moving radioactive objects and materials into their facility without “secondary containment.” It is not understood how the radiation escaped from the glove boxes and the plastic wrapping that was applied at Hanford.

           Hanford Challenge, the watchdog group who obtained documents about the incident said that there was a threat to the public and the environment and that DOE had to take a more active role in monitoring their contractors. They demanded greater transparency and more stringent control on such shipments and the handling of the material being shipped.

           Investigation by King 5 Television in Seattle revealed that the DOE and its contractors were using parade permits to move radioactive shipments through Richmond, Washington. Parade permits have much less stringent requirements for safety measure than other types of transportation permits. It is obviously improper to move such shipment with parade permits and it is not clear how that was authorized and justified by DOE.

Richland, Washington near the Hanford Nuclear Reservation:

New Godzilla movie being shot in Japan is related to the recent Fukushima disaster. yvrshoots.com

On Thursday, a group of senators introduced a bill, the Nuclear Waste Administration Act, that would establish such a process, based in part on public comments solicited online by the bill’s sponsors. thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com

North Korea’s chief nuclear negotiator will meet senior Russian officials in Moscow next week amid signs of a new push to get Pyongyang to re-join protracted talks over ending its atomic program. news.yahoo.com

The ruling Liberal Democratic Party was the sole opponent of abolishing nuclear power in a policy debate involving the secretaries-general of nine major political parties Saturday.  japantimes.co.jp

Geiger Counter Readings in Seattle, WA on June 30, 2013

Ambient office = .114 microsieverts per hour

Ambient outside = .103 microsieverts per hour

Soil exposed to rain water = .107 microsieverts per hour

Whtie Peach from Costco =  .102 microsieverts per hour

Tap water = .124 microsieverts per hour

Filtered water = .106 microsieverts per hour

              I have posted a lot of articles about nuclear weapons. Most of these have focused on high-tech atomic and hydrogen bombs built by nation states with huge investments of manpower and equipment. These do constitute the greatest threat to the future of humanity. However, there is another type of bomb that utilizes nuclear materials known as a “dirty bomb.” This is a low tech device which does not result in a nuclear or thermonuclear explosion. Conventional explosives are combined with a radioactive material and the explosion results in spreading the radioactive material over a wide area rendering it dangerous for human occupation. Even if all the nations get rid of all their nuclear weapons, the world is still under threat from non-state actors creating and using dirty bombs for purposes of terrorism.

             There are many possible sources for radioactive materials that might be used in dirty bombs. Radioactive materials can be found in smoke alarms, various kinds of industrial sensors, medical equipment, etc. One of the greatest concerns is that radioactive materials created for use in nuclear reactors or for the creations of nuclear weapons might be stolen from their manfucturers. Control of such nuclear materials is very strick but the break up of the Soviet Union created opportunities for the loss of such materials. A great deal of the current enforcement efforts for control of nuclear materials is concentrated on highly refined and concentrated uranium or plutonium. There is a small risk that an unauthroized group with sufficient funding, facilities and expertise could construct a workable atomic bomb. The most likely scenario is that some group will make a dirty bomb.

           The International Atomic Energy Agency of the United Nations is going to host a meeting in Vienna next week for representatives of over a hundred nations to discuss this problem.The IAEA maintains a Tracking Database for incidents involving unathorized access to, theft of, illegal transfers of or sabotage with nuclear materials. Between one hundred and fifty and two hundred incidents are reported to the IAEA each year. Most of these are not major security risks there are some reported incidents that involve uranium or plutonium. Some smugglers have become more sophiticated and are using shielded containers to try to avoid detection. Fortunately, the quantities of uranium and plutonium involved are grams and not kilograms. They would be sufficient for the creation of a dirty bomb but not an actual atomic bomb.

           There are other possible ways of spreading nuclear materials that do not involve explosives. One such method would involve grinding up a few grams of plutonium, mixing it with gasoline and then driving around a city. The radioactivity in the exhaust from the vehicle would settle over the driving area and pose a threat to human health. Most likely, there would be no effective way to clean up the radiation and the city would have to be abandoned. While terrorists do like to have spectacular events to generate terror, the possibility of less dramatic methods of nuclear dispersal definitely exist.