Comment: Virginia would welcome horrible stuff like this if a uranium mill were built! Demand state and local leaders to ban uranium mining and mill now!
Written by Ann Garrison
Thursday, 19 February 2009
Since 2006, Energy Solutions, global leader in the nuke waste storage biz', has paid to brand its name on Salt Lake City's Sports Arena, home of Salt Lake's NBA pro basketball team, the Salt Lake City Jazz. Ailing Delta Airlines had branded the arena for the previous 15 years, but could no longer pay for the privilege. Energy Solutions' business continued to grow, however; book-to-bill orders for nuke waste disposal just kept piling up.
Now, Energy Solutions is even offering to save Utah from its state budget crisis by paying for the right to turn Utah into one of the world's biggest nuclear waste dumps.
In stealth negotiations, the corporation promised a full fifty percent of revenues.
Heal Utah's John Ungo says: "When we first learned about the deal, brokered in secret between EnergySolutions and Utah legislators, we were caught speechless."
Utah's Republican Governor Jon Huntsman says: “Our position is abundantly clear. Let's just say that the price the state pays for being a dumping ground lasts forever. The recession will not."
Utah's Democratic Congressman Jim Matheson says: "I am outraged that Utah legislators would even consider allowing our state to become the universal dumping ground for the world's nuclear garbage and I know most Utahns share my anger."
However, this is hardly the first time a corporation, or several, have tried to make the State of Utah nuclear disposable.
Margene Bullcreek of the Skull Valley Goshute Tribe led a 10-year defense of her tribal homeland against Private "Fuel" Storage, a nuclear conglomerate of eight nuclear power corporations including Excelon, Entergy, and Southern California Edison, which wanted to dump 44,000 tons of nuclear waste on 800+ acres of their reservation. The Western Goshute finally won an Interior Department precedent setter, in September, 2006.
Nuclear Weapons Waste
Nuclear weapons manufacturers, and the U.S. Departments of Defense and Energy, subjected Utahns to more radiation exposure from aboveground nuclear bomb tests, in Nevada's northeastern corner, than the citizens of any other state; they had the misfortune to be downwind of the Nevada Nuclear Test Site as our federal government prepared to defend us against nuclear weapons attack by a foreign power.
Then, in 2006, the U.S. threatened to stir up all the radioactive dust at the Nevada Nuclear Test all over again, into the wind blowing through Utah, in a test of the 700-ton nitrate-and-fuel- oil monster bomb: Divine Strake.
Near the eve of the scheduled Divine Strake explosion, the (anti-) Divine Strake Coalition of 50 organizations met---where else?---in Salt Lake City's Energy Solutions Sports Arena, home of the Salt Lake City Jazz.
Nevertheless, the (anti-) Divine Strike Coalition, stopped Divine Strake, after Salt Lake City newscasters flew to Washington with the paper copies of so much e-mail that it had disrupted Congressional computers to the point of dysfunction.
So here's hoping that Utah itself cannot be bought like the home court of their b-ball team, the Salt Lake City Jazz, which is, let's face it: a big corporation, like all professional ball teams.
http://www.thepriceofuranium.com/2009021945/News/News/Stimulus_Pack_Nuclear_Disposable_Utah.html
Friday, July 31, 2009
Toxic Tsunami
Comment: This type of coal ash ponds are legal and not regulated closely! Virginia may have uranium tailing ponds and they tend to collapse during extreme rainstorms, which this county has a lot of rain! Oh, do not forget about Hurricane Camille and Fran!
The day after: Harriman, Tenn.
Inside the largest industrial spill in American history. How coal ash ruined one Tennessee town—and why it could happen again.
By Arian Campo-Flores Newsweek Web Exclusive
Jul 18, 2009
At about 1 a.m. last Dec. 22, James Schean awoke with a start. He heard what sounded like a furious thunderclap and a staccato of snapping trees. Then his house shuddered and heaved. Swept up by some mighty force, it tore clear of its foundation and rumbled off like a derailed freight car. "I could hear everything breaking," he says, "the rafters cracking, Sheetrock falling off, the furniture getting twisted and moved, all the pictures falling off the walls, glass breaking everywhere." Amid the upheaval, the power had been knocked out. He groped frantically in the dark for his pants, coat, and work boots, which he'd laid out beside his bed, and struggled to get them on. When the house finally stopped moving, everything went silent.
