Japan’s first shipment of mixed uranium-plutonium oxide (MOX) fuel since the Fukushima nuclear crisis broke out on March, 11, 2011, arrived early Thursday at the Sea of Japan port of Takahama, Fukui Prefecture. japantimes.co.jp

Work to remove melted fuel from the three crippled reactors at Tokyo Electric Power Co.’s Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant could start in 2020. japantimes.co.jp

Two Pacific Northwest National Laboratory employees inhaled small amounts of radioactive tritium while doing work in the Hanford 300 Area last month. bellinghamherald.com

Managers of Cooper Nuclear Station sought to assure federal regulators Wednesday that they are responding to employee performance problems at the plant. omaha.com

Geiger Counter Readings in Seattle, WA on June 29, 2013

Ambient office = .111 microsieverts per hour

Ambient outside = .079 microsieverts per hour

Soil exposed to rain water = .058 microsieverts per hour

Bartlett pear from Costco =  .130 microsieverts per hour

Tap water = .086 microsieverts per hour

Filtered water = .077 microsieverts per hour

            Several weeks ago, I post four blogs about the situation at Magnuson Park in Seattle. There are a couple of rooms in old buildings and several outside areas in which radiation has been detected that was left over from repair of radium dials on airplanes during World War II when the park was an Naval airbase. The city of Seattle found out about the radiation in 2010 but did nothing about it aside from putting up some fences and small signs.

            This last March, information began leaking out into the community and media about the radiation. In mid-May, the Navy invited the public to an open house to explain their plan to clear up the left over radiation. Working with the Washington State Department of Health, the Navy had developed a plan which called for an emergency cleanup that did not include public meetings and environmental impact statements. The State Department of Ecology which has ultimate authority of such projects was brought into the project only a few weeks before the open house. The Navy was calling for written comments to be submitted by the end of June and intended to start work on the project in mid-July.

           The meeting was turbulent as Seattle citizens and Gerry Pollet, a Washington State Representative for the district that contains the park, bombarded the Navy and Washington State representatives with questions about the project. The main concern was that the Navy was going to use the standards of the Washington State Department of Health for allowable remaining radiation levels which are lower than the Washington State Department of Ecology standards or several Federal standards. Citizens and Representative Pollet expressed doubts that public input would be taken seriously by the Navy and that Magnuson Park would be safe for community use after the Navy project was completed. There was a general call for more public input to the process and for the Washington State Department of Ecology, as the senior agency in the project, to step up and override the Navy’s plans to start the cleanup in mid-July.

            The end of June has arrived and the Navy and Washington State Departments of Health and Ecology have agreed to extend the time for public comments to the end of July and to hold public meetings about the situation at Magnuson Park. This is a positive sign. However, the Navy has announced that it intends to start preliminary work on July 8^th. Obviously, the “preliminary work” will not be informed or altered by public comment during the month of July. Documentation about the situation at the Park has been requested from the Seattle Parks Department but will not be publicly available until about the same time that the Navy intends to start work. The Navy has not even responded to Freedom of Information request for documentation about the site.

          The Navy has publicly stated that the Washington State Department of Ecology has the ultimate authority in this cleanup project. However, the fact that the Navy is proceeding without waiting for public meetings and public input seems to indicate that they do not actually respect the authority of the Washington State Department of Ecology or the citizens who use Magnuson Park. Public pressure is mounting for the Washington State Department of Ecology to take over the project and follow normal procedures for such cleanup projects.

The government is taking steps to help ensure that children who need CT scans and other X-ray-based tests don’t get an adult-sized dose of radiation. news.yahoo.com

Legislation that would create interim storage sites for spent nuclear fuel and strip responsibility for its disposal from the Department of Energy took another step forward Thursday. nuclearstreet.com

A leaking weld discovered by plant personnel prompted operators to shut down a reactor at the Diablo Canyon nuclear plant Tuesday night. nuclearstreet.com

The UK government has announced that EDF Energy’s proposed Hinkley Point C nuclear power plant is eligible for a multi-billion pound loan guarantee. world-nuclear-news.org

Geiger Counter Readings in Seattle, WA on June 28, 2013

Ambient office = .107 microsieverts per hour

Ambient outside = .103 microsieverts per hour

Soil exposed to rain water = .090 microsieverts per hour

Vine ripened tomatoes from Costco =  .106 microsieverts per hour

Tap water = .086 microsieverts per hour

Filtered water = .074 microsieverts per hour

          I have posted a number of articles about the arms race and the proliferation of nuclear weapons during the Cold War. There have been a number of treaties that reduced the number of warheads that the U.S. and Russia have from the tens of thousands both sides possessed at the height of the Cold War. If countries are to dismantle warheads, how will it be done? One particular program that has been successful in the decommissioning of Russian warheads is commonly referred to as Megatons for Megawatts. In 1995, under the terms of a non-proliferation treaty between the U.S. and Russia, a twenty year program was started to convert highly concentrated nuclear materials known as HEU (U-235 enriched to ninety percent) from Russian warheads into low concentration radioactive materials know as LEU (less than five percent U-235) suitable for use as fuel in commercial nuclear reactors.

