Yucca Mountain News Clips
Thursday, April 27, 2006
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Las Vegas SUN
April 27, 2006

Survey shows more residents fear Yucca Mountain impact

By Tony Cook
Las Vegas Sun

A recent Clark County survey shows that more residents than ever fear that the proposed Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository will negatively affect their quality of life.

The survey - the results of which county officials will make public in a few days - revealed that more than two-thirds of the randomly surveyed 609 residents fear that Yucca will harm their quality of life. That's up from 59 percent in a survey taken last summer.

About one-third of the respondents also said they disagree that the Energy Department can be trusted to ensure the public's safety in terms of transportation and storage of nuclear waste.

Beyond the disposition of their constituents, Clark County commissioners have personal reasons to be concerned about the Energy Department's plan to ship radioactive waste to Yucca Mountain, said Robert Halstead, transportation adviser to the Nevada Commission on Nuclear Projects.

He told former Sen. Richard Bryan, D-Nev., and other members of the state board Wednesday that the federal government's preferred rail route would result in the Clark County Government Center getting zapped with low levels of radiation.

That's because at least 6 percent of the shipments - and potentially up to 89 percent - would run through downtown Las Vegas, next to the Government Center, on the Union Pacific mainline, he said.

Although transport containers are designed to hold in radioactivity, a small amount escapes, Halstead said, resulting in "measurable doses of radiation" equivalent to one or two medical X-rays within about a half-mile of the tracks.

As County Commissioner Myrna Williams' eyes got big, Halstead attempted to reassure the group.

"Mainstream medical thinking is that these very small doses are not significant," he said. "We would not expect significant health effects."

His concern, however, is with "the perception of risk and the ability to maintain a robust gaming and tourism economy ¦ This will definitely have an impact on property values."

Tony Cook can be reached at 259-2320 or at tony@lasvegassun.com.

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Las Vegas Review-Journal
April 27, 2006

Editorial: Full disclosure on Yucca Mountain

Officials must provide more information on e-mail inquiry

Critics of the Yucca Mountain Project have long maintained that the federal government will do anything to keep its heavy equipment humming northwest of Las Vegas.

As research has uncovered flaws in designs of the planned nuclear waste repository, the Department of Energy has spared no expense in attempting to remedy them, insisting each fix would be good enough to meet arbitrary health and radiation standards. Over the years, even as congressional audits exposed shoddy management, wasted resources and questionable science, the federal government has stuck to its assumptions that nuclear waste is best kept inside a mountain, and that Southern Nevada has the only mountain suitable for the repository.

But last year's disclosure that U.S. Geological Survey employees might have fabricated and falsified data to satisfy quality assurance bureaucrats took the project's reputation to a new low. E-mail messages sent by government hydrologists between 1998 and 2000 suggested they made up dates, deleted some information and submitted official documents with data that did not match their own records related to water infiltration at the repository.

The allegation that well-paid federal scientists and contractors were using bogus information to prop up a project that already has cost billions of dollars hinted at a massive fraud against taxpayers. Congressional hearings and an inquiry by the Energy Department's inspector general followed. In December, the inspector general finished its investigation and forwarded its findings to the U.S. attorney's office in Nevada.

On Tuesday, Energy Department Inspector General Gregory Friedman announced that the e-mails "did not meet the level of criminality," and that the U.S. attorney's office "could not show intent" to commit crimes. As a result, no criminal charges would be pursued.

Case closed.

Details of the evidence that supported the U.S. attorney's decision could have gone a long way toward restoring public confidence in the scientists tasked with developing a safe storage site for the nation's most dangerous nuclear waste.

But Tuesday's announcement was hollow. It provided no meaningful supporting information for the U.S. attorney's decision, nor any details about the interviews and research conducted during the inquiry.

As a result, the decision stinks of collusion. How can taxpayers be certain that the probe, like the allegations it was supposed to investigate, wasn't loaded with fabrications? Considering how badly the Bush administration wants to move forward with the Yucca Mountain Project, how can the public be sure the probe was conducted free of partisan influences? Has the work environment that allowed these e-mails to be ignored for years been improved?

Allegations surrounding the e-mails were serious enough to halt work on project design and research on canister corrosion and have the hydrologists redo their work, but not serious enough for complete public disclosure?

News of the decision to not prosecute wasn't even announced by Nevada's U.S. attorney, Daniel Bogden -- it was issued by the Department of Energy.

This isn't about jailing scientists so Yucca Mountain Project opponents can have their pound of flesh. This is about bringing at least some perception of integrity to a project plagued by a culture of dysfunction.

Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman and Mr. Bogden should come clean with the public on these issues. And if they won't, Nevada's congressional delegation should force them to.

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UNR NevadaNews
April 27, 2006

Removing the conjecture about nuclear waste transportation

Story by: Marketing and Communications

The safety of nuclear disposal and transportation has been a major concern in Nevada for the last decade. However, the University´s nuclear transportation research team is working to remove the conjecture surrounding the issue and definitively say what would happen if a nuclear waste transport were involved in an accident.

For the past 13 years Miles Greiner, a mechanical engineering professor, and his team have performed research to predict the response of nuclear waste transport casks in severe fire accidents. In June, the University will receive a $750,000 grant to expand these efforts.

“We are independent so we have no agenda or preconceived notion about whether proposed transportation systems are safe or not,’ said Greiner. “All we want to do is perform impartial, quantitative research. That data can be used rationally by policy makers and the public.’

Hundreds of nuclear waste shipments have been made on the nation´s highway and railway system during the past 40 years without any severe accidents or public health consequences. The nuclear waste is shipped in massive metal casks that shield the public from its radiation during both normal and accident conditions.

Before a transport cask is licensed by the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, the manufacturer must demonstrate that it will survive the following sequence without any loss of function: a 30-foot drop onto an unyielding surface, a 40-inch drop onto a puncture fixture, full engulfment in a fire for 30 minutes, and then submersion in water. This sequence is more severe than almost all transportation accidents.

“If Yucca Mountain becomes the nation´s nuclear waste repository many more nuclear waste shipments will be made each year than have been performed in the past,’ Greiner said. “This requires that the likelihood of all possible accidents and their public health consequence be evaluated. After these quantitative assessments are completed, a judgment must be made as to whether the entire transportation system is safe enough to use, or must be redesigned.’

During the past several years, Greiner and his students have evaluated the response of transport casks in fires. Former student, Alex Kramer, measured the response of a truck cask surrogate in fires at the Sandia National Laboratories in Albuquerque N.M. Several engineering students at the University have used this data to test the validity of computer programs that are used to predict fire behavior. They then used these programs to predict the response of real casks in fires. The team is currently performing research that will allow more spent fuel to be safely loaded into a transport cask. This will reduce both the number of shipments and the risk to the public.

In the past these projects have been funded by a mix of agencies, including the U.S. Department of Energy, the Nevada Nuclear Waste Project Office, Sandia National Laboratories and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.

The new funding that will start in June will be used to predict the response of much larger railcar-sized casks in fires. It will also be used to study potential problems that may occur when spent nuclear fuel is removed from water storage pools at reactor sites and placed into dry transportation packages.

“It´s great to be training students and performing research of scientific and national interest at the same time,’ Greiner said.

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NEI Nuclear Notes
April 27, 2006

Per Peterson on Yucca Mountain's Storage Capacity

Following up on a post we did last week about Yucca Mountain's storage capacity, Per Peterson, an engineering professor at UC-Berkeley, wanted to clarify his comments that appeared in the Las Vegas Review-Journal:

I saw the blog today on the EPRI study on Yucca Mountain's technical capacity. The quote from my longer email to Steve Tetreault, which appeared in the Las Vegas Review Journal, is being misinterpreted. I agree with John Kessler at EPRI that the performance-based capacity limit for Yucca Mountain is much larger than the statutory limit, likely substantially above 200,000 metric tons. But the science and technology base for an expanded repository design is clearly not yet in place, and it is important that DOE proceed on its current schedule to submit a license application based on its current design.