As he headed for the bedroom door, Schean realized he was ankle-deep in some kind of mud, thick and viscous like quicksand. All he could think about was his fiancée, Crystell Flinn, and their daughter, Heather Schean, who had come to visit. He called out their names, but heard nothing. He searched for them, feeling his way through the house and bumping up against walls and furniture in places they shouldn't have been. Still unable to find his family, he concluded (correctly) that Flinn had driven Heather home after he'd gone to sleep at 10 p.m. Now he just wanted to escape before the whole place collapsed. He tried the front door, but it was jammed shut. So he worked his way to the living room, where he jumped on a desk, kicked out the window above it, and wriggled through. An embankment that used to be across the road was now staring him in the face. Hearing people at the top of the hill calling to him, he clambered toward them, to safety. (When he later returned to his house, he found that the ceiling over his bed had caved in.)
As Schean soon learned, the Tennessee Valley Authority's Kingston Fossil Plant had experienced a catastrophic failure. He knew the place well. He'd been working there as a boilermaker for two years, and its towering twin stacks loomed over his waterfront property on Swan Pond Circle Road in Harriman, Tenn. Just across the pond where he and Flinn fished for bass, bluegill, and crappie sat a colossal 80-acre mound filled with fly ash, one of the waste products left over from burning coal for electricity.
On that December night, the dike surrounding the mound collapsed, unleashing a tsunami that coated 300 acres of gorgeous countryside and waterways with 1 billion gallons of gray sludge. The wall of ash surged with such ferocity that it destroyed three homes, including Schean's, which it carried about 40 feet and slammed against that embankment. The wave crumpled docks and wiped out roads and railroad tracks. It swallowed a small island, chewed up poplars and pines, and completely choked two sloughs where deer used to water. Miraculously, no one died; the breach occurred on one of the coldest nights of the year, when everyone was buttoned up indoors. But the devastation was overwhelming. When the ash finally settled, it looked "like the surface of the moon, all gray and craters and mounds," says Janice James, who owned one of the other destroyed homes and also managed to escape. "It was the saddest thing I've ever seen."
Yet the Kingston disaster had only begun to wreak its havoc. The largest industrial spill in U.S. history, it has created an environmental and engineering nightmare. The cleanup effort, which the Environmental Protection Agency is overseeing, could cost as much as $1 billion (though estimates continue to climb) and take years to complete. Meanwhile, the released ash—which is packed with toxins like arsenic, lead, and selenium—threatens to poison the air and water. Congressional committees are investigating the failure, some lawmakers are calling for greater regulation of utilities, and the EPA is probing about 400 other facilities across the country that store ash in similar ways. Yet the debacle has had another, potentially more far-reaching, impact: it has displayed in the most graphic manner imaginable just how dirty coal is. At a time when seemingly everyone from President Barack Obama on down is talking about "clean coal," the spill showed it's anything but. "Kingston opened people's eyes," says Lisa Evans of Earthjustice, a nonprofit environmental-law firm. "Clean coal is an impossibility."
Growing up in the Kingston area in the 1950s, Peggy Blanchard heard regularly about the virtues of coal and the Tennessee Valley Authority's mission to harness it for power. "The story I always heard," she says, "was that TVA provided jobs and electricity and flood control all throughout Appalachia, that that changed people's lives and made this a productive area." When TVA completed the Kingston plant in 1955, it was seen as a blessing. The smokestacks may have been unsightly, but the surrounding area was nevertheless stunning. Along Swan Pond Circle—a horseshoe-shaped road on a peninsula ringed by the Emory River—Blanchard would marvel at the rich variety of birds: cardinals, robins, great blue herons. Come April, she says, "you'd see beautiful colors reflected in the water, the tender green of spring leaves and redbud and dogwood."
