Waste

Many Americans mistakenly believe that France has solved the radioactive waste issue. According to this report, 

that is far from the truth: 

 

Reuters, June 30, 2009

French radioactive waste to double by 2030, High level waste to rise to 5,060 cm 

By Mathilde Cru

PARIS, June 30 (Reuters) - France's highly radioactive waste will more than double by 2030 mainly as spent fuel derived from nuclear reactors mounts up, the French national radioactive waste management agency (Andra) said on Tuesday.

Andra draws up every three years an inventory of sites polluted with radioactivity and details quantities per waste category as well as volume forecasts.

In 2007, high level waste, the most dangerous category, accounted for 95 percent of French waste radioactivity but only 0.2 percent in volume, it said in the inventory report. A complicated scale lists a wide range of different intensities of radioctive waste.

High level waste will rise by 120 percent to 5,060 cubic metres by 2030 out of a total of 2.2 million cubic metres, the Andra report said. The 2.2 million cubic metres itself is twice the 2007 level.

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Eric Epstein, Chairman of Three Mile Island Alert, contends PPL's application for a license to construct a nuclear reactor at Bell Bend near Berwick, Pa. leaves at least four serious matters in need of attention. 

Epstein contends that the federally required funds to decommission (close down) a plant are inadequate. 

He also told the Nuclear Regulatory Commission that PPL's has no solid plan for how to dispose of low-level radioactive waste. 

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Nuclear license renewal sparks protest

Coalition asks federal court to overturn NRC

June 02, 2009

BY MARYANN SPOTO

Star-Ledger Staff

Two months after the Oyster Creek Nuclear Generating Station in Lacey Township, New Jersey, won a 20-year extension of its license, a coalition of environmental and citizens groups has asked a federal court to overturn the decision.

Citing inadequate information provided to the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission about the plant's safety, the coalition wants a federal court to invalidate the relicensing of the 40-year-old facility.

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By Marlene Lang

 

We all know trash ain't cheap.  

Electricity users have long paid a "garbage fee" on that portion of their power produced by nuclear reactors – a fee of one tenth of a cent per kilowatt-hour. The pennies go into the Nuclear Waste Fund. Since the fund was set up in 1982, about $30 billion has accumulated. 

The money has gone unused as politicians and scientists debate what is the best the location for a national dump where the radioactive waste will rest for thousands of years. 

Congress in 2002 designated Yucca Mountain in Nevada as the nation's – and possibly, the world's – nuclear waste repository site. But not every one thought the desert outside of Las Vegas was such a great location. Then-governor of Nevada Kenny Quinn vetoed Congress and the power-volley continues. 

Obama cut Yucca Mountain out of the budget and in response, a group of Republicans has sponsored a bill that would give the Nuclear Waste Fund back to the utilities and customers, if Yucca is not built and soon. 

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By BROCK VERGAKIS, Associated Press Writer

Tue May 5, 5:06 pm ET

SALT LAKE CITY – Despite having their own radioactive waste dump, three states have shipped millions of cubic feet of waste across the country this decade to a private Utah facility that is the only one available to 36 other states, according to an Associated Press analysis of U.S. Department of Energy records.

The shipments are stoking concerns that waste from Connecticut, New Jersey and South Carolina is taking up needed space in Utah, unnecessarily creating potential shipping hazards and undermining the government's intent for states to dispose of their own waste on a regional basis.

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High inspection marks anger resident, who says plant's performance is not deserving

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 Sun editorial:

A critical look at Yucca?

 

April 8, 2009

A panel of judges from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission held a three-day hearing last week on objections to the Energy Department’s application to build a nuclear waste dump at Yucca Mountain, 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas.

The judges are scheduled to decide who can challenge the government’s plan during licensing hearings and what they can raise as objections. There have been 320 objections filed by 14 groups. The fact that President Barack Obama is against the Yucca Mountain plan went virtually unnoticed.

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 March 6, 2009

By MATTHEW L. WALD

WASHINGTON — President Obama’s proposed budget cuts off most money for the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste project, a decision that fulfills a campaign promise and wins the president political points in Nevada — but raises new questions about what to do with radioactive waste from the nation’s nuclear power plants.

The decision could cost the federal government additional billions in payments to the utility industry, and if it holds up, it would mean that most of the $10.4 billion spent since 1983 to find a place to put nuclear waste was wasted.

A final decision to abandon the repository would leave the nation with no solution to a problem it has struggled with for half a century.

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 March 18, 2009         

A Nuclear Waste

New York Times Op-Ed By STEPHANIE COOKE (author of the forthcoming “In Mortal Hands: A Cautionary History of the Nuclear Age.”)

 

PRESIDENT OBAMA has made clean and efficient energy a top priority, and Congress has obliged with more than $32 billion in stimulus money mostly for conservation and alternative energy technologies like wind, solar and biofuel. Sadly, the Energy Department is too weighed down by nuclear energy programs to devote itself to bringing about the revolution Mr. Obama envisions.

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March 4, 2009

By Steve Vogel
Washington Post Staff Writer
 

More than two decades after Yucca Mountain in Nevada was selected to be the national nuclear waste repository, the controversial proposal may finally be put to rest by the Obama administration.

In keeping with a pledge President Obama made during the campaign, the budget released last week cuts off almost all funding for creating a permanent burial site for a large portion of the nation's radioactive nuclear waste at the site in the Nevada desert. Congress selected the location in 1987 and reaffirmed the choice in 2002. About $7.7 billion has been sunk into the project since its inception.

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