Archives: News

Texas bans storage of highly radioactive waste, but a West Texas facility may get a license from the feds anyway

Sophia Meryn

The new law may soon be in conflict with federal regulators. A decision from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission on one company’s license could come as early as Monday.

BY ERIN DOUGLAS 

Texas bans storage of highly radioactive waste

Gov. Greg Abbott on Thursday night signed a bill into law that attempts to block a plan to store highly radioactive nuclear waste at a site in West Texas.

House Bill 7 effectively bans highly radioactive materials from coming to Texas, targeting one company’s plan to build such a facility near the New Mexico border in Andrews County.

But, the new state law may soon be in conflict with federal regulators. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission is advancing the company’s application for a license to allow the high-level nuclear waste to Texas, and a decision from the federal agency could come as early as Monday, a spokesperson with the commission said.

For years, environmental and consumer advocates have protested a proposal by a West Texas company, Waste Control Specialists, to build with a partner an interim storage site for high-level nuclear waste, which is mostly spent fuel rods from nuclear power plants. Waste Control Specialists has been disposing of the nation’s low-level nuclear waste, including tools, building materials and protective clothing exposed to radioactivity, for a decade in Andrews County.
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More nuclear waste may be heading to WIPP on US 285

Sophia Meryn

[WIPP is the world’s only operating underground nuclear waste dump. It is limited to nuclear weapons waste, but the federal government is trying to expand WIPP and break its promises and social contract with New Mexicans.

Help Us STOP FOREVER WIPP-Waste Isolation Pilot Plant. The nuclear waste dump is permitted to operate until 2024, but the Federal government wants to expand the amount and types of waste allowed with NO end date.

We need your help to protect New Mexico!]

“At a recent Santa Fe County Town Hall, activist Cindy Weehler of 285 ALL said the U.S. Department of Energy made it clear that it’s going to expand its nuclear waste program, she said. She said she’s concerned about the new type of radioactive waste that would be traveling through the county, which would be diluted plutonium, instead of contaminated items.”

BY ISABELLA ALVES / JOURNAL NORTH abqjournal.com Copyright © 2021 Albuquerque Journal

Spanning the length of the state, U.S. Highway 285 is a major thoroughfare for truck transports and other traffic. This busy highway, nicknamed “Death Highway” due to the number of fatal accidents on it, may get busier.

Concerned citizens in Santa Fe County recently called out the U.S. Department of Energy’s Waste Isolation Pilot Plant for expanding its mission in a permit renewal application to include more nuclear waste being shipped along the 285 corridor.

Part of Highway 285 goes along the southern edge of the city of Santa Fe, and local activists are calling on local and federal leaders to halt this increase in nuclear waste transportation.

The permit application is requesting to add two nuclear waste storage panels to WIPP that would increase the waste volume in these areas.

ORIGINAL ARTICLE

Montco offering potassium iodide tablets in the event of a nuclear emergency

Sophia Meryn

Radioactive iodine, a contaminant that could be released in the event of a nuclear accident, can increase the risk of thyroid cancer. Potassium iodide (KI) can help protect the thyroid gland against radioactive iodine.

By Maria Pulcinella whyy.org September 8, 2021

The Limerick Generating Station is pictured in Montgomery County. (Exelon)

If you live, work, or attend school within a 10-mile radius of the Limerick nuclear power plant, local health officials have a freebie for you — albeit not a sexy one.

Montgomery County’s Office of Public Health will be handing out potassium iodide tablets to those in close proximity to the Limerick Generating Station.

The distribution is part of a statewide emergency preparedness effort — the Limerick site is one of Pennsylvania’s four active nuclear power plants.