Granted, the soot released from the plant could be unpleasant. It would drift down onto clothes left out to dry and would blanket vehicles so thickly that TVA used to provide free car washes. But over the years, as clean-air laws and regulations tightened, the utility cleaned up the emissions from the smokestacks. It installed scrubbers to filter out sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxide, which contribute to acid rain. And it added devices called electrostatic precipitators to trap fly ash, which is so fine that it would otherwise shoot out through the flues, float into the atmosphere, and potentially lodge itself in people's lungs.
But all that sequestered fly ash has to go somewhere. Many plants dispose of it using a "dry" method, piping it into storage silos and then trucking it off to landfills. More, like the Kingston facility, opt for the cheaper "wet" method, which environmentalists consider far worse. It involves mixing the ash with water and sluicing it into a collection pond. From there, the ash is dredged and dumped in an impoundment, which usually lacks a protective liner, meaning that over time all those toxins could leach into the groundwater or nearby streams. According to a 2007 EPA study, residents living near such unlined ash ponds face heightened cancer risks from drinking water polluted by arsenic, as well as increased chances of lung, liver, and other organ damage from metals like cadmium and cobalt. In a separate report that same year, the EPA documented 67 contaminated sites in 23 states where coal-combustion waste—including fly ash and bottom ash, the stuff left over in the boilers—contaminated the water.
Coal-industry groups dispute the depiction of fly ash as inherently noxious. "If coal ash is not managed appropriately, it can produce adverse effects," says Jim Roewer, executive director of the Utility Solid Waste Activities Group, a lobbying organization. But "we believe coal ash can be safely managed." Not only that, he notes, plenty of fly ash is repurposed for "beneficial uses," including as a replacement for Portland cement in concrete. Environmental groups, however, argue that there's no getting around the fact that fly ash is filthy. And the more utilities scrub the air emerging from the stacks, the filthier the ash gets. Basically, "you're transfering the problem from the air to the ground," says Jeffrey Stant of the Environmental Integrity Project, which advocates for stricter coal-ash regulations.
In the wake of the Kingston spill, the fight over how to regulate the 129 million tons of coal-combustion waste produced in the U.S. each year has intensified. The EPA came close to regulating it as a hazardous waste in 2000, during the final months of the Clinton administration—a decision that would almost certainly have mandated dry storage of ash in double-lined landfills. But after coal lobbyists howled in protest, the EPA backed off, deciding to regulate it as a nonhazardous waste instead—the option favored by pro–coal lobbying groups like Roewer's. The agency never followed through on that determination, though. And once the Bush administration came to power, all movement on the issue ceased, thereby preserving the status quo: a patchwork of inconsistent state regulations that environmental groups consider, for the most part, anemic (though Roewer would dispute that).
Under Obama's new EPA administrator, Lisa Jackson, the calculus has now changed. In March she announced that the agency will propose new rules by the end of the year, and her staff has made clear that all options, including regulation of coal ash as a hazardous waste, are back on the table. The EPA is also scrutinizing ash piles across the country. Of the 400 or so sites similar to Kingston's, the agency identified 44 that pose a "high hazard"—meaning that if they fail, they present a lethal threat to nearby communities. At first, the EPA declined to make the list public, citing national-security concerns raised by the Army Corps of Engineers and the Department of Homeland Security. But after Sen. Barbara Boxer, chair of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, raised a stink, the agency released the list last month. It catalogued ash dumps in 10 states, including Arizona, Kentucky, and North Carolina. Though no TVA sites were named, the company announced this week that four of its facilities—two in Tennessee (not including Kingston) and two in Alabama—should have been labeled "high hazard."
Under tighter controls, the Kingston impoundment may never have reached the proportions it did. Blanchard remembers when the spot where the mound rose up was still an actual pond. Over the years, she watched as TVA walled the area off and gradually filled it in. The pile grew 10 feet high, then 20, then 30—fed by more than 1,000 tons of fly ash per day when all the boilers were burning. Occasionally, Blanchard would ask herself: "How high are they going to build that?" By last year the pile had reached 60 feet, sculpted into a massive tiered plateau held back by a dike made of rolled earth and … more ash. In the wee hours of Dec. 22, the pressure of all that waste—five decades' worth—simply became too much to bear. A root cause analysis released last month cited a number of potential reasons for the failure, including the height of the pond, the high water content of the ash, and the construction of the sloping dikes.