But I call this a "baseline" design, because it can then provide a starting point for subsequent license amendments to implement improvements to increase capacity, reduce cost, and adapt the repository to accept advanced waste forms from reprocessing that may be performed in the longer term.

The political motivations for the original 1982 capacity cap of 70,000 metric tons of heavy metal no longer hold. As for other important environmental issues such as sulfur emissions, the correct and modern approach to meet environmental goals is set performance requirements, but not prescribe the technology used to meet these requirements. The new 1-million-year EPA safety standard for Yucca Mountain is far more rigorous than anything EPA requires for chemicals, and thus it clearly provides sufficient protection for public health and safety. We want to have improved repository science and technology, advanced fuel designs for existing reactors, and reprocessing and recycle compete on an equal playing field to meet a performance-based standard for Yucca Mountain. Removing the 70,000 MT cap will create the incentives to do this.

Best regards,

Per Peterson

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New York Times
April 27, 2006

Ex-Environmental Leaders Tout Nuclear Energy

By Matthew L. Wald

WASHINGTON, April 24 — The nuclear industry has hired Christie Whitman, the former administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, and Patrick Moore, a co-founder of Greenpeace, the environmental organization, to lead a public relations campaign for new reactors.

Nuclear power is "environmentally friendly, affordable, clean, dependable and safe," Mrs. Whitman said at a news conference on Monday. She said that as the E.P.A. leader for two and a half years, ending in June 2003, and as governor of New Jersey for seven years, she had promoted various means to reduce the emission of gases that cause global warming and pollution.

But Mrs. Whitman said that "none of them will have as great a positive impact on our environment as will increasing our ability to generate electricity from nuclear power."

Mrs. Whitman headed the E.P.A. when it published rules for the proposed high-level nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain in Nevada. After she left the office, the courts threw out the rules because they covered only the first 10,000 years of waste storage, while peak releases of radiation were expected after that time.

Organizers released a list of 58 companies and institutions and 10 people who they said were members of a new Clean and Safe Energy Coalition, which Mr. Moore said would engage in "grass-roots advocacy." A spokesman for the Nuclear Energy Institute, the trade association of reactor operators, acknowledged that it was providing all of the financing, but would not say what the budget was.

Mr. Moore said he favored efficiency and renewable energy, but added that solar cells, which produce electricity from sunlight, were "being given too much emphasis and taking too much money." A dollar spent on geothermal energy, he said, was "10 to 12 times more effective in reducing greenhouse emissions."

Mr. Moore is the director of a company that distributes geothermal systems in Canada. He is also a supporter of what he called "sustainable forestry" because, he said, building with wood avoided the use of materials whose manufacture releases greenhouse gases, like steel and concrete.

Mr. Moore, who left Greenpeace in 1986, favors many technologies that some environmentalists oppose, including the genetic engineering of crops, and has referred to his former colleagues as "environmental extremists" and "anti-human."

Mr. Moore said Greenpeace was wrong to oppose nuclear energy, which he called essential to reducing global warming gases. Coincidentally, Greenpeace released a report on Monday about 200 failures at American nuclear power plants, which it described as "near misses," since 1986. The report was to mark the 20th anniversary of the Chernobyl nuclear plant explosion in the former Soviet Union.

Mrs. Whitman also referred to Chernobyl, saying people "still think in terms of Bhopal and Chernobyl." A leak at a chemical plant in Bhopal, India, killed more than 2,500 people in December 1984. But nuclear power, she said, "can be safely and appropriately used to expand our mix."

Representatives of the United States Chamber of Commerce and the Teamsters also spoke in favor of new reactors.

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Washington Post
April 27, 2006

Warming Up to Nuclear Power

Energy Source Gets Another Look As Fuel Costs Reach New Heights

By Steven Mufson
Washington Post Staff Writer

Twenty years ago yesterday, at 5 in the morning in Moscow, Mikhail Gorbachev got a phone call telling him that there had been an accident followed by a fire in the fourth block of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant. "I was astounded: How was such a thing possible?" Gorbachev said in an interview published earlier this year. "Nuclear scientists had always assured the country's leadership that our nuclear reactors were completely safe."

For years the nuclear industry has lived in the shadow of Chernobyl, which discouraged many nations from pushing ahead with nuclear power plants. A referendum in Italy banned plants shortly after the accident. Sweden, which first reported that something had happened in the former Soviet Union after sensors at its own nuclear plants detected elevated radiation levels, said it would close down the ones it had. In the United States, the Soviet reactor accident compounded questions over safety issues. Since the incident at the Three Mile Island plant in Pennsylvania in 1979, there has not been a single new order for the construction of a U.S. nuclear plant.

But now the Bush administration is pushing for a revival of nuclear power both abroad and in the United States, saying it wants to promote a domestic unlimited energy source. The Bush-backed Energy Policy Act of 2005 included a bevy of incentives for domestic nuclear power, and the administration has laid aside nuclear-proliferation issues to urge India to build nuclear power plants.

"What I view myself as is the chief salesman for nuclear energy," said Dennis Spurgeon, the new assistant secretary for nuclear energy at the Energy Department and the first person to hold that job in a decade. Spurgeon, who most recently was the chief operating officer of Bethesda-based USEC Inc., an international supplier of enriched uranium for nuclear plants, said, "There's a great story to tell."

Spurgeon said getting a new U.S. nuclear plant built is his "number one priority." But at an initial cost of $1.5 billion to $2 billion for a 1,000-megawatt plant, and with uncertainty about costs linked to nuclear waste that lasts for centuries, most companies remain cautious. Critics of nuclear power say that plants would cost even more without government subsidies and that, in an age of terrorism, they carry grave security risks.

Nuclear power fans have gotten unexpected support from a handful of prominent environmentalists who are more worried about global warming than nuclear accidents or waste disposal. While Greenpeace says that "safe nuclear power is a myth," the organization's founder, Patrick Moore, riled the environmental community by declaring, "Nuclear energy is the only large-scale, cost-effective energy source that can reduce these emissions while continuing to satisfy a growing demand for power. And these days it can do so safely."

Many environmentalists still disagree. "Nuclear power would be a great solution to greenhouse gases but for the four problems that have been mentioned: It's uneconomical, it has a safety problem, it has a horrendous proliferation problem on the global level, and it has a long-term waste problem that hasn't been solved," Thomas Cochran, a nuclear policy expert at the Natural Resources Defense Council, said at a meeting last fall.

But electric power companies aren't going to make big nuclear investments out of concern for the environment. Companies have been encouraged recently by the high price of natural gas and the rising cost of coal, nuclear power's biggest (and cheaper) competitor in the electricity business. If a new system of penalties and credits tied to carbon emissions takes hold, that could further raise the cost of using coal. There are 10 U.S. nuclear projects under consideration, but no company has applied yet for construction or operating licenses or decided to move ahead.

To nudge them along, the Energy Policy Act provides $1.6 billion of spending on research and infrastructure, tax credits of 1.8 cents per kilowatt-hour for eight years, protection against the risks of regulatory delay for six new plants, and $1.25 billion to fund a prototype for a new generation of nuclear plants. It also plans a pilot project to use nuclear power to produce hydrogen for cars that can burn it.

Realizing that waste disposal is a key financial issue, the Energy Department is also looking for ways to cut those costs. The administration continues to push the idea of a giant disposal site at Yucca Mountain in Nevada, and some preparations have been made there. But a coalition of environmentalists, Nevada residents, agencies and nuclear waste experts are still challenging the project. Nuclear power supporters say that new reprocessing technologies could reduce the size of the waste problem by reusing some parts of the spent fuel.

Another lure for companies looking at nuclear power: Companies that gambled on nuclear plants that no one wanted just five to seven years ago are making good profit on those plants now.