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We could all learn a lesson on disarmament from Archbishop Hunthausen

Sophia Meryn

By Leonard Eiger nrconline.com

Nagasaki, Japan, is shown four years after an atomic bomb was detonated over the city Aug. 9, 1945. “Hiroshima challenged my faith as a Christian in a way I am only now beginning to understand,” the late Archbishop Raymond G. Hunthausen of Seattle said in 1981. “That awful event and its successor at Nagasaki sank into my soul, as they have in fact sunk into the souls of all of us, whether we recognize it or not.” (CNS/USA TODAY NETWORK via Reuters/Milwaukee Journal Sentinel files)

“I am grateful for having been invited to speak to you on disarmament because it forces me to a kind of personal disarmament. This is a subject I have thought about and prayed over for many years. I can recall vividly hearing the news of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima in 1945. I was deeply shocked. I could not then put into words the shock I felt from the news that a city of hundreds of thousands of people had been devastated by a single bomb. Hiroshima challenged my faith as a Christian in a way I am only now beginning to understand. That awful event and its successor at Nagasaki sank into my soul, as they have in fact sunk into the souls of all of us, whether we recognize it or not.”

Those are the opening lines of the “Faith and Disarmament” speech Seattle Archbishop Raymond Hunthausen delivered on June 12, 1981. Hunthausen had become active in resistance to the U.S. stockpiling of nuclear weapons and the new Trident submarine-based nuclear weapons system, which included the Bangor Trident submarine base in Puget Sound just 20 miles west of Seattle.

In that 1981 speech, Hunthausen referred to the Trident submarines based there as “the Auschwitz of Puget Sound.” In context, it was both a profound and prophetic statement of fact.

As Hunthausen said, “Trident is the Auschwitz of Puget Sound because of the massive cooperation required in our area — the enormous sinful complicity that is necessary — for the eventual incineration of millions of our brother and sister human beings.”

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Stop Nuclear Waste Site Expansion Before it’s Too Late

Sophia Meryn

John Watson-Jones, Letters to the Editor, santafenewmexican.com

Many New Mexicans are aware that Waste Isolation Pilot Project in Southern New Mexico is the nation’s sole repository for radioactive weapons waste, but did you know that WIPP has surpassed its authorized capacity and that the federal Department of Energy has given it a new mission: to build a new shaft and more than double its capacity?

The resulting increased amount of radioactive plutonium being transported through the Santa Fe area should worry us all. You might assume that nuclear experts have the storage and transportation situation well in hand, but the Los Alamos National Laboratory and WIPP have dismal safety records.

If the powder form of plutonium being carried by tractor-trailers on N.M. 599, Interstate 25, and U.S. 285 is accidentally released into the air, even minuscule doses are 100 percent carcinogenic, especially to children, and cleanup is virtually impossible. And it is our local jurisdictions that respond first to highway accidents. To better understand the danger, see stopforeverwipp.org.

Fortunately there is something citizens can to do try to stop this dangerous expansion. Contact Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham, who has to approve such a change. Tell her to tell the Energy Department to stop digging a fifth shaft at WIPP. You can use governor.state.nm.us/contact-the-governor.

John Watson-Jones

Galisteo

ORIGINAL ARTICLE

The Secret ‘White Trains’ That Carried Nuclear Weapons Around the U.S.

Sophia Meryn

For as long as the United States has had nuclear weapons, officials have struggled with how to transport the destructive technology.

“The epicenter of nuclear transit was the Pantex Plant, about 17 miles outside of downtown Amarillo, Texas, a maze-like complex of dozens of buildings located on 10,000 acres of land. Amarillo was the final destination for almost all of America’s nuclear trains and the Pantex Plant was the nation’s only assembly point for nuclear weapons, a role it maintains to this day.“

BRIANNA NOFIL | UPDATED: MAY 6, 2021, ORIGINAL: MAY 31, 2018 history.com

At first glance, the job posting looks like a standard help-wanted ad for a cross-country trucker. Up to three weeks a month on the road in an 18-wheel tractor-trailer, traveling through the contiguous 48 states. Risks include inclement weather, around-the-clock travel, and potentially adverse environmental conditions. But then the fine print: Candidates should have “experience in performing high-risk armed tactical security work…and maneuvering against a hostile adversary.”