In the immediate aftermath of the disaster, TVA strived to reassure the surrounding community. "We're going to clean it up right," vowed CEO Tom Kilgore. "We're going to make it whole" and compensate affected residents. Among the many who trusted him was Tom Grizzard, whose family has owned land in the Swan Pond area since 1802. "TVA has been good to our community," he says. Apart from delivering jobs and cheap electricity, it donated computers to schools, sponsored local charities, and built parks and playing fields.
But in the months since, that trust has steadily eroded. Documents surfaced showing that the ash pond suffered repeated failures over the years and that TVA responded with what appeared to be patch-up jobs. In 2003, for instance, dredging had to be halted because of a leak in the dike. Among the eight solutions that TVA considered, according to one of its reports, was converting to a dry-ash collection system, which would have cost $25 million. In a table listing the pros and cons of that proposal, the former included "Global Fix" and "Benefit to Marketing???" while the latter cited "High Cost." In the end, TVA chose the cheapest option: constructing a new dredge cell (a subdivision of the pond) for $480,000, even though it listed under cons that this would be a "Short Life/Term Fix." Asked by NEWSWEEK whether it might not have been wiser to pay $25 million in 2003 to guard against the potentially billion-dollar cleanup TVA now faces, Kilgore replied: "In 20/20 hindsight, we ask ourselves that question too."
TVA has fanned suspicions further by seeming to downplay the dangers of the released ash. Early on, a TVA spokesman declared that the material "does have some heavy metals within it, but it's not toxic or anything." The utility says that all its air, water, and soil samples have fallen within environmental standards, with only a handful of exceptions—a spike in arsenic in the river water near the spill and some high thallium readings in a few soil tests. Yet a number of scientists and environmental groups have released more-worrisome findings—for example, elevated levels of not just arsenic, but barium, cadmium, lead, and selenium in water at the spill site. All of which has prompted arcane debates over sampling methodologies, leaving everyone who's not a chemist utterly confused—and scared.
Charlotte Phillips, for one, doesn't know what to think. Her daughter, Autumn, 6, had always been a healthy girl, never battling more than a runny nose or pinkeye. But a few days after the disaster, which occurred a couple miles down the road, Autumn developed a dry hack and suffered persistent vomiting bouts. Her condition worsened in subsequent weeks, prompting multiple trips to the emergency room, the pediatrician, a gastroenterologist, and a pulmonologist—roughly $12,000 worth of treatment and counting. Eventually, Autumn was diagnosed with asthma and now uses an inhaler. Her doctors think the spill—either ash released into the air or dust kicked up by the hundreds of dump trucks working on the cleanup—might have triggered it. No one can say for sure. But Phillips says she certainly didn't get any answers from TVA. She visited the company's outreach center in town at least 10 times to file medical claims and explore the possibility of TVA buying her house so she could move Autumn out of the Swan Pond area. But the company maintained that she wasn't entitled to such compensation. (She has since joined one of the seven lawsuits against the utility.)
How TVA decides whether to purchase a particular property is an especially incendiary topic. The company immediately bought out people like Schean, whose homes were either ruined or damaged. Then it made offers on places that it judged would be affected by the recovery effort—all the dredging, hauling, and rebuilding. TVA has acquired more than 100 properties so far and may buy as many as 140 altogether. A lot of folks in the area, though, consider that far too limited. If property values were already sinking because of the economic crisis, living near an ecological calamity has sent them into free fall. "The community has a big X on it," says Grizzard, whose opinion of TVA has soured since those early days. "You couldn't give land away now." Considering how deep his roots run in Harriman, he wouldn't want to sell. But he thinks TVA should at least compensate him for the diminished value of his land—a request the company has ruled out. "How can they draw a line and say, 'Here is affected, and here isn't affected?' " asks Grizzard. To which Kilgore responds: "You have to draw the line somewhere."