            One of the requirements of the program was that no government money be spent on the program. The U.S. created a government corporation called the United States Enrichment Corporation (USEC) and the Russian Federation launched a commercial subsidiary of the Ministry of Atomic Energy which is known as Tekhsnabeksport (Tenex). The conversion process has two stages. In Russia, Tenex downblends or dilutes the HEU into LEU. Then the LEU is shipped to USEC in the United States where uranium fuel is created from the LEU.

             There were some initial arguments over the exact terms of the contract and the details of the process but they were eventually worked out and the process has been running smoothly. The initial contract called for about five hundred metric tons of HEU from Russian warheads to be converted. As of June 25, 2013, the National Nuclear Security Administration of the United States which monitors the Megatons to Megawatts program says that four hundred seventy five metric tons of Russian HEU has been converted into LEU.  The fuel created by USEC from the Russian HEU is used to generate about half of the nuclear power in the U.S.  This represents about ten percent of the electric power produced in the U.S. annually. It is estimated that the Russian Federation has received over eight billion dollars for the uranium purchased by the USEC.

             The Megatons to Megawatts has been highly successful and has accomplished ninety five percent of its goal within eighteen years out of the allocated twenty year life span of the program. About twenty thousand nuclear warheads have been eliminated from the Russian arsenal and the world is a little safer. There are still thousands of nuclear warheads under the control of the U.S. and Russia poised to launch in moments in the event that war breaks out. As I have said before, even the exchange of a few hundred nuclear warheads could end human civilization. President Obama recently called for additional reduction of warheads in the U.S. and Russia. Good work has been done in reducing the threat of nuclear annihilation but much work remains to be done.

Local program in the Seattle, Washington area helps children receive treatment years after Chernobyl disaster. king5.com

Children are being used to promote pro-nuclear agenda in Japan. ex-skf.blogspot.jp

TEPCO has announced a total rejection of a plan by the government arbitration board to compensate victims from Iitate Village. simplyinfo.org

The U.S. government pressured Japan in secret to continue their MOX program. simplyinfo.org

Geiger Counter Readings in Seattle, WA on June 27, 2013

Ambient office = .089 microsieverts per hour

Ambient outside = .071 microsieverts per hour

Soil exposed to rain water = .076 microsieverts per hour

Vine ripened tomatoes from Costco =  .094 microsieverts per hour

Tap water = .108 microsieverts per hour

Filtered water = .093 microsieverts per hour

              In previous posts, I have talked about how uranium mining has been disastrous for indigenous peoples and the environment in remote and desolate areas of the world. I have also mentioned my concern that nuclear companies may go bankrupt and dump the costs of cleaning up nuclear waste on the government and the taxpayers. Today’s post brings both of these concerns together.

              Near Moab, Utah, a uranium mine and mill operation started processing uranium in 1956 under the ownership of the Uranium Reduction Company. The mine and mill were purchased by the Atlas Uranium Corporation in 1962 and continued to operate until 1984. The mining operation covered over one half of a square mile that came within 750 feet of the Colorado River which provides drinking water for twenty five million people. By the time that the mine was shut down, about one third of the site was covered by a layer of radioactive uranium mine tailings over seventy five feet thick. There were sixteen million gallons of tons of tailings in that layer.  Since the mine and mill were closed in 1982 due to a soft market for uranium, the pile of tailings has been leaking contamination into the soil, the aquifer below the land, and the Colorado River. By the late 1990, the level of uranium in the soil beneath the layer of tailings was over thirty times the safe limit. It is estimated that nearly thirty thousand gallons of contaminated water from the tailings flow into the Colorado River every year.

              The Atlas Uranium Corporation proposed that a “cap” of rock and clay be used to cover and seal in the tailings. After an extensive regulatory battle over whether the proposed cap would be sufficient to protect the environment, the Corporation declared bankruptcy in 1998.  The responsibility for cleaning up the mess at the mine was transferred to the U.S. Department of Energy for remediation in 2001. Following the bankruptcy, there were legal and legislative battles fought by local residents who wanted the tailings relocated to a safer place away from the Colorado River. Work began in 2009 to move the tailings to the Crescent Junction engineered disposal cell, about thirty miles to the north.

             As of June, 2013 about six million tons or forty percent of the tailings had been shipped to Crescent Junction. The Obama administration has budgeted about thirty six million dollars for the cleanup operation in the budget for fiscal year 2014. It is estimated that the project will take until the year 2025 to complete. A 2008 estimate of the eventual cost of the project concluded that about three quarters of a billion dollars of taxpayers’ money would have to be spent.

             A company in the nuclear industry made money from mining and selling uranium and then declared bankruptcy, walking away from the pile of radioactive mile tailing. The federal government will ultimately be paying nearly three quarters of a billion dollars to clean up the mess left by the company. What I would like to know is whether or not that three quarters of a billion dollars will ever be included in the calculations that we hear about the cost of nuclear power. Another question I have is how much more the U.S. taxpayers will have to pay to clean up the messes left by the nuclear industry.

 

 

Helen Caldicott says that nuclear power, nuclear war and climate change are the biggest dangers facing the human race. globalresearch.ca

A Fukushima worker claims that TEPCO is deceiving the public about the cleanup of the nuclear power plant.  simplyinfo.org

The Japanese media is lying to the Japanese people about the safety of their food supply with respect to radioactive.   simplyinfo.org

Nuclear power remains a key component of the Obama administration’s strategy for reducing U.S. carbon emissions. nuclearstreet.com