The U.S. government is hiring “Nuclear Materials Couriers.” Since the 1950s, this team of federal agents, most of them ex-military, has been tasked with ferrying America’s roughly 6,000 nuclear warheads and extensive supply of nuclear materials across the roads and highways of the United States. America’s nuclear facilities are spread out throughout the country, on over 2.4 million acres of federal real estate, overseen by the Department of Energy (DOE)—a labyrinth of a system the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists called “highly scattered and fragmented…with few enforceable rules.”

Some sites are for assembly, some are for active weapons, some are for chemicals, some are for mechanical parts. What this means in practice is that nuclear materials have to move around—a lot.

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Staffers see little interest or action on nuclear waste issues

Sophia Meryn

“The Town of Vernon supports a repository site or sites under the following conditions: Approval by the Federal Government, DOE, Congress, and the NRC. Deemed/tested safe by engineering and environmental experts by known and reasonable standards. Received approval/consent from the state, territory, town, or country chosen to be the repository/repositories. This includes one single repository, multiple repositories, or interim storage,”

By Susan Smallheer, Brattleboro Reformer | August 24, 2021, reformer.com

Demolition of the stack that handled the release of radioactive gases from the Vermont Yankee nuclear power plant site was completed last month.
Photo provided by NorthStar

BRATTLEBORO — The 117th Congress has introduced few bills this session dealing with nuclear power and nuclear waste, staffers for Vermont’s congressional delegation told a Vermont committee studying federal nuclear waste policies Monday.

The committee, an arm of the Vermont Nuclear Decommissioning Citizens Advisory Panel, is investigating whether it should take a stand on what happens to the high-level radioactive waste currently stored at the Vermont Yankee site in about four-dozen stainless steel and concrete casks.

Two companies, including the parent company of NorthStar Decommissioning, which owns the Vermont Yankee plant and is demolishing it, want to build interim storage facilities for high-level waste — one in west Texas and the other in New Mexico. Interim storage would hold radioactive waste until a federal depository is built.

The two congressional staffers who met with the committee, Haley Pero, from Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., office, and Thea Wurzburg of Rep. Peter Welch, D-Vt.’s office, both said they have seen little interest from the Biden administration in taking on the difficult issues of nuclear power and its nuclear waste.

The administration of former President Donald Trump tried to revive funding for the Yucca Mountain high-level radioactive waste facility in Nevada, but made no progress, Pero said. Not as many bills have come up this year, Pero said.

Congress’ attention is elsewhere, the two staffers said.

The Vermont panel last year backed off an earlier endorsement of interim waste storage, like the facilities proposed by NorthStar in Texas and Holtec International in New Mexico.

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Petition calls for A-bomb victims to be remembered during Olympics

Sophia Meryn

“The moment of silence will also express a commitment to making world peace a reality through the abolition of nuclear weapons.” 

 KYODO NEWS – Jul 22, 2021 | kyodonews.net

A former mayor of Hiroshima has launched an online petition calling for a moment of silence to be observed during the Tokyo Olympics at the time the atomic bomb was dropped on his western Japan city on Aug. 6.

Tadatoshi Akiba, 78, launched the Change.org campaign on the day International Olympic Committee chief Thomas Bach visited Hiroshima on July 16, amid opposition from some A-bomb survivors who said the visit ahead of the Tokyo Games starting Friday was politically motivated.

“He should have no objections to how important it is to spread the message of Hiroshima and Nagasaki to the world,” Akiba said, noting that Bach came to Hiroshima in spite of the coronavirus pandemic and opposition from many people.

The petition proposes that athletes and people from around the globe observe a moment of silence at 8:15 a.m. on Aug. 6 to remember not only those who perished in the atomic bombings of the two cities, but all victims of war.
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Carbon-Free Power Project: Don’t Continue To Delay The Inevitable

Sophia Meryn

“Disclosure of these would go a long way toward improving the credibility of NuScale, UAMPS, and the community boards who are putting their own credibility on the line by subscribing to this project.

We must not forget that our ratepayer and taxpayer monies are being used to underwrite this ambitious project. We are owed transparency in return.”

BY GEORGE CHANDLER, Los Alamos

Los Alamos County Councilors,

I hope you will choose to take this unexpected off-ramp rather than continue to delay the inevitable.  The UAMPS CFPP project looks to be slowly dying, apparently because not enough communities believe it to be a viable project, or perhaps because of a lack of transparency.  If you choose to continue, then you can make this a better project.

I submitted the questions below to the Utilities Board prior to their July 21 meeting.  The Director of the Utilities Department asked CFPP to address these questions at the July 21 meeting, and Mr. Baker and Mr. Hughes did address most of them during their presentation and under questioning by Ms. Walker.  Their responses were  incomplete, contradictory, and generally unsatisfying.  The three of most  importance are the Economic Competitiveness Test (ECT), the work on the reactor core being done by Fromatome and Enfission, and the rather curious explanations of the 54% change in output with no design changes.

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Eastern Idaho nuclear reactor project downsized

Sophia Meryn

Others who support the project worry about its incomplete financial support. All but one council member that day voted to continue Idaho Fall’s 5 MW commitment. But two voiced direct concern over the project not having full subscriptions. Council member Jim Francis was the sole nay vote.

“If this project works out, it’ll be great. I just wish there was a slight bit more security,” he told the Post Register in a phone interview.

BY: KYLE PFANNENSTIEL

A project to build a first-of-its-kind nuclear reactor in eastern Idaho has been significantly downsized.

The initial plan for the Carbon-Free Power Project was to build 12 interconnected miniature nuclear reactor modules to produce a total of 600 megawatts. It would be the first small modular reactor in the United States. After the company tasked with manufacturing the plants said it could make the reactors more power-efficient, planners reduced the project down to six module reactors that could produce 462 MW total.

“After a lot of due diligence and discussions with members, it was decided a 6-module plant producing 462 MW would be just the right size for (Utah Associated Municipal Power Systems) members and outside utilities that want to join,” said LaVarr Webb, UAMPS spokesman.

The decision was made in late June, Webb said.

The project between UAMPS and Portland-based reactor producer NuScale received $1.4 billion from the U.S. Department of Energy last year. The reactor is planned to be built on the DOE’s 890-square mile desert site west of Idaho Falls at Idaho National Laboratory. The plant is expected to be running by 2029.

“A 6-module plant allows us to get to full subscription faster, but we would have reached full subscription regardless,” Webb said of the project’s ability to achieve full financial commitment from partners. “Before joining a next-generation, first-of-a-kind nuclear plant, utilities obviously want to be certain the plant is feasible and will be built. Now that we have made significant progress, including a large cost-share award from the Department of Energy, and NuScale has received design approval from the (Nuclear Regulatory Commission), we’re seeing more and more utilities express interest in the plant.”

So far, Webb said 28 participants have committed to a total of 103 MW. But, he said, “all are currently evaluating whether to increase or decrease” their commitments. He also said “a number of utilities outside of UAMPS are considering” making a commitment.

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Next Steps Following Public Hearing on New Shaft for WIPP Expansion

Sophia Meryn

Last week the New Mexico Environment Department virtual public hearing on the new shaft to expand the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) took place over four days, from Monday through Thursday.  The public comment period ended on Friday.

[A special shout out to all those who submitted public comments.  THANK YOU!!!] 

The hearing process continues until at least October with the filing of post-hearing documents by the Parties supporting the expansion, including the Hazardous Waste Bureau of the Environment Department https://www.env.nm.gov/hazardous-waste/ , the Department of Energy (DOE), and Nuclear Waste Partnership, LLC, the contractors at WIPP.  https://wipp.energy.gov/

The Parties opposing the expansion are:  Southwest Research and Information Center http://www.sric.org/ ; CCNS http://nuclearactive.org/ ; Nuclear Watch New Mexico https://nukewatch.org/ ; and individuals, including longtime activist Deborah Reade; former Environment Department Regulator for WIPP, Steve Zappe; and a former Environmental Evaluation Group (EEG) scientist, George Anastas.  Dr. James Channell, another former EEG scientist, testified in opposition to the new shaft and WIPP’s physical expansion.  http://www.sric.org/nuclear/eeg.php

CCNS anticipates the Hearing Officer’s report and the Parties’ comments will end up on the Environment Department Secretary’s desk in mid-September.

Read the whole story and more at nuclearactive.org

ILHAN OMAR SIGNS ICAN PLEDGE

Sophia Meryn

April 30, 2021: Representative Ilhan Omar today submitted her signed ICAN Pledge to ICAN, becoming the eleventh member of the US Congress to sign the Pledge. Rep. Omar represents Minnesota’s 5th Congressional District in the US House of Representatives. Rep Omar also co-sponsor the H.R.2850 Nuclear Abolition and Economic Conversion Act of 2021 that Representative Eleanor Holmes Norton reintroduced on April 26, 2021.

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Sleepwalking into Nuclear War?

Sophia Meryn

“People like to think that every nuclear-armed country has only one “button”, with which a president could consciously choose to start a nuclear war, after careful deliberation. But in fact there are thousands of people in the world controlling different parts of different arsenals who could independently initiate a nuclear war.” – Caitlin Johnstone 

JONATHAN POWER | indepthnews.net

LUND, Sweden (IDN) — Last week on Tuesday (April 20), US Strategic Command, the part of the military responsible for nuclear weaponry and its use, posted an official Tweet that read, “We must account for the possibility of conflict leading to conditions which could very rapidly drive an adversary to consider nuclear use as their least bad option”.

This came just as Russia was pulling back its large deployment of troops on Ukraine’s border which, in turn, was triggered in part by President Joseph Biden’s decision to ship for the first time sophisticated weapons to Ukraine.

The crisis has now passed but the lesson lingers. Arguably we are closer to war with Russia than at any time since the Cuban missile crisis of 1962 (which I wrote about last week, April 20).

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Offline Iowa Nuclear Plant Eyed as Site of Solar Project

Sophia Meryn

AP News | apnews.com

CEDAR RAPIDS, Iowa (AP) — A decommissioned eastern Iowa nuclear plant could become the site of a new massive solar energy project.

NextEra Energy of Florida on Tuesday laid out plans in a meeting with nearby landowners to build a solar farm near the now-idle Duane Arnold Energy Center in Palo, The Gazette of Cedar Rapids reported.

The company said the project could bring in a $700 million capital investment and about 300 construction jobs. The solar farm would stretch across 3,500 acres near the plant and would produce up to 690 megawatts of solar energy — more than the nuclear plant had generated.

“We’re also hoping to accompany that solar project with up to 60 megawatts of AC-coupled batteries,” project manager Kimberly Dickey said in the meeting. Battery storage allows a company to store energy for use during peak energy-use times.

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Scotland Reaches Green Landmark – Scotland generated 97.4% of its electricity demand from renewables last year

Sophia Meryn

By: Juan Cole | scheerpost.com

In 2011, Scotland’s government, urged on by visionaries like Richard Dixon, set itself the ambitious goal to get 100% of its electricity from renewables by 2020. At that time, it only only got about a fourth from clean energy sources, and a lot of that was hydro.

The report card is in for 2020 and Scotland generated 97.4% of its electricity demand from renewables last year, just a whisker less than the 100% goal.

Scotland will host the COP26 climate summit in Glasgow in a few months, and is well placed to assert climate leadership.

Scotland no longer has a coal plant, and its one natural gas plant is under-utilized and seems likely to close in a few years.

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DOE’s NNSA Reveals it’s Out of Money. Flat Broke. Busted. Nothing Left for Beneficial Nuclear Non-Proliferation Program to Convert Reactor from Weapon-Grade Uranium Fuel

Sophia Meryn

By: SRS Watch | srswatch.com

The U.S. Department of Energy’s National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) has revealed that it has spent all of our money. Busted flat. Nothing left. Nada. Zilch. Nichts.

Well, that’s what it seems like at the NNSA has notified GE Hitachi Nuclear Energy that there are no funds available to convert a test reactor in Vallecitos, California from weapon-grade uranium (highly enriched uranium, HEU) to low-enriched uranium (LEU), as part of an nuclear non-proliferation effort.

On March 25, 2021, NNSA told GE Hitac hi Nuclear Energy: “you are hereby notified that Department of Energy funding will not be available in fiscal year 2021 to complete the conversion of NTR to LEU fuel.” And GE subsequently told the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission that ” DOE funding is not currently available for conversion of the NTR fuel.”

See: “GE Hitachi Nuclear Energy Americas, LLC – Annual Statement of Non-availability of Federal Government Funding for Conversion from HEU to LEU for VNC Nuclear Test Reactor (NTR) at https://adamswebsearch2.nrc.gov/webSearch2/main.jsp?AccessionNumber=ML21084A808

BUT WAIT!  NNSA continues to front for boosters and contractors engaged in project to convert the abandoned plutonium fuel (MOX) plant at the Savannah River Site into the SRS Plutonium Bomb Plant (PBP) at a cost of $4.6 billion (add higher number if you wish) by 2030 (add any date you wish).  So, there seems to be money available for projects dangerous to our national security – making plutonium pits for unneeded and provocative new nuclear weapons – but not a penny left to get HEU out of commerce. This confirms that the priorities of NNSA are totally screwed up and that it’s placing contractor enrichment and parochial politics above national security.  Congress must make sure that the HEU conversion program is fully funded and that the Ground Based Strategic Deterrent (with W87-1 warhead) and the new SLBM (with W93 warhead) – the first new weapons to get new plutonium pits – are terminated and funded halted.  As in nada, zilch, nothing.

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People downwind of atomic blasts renew push for US payout

Sophia Meryn

“Officials say the team at Sandia is working with researchers from Australia as well as particle-technology researchers who are building a second concentrating solar power facility in Saudi Arabia to test variants of key components.”

By: The Associated Press / March 24, 2021 | apnews.com

The first atomic bomb test was conducted at Alamogordo, New Mexico, July 16, 1945. (AP / US Army)
The first atomic bomb test was conducted at Alamogordo, New Mexico, July 16, 1945. (AP / US Army)

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. (AP) — In the desert northeast of Las Vegas, residents living along the Nevada-Arizona border would gather on their front porches for bomb parties or ride horses into the fields to watch as the U.S. government conducted atomic tests during a Cold War-era race to build up the nation’s nuclear arsenal.

About 100 of those tests were aboveground, and U.S. Rep. Greg Stanton of Arizona testified during a congressional subcommittee hearing Wednesday that residents at the time marveled at the massive orange mushroom clouds billowing in the distance.

“They had no idea. They were never told that they were being exposed to dangerous cancer-causing radiation,” Stanton said. “As a direct result of the radiation exposure from these tests, thousands of Arizonans have suffered from cancer, entire families have suffered from cancer and far too many have died.”

He and others testified as part of a renewed push for compensation from the U.S. government following uranium mining and nuclear testing carried out during the Cold War.

ORIGINAL ARTICLE

Sandia Labs to build solar power testing center in New Mexico

Sophia Meryn

“Officials say the team at Sandia is working with researchers from Australia as well as particle-technology researchers who are building a second concentrating solar power facility in Saudi Arabia to test variants of key components.”

By: The Associated Press / March 26, 2021 | kob.com

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. (AP) — Sandia National Laboratories has been awarded a $25 million contract to build, test and operate a new solar power test facility on its campus in New Mexico.

Using a concentrated beam of sunlight to heat up sand-like particles, lab officials say the system will be able to produce thermal energy for thousands of hours and will have the capacity to store six hours of energy. This heat can be used to spin a turbine or power an engine to generate electricity.

The contract was announced Thursday by the lab and the U.S. Energy Department. The goal of the federal agency is to develop technology that can make concentrating solar power plants more reliable and easier to build using fewer high-cost materials so that they can be more widely commercialized.

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Transcript of interview with US Secretary of State Antony Blinken

Sophia Meryn

Washington’s top diplomat holds roundtable with Japanese media in Tokyo

By: ERI SUGIURA| asia.nikkei.com

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken speaks to reporters during an online group interview in Tokyo on Wednesday. (Photo courtesy of U.S. Embassy)

TOKYO — U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken held a virtual roundtable with Nikkei Asia and other Japanese media in Tokyo on Wednesday, a day after he and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin met for “two-plus-two” talks with Japanese counterparts Toshimitsu Motegi and Nobuo Kishi.

Here is an edited transcript of the group interview with Blinken:

— Opening remarks

The partnership between the United States and Japan is absolutely vital. I think it’s vital to our country’s respective citizens to the region, and in so many ways to the world. It really starts with our common commitment to democracy. And I think that’s especially significant today because democracy is under challenge and under threat in ways that it hasn’t been before, certainly not in recent years, particularly from autocratic countries were on the rise around the world.

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Links between Box Elder landfill, California business charged in radioactive waste scandal emerge

Sophia Meryn

“[Bradley] Angel, with Green Action, says his organization is relieved that Tetra Tech EC has been taken off the Hunter’s Point cleanup but still worries about all projects Tetra Tech is involved in.

“Promontory Point Resource’s application in Utah stresses the convenient value of superfund cleanup sites in the San Francisco Bay Area. Tetra Tech, which designed the Promontory landfill, has also been deeply invested in other northern California superfund projects. Besides Hunter’s Point, documents from the Environmental Protection Agency and news accounts show the company is actively involved in cleanups at other Bay Area superfunds like the Alameda Naval Air Station and McLellan Air Force Base. All these sites contain radioactive contaminants.”

By: Eric Peterson / Special to the Standard-Examiner | standard.net March 19, 2021

Promontory Point Resources landfill is again seeking out-of-state waste and is eyeing superfund sites in northern California for waste to bring in. Photo supplied, The Box Elder News Journal

After sitting empty for years on the north shore of the Great Salt Lake in Box Elder County, Promontory Point Resources is trying once again to receive out-of-state waste for its landfill after abandoning a previous attempt in 2018.

In its new Class V landfill application with the state Department of Environmental Quality, the company talks about the lucrative market in contaminated soils from superfund cleanup sites in northern California.

“The full market demand for excavated soil disposal from just counties around the San Francisco Bay appears to have an average in the range of 250,000 to 350,000 tons per year,” the document states.

The report does not mention many sites by name, although they are very well known in California.

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Cap on Trident nuclear warhead stockpile to rise by more than 40%

Sophia Meryn

Boris Johnson announcement on Tuesday will end 30 years of gradual disarmament

By: Tricia Ennis | 13abc.com

The increased limit, from 180 to 260 warheads, is contained in a leaked copy of the integrated review of defence and foreign policy. Photograph: Tam McDonald/MoD/EPA

Britain is lifting the cap on the number of Trident nuclear warheads it can stockpile by more than 40%, Boris Johnson will announce on Tuesday, ending 30 years of gradual disarmament since the collapse of the Soviet Union.

The increased limit, from 180 to 260 warheads, is contained in a leaked copy of the integrated review of defence and foreign policy, seen by the Guardian. It paves the way for a controversial £10bn rearmament in response to perceived threats from Russia and China.

The review also warns of the “realistic possibility” that a terrorist group will “launch a successful CBRN [chemical, biological, radiological or nuclear] attack by 2030”, although there is little extra detail to back up this assessment.

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Ongoing ‘review’ forces Pentagon official to pull out of SC pit production briefing

Sophia Meryn

A Pentagon official backed out of a plutonium pit production briefing in Columbia this week because the Biden administration is “engaged in a full review of the program,” according to Rick Lee, the chairman of the S.C. Governor’s Nuclear Advisory Council.

By: Colin Demarest cdemarest@aikenstandard.com | postandcourier.com

Rick Lee, the chairman of the S.C. Governor’s Nuclear Advisory Council, pictured here during a meeting in 2018. The council met in Columbia on Monday. (Colin Demarest/Staff)
Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Nuclear Matters Drew Walter was scheduled to make a presentation about pit production – the crafting of nuclear weapon cores, potentially in both South Carolina and New Mexico – “and why the Department of Defense feels it’s imperative that we get underway with the program,” Lee said.
But until the new administration settles on “what they want to do moving forward,” the chairman continued, Walter “would not be available for that kind of gathering.”
Exactly what the purported review covers or drills down on is unclear. A big question, Savannah River Site Watch Director Tom Clements suggested Wednesday, “is if there is any kind of formal review of pits and overall nuclear weapons modernization at DOE and DOD.”

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Report: Cancer death rates rising near Fermi nuclear plant

Sophia Meryn

A new study is looking to test baby teeth from children living near the plant.

By: Tricia Ennis | 13abc.com

(Photo: DTE Energy) (WNDU)

NEWPORT, Mich. (WTVG) – A new report from the Radiation and Public Health Project claims that the cancer death rate in Monroe County, Michigan is on the rise and it’s tying that growth to the Fermi 2 nuclear plant in Newport.

According to the report, which uses public health data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the rate of death due to cancer in Monroe County was roughly equal to that of the rest of the United States. Since 1988, that rate has risen steadily, reaching 11.3% higher than the national average in the most recent 10 years (2009-2018). From 2014-2018, that rate was 14.3% higher than the national average, amounting to 1,794 deaths. In the period between 1969 and 1978, outlines the report, that rate was 4.5% lower than the national average.

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Sophia Meryn

By: William D. Hartung | Arms & Security Program

Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles (ICBMs) have been called “some of the most dangerous weapons in the world” by former Defense Secretary William Perry, because under current policies the president would have only a matter of minutes to decide whether to launch them in a crisis, increasing the risks of an accidental nuclear war.1 Despite this reality, proposals for reducing this risk have routinely been blocked, in significant part due to a group of Senators from states that host ICBM bases or ICBM maintenance and development activities, often referred to as the ICBM Coalition. The Coalition includes Senators from Montana, North Dakota, Utah, and Wyoming.

The polices promoted by the ICBM Coalition and its allies do not have wide public support. A recent poll conducted by ReThink Media and the Federation of American Scientists found that 60% of Americans supported either forgoing the development of a new ICBM, eliminating ICBMs altogether, or eliminating all nuclear weapons, an indication that a change in current ICBM policies would have significant public support.

REPORT SUMMARY

FULL REPORT

Putin, Biden Should Aim For More Arms Curbs: Gorbachev

Sophia Meryn

Gorbachev told the Interfax news agency that the two leaders  – who spoke by phone after Biden’s inauguration last month – should meet and discuss further arms curbs.

By: AFP NEWS – Agence France Presse /

Former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev on Saturday urged Russian President Vladimir Putin and new US President Joe Biden to push for deeper restrictions on nuclear weapons.

Tensions soared between the two nations under previous US leader Donald Trump, fuelled by allegations of sweeping cyberattacks and a litany of other disagreements.

But soon after Biden took office, the two powers extended a pact that limits each side to 1,550 nuclear warheads, which Putin hailed as a positive development.
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