Kilgore, understandably, has been concentrating on a far more urgent issue: how to mop up 1 billion gallons of coal ash. Roughly half of it gushed into the channel fronting Schean's property and into the nearby sloughs. The water is gone, replaced by an enormous expanse of ash that has been bulldozed and graded into a somewhat tidier plain. TVA's main priority: to keep the ash from fluttering into the wind and dispersing throughout eastern Tennessee. After trying early on to seed it with grass and cover it with hay, officials settled on spraying it with a fluorescent green substance called Flexterra (typically used for erosion control) that seals the ash in place. Workers reapply the material to a few acres per day, leaving behind neon stains that give the site an even more dystopian look.
Dealing with the other half of the ash presents a thornier problem. It poured into the main part of the Emory River, settling in layers as thick as 30 feet. Dredge it, and you risk sending a stream of toxins downriver. Leave it in place, and you allow fish and other aquatic species to feed on it and introduce those toxins into the food chain. Making matters worse, the fish were apparently already poisoned before the spill even happened. Shea Tuberty, a biologist at Appalachian State University whose research team sampled species from the river a few weeks after the disaster, found that their tissues had dangerously high levels of selenium. Since that element usually takes at least a month to accumulate in an organism, the contamination probably occurred much earlier. One possible explanation: according to a TVA document, the Kingston plant was discharging about three pounds of selenium per day as part of its routine operations. The spill probably added some 27 tons more, by Tuberty's estimates. He found one catfish whose gut was filled with ash and others whose gills were coated with it. The adults will likely survive, he says. It's their offspring he's worried about.
To get an idea of what could happen to them, ask A. Dennis Lemly. A researcher at Wake Forest University, he studied the impact of coal-ash contamination on fish in Belews Lake, N.C., in the 1970s. Selenium entered their reproductive systems and produced a host of defects in their young: bulging eyes, twisted spines, deformed heads. Out of 20 species in the lake, 19 were wiped out. Something similar could happen in Kingston, according to Lemly. "The system was already saturated" with selenium, he says. "If anything, the spill will increase levels above that threshold."
With no good options, TVA is just trying to dredge the ash out of the river as quickly and carefully as possible. But workers ran into difficulties from the start. The dredges vacuum up ash with long suction tubes, and at their tips are round cutter heads with claws that crunch up solids into a purée that can be piped out more easily. As the cleanup crews discovered, though, the ash slide swept up so much debris in its path that the riverbed is teeming with trees, rocks, and pipes. So the cutters regularly jam up, halting activity until a backhoe can be barged in to clear the clutter out of the way. "That slowed us down a lot," says Anda Ray, the TVA executive in charge of the recovery. By late April—four months after the spill—only about 26 million gallons, roughly 4 percent of the total that landed in the Emory, had been removed.
Around that time, Steve Scarborough sat on his office balcony, from which you can see the affected area in the distance, and explained why he was so worked up. It wasn't that he owned a few lots out there and now had little hope of unloading them any time soon. It was the glacial pace of the dredging operation. The rainy season was nowhere near over, and all it would take was one big downpour to power up the Emory and send it charging through all that ash, carrying the stuff miles downstream. "We're in a race against time to get [the ash] out of the channel before a flood moves it out of there," he said.
A few weeks later it began to rain—mostly showers, punctuated by periodic cloudbursts. On their own, they weren't much to worry about, but they persisted for about two weeks. Gradually, the ground became saturated. And right when the earth couldn't absorb much more, Mother Nature let loose. On the weekend of May 2, storms battered the region with three-and-a-half inches of rain in about 36 hours. By May 4 the Emory, which might flow at 1,000 cubic feet per second on a normal day, churned up to nearly 70,000 cubic feet per second—about four or five times the volume of the Colorado River as it charges through the Grand Canyon. "It was probably the fifth highest [rate] in as many years," says Ray.
The heightened flow generated chaos. One of the dredges tore loose and collided against an embankment. The torrent roiled up heaps of ash and propelled them past a weir (an underwater dam) that TVA had built downstream to try to keep the muck in place. That May 4 morning, one of Scarborough's friends called him in tears. "You've got to come out and look at this," said the friend, who lives on the Emory about a mile below the spill. When Scarborough arrived, he went out to the guy's dock. The river looked like a tar pit—dark gray and swirling with sludge. "Oh, my God," he thought. It was worse than even he had imagined. According to bathymetry studies conducted afterward, millions of gallons of ash were dislodged and sent downriver. "Everything that we were afraid was going to happen, happened," says Scarborough.
As TVA continues to grapple with the cleanup, Schean is working through his own form of recovery. His cream-colored cottage with red trim, his beloved pond where he cast lines at sunset, his plans to build a second deck overlooking the water—"all of it got swept away," he says. He has few complaints about TVA. In settlement talks "they told me, 'Come up with a figure,' and I did," he says. "They gave me what I asked for" (a number he can't disclose, under the terms of the agreement). He and Flinn bought a brand-new house on the other end of Swan Pond Circle Road that's double the size of the old place. But the view—not much more than a green field—is nothing like that pond.
One recent afternoon, the couple visited the site of their old home. Where it once stood, there are now a couple of yellow backhoes and a blue outhouse. Behind that, the ash stretches out toward the ragged remains of the impoundment. And beyond that, in the shadow of the smokestacks, lies an old soccer field that's gradually filling up with the dredged ash from the river (TVA has started shipping it by rail to a landfill in Alabama). Schean recalled Kilgore's words in the aftermath of the spill: "We're going to make it whole," the CEO had said. "I think they will," said Schean, as he gazed out at all that gray. But the look on his face said otherwise.
Find this article at
http://www.newsweek.com/id/207445
The day after: Harriman, Tenn.
Inside the largest industrial spill in American history. How coal ash ruined one Tennessee town—and why it could happen again.
By Arian Campo-Flores Newsweek Web Exclusive
Jul 18, 2009
At about 1 a.m. last Dec. 22, James Schean awoke with a start. He heard what sounded like a furious thunderclap and a staccato of snapping trees. Then his house shuddered and heaved. Swept up by some mighty force, it tore clear of its foundation and rumbled off like a derailed freight car. "I could hear everything breaking," he says, "the rafters cracking, Sheetrock falling off, the furniture getting twisted and moved, all the pictures falling off the walls, glass breaking everywhere." Amid the upheaval, the power had been knocked out. He groped frantically in the dark for his pants, coat, and work boots, which he'd laid out beside his bed, and struggled to get them on. When the house finally stopped moving, everything went silent.
As he headed for the bedroom door, Schean realized he was ankle-deep in some kind of mud, thick and viscous like quicksand. All he could think about was his fiancée, Crystell Flinn, and their daughter, Heather Schean, who had come to visit. He called out their names, but heard nothing. He searched for them, feeling his way through the house and bumping up against walls and furniture in places they shouldn't have been. Still unable to find his family, he concluded (correctly) that Flinn had driven Heather home after he'd gone to sleep at 10 p.m. Now he just wanted to escape before the whole place collapsed. He tried the front door, but it was jammed shut. So he worked his way to the living room, where he jumped on a desk, kicked out the window above it, and wriggled through. An embankment that used to be across the road was now staring him in the face. Hearing people at the top of the hill calling to him, he clambered toward them, to safety. (When he later returned to his house, he found that the ceiling over his bed had caved in.)
As Schean soon learned, the Tennessee Valley Authority's Kingston Fossil Plant had experienced a catastrophic failure. He knew the place well. He'd been working there as a boilermaker for two years, and its towering twin stacks loomed over his waterfront property on Swan Pond Circle Road in Harriman, Tenn. Just across the pond where he and Flinn fished for bass, bluegill, and crappie sat a colossal 80-acre mound filled with fly ash, one of the waste products left over from burning coal for electricity.
On that December night, the dike surrounding the mound collapsed, unleashing a tsunami that coated 300 acres of gorgeous countryside and waterways with 1 billion gallons of gray sludge. The wