The radioactive waste at "The Fourth Reactor and the Destiny of Japan"

In an essay by that title, Akio Matsumura has warned about the risks of Fukushima Daiichi Unit 4's high-level radioactive waste storage pool collapsing:

"In the last weeks, I have been speaking constantly with Japanese government and party leaders on this urgent issue. Surprisingly, most of them were not aware of the dangerous situation. I, along with many eminent scientists, are emphasizing the precarious situation of the fourth reactor that contains 1,535 nuclear fuel rods in the pool and is balanced on the second floor [sic*], outside of the reactor containment vessel. If the fuel rods spill onto the ground, disaster will ensue and force Tokyo and Yokohama to close, creating a gigantic evacuation zone. All scientists I have talked with say that if the structure collapses we will be in a situation well beyond where science has ever gone. The destiny of Japan will be changed and the disaster will certainly compromise the security of neighboring countries and the rest of the world in terms of health, migration and geopolitics.  The Japanese government should immediately create an independent assessment team to determine the structural integrity of the spent fuel pool and its supporting structure. This is of the highest importance: the structure’s security is critical to the country’s future."

Dr. Gordon Edwards, Montreal based President of the Canadian Coalition for Nuclear Responsibility (CCNR), whole heartedly agrees with Matsumura about these risks. Edwards has provided a technical backgrounder about the risks, and has called for international assistance to prevent a worsening of the Fukushima Nuclear Catastrophe that could result from a collapse of the storage pool, and the ignition of overheated irradiated nuclear fuel. Edwards provided Matsumura more technical detail in a letter on January 13th.

[*General Electric Boiling Water Reactors of the Mark 1 design actually have high-level radioactive waste storage pools located several stories up in the air]

"Interim" parking lot dumps for high-level radioactive waste storage could become de facto permanent

National Public Radio's coverage of the publication of the final report by the Blue Ribbon Commission on America's Nuclear Future (BRC) and its recommendations for radioactive waste management briefly mentioned a warning by Beyond Nuclear at the end of its online article: "The anti-nuclear group Beyond Nuclear has weighed in as well, arguing that the interim storage site is a bad idea because it may just become a permanent site." However, Beyond Nuclear was not mentioned in the on air story, while the nuclear establishment, including the BRC co-chairman and Nuclear Energy Institute, were quoted at length.

Lake Michigan surrounded by radioactive waste risks

Satellite photo of Lake MichiganAs shown by the map in Beyond Nuclear's "Routine Radioactive Releases from Nuclear Power Plants in the United States: What Are the Dangers?", as well as by Nuclear Awareness Project's "Great Lakes Nuclear Hot Spots" map, Lake Michigan is surrounded by risky atomic reactors on its shores.

In Wisconsin, one reactor operates at Kewaunee, while two operate at Point Beach. Some years ago, Kewaunee alone had a majority of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission's (NRC) "yellow findings" (second highest level of safety violation) of the entire 103 (at the time) operating reactors in the entire U.S. fleet; Point Beach had a majority -- 3 of 5 -- of the "red findings" (highest level of safety violation) in the entire country. In Michigan, two reactors operate at Cook nuclear power plant, with one operating at Palisades. Cook was shut down for major safety violations from 1997 to 2000; Palisades suffered 5 un-planned shutdowns of varying severity in 2011 alone.  In addition, the largest decommissioning in U.S. history is underway at Zion -- at least a billion dollar price tag for dismantling two 1,000 megawatt-electric reactors -- just 30 miles north of Chicago. At Big Rock Point in Michigan, despite spending $366 million on decommissioning a tiny, experimental reactor, plutonium and other radioactive hazards were left behind in the soil, groundwater, and sediments of Lake Michigan.

Rory Keane at the Medill Journalism School of Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois has just published an article entitled "Nuclear Worries Abound in Great Lakes Region,"  about such radioactive risks to Lake Michigan as tritium leaks from aging atomic reactors, as well as high-level radioactive wastes stored in indoor pools and outdoor dry casks that have nowhere to go. The article quotes Beyond Nuclear's Kevin Kamps regarding the reactor and radioactive waste risks, as well as tritium leaks: “Lake Michigan alone faces some of the major safety violations in the country...the opinion of the NRC and company was…‘dilution is the solution.’ We call that delusional.”

BRC report continues shameful history of targeting Native American communities for radioactive waste dumps

Grace Thorpe helped stop dozens of radioactive waste dumps targeted at Native American communities by DOE's Nuclear Waste NegotiatorToday's final report by the Blue Ribbon Commission on America's Nuclear Future (BRC) continued the shameful history of the U.S. nuclear establishment, in both government and industry, of targeting Native American communities for radioactive waste dumps. Beyond Nuclear issued a media statement regarding the BRC report today, and an op-ed several days ago. At the very first public meeting of the BRC nearly two years ago, Beyond Nuclear's Kevin Kamps pleaded this environmental injustice be stopped. To the contrary, BRC's final report points to the U.S. Department of Energy's "Nuclear Waste Negotiator" as a model to be followed again now to advance "consolidated interim storage sites" and repositories. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, DOE's Nuclear Waste Negotiator contacted every single federally recognized Native American tribe in the United States, then targeted 60 in particular, focusing in the end on Mescalero Apache, New Mexico. It is a testament to the extraordinary efforts of Native American environmental justice activists like Grace Thorpe that all those proposals were defeated, and the Nuclear Waste Negotiator's program eliminated. The nuclear power  utilities picked up where the Negotiator left off, next targeting Skull Valley Goshutes, Utah -- a struggle that continues. Ironically, President Obama praised Grace Thorpe in his "Women Taking the Lead to Save our Planet" Women's History Month Proclamation on March 3, 2009, for launching "a successful campaign to organize Native Americans to oppose the storage of nuclear waste on their reservations" -- only now to have his own DOE's BRC recommend that the Nuclear Waste Negotiator model be revived,  including to re-target Native American communities for radioactive waste dumps.

Beyond Nuclear response to publication of report by DOE's Blue Ribbon Commission on America's Nuclear Future

News from Beyond Nuclear, For Immediate Release, January 26, 2012

Contact: Kevin Kamps, Radioactive Waste Specialist, Beyond Nuclear, office 301-270-2209 ext. 1, cell 240-462-3216

Press Statement by Kevin Kamps, Radioactive Waste Specialist at Beyond Nuclear, on the publication of the final report  by the U.S. Blue Ribbon Commission on America’s Nuclear Future

“Today the U.S. Department of Energy’s Blue Ribbon Commission on America’s Nuclear Future unveiled the result of its two-year-long investigation into what to do with the accumulated radioactive waste at this country’s atomic reactors. By this year’s end, that waste will constitute a mountain 70 years high, with the first cupful generated on December 2, 1942 at Enrico Fermi’s Manhattan Project lab at the University of Chicago, when scientists first created a self-sustaining nuclear chain reaction.

There remains no viable solution for either the management or certainly the ‘disposal’ of radioactive waste. Yet, the one essential recommendation that is not contained in the DOE report is to stop making any more of it.  While a child would never be allowed to continue piling up toys in his or her room indefinitely, failing to tidy up the mess, the nuclear industry continues to be permitted to manufacture some of the world’s most toxic detritus without a cleanup plan.

The Blue Ribbon Commission’s final report confirms that no new miracle solutions have been found. Its preferred ‘solution’ appears to be ‘consolidated interim’ storage, an allegedly temporary but potentially permanent parking lot dumpsite for highly radioactive waste that, based on past practices, will likely be targeted at an Indian reservation or a poor community of color.

In fact, the Blue Ribbon Commission points to the DOE’s Nuclear Waste Negotiator of the late 1980s and early 1990s as a model to follow. DOE’s Nuclear Waste Negotiator dangled money in front of impoverished Native American communities, hoping to entice them into ‘hosting’ hazardous radioactive waste parking lot dumps, an egregious environmental justice violation.

Several years ago, environmental groups chronicled this shameful history in a backgrounder entitled “Radioactive Racism: The History of Targeting Native American Communities with High-Level Atomic Waste Dumps,” posted online at: http://www.nirs.org/radwaste/scullvalley/historynativecommunitiesnuclearwaste06142005.pdf.

The most likely target today, given the Blue Ribbon Commission’s 5 to 10 year timeline to open a parking lot dump, is the Skull Valley Goshutes Indian Reservation in Utah. The Private Fuel Storage, LLC proposal already received a construction and operations license from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission in 2006, despite widespread environmental justice movement opposition. Background information is posted online at http://www.nirs.org/radwaste/scullvalley/skullvalley.htm.

‘Centralized interim’ storage sites for the country’s irradiated reactor fuel rods could easily become permanent if no suitable geological repository site is found. It will mean transporting the waste from reactors predominantly located east of the Mississippi to a likely more remote, western location. And these wastes would then have to be moved again, transported past potentially 50 million homes, en route to a ‘permanent’ dump site or reprocessing facility. This amounts to a risky radioactive waste shell game on our roads, rails, and waterways.

Reprocessing, a chemical separation used extensively in France, creates enormous amounts of additional radioactive wastes that are discharged into the air and sea and a plutonium stockpile that could be diverted for nuclear weapons use. While the Blue Ribbon Commission does not recommend a full-scale return to commercial reprocessing for now, it does endorse the DOE still squandering tens to hundreds of millions of dollars of taxpayers’ money year after year on reprocessing and associated “advanced reactor” research, development, and demonstration activities.

The repository debacle ended temporarily in 2011 with the wise cancelation of the scientifically flawed Yucca Mountain dumpsite proposal in Nevada. But new moves are afoot to search for an alternative site with the granite states – such as Vermont, New Hampshire, Wisconsin, Minnesota and North Carolina – highly favored. The Blue Ribbon Commission may point to the granite repository currently under construction in Finland as the way forward. But as one Scandinavian official stated unforgettably in the haunting documentary, Into Eternity, that examines the implications for the future if the Finnish repository is ever completed – in reality, “nobody knows anything at all.”

Attempting to find a site that can store deadly radioactive waste for a million years – the amount of time that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency acknowledges the waste will remain hazardous – could indeed be beyond the scope of humanity for the foreseeable future. But advocates of dump sites, permanent or temporary, argue that something must be done with the waste already accumulated. Almost all reactor fuel pools are filled to capacity, necessitating ‘overflow parking’ in outdoor casks on site: both are vulnerable to accidents, attacks, and natural disasters, as shown so clearly by the Fukushima Nuclear Catastrophe. If a cask wears down from its exposure to the elements over time, not to mention the thermally hot high-level radioactivity contained within it, no safe, sure plan yet exists to transfer the waste inside it to a new cask.

While failing to advocate a cessation of production until a radioactive waste disposal solution is found, the DOE has also consistently ignored the only reasonable interim option, one that is technically feasible and avoids the need to repeatedly move the waste vast distances to unwelcome destinations. This is Hardened On-Site Storage or HOSS, endorsed for the past decade by scientists and more than 200 environmental advocacy groups around the country.  HOSS calls for emptying the high-level radioactive waste storage pools and placing the irradiated rods in high quality outdoor casks fortified by thick bunkers and berms. Safeguards, security, and monitoring would be designed to protect against leaks, accidents and attacks.

HOSS would buy time, necessary while we wait to see if scientific advances will ever deliver a safe, secure and enduring radioactive waste solution. But until such a time, generating more waste, and rushing it onto the roads, rails, and waterways, bound for parking lot dumps that would require the doubling of transport risks, or into repositories that likely would not shield their deadly cargo for the sufficient time while the isotopes and their containers decay, is a reckless decision that leaves a deadly legacy for future generations.”

--30--

Kevin Kamps is the Radioactive Waste Specialist at Beyond Nuclear, a Takoma Park, Maryland-based safe energy advocacy organization.

Kevin Kamps
Radioactive Waste Watchdog
Beyond Nuclear
6930 Carroll Avenue, Suite 400
Takoma Park, Maryland 20912
Office: (301) 270-2209 ext. 1
Cell: (240) 462-3216
Fax: (301) 270-4000
kevin@beyondnuclear.org
www.beyondnuclear.org

Beyond Nuclear aims to educate and activate the public about the connections between nuclear power and nuclear weapons and the need to abandon both to safeguard our future. Beyond Nuclear advocates for an energy future that is sustainable, benign and democratic.

Update on January 26, 2012 by admin

The Alliance for Nuclear Accountability, of which Beyond Nuclear is a member group, issued the following media release regarding the BRC's final report:

BLUE RIBBON NUCLEAR WASTE COMMISSION FAILS TO CHART SAFE, PUBLICLY ACCEPTABLE NUCLEAR WASTE PLAN

The Blue Ribbon Commission on America’s Nuclear Future report released today received mixed reviews from groups that monitor sites where large quantities of radioactive waste are stored. The Alliance for Nuclear Accountability (ANA) said major flaws in the report include the Commission’s “failure to advocate prompt removal of commercial spent fuel from reactor cooling pools with placement in hardened On-Site Storage (HOSS) to safeguard commercial spent fuel at nuclear power plants.” ANA and hundreds of community groups had told the Commission that HOSS could protect the heavily reactive material for the decades needed to develop a scientifically sound and publicly acceptable waste disposal program.

 “The Commission’s decision to support consolidated interim storage at the expense of HOSS continues decades of policy failure in this area,” explained ANA Director Susan Gordon. “The reality, which the Commission recognizes and the nuclear industry is pursuing, is that reactor sites must store their spent fuel for decades. Instead of pursuing centralized facilities, on-site storage should be improved to protect public health and the environment. Centralized storage would leave thousands of tons of waste at operating power plants. It would also create even more storage sites and endanger millions living along transportation routes.  At the same time, it would increase the risk that consolidated fuel will be reprocessed.”

ANA Program Director Katherine Fuchs continued, “Just as power plants must safely store their spent fuel, Department of Energy facilities must safely store high-level waste. The recommendation to send those dangerous materials  to a non-existent disposal site ignores the fact that those wastes are not ready for transportation.  Funds should be spent to solidify those wastes and provide robust storage.”

“We are disappointed in some Commission recommendations. We are not surprised, however, since none of the commissioners represent communities downstream or downwind of major nuclear weapons sites or nuclear power plants.  No one on the commission has even worked with such groups, as we have pointed out since the Commission was formed,” said Don Hancock, Director of Southwest Research and Information Center’s Nuclear Waste Safety Program. 

ANA does support the Commission’s recommendation not to pursue commercial waste reprocessing. “The Commission understands that reprocessing is prohibitively expensive, creates new waste streams, and poses a nuclear proliferation risk” said ANA’s Nonproliferation Policy Director Tom Clements. “In these austere times, we shouldn’t even invest in reprocessing research. In these austere times, the government shouldn't even invest in reprocessing research. Instead it must focus on safer and more secure storage of spent fuel at existing waste storage facilities.”

The Alliance for Nuclear Accountability (ANA) is a 25 year old national network of three-dozen grassroots and national groups representing the concerns of communities near U.S. nuclear weapons sites that are directly affected by 65 years of nuclear weapons production and waste generation.  

Local Contacts: Susan Gordon, ANA Director (NM): 505-577-8438Tom Clements, ANA Nonproliferation Policy Director (SC): 803-240-7268Don Hancock, Southwest Research and Information Center Nuclear Waste Safety Program Director, (NM): 505-262-1862Beatrice Brailsford, Snake River Alliance Program Director (ID):208-233-7212