Take Constellation Energy Group, the parent of Baltimore Gas and Electric. Constellation took control of the Calvert Cliffs, Md., nuclear plant from BGE at a time when the value of the plant was thought to be a fraction of its book market value. That assessment was an important part of rate negotiations in 1999, and state officials and consumer groups balked at the chance to have a new assessment done in 2001, for fear that the nuclear plant would fail to get relicensed, be worth even less or require unforeseen repairs.

Today, power generation at Calvert Cliffs looks relatively cheap. After investing substantially in the plant, Constellation is running it much more efficiently than BGE did. With deregulation of prices, Constellation should earn more. The company's acquisition of two other nuclear plants also looks smart today.

Nationwide the story is similar. The 103 U.S. nuclear plants run at around 90.5 percent of capacity, up from 56.3 percent in 1979, according to the Nuclear Energy Institute. They account for 20 percent of the nation's electricity. (Their output has kept pace with growing U.S. demand. So has coal-fired electricity, while hydropower hasn't kept pace and oil is rarely used.)

But taking over an existing plant is better business than building one from scratch, many say.

That has been less of a problem in other countries. There are more than 30 nuclear plants under construction around the world. China, which has nine plants, might build as many as 30 more over the next 15 years.

Countries with existing nuclear plants have done little to pare them back. France gets three-quarters of its electricity from its 56 nuclear plants and emits much lower quantities of greenhouse gases than the United States. Even Sweden, which planned to shut down all of its reactors after Chernobyl, has shut down only one. Russia hasn't needed any new plants; its economy contracted after the Soviet Union collapsed and it has plentiful coal, oil and natural gas reserves.

The biggest costs of Chernobyl came in Ukraine, where the reactor was, and neighboring Belarus. Both have borne costs for treating illnesses, decontaminating the plant and surrounding towns and resettling people, in addition to losing industrial output. The International Atomic Energy Agency says that Belarus alone spent $13 billion dealing with the aftermath of Chernobyl from 1991 to 2003. The toll in lives, while hard to measure, has been big, too. The IAEA estimates the accident will have caused 4,000 deaths from radiation and radiation-induced cancers when all is said and done. Greenpeace puts the number closer to 200,000, and there are others in between.

Many nuclear defenders say that such a disaster couldn't happen again, blaming the Soviet reactor model and pointing to more recent improvements in reactor designs.

"People say reactors can't blow up, but Chernobyl blew up," said Victor Gilinsky, a consultant who served on the Nuclear Regulatory Commission from 1975 to 1984. "It was a real explosion." He said people were "too quick" to blame Soviet design and procedures. "There's a tremendous worldwide PR campaign" for new nuclear power plants, he said, "but I guess the acid test will be whether electric companies buy them or not. We can only wait and see."

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The Age
April 27, 2006

Safely, greenly nuclear

There are no significant obstacles to the safe handling and storage of civil nuclear wastes, writes Ian Hore-Lacy.

Last week Helen Caldicott regaled your readers with some fantasising about nuclear power. This week Christine Milne warns us not to risk repeating the Chernobyl accident as we sell uranium to China. I agree.

Broadly, renewed world attention to nuclear power is driven by three factors: improved basic economics, the prospect of carbon-emission costs on fossil-fuelled alternatives, and energy security. With growing electricity demand coupled with the need to limit greenhouse gas emissions, most countries have nowhere else to go for clean base-load electricity generation than nuclear power. By and large, renewables such as wind cannot deliver continuous reliable supply of electricity, let alone on any scale.

Whereas 10 years ago the environmental lobby was noisy in opposition, today some of the world's highest-profile environmentalists speak clearly for nuclear power, because they think it represents much less of a problem or threat than global warming. In the United States, a new public coalition for Clean and Safe Energy announced this week is being headed by Greenpeace co-founder Patrick Moore and former administrator of the US Environment Protection Agency Christine Todd Whitman to promote nuclear energy.

Internationally, the nuclear renaissance is gathering steam. At present, 30 nations representing two-thirds of humanity use some 440 nuclear reactors to produce 16 per cent of global electricity, from 368 GWe (gigawatt electric) of capacity - more than seven times Australia's total. Twenty-seven more units are being built in 10 countries because they make economic sense, 38 more are firmly planned, and more than 100 are further back in the pipeline. Many of these are modern designs building on 50 years' experience with the technology.

While capital costs of nuclear plants are high, overall generation costs are competitive in most parts of the world today, though probably not in Australia due to our cheap and abundant fossil fuels. Any costs imposed on carbon emissions from fossil-fuel burning will improve nuclear power's economics greatly and make it feasible practically anywhere.

Doubling the world's nuclear contribution would eliminate one-quarter to one-third of the CO2 emissions from power generation. The fond hopes of the green movement cannot match this.

The main relevance of the 1986 Chernobyl disaster is that it tragically showed why nothing like that kind of reactor could ever be licensed or built outside the Soviet Union. In a worst-case accident in the kind of reactors common in the West, the neighbours would be unscathed - as at Three Mile Island in the US seven years earlier. And today' reactors - including China's - are improved on those.

Caldicott's assertion that it would be easy to cause a reactor meltdown is wrong. But more importantly, it would not matter for those nearby, even though it would be a disaster for the operator. There is enough experience of melted cores to be confident of this.

Nuclear wastes may be a bogy in the public mind due to irresponsible fearmongering, but in fact they are arguably a distinct positive due to their relatively low quantity and ease of containment, storage and disposal, all fully funded by the electricity customer.

Other than at the political level, there are no significant problems with safe handling and storage of civil nuclear wastes anywhere in the world. Caldicott's representation of the US Yucca Mountain repository site is fanciful, e.g. the host rock she called "permeable pumice" is actually welded tuffs - more like glassy slag.

Audited data shows that the amount of carbon dioxide emitted by the full life cycle of nuclear power is up to 5 per cent that of gas-fired plants, but could rise to 7 per cent with the very low-grade ores asserted by Caldicott as likely to be needed. These levels are widely published and different from her beliefs.

Radioactive emissions from nuclear plants are negligible - giving far less exposure than the natural background radiation we all happily live with.

The resource base for long-term - indeed indefinite - use of nuclear power is excellent. With the new wave of mineral exploration focused on uranium now getting under way after a long slowdown due to ex-military uranium coming on the market, I would expect known resources to double within a few years. And that is only part of the story.

In Europe and North America energy security is a big issue. In contrast with fossil fuels, several years' supplies of uranium or fabricated fuel can be stored safely, unobtrusively and relatively inexpensively if political circumstances make that necessary or desirable. Energy security was a factor in Finland's decision to build a fifth nuclear reactor, and it comes even more to the fore in 2006 due to gas supply constraints in Europe.

In addition to power generation, nuclear power has a prospective role in providing for transport through the manufacture of hydrogen.

"A truly informed national debate" such as called for will not be helped by recycling folklore in the popular media. Let's see what the House of Representatives Industry and Resources Committee comes up with after spending a year looking at Australia's uranium exports and related issues.

Meanwhile, Australia provides a quarter of the mined uranium for a world increasingly concerned with the clean and reliable production of large amounts of electricity.

We could do even more.

Ian Hore-Lacy is general manager of the Uranium Information Centre, Melbourne.

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BBC News
April 27, 2006

Finland buries its nuclear past

By Richard Black

An unprepossessing tunnel entrance set in low forest on the western coast of Finland marks the probable final resting place of the country's most dangerous nuclear waste.

While British authorities agonise over what to do with the legacy of half a century of nuclear power, Finland is one of a handful of countries which has embarked on the journey towards a "final" waste solution.

Enter the 6.5m-high, 5m-wide (20ft-high, 16ft-wide) Onkalo tunnel, and you would drive down a spiralling track which will eventually stretch 5km (3miles) through solid rock, reaching a depth of 500m (1,600ft).

The first travellers to go down the tunnel will be investigators aiming to demonstrate that the rock is structurally sound enough to proceed with the disposal of spent fuel rods containing plutonium and other unpleasant materials.

If they were to turn up a positive result, and if government agencies grant the necessary licences, the first canisters of spent fuel would begin rolling down the tunnel about 15 years from now.

As things stand, Finland is on course to become the first country in the world to entomb its most troublesome nuclear waste in a designated final resting place.

'Multiple barriers'

The Onkalo facility is run by the company Posiva, and the system it uses is a Swedish concept called KBS3, which Sweden's proposed repository would also implement.

The other country close to solving its problem, the US, is exploring a different technology at its Yucca Mountain site.

"The safety concept is based on so-called 'multiple barriers'," says Timo Aikas, Posiva's vice-president in charge of engineering.

"One barrier is of course the solid stable crystalline rock. The remaining barriers are engineered barriers, the most important of which is long corrosion-resistant copper canisters, inside which we put the actual fuel rods."

In this vision, the bottom of the Onkalo tunnel would sprout a grid of horizontal shafts.

Canisters containing the spent fuel rods would be deposited into holes in the bottom of each shaft.

The canisters would nest in a bed of bentonite clay, which swells when it absorbs water. This comes with twin benefits; cushioning the cargo from geological movement, and ensuring there are no voids where substantial quantities of water can penetrate, corroding the canisters and carrying away their radioactive contents.

As each canister goes in, the tunnels would be filled up again with yet more clay and rock.

By 2100, the repository would be complete, access routes would be filled and sealed. What to do next would be a decision for Finns of that era; but the concept is designed to allow them, if they want, to cover the tunnel mouth, landscape it and walk away, leaving no entrance into the rock and no sign of the material buried underneath.

A granite curtain would have descended on the first civilian nuclear epoch.

Through the ice age

Some of the radionuclides - atoms with unstable nuclei that undergo radioactive decay - in spent fuel rods remain radioactive for more than 100,000 years. In that time, could not even the tiny quantities of water which the bentonite allows through penetrate the copper canister shells, allowing dangerously active isotopes to escape?

Timo Aikas believes not. "We have seen that the copper canister will not be corroded away," he says.

"We have native copper in the Finnish and Swedish bedrock, which means we have good conditions for such things. We know from corrosion testing that 1.5cm [thickness] of copper would be enough from the corrosion standpoint for times longer than 100,000 years, but we have 5cm (two inches) copper."

The time period is so mind-bendingly long that it will almost certainly take the world through another ice age; which, if history is a guide, would bury Finland and Sweden under 2-3km of ice.

The huge pressures created by this ice will certainly deform even bedrock, compressing the copper canisters and fuel rods which lie inside (the rods are contained within channels bored into a steel cylinder).

So concerned have European authorities been about this that the European Commission's Institute for Energy in the Netherlands commissioned pressure tests on the steel cylinders.

"The maximum [ice] thickness is 3km, which equates to a pressure of 30 megapascals (MPa)," says the engineer in charge, Kalle Nielsson.

Combined with pressure from groundwater and the tight embrace of bentonite clay, the cylinders would experience a total pressure of 45 MPa, which corresponds to the pressure you would have 4,500m (15,000ft) down in the ocean.

In tests, the cylinders stood up to a pressure three times that value before failing.

"I would say that it's safe," is Kalle Nielsson's conclusion. "And we have made a probabilistic calculation - 'what is the probability that it would fail at this 45 MPa?' - and it is less than one out of a million canisters that would fail. So I would say as a concept that it's safe."

Far-sighted funds

Technology is only one part of the Finnish solution; the other vital component is finance.

"Our current cost estimate for this 'funeral' is about 3bn euros," says Timo Aikas.

Three billion euros is a significant sum of money. Is this another example, then, of the state having to pay vast sums to clean up a nuclear industry which has in the past generated profit for private ends?

The signs point in a different direction. The advent of commercial nuclear power to Finland in the late 1970s saw the establishment of a fund to pay for the eventual clean-up.

"Every year, we have re-calculated the fund based on the amount of spent fuel accumulated," says Timo Aikas, "and at the moment the fund is approximately 1.4bn euros."

The money has come from generating companies through a small levy on the price of nuclear electricity.

It is, perhaps, the sort of measure which current British leaders looking at a waste disposal facility bill in the region of £10bn (14bn euros) would wish their predecessors had chosen to implement.

Rocky site

Even if the KBS3 concept is sound, even if Finland has the money to implement it, there is a question over whether Eurajoki is the best place to put it into action.

Greenpeace, which has been spearheading a campaign against the new Olkiluoto-3 nuclear reactor taking shape just a kilometre from the Onkalo site, is concerned that the local geology may not be the soundest available.

"When the site selection started in Finland, the nuclear industry said they would find the best geological site," says energy campaigner Kaisa Kosonen.

"And, eventually, they chose the site on sociological reasons, because eventually Eurajoki was the first municipality to say 'ok, we can take it', and there wasn't an active nuclear opposition in this area."

That lack of local opposition may be down to the fact that nuclear reactors have stood in the area for three decades, gaining acceptance for an industry which has maintained a good local safety record and brought employment.

"It boils down basically to trust," comments Timo Aikas.

"When you make a decision concerning this kind of thing, which takes us to 2100 when the final sealing takes place, there will always be uncertainty. So you have to have trust."

Kaisa Kosonen urges caution; the case for Onkalo, she says, is not proven.

"I would like to see much more research done and not having this hasty process," she says. "And I would not want this marketed as 'waste issue solved', because it's not."

But Timo Aikas believes his system and his team deserve the trust they have found in Eurajoki, and that Onkalo will prove as safe a resting place for highly active radionuclides as can be found, barring any surprises with the local geology.

And he urges other countries, Britain included, to take a decision and find a solution.

"Nuclear waste doesn't go away," he reflects.

"And if we just keep it in stores above ground we just push the problem to the next generation. It's much more responsible now to develop solutions on how to take care of it."

Richard.Black-INTERNET@bbc.co.uk

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Senator Harry Reid
Tuesday, April 25, 2006

Reid, Ensign Say Investigation Shows Yucca Mountain is Unsafe

Washington, D.C. – An Inspector General´s report released today stops short of recommending criminal prosecutions in a Yucca Mountain science scandal, but Nevada´s two Senators say it underscores the fact that the proposed Yucca Mountain nuclear dump is unsafe and scientifically unsound.

Sen. Harry Reid (D-NV) and John Ensign (R-NV) asked for an investigation after e-mails surfaced last year alleging that government scientists falsified some test results for the Yucca Mountain project. The tests looked at water infiltration at the proposed dump site. The falsified work compromised quality assurance requirements and raised questions about the accuracy of other health and safety data related to Yucca.

The Inspector General of the Department of Energy, the Inspector General of the Department of the Interior, and the Federal Bureau of Investigation looked into the allegations. Today, they announced they would not pursue criminal charges, citing among other issues the length of time between when the e-mails were written and when they were discovered as obstacles to building a case. However, the Inspector General noted that “the actions of those involved … have had the effect of undermining public confidence in the quality of the science associated with the Yucca Mountain Project.’

Senators Reid and Ensign say today´s decision has no impact on their opposition to Yucca Mountain.

“The science that DOE claims is supporting Yucca Mountain is sloppy, and in some cases it´s actually false,’ said Reid. “That´s a much bigger concern than whether a couple of employees will go to jail. The Yucca Mountain project is a complete failure. It has failed every legitimate health, safety, and scientific test. I´m going to continue working to stop Yucca Mountain altogether.’

“The prospect of criminal prosecutions is secondary to the underlying fact that the science presented by the USGS and the DOE is faulty, misguided and fraudulent,’ said Ensign. “The emails in question show clearly that data has been manipulated or fabricated, and the ensuing hearings have brought this important aspect to light. No case has been made, nor can it be made, that the storage of high-level nuclear waste at Yucca Mountain is scientifically sound. I intend to thoroughly review the Attorney General´s report, but regardless of the AG´s findings the scientific case put forth by Yucca Mountain supporters is as weak as ever.’

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Las Vegas SUN
April 26, 2006

Editorial: Scientist's alarming charge

Allegations that a public water-quality study is being covered up need public airing

A biologist who teaches at the University of Florida says he gave up on a publicly funded study of Lake Mead's water quality because his findings after nearly seven years of research were deemed by superiors to be "too sensitive."

Federal officials in charge of the study, however, deny the scientist's charge, saying that they want to make the study public but only after there has been time to evaluate additional research.

The scientist and researcher, Timothy Gross, began studying the lake for the U.S. Geological Survey after Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., secured $250,000 in federal funding for the project in 1998. In 2004 the Interior Department augmented that funding with $2.5 million.

In a story published Sunday, Gross told Las Vegas Sun reporter Launce Rake that he resigned as head of the project in January 2005 out of frustration that his work had not been published.

"They don't like the conclusions," Gross said, referring to the Geological Survey. "We've been told specifically the issues are too sensitive, that it would inhibit economic development in the area."

Gross is making a serious charge: that a scientific study of the Las Vegas Valley's main source of drinking water, paid for with taxpayer dollars, is being covered up to protect commercial interests.

Data generated by his study show reproductive problems developing in carp, large-mouth bass and razorback suckers that live in the lake. The changes in the fish, Gross says, are likely the result of their exposure to chemicals near the Las Vegas Wash, which carries runoff into the lake. Treated sewage is also released into the wash.

Gross told Rake that it is unclear if those same chemicals pose a threat to people who use the lake's water. Local water officials deny there is a problem with drinking water, as it is drawn from deep intake valves far from the wash.

With conflicting reports - the Geological Survey, for example, says Gross did not resign but was fired - it is impossible at this time to know for sure what is truly going on with this study. But we do know that nearly $3 million of taxpayer money and almost seven years have gone into it. For that commitment of time and money, the taxpayers have a right to know the truth.

We suggest a congressional hearing, such as one convened in Las Vegas three years ago when employees at Yucca Mountain raised alarms about the quality of work there. Gross and Geological Survey officials should each be compelled to give public testimony about this important issue bearing on public health.

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Las Vegas Review-Journal
April 26, 2006

Yucca e-mails bring no charges

U.S. attorney's office says criminal intent cannot be proved

By Steve Tetreault
Stephens Washington Bureau

WASHINGTON -- The U.S. attorney's office in Nevada will not pursue criminal charges over allegations that scientists falsified documents at Yucca Mountain, concluding the activities "did not meet the level of criminality," the Energy Department's chief inspector said Tuesday.

Prosecutors indicated they "could not show intent" to commit crimes, said Gregory Friedman, DOE inspector general. The case involved e-mails in which workers expressed disdain for quality assurance procedures on the nuclear waste project.

Evidence focused on e-mails in which hydrologists wrote about making up dates and names, using "fudge factors" and keeping multiple sets of notebooks, one to keep auditors happy and one for themselves.

Friedman said that barring new information, he planned to close his office's investigation on the case, which exploded a year ago in March when the e-mails were revealed.

The messages cast doubt on data that went into computer modeling for water infiltration, an effort that seeks to quantify how much rainfall and runoff might seep into the mountain, where nuclear waste containers would be stored.

The controversy caused DOE to delay the project and spend millions of dollars to double check the research. Managers concluded the science was sound, but they are having the work redone anyway.

Regardless of whether the case is prosecuted, "the actions of those involved -- which have been described by observers as irresponsible and reckless -- have had the effect of undermining public confidence in the quality of the science associated with the Yucca Mountain Project," Friedman said.

He announced the outcome Tuesday in a memo to Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman and in testimony before a U.S. House subcommittee investigating lapses within the Yucca Mountain program.

Three scientists employed by the U.S. Geological Survey were identified as the main authors of the e-mails, which were written between 1998 and 2000.

Inspectors sent their materials to the office of U.S. attorney Daniel Bogden of Nevada in December. Friedman said a decision not to prosecute was made on Monday.

A Bogden spokeswoman said Justice Department rules prohibited him from commenting.

Nevada lawmakers shrugged at the decision not to prosecute the Yucca workers, who were no longer with the project when the e-mails were detailed. The lawmakers said the move should not detract attention from what they called systemic problems within the program that were brought to light by the episode.

"That's a much bigger concern than whether a couple of employees will go to jail," said Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev.

"Prosecuting the geologists would not have changed one thing," said Rep. Jim Gibbons, R-Nev.

Rep. Shelley Berkley, D-Nev., said the decision "by no means erases the long list of scientific problems still facing Yucca Mountain, nor does it excuse the negligence of those in charge of the project."

Sen. John Ensign, R-Nev., said, "The prospect of criminal prosecutions is secondary to the underlying fact that the science presented by the USGS and the DOE is faulty, misguided and fraudulent."

The pro-Yucca Nuclear Energy Institute "hopes this closes the book on this issue," spokeswoman Trish Conrad said. "The investigations are now over. It is time to move on and move forward."

But beyond the e-mails, Friedman said investigators identified weaknesses in how DOE and its contractors handled the matter.

He said nearly six years passed before the messages were brought to management's attention, though several of them were read by at least one U.S. Geological Survey supervisor and a quality assurance official.

And even after the e-mails were flagged in November 2004 to Bechtel SAIC, the Yucca management contractor, another four months passed before they were brought to the attention of DOE managers, Friedman said.

"We could not find a satisfactory explanation as to why the e-mails had not been recognized as problematic years earlier," Friedman wrote.

He said a DOE report gave as a reason "competing workload priorities and the disruption of work during Bechtel's holiday season shutdown."

Friedman also faulted DOE and the USGS after they learned that a required science notebook had not been maintained. With DOE approval, USGS waived the notebook requirement.

Also, files to support the water infiltration research were lost. Some were found later at the home of a USGS worker.

"If this were NASA and the space shuttle, the space shuttle would not fly," said Rep. Jon Porter, R-Nev., the chairman of the House federal workforce subcommittee that held the hearing to review problems with Yucca Mountain quality controls.

Paul Golan, acting Yucca Mountain director for the past year, said he was working to improve "the quality assurance program and the culture of the organization."

Golan said he has not hesitated to stop work on segments of the project when problems are spotted, and he was working to broaden safety consciousness throughout the Yucca organization.

But DOE continues to face quality assurance problems, said Jim Wells, a director with the Government Accountability Office, which issued a 54-page Yucca Mountain critique last month.

The GAO concluded DOE had a history of undertaking costly repairs to resolve lingering quality assurance problems, while the management tools they were using to track their effectiveness have not worked well.

"They are not out of the woods yet," Wells said, noting DOE is undertaking a repository redesign.

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New York Times
April 26, 2006

No Charges in Falsified Nuclear Waste Data

By The New York Times

WASHINGTON, April 25 — The United States attorney for Nevada has decided not to prosecute federal employees who admitted making up details about research involving the Energy Department's effort to open a nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain, the department's inspector general said Tuesday.

But the inspector general, Gregory H. Friedman, said the Yucca project had "internal control deficiencies" that allowed lapses that contributed to a loss of public confidence.

Mr. Friedman's findings were part of a report about e-mail messages sent by employees of the United States Geologic Survey who said they had made up details about their research about the mountain's geology.

After an examination of the e-mail messages, which were written from 1998 to 2000, "We could not find a satisfactory explanation as to why the e-mails had not been recognized as problematic years earlier," he said.

The department still has not made its research materials public, and has been unable to apply for a license for the project, which was supposed to begin burying waste in 1998.

Mr. Friedman said that the Energy Department was testing or replacing the Geological Survey work, using outside scientists.

"We concluded that these steps are essential if the Yucca Mountain Project is to overcome historical and current quality assurance concerns," he wrote.

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Platts
April 25, 2006

Criminal investigation closed in USGS e-mail case

Washington (Platts)--25Apr2006

The US Attorney's Office has declined to pursue criminal prosecution in a case involving US Geological Survey e-mails that suggested some documents associated with DOE's repository project at Yucca Mountain, Nevada may have been falsified. The DOE Office of Inspector General, which made public the US Attorney's Office decision, also reported in a memorandum it sent today to Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman that OIG will be closing its criminal investigation into the case. OIG said it was taking that action, in part, because of the decision by the US Attorney's Office and the absence of additional information on any criminal behavior. The e-mails, which were written between 1998 and 2000 and made public in March 2005, suggested that some quality assurance documents associated with USGS work at Yucca Mountain may have been falsified. The OIG memorandum this week questioned why the e-mails were not recognized as being problematic years earlier. OIG noted that at least one USGS supervisor and one QA official had seen some of the e-mails at the time they were written.

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Salt Lake Tribune
April 26, 2006

Feds: No charges against Yucca scientists

By Robert Gehrke
The Salt Lake Tribune

WASHINGTON - Federal prosecutors will not file charges against several scientists who were accused of falsifying documents relating to water in the proposed Yucca Mountain nuclear waste site in Nevada.

The Energy Department's Inspector General Gregory Friedman reported Tuesday that the U.S. Attorney's Office in Nevada had declined on Monday to file charges in the case.

"Nonetheless, the actions of those involved - which have been described by observers as irresponsible and reckless - have had the effect of undermining public confidence in the quality of the science associated with the Yucca Mountain Project," the report said.

The memorandum said it is unusual to disclose the outcome of such investigations publicly, but the inspector general chose to do so because of public interest in the issue.

Last year, the department found that a series of e-mails between U.S. Geological Survey employees between 1998 and 2000 suggested that government hydrologists had falsified dates and other documentation as part of their review of technical data before the Energy Department sought a license from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.

The Energy Department is re-creating technical work done by the USGS, and is also reviewing some 14 million e-mails to ensure there are no other problems to be found, a labor-intensive process, according to the Government Accountability Office.

Repeating the work has led to lengthy, costly delays in the Energy Department's submission of a license application, the GAO said Tuesday.

Yucca Mountain was supposed to open in 1998, but the department still has not submitted a license application. The application is expected to be finished sometime next year, although it remains unclear when the site - 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas and upwind of southern Utah communities - might actually open.

Most members of Utah's congressional delegation have joined with colleagues from Nevada in opposing the site. The Nevada leaders say it will never open.

"The science that DOE claims is supporting Yucca Mountain is sloppy, and in some cases it's actually false," said Reid. "That's a much bigger concern than whether a couple of employees will go to jail. The Yucca Mountain project is a complete failure. It has failed every legitimate health, safety and scientific test. I'm going to continue working to stop Yucca Mountain altogether."

Nevada Rep. Shelley Berkley, a Democrat, said the episode shows that the entire process is in "tatters."

"Although these workers will not face criminal charges, this decision by no means erases the long list of scientific problems still facing Yucca Mountain, nor does it excuse the negligence of those in charge of the project," said Berkley.

Yucca Mountain is now slated to contain 77,000 tons of nuclear waste, although the Bush administration is pushing to remove that cap.

The White House's proposed legislation would also make a number of other changes to accelerate the Yucca construction.

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Tooele Transcript-Bulletin
April 26, 2006

GOP boots out commissioners, attorney

Written by Jesse Fruhwirth

Republicans tossed out three incumbents who sought re-election at the county convention Friday. Eyes widened and jaws dropped, even from some of the delegates, as the results were read. None of the top county positions will be contested during the June Republican primary season due to the overwhelming convention results.

In his address to convention-goers, county commissioner Matthew Lawrence said "a commissioner is the voice and face, we are the person that represents Tooele." Later in his speech, referring to the county's unfair and negative reputation, he added, "we have to change the image of this county."

Apparently delegates agreed, perhaps more than anyone could have predicted.

Two-term county commissioner Dennis Rockwell was ousted in favor of newcomer Bruce Clegg. Clegg received a whopping 85 percent of the delegates' votes. Free from the hassle of a primary challenger, Clegg can focus on the November election where he will face either of two Democrats, Kendall Thomas or Walt Shubert.

First-term commissioner Lawrence was likewise snubbed by the party. Jerry Hurst received 70 percent of the delegates' votes and will be placed on the ballot against Democrat Michael Johnson.

A seat on the county commission pays $60,000 per year. The commission position is a part-time responsibility, but Hurst said he would be "dedicated on a full-time basis" while Clegg said he would be a "full-time commissioner."

The Republican purge went beyond the commission, however. The GOP revolt ousted County Attorney Doug Alhstrom as well. Ahlstrom was elected to the post three times. The Democrats have no candidate in the race for county attorney. Without a challenger from the other party, the 73 percent of delegates who voted for Doug Hogan essentially anointed him the new county attorney. Hogan's early victory comes months prior to the November election when his name will be the only one on the ballot for the attorney position.

"I've learned there will be times to lead and times to follow," Hogan said in his convention speech. "I'm ready to give my all for Tooele County ... I'll do everything in my power to ensure that the county receives the highest legal counsel."

The Republican convention gathered votes from 60 delegates who were chosen at neighborhood caucus meetings last month. Candidates needed more than 66 percent of the delegates' votes to avoid a primary election challenge. Every contested race surpassed that threshold.

Jess Clifford was resoundingly selected as the Republican candidate for district 21 in the Utah House of Representatives. Clifford received all of the 60 delegates' votes, leaving nothing behind for his convention opponent, Primus Butler. Clifford will go on to face long-time Democratic incumbent Jim Gowans. District 21 encompasses Tooele, Erda, Stansbury Park and Lake Point.

Sheriff candidate Tony Garcia was recently in Utah and some national news for leading the investigation that recovered several rare editions of the Book of Mormon. The Utah State Bureau of Investigations lieutenant was chosen by 80 percent of the delegates to face off against current Tooele County Sheriff Frank Park. Garcia defeated the recently retired Tooele sheriff deputy Judd Ericson.

Chief deputy clerk Marilyn Gillette received 83 percent of the delegates' votes in the only three-way race of the night. Gillette is seeking the county clerk position. The few votes Gillette left over were shared by Mark Bateman and Dee Leo. She will face Democrat Gary Vario in November.

Steven Dana defeated Brad Sutton with 95 percent of the delegates' votes for the assessor candidacy. He will face Democrat Wendy Shubert.

Senator Orrin Hatch was in attendance and spoke briefly about his recent accomplishments. The 30-year senator will presumably receive his party's nomination in May, and face-off against Democrat Pete Ashdown in the November election.

In an interview before the convention began, Hatch said his proudest achievements in his last term were keeping Hill Air Force base in operation and poking a strong thorn in the side of Private Fuel Storage.

"I've pulled four of the eight backers [of PFS]," Hatch said. "It's no secret that they don't want to be on the wrong side of the ranking member of the Senate Finance Committee."

PFS is a consortium of public utility companies that seeks a waste disposal site on the Skull Valley Goshute Reservation in Tooele County.

Hatch, however, remains a strong supporter of nuclear energy and called it "one of the best things we can do if we value our clean air and water."

He said reprocessing fuel rods can reduce the size of the waste and if the technology is utilized, "Yucca Mountain [in Nevada] could take it for centuries."

Reprocessing does indeed reduce the volume of nuclear waste, but also concentrates its power, producing weapons-grade plutonium as its byproduct.

Hatch also commented on the so-called Senate compromise immigration reform bill. Washington Democrats held up the bill refusing to allow amendments that could have made the bill look similar to the House version that makes illegal immigration a felony. Hatch said the Democrats were grandstanding and when the Senate convenes this week, perhaps a real solution can be found.

"I've held back because I know people had to get it out of their systems," he said. "We've got to find some compassionate way to get people to conform to our laws."

Hatch also said the number of immigrants is too high even if they all "conformed to our laws." Currently there are an estimated 11 million undocumented immigrants in the U.S. He declined to give an estimate of what a reasonable annual flow of immigrants to the U.S. would be.

Unopposed within their own party, many other Republicans had their candidacies affirmed at the convention. Richard Copeland seeks the county auditor position. Russell Winters will run for recorder. Douglas Kinsman will seek the surveyor position and Sam Woodruff will be on the ballot for treasurer.

Candidates for state offices will be chosen May 13 at the South Towne Expo Center in Sandy. The candidates for those positions were given an opportunity to address the crowd, but no formal action was taken on their nominations.

Senate district 12 features three candidates. Christy Achziger, Daniel Tuttle and Jack Nielsen spoke. District 12 encompasses Stansbury Park, Magna and West Valley. The winner of that contest will face Democratic incumbent Brent Goodfellow.

Senate district 24 features Republican incumbent Darin Peterson. One of his party challengers, Ryan Smith, attended the convention. Jay Collier did was not in attendance. District 24 encompasses the south half of Tooele City as well as Juab, Sanpete, Sevier, Piute and Wayne Counties.

U.S. District 1 Rep. Rob Bishop was in attendance and is unopposed by anyone in his party. He will face Democratic challenger Steve Olson in November.

Senate District 17, currently filled by Republican majority leader Peter Knudson, will be unchallenged at the state convention. Knudson will face either Arthur Douglas or Wayne Russell in the November election. That district encompasses the north half of Tooele City, Grantsville, Erda, Lake Point, all of Box Elder county as well as Brigham City in Cache County.

Just one Republican is seeking Utah House of Representatives district 1 seat. Incumbent Ronda Rudd Menlove will face Democrat Roger Fridal.

e-mail: jessejf@tooeletranscript.com

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Seattle Post Intelligencer
April 26, 2006

Gregoire meets with Energy secretary

The Associated Press

TRI-CITIES, Wash. -- Gov. Gregoire met with Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman today in Washington, D-C.

She told Tri-Cities radio station K-O-N-A that he agrees there needs to be better government oversight of the Hanford waste tank clean up and construction of the vitrification treatment plant.

Gregoire is also meeting with Sen. Harry Reid of Nevada about the Yucca Mountain site where Hanford nuclear waste is to be shipped for final disposal. She shares his concern that the project is mired in safety and technical problems.

(From Dennis Shannon, KONA)

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LAVoice
April 26, 2006

Chernobyl Disaster 20 years ago - we must listen to history

20 years ago today the world awoke to a nuclear nightmare. A lethal chain of events at the Chernobyl Nuclear Plant resulted in a radioactive fire that eventually left 17 ghost villages within 19 miles of the facility. Four hundred times more radioactivity than Hiroshima bomb was released and traveled around the world. The fallout drove a third of a million people permanently from their homes. And as devastating as Katrina was last year, it pales in comparison to this tragedy.

Why should this be of concern to Los Angeles? The radioactive plume from Chernobyl was first acknowledged in Sweden, hundreds of miles from Ukraine. It had been two days since the accident and the Soviet government had yet to tell their people. Los Angeles County sits less than 50 miles from the San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station and approximately 150 miles from Diablo Canyon Nuclear Plant. Los Angeles is also on the proposed transport route for both nuclear plants to Yucca Mountain, should it ever open.

The nuclear industry continues to downplay the devastation of the Chernobyl nuclear fire. Remembering the Chernobyl accident contradicts the claim that new nuclear power plants are safe and the solution to global warming. Nuclear advocates shy away from discussing the economic costs of Chernobyl, which continue to this day. The sarcophagus that covers Chernobyl�s nuclear coffin is leaking. A new cover is set to be in place in 3 years, but not without international aide. In the meantime, it leaks.

The lasting impacts of the Chernobyl accident cannot be denied. The impacts include seventeen ghost villages, hundreds of thousands of displaced residents, continuing fear of radioactive related illnesses and contaminated agriculture. According to the International Atomic Energy Agency:

Massive radioactive contamination forced the evacuation of more than 100,000 people from the affected region during 1986, and the relocation, after 1986, of another 200,000 from Belarus, the Russian Federation and Ukraine. Some five million people continue to live in areas contaminated by the accident and have to deal with its environmental, health, social and economic consequences.

Agriculture and forestry are forbidden in wide areas. Poverty forces many people to eat contaminated berries, mushrooms, game and fish, to feed contaminated hay to their cattle and to burn radioactively contaminated firewood in their stoves. Many of those living in the affected areas are ignorant of the risks that they face, or have adopted an apathetic and fatalistic attitude.

A total of some seven million people are in receipt of Chernobyl-related welfare benefits of one kind or another... According to the Ukrainian national report �15 Years after the Chernobyl Catastrophe� the Soviet Union spent $18 billion on Chernobyl rehabilitation between 1986 and 1991.

Far from the burnt shell of Chernobyl the consequences of massive radioactive smoke that traveled worldwide from Chernobyl are still being felt.

After two decades, the legacy of the Chernobyl disaster is still casting its poisonous shadow over Britain's countryside. The Department of Health has admitted that more than 200,000 sheep are grazing on land contaminated by fallout from the explosion at the Ukrainian nuclear plant 1,500 miles away. Emergency orders still apply to 355 Welsh farms, 11 in Scotland and nine in England as a result of the catastrophe in April 1986.

Last September I returned to Kiev after 20 years. In the fall of 1985, no one I met in Kiev appeared concerned about four reactors 70 miles from their homes. No one in Ukraine could have known that in less than six months their lives would be drastically altered. Since my last visit in 1985, Ukrainians have gone from denial that an accident could happen to skepticism that the government will effectively stop the radiation from leaking in their lifetimes.

Phase out aging nuclear plants, limiting the waste and securing California�s nuclear sites are the goals of the Alliance for Nuclear Responsibility. It took an accident to accomplish two of these three things at Chernobyl. Support the Alliance, share your ideas, become a part of our effort to leave a less radioactive future as our legacy to this community (state). Don�t let this tragedy be forgotten. Please join us to remember Chernobyl � 20 years later.

For more information please contact the Alliance for Nuclear Responsibility at www.a4nr.org

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openDemocracy
April 26, 2006

The true cost of nuclear energy

Pierpaolo Mittica

On the 20th anniversary of the nuclear disaster at Chernobyl, photographer Pierpaolo Mittica argues that the hidden legacies of this terrible accident must be exposed. Plus, an exclusive photo slideshow of images from affected regions in Ukraine and Belarus.

The eruption of a single nuclear reactor at Chernobyl 20 years ago on 26 April, 1986, was enough to invest half the world with radioactive fall-out. Nevertheless the alchemic benefits of nuclear fission are relentlessly and pervasively championed – that it produces energy that is economical, clean and safe.

The cost of nuclear energy is promoted as being about 2 cents per KWh, while that produced by gas is 4 cents per KWh, and by oil, hydro-electric and wind power 7 cents per KWh. Thus expressed, nuclear energy appears to be considerably the least expensive. But that cost is based only on operating expenses and does not include the expenses of the construction of the nuclear power plant, its maintenance and management of radioactive waste, and finally the dismantling of the plant at the end of its productive cycle.

The construction cost of a medium-capacity nuclear power plant is about $1.5 billion. After 30 years the plant has exhausted its physiological cycle of production and must be dismantled. The demolition of a nuclear power plant costs at least as much as its construction. To give an example, the total cost of the closure of the Eccellente-Phenix reactor in France was estimated at $2.4 billion. The strictly economic arguments for nuclear power are thus critically flawed.

The storage issue

These flaws are as nothing compared to the problems of secure storage of nuclear waste, which remains dangerous for millennia. The US Department of Energy (DOE) has recently attempted a resolution of these problems in America. They have proposed a program that provides for the collection of the most dangerous radioactive material – with little reference to the less dangerous material – now dispersed in various sites and its transportation to a vast underground depository beneath Mount Yucca in Northern Nevada, 160 kilometres northwest of Las Vegas.

Every nuclear plant produces 10 metric tons of radioactive waste per year. Currently in the US there are 50,000 metric tons of radioactive fuel by now exhausted, 350 million litres of highly-active waste derived from the production of plutonium, scores of metric tons of plutonium, 500,000 metric tons of impoverished uranium, millions of cubic metres of contaminated utensils (fragments of metal, clothing, oils, solvents and other waste), and 25 million metric tons of waste from uranium grinding. Were that material to be loaded on a train its length would exceed the circumference of the equator.

The US proposition for the Mount Yucca depository was accepted in February 2002. The cost and the complexity of the operation are enormous. For the preliminary studies of the terrain and the project $7 billion have been spent; for the construction of the deposit at least $58 billion dollars is foreseen. It is then a matter of transferring the radioactive material, currently conserved in 131 deposits distributed in 39 states: for the transport 4,600 trains and trucks will be needed, escorted by the police and the military.

The intention is to isolate the waste for eternity. The US understands this to be several hundred thousand years, or as long as they can comprehend human life's existence, whichever is the shorter. Currently it is not possible to find materials that will assure leak-proof retention over even the US's understanding of radioactive life, or eternity. The nickel containers designed to store the radioactive waste (besides being very costly) will not last longer than 500 years.

Further, there is no scientific evidence that the geological strata can guarantee absolute stability of the containers. In fact, it is quite the reverse. The infinite and inexorable movement of the earth's crust is calculably liable to shift the nuclear waste, when it will disperse in aquifers or on the surface. The DOE has calculated that the US will spend more than 1,000 billion dollars over the next 70 to 100 years – music to the ears of the nuclear industry.

To date that industry has vigorously upheld the revealed costs of nuclear power as being clear evidence of its validity, and its profits. In fact the definable conclusion is that electrical energy produced by nuclear power plants costs up to ten times more than other forms of energy.

But these are facile representations of the costs, and the profits to be made from them, of nuclear power. In real terms the costs will be measured over the next millennium, 1,000 years, which we know to be the poisonous life of radioactivity. Radioactivity does and will cause cancers in children, and their children, and their children for generations to come, so that the lights will be on but the people will be ignorant of their good fortune. They will be blind, but the lights will be on.

 Also on openDemocracy about the twentieth anniversary of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster:

Rob Edwards, "Nailed: the lie about Chernobyl's death toll"

(April 2006)

Environmental legacy

The environmental damage caused by nuclear power plants in 50 years of use is devastating. Radioactive waste, even now, is clandestinely sent to the developing world, where it is buried underground or thrown in the sea. If that's not possible it's stored in temporary surface deposits.

The US has ten principal areas of storage. Hanford, in Washington, has for decades dumped radioactive materials and has committed its population within at least 1450 square kilometres to the possibility of cancers.

In Europe the English nuclear reactors of Sellafield (Windscale), Winfrith and Dounreay have discharged millions of litres of radioactive waste in the Irish Sea since 1950. Today the Irish Sea is considered the most contaminated in the world. From 1950 to 1963 England dumped barrels of radioactive waste in the North Sea, and the French reactor of uranium reprocessing at La Hague discharges hundreds of litres of radioactive waste a year in the Channel.

Russia can claim the three most contaminated sites in the world (excluding Chernobyl): Seversk (Tomsk-7), Mayak (Chelyabinsk-40) and Zheleznogorsk (Krasnoyarsk-26). In these zones the liquid radioactive waste of medium and high levels was systematically discharged in enormous quantities in the local terrain and rivers. Thousands of square kilometres are highly contaminated.

Currently in the world there are around 438 nuclear reactors, of which 45, situated in the former Soviet republics, are technologically in the same state as Chernobyl (11 of the RBMK plants are time bombs waiting to explode). The total nuclear power contributed is 350 gigawatts, about 16% of the energy produced world-wide, a percentage that cannot justify the catastrophic environmental damage.

Health risks

Not included in these costs is the price that health services must pay every year to treat those who fall ill with tumours or other illnesses derived from radiation. It is a price beyond all others, practically immeasurable. Currently in the US more than two thousand cancer victims are suing the nuclear plant of Hanford. Since 1944 the plant has discharged into the atmosphere a million Curie of Iodine 131, which carried by the wind has contaminated around 120,000 square kilometres of land and more than 2 million people.

Various studies have demonstrated the increment of cancer in populations living near nuclear plants, as does the work of Dr. Jay Gould, director of the Radiation Public Health Project (RPHP). Analysing the data collected over 50 years in more than 3,000 American counties by the National Cancer Institute, Dr. Gould has demonstrated, for example, that women who live in nuclear zones are at greater risk of death by breast cancer, and that in men there is a considerable increase in cancer of the prostate and lung cancer. From analysis of these studies Dr. Gould has reasoned that in America alone there have been hundreds of thousands of deaths caused by the normal routine operations of nuclear plants.

Numerous European and Japanese studies have evidenced the increase of leukaemia by 34% and of malignant cancer from 22% to 53% in children that live near nuclear plants in Great Britain, France, Germany, Spain and Japan. In Russia, besides Chernobyl, in the zones of Seversk (Tomsk-7), Mayak (Chelyabinsk-40), and Zheleznogorsk (Krasnoyarsk-26) more than 3 million people have been exposed to high level radiation and tumours have increased by 900%.

In a village near Mayak, Tatarskaya Karabolka, 80% of the population is affected by cancer. It is impossible to estimate even approximately how many people have died in the world because of the radiation caused by the nuclear power plants and their waste, and of how many have yet to die in the future. If we tried to count them they would surely be tens of millions.

The myth of safety

The safety of nuclear power plants is a myth constructed by omissions of truth and the suppression of information. Chernobyl is only the tip of the iceberg. To date there have been thousands of verified serious incidents, while there have been unknowable instances of nuclear radiation subject to military secrecy.

In 1957 the reactor at Mayak in the former Soviet Union caused the contamination of 270,000 people and thousands of square kilometres of land. A fire in the reactor at Sellafield in Great Britain, where plutonium was produced for military purposes, the same year generated a radioactive cloud that passed over the breadth of Europe - 300 deaths were officially recognized and 518 square kilometres of land contaminated just in Great Britain.

In 1979 at Three Mile Island in the US the overheating of the reactor caused the partial fusion of the core, releasing radioactive gas equal to 500,000 Curie. More than 200,000 people were evacuated. In 1993 in Seversk (Tomsk-7) in Russia a tank exploded releasing uranium and plutonium, contaminating an area of over 100 square kilometres.

In 1992 in the nuclear complex near St. Petersburg a loss of pressure in the reactor caused the discharge of iodine 131 and inert gases into the atmosphere. In Japan in Tokaimura between 1995 and 1999 three accidents caused the immediate death of three people while more than 400 were exposed to high levels of radiation.

These are but a handful of examples that all too dramatically illustrate the inability to prevent nuclear accidents. When they do happen it's too late for everyone and for everything. Nuclear energy by fission is not as clean, safe, or economical as the powerful lobbies for it would have us believe.

The overwhelming reason that nations have adopted and sponsored nuclear energy as an energy resource is to be able to build and possess nuclear weapons. The US fear of the current Iranian nuclear programme is clear proof of that. The facts are that civil nuclear reactors use uranium as fuel. One of the by-products of uranium is plutonium, a radioactive element used to build atomic warheads. By means of civil reactors one can assure the availability of plutonium with which to construct nuclear weapons. Hence, as sure as night follows day, the exploitation of the civil use of nuclear power. And the economic and political interests involved will assuredly deny these truths.

The use of fission nuclear energy is an opportunity for and in the interest of a cabal that threatens everyone. But above all it is a crime against humanity.

Between 2002 and 2004 Pierpaolo Mittica visited Chernobyl-affected areas in Ukraine and Belarus three times, for a total of 45 days. The photographs in this slideshow are a selection from his book Chernobyl the hidden legacy, and are currently being featured at the Chernobyl National Museum. Please click the image below to launch the slideshow:

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State of Nevada
Agency for Nuclear Projects
www.state.nv.us/nucwaste/
nwpo@nuc.state.nv.us
775-687-3744
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