Uranium cleanup still hazy / Wishful Thinking on Nuclear Power
December 26, 2012 5:00 am •
WASHINGTON -- For seven weeks this fall, workers and scientists labored from 7:30 a.m. to 5 p.m., six days a week, digging up and hauling off thousands of cubic yards of uranium-tainted soil in Cove, Ariz., and sealing what remained.
The $1.5 million project by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency was an emergency measure to clean up two former uranium transfer stations because of their proximity to a day school, a house -- which sat on top of one station -- and a highway on the Navajo Nation.
The goal was to remove the immediate threat of uranium contamination, stabilize the soil and keep uranium from becoming windborne.
It's a stopgap measure on two tainted sites among at least 500 -- possibly more than 2,000 -- that pose a threat to people on the Navajo reservation that spans parts of Utah, New Mexico and northern Arizona.
More than six decades after the first mines opened on Navajo lands, it is still unclear how many sites need to be cleaned up, how many people may be suffering from the effects of uranium exposure and what can be done to contain all the hazardous material in these communities -- if that's even possible.
What everyone can agree on is that overcoming the legacy of uranium mining will take a long, long time.
"They say it's a widow community," Eugene Esplain said of Cove, where this fall's cleanup took place. "So many men have died from the impacts of uranium mining."
AN INVISIBLE THREAT
Esplain, who works for the Navajo Nation Environmental Protection Agency, said he drank from a uranium-contaminated well when he was a student at the Cove Day School, which is near Transfer Station 1.
"They shut it (the well) down, but that was after I left the school," he said.
Families that lived close to the uranium mines and the secondary sites where uranium was kept or processed - like the Cove transfer stations - breathed in radioactive dust in the air and ingested it in tainted food and water. Some Navajo used uranium-tainted material to build houses, although many of those structures have since been torn down, according to the U.S. EPA.
The contaminated dirt at the transfer sites is not easily discernable without the use of detection tools, said Maggie Waldon, EPA on-scene coordinator for the Cove cleanup.
http://azdailysun.com/news/local/state-and-regional/uranium-cleanup-still-hazy/article_8bc72aae-7aaf-54e9-9dd4-76d38c55938f.html
By Dr. Dale Dewar, The StarPhoenix, December 21, 2012 2:02 AM
Dewar is executive director of the group Physicians for Global Survival.
In the article Cameco CEO bullish on nuclear future (SP, Nov. 30), Tim Gitzel presents a report of the nuclear industry that is very much at odds with the World Nuclear Industry Status Report 2012 and the International Atomic Energy Agency.
While Cameco’s chief executive is well paid to sell the industry, apparently being factual is unnecessary.
Gitzel says there will be 80 new nuclear reactors online in 2021. To make that a reality, there would need to be a lot more groundbreaking today. Of the 59 reactors currently listed as being under construction, nine have been on the list for more than 20 years, four for 10 years and, according to the IAEA, 43 are not yet close to an official startup date.
Some of Gitzel’s figures are wishful thinking. He says that four new plants are being built in the United States. In fact, there are no new plants being built south of the border. In addition to U.S. cancellations, Brazil, France and India have cancelled their new builds and the Netherlands may follow suit.
And China may want to have 26 under construction, but not a single construction site has yet been opened. Constructions in Bulgaria and Japan have been abandoned, and the Finnish Okiiluoto 3 site is so delayed and so far over-budget that it is in jeopardy.
The nuclear industry has been its own worst enemy.
Adding to this litany of faults is the failure of the industry to convince any insurance agency to cover its liabilities in the case of an accident.
When things go wrong - as they did at Three Mile Island, Chornobyl and Fukushima - they go really wrong. The toll to human lives and the environment is astronomical, cleanup impossible, and financial costs beyond belief. The radiation that boils the water that creates the power is messy.
It gradually destroys pipes and containment vessels, and finally clogs up the fuel itself.
Seventy years of wishing (and trying) has not harnessed the atom or even come close. It cannot even be contained. Furthermore, nuclear power is like building an outhouse without putting a hole under it - there is no place for the waste to go.
Each previous accident resulted from entirely different sequences of human and technical failures. Accidents will continue to occur, especially as older plants are being refurbished. Costs are high. Builds and repairs, refurbishment and refuelling cannot be completed within - or even close to - estimated times, and accidents are devastating.
Factor in the mining, transportation, carbon costs of construction, security, waste management and decommissioning all at the greatest cost of any source and nuclear power is only green at best when it is up and running at 90 per cent or better efficiency a figure rarely reached by most reactors.
The cost to our pocketbooks and to the environment is incredibly important. At a time when Saskatoon city council is trading off improved bicycle paths for fixing potholes in streets, doesn’t it make sense to invest in conservation and sustainable energy sources?
http://www.worldnuclearreport.org/spip.php?article129
The goal was to remove the immediate threat of uranium contamination, stabilize the soil and keep uranium from becoming windborne.
It's a stopgap measure on two tainted sites among at least 500 -- possibly more than 2,000 -- that pose a threat to people on the Navajo reservation that spans parts of Utah, New Mexico and northern Arizona.
More than six decades after the first mines opened on Navajo lands, it is still unclear how many sites need to be cleaned up, how many people may be suffering from the effects of uranium exposure and what can be done to contain all the hazardous material in these communities -- if that's even possible.
What everyone can agree on is that overcoming the legacy of uranium mining will take a long, long time.
"They say it's a widow community," Eugene Esplain said of Cove, where this fall's cleanup took place. "So many men have died from the impacts of uranium mining."
AN INVISIBLE THREAT
Esplain, who works for the Navajo Nation Environmental Protection Agency, said he drank from a uranium-contaminated well when he was a student at the Cove Day School, which is near Transfer Station 1.
"They shut it (the well) down, but that was after I left the school," he said.
Families that lived close to the uranium mines and the secondary sites where uranium was kept or processed - like the Cove transfer stations - breathed in radioactive dust in the air and ingested it in tainted food and water. Some Navajo used uranium-tainted material to build houses, although many of those structures have since been torn down, according to the U.S. EPA.
The contaminated dirt at the transfer sites is not easily discernable without the use of detection tools, said Maggie Waldon, EPA on-scene coordinator for the Cove cleanup.
http://azdailysun.com/news/local/state-and-regional/uranium-cleanup-still-hazy/article_8bc72aae-7aaf-54e9-9dd4-76d38c55938f.html
Wishful Thinking on Nuclear Power
Friday 21 December 2012
Dewar is executive director of the group Physicians for Global Survival.
In the article Cameco CEO bullish on nuclear future (SP, Nov. 30), Tim Gitzel presents a report of the nuclear industry that is very much at odds with the World Nuclear Industry Status Report 2012 and the International Atomic Energy Agency.
While Cameco’s chief executive is well paid to sell the industry, apparently being factual is unnecessary.
Gitzel says there will be 80 new nuclear reactors online in 2021. To make that a reality, there would need to be a lot more groundbreaking today. Of the 59 reactors currently listed as being under construction, nine have been on the list for more than 20 years, four for 10 years and, according to the IAEA, 43 are not yet close to an official startup date.
Some of Gitzel’s figures are wishful thinking. He says that four new plants are being built in the United States. In fact, there are no new plants being built south of the border. In addition to U.S. cancellations, Brazil, France and India have cancelled their new builds and the Netherlands may follow suit.
And China may want to have 26 under construction, but not a single construction site has yet been opened. Constructions in Bulgaria and Japan have been abandoned, and the Finnish Okiiluoto 3 site is so delayed and so far over-budget that it is in jeopardy.
The nuclear industry has been its own worst enemy.
Adding to this litany of faults is the failure of the industry to convince any insurance agency to cover its liabilities in the case of an accident.
When things go wrong - as they did at Three Mile Island, Chornobyl and Fukushima - they go really wrong. The toll to human lives and the environment is astronomical, cleanup impossible, and financial costs beyond belief. The radiation that boils the water that creates the power is messy.
It gradually destroys pipes and containment vessels, and finally clogs up the fuel itself.
Seventy years of wishing (and trying) has not harnessed the atom or even come close. It cannot even be contained. Furthermore, nuclear power is like building an outhouse without putting a hole under it - there is no place for the waste to go.
Each previous accident resulted from entirely different sequences of human and technical failures. Accidents will continue to occur, especially as older plants are being refurbished. Costs are high. Builds and repairs, refurbishment and refuelling cannot be completed within - or even close to - estimated times, and accidents are devastating.
Factor in the mining, transportation, carbon costs of construction, security, waste management and decommissioning all at the greatest cost of any source and nuclear power is only green at best when it is up and running at 90 per cent or better efficiency a figure rarely reached by most reactors.
The cost to our pocketbooks and to the environment is incredibly important. At a time when Saskatoon city council is trading off improved bicycle paths for fixing potholes in streets, doesn’t it make sense to invest in conservation and sustainable energy sources?
http://www.worldnuclearreport.org/spip.php?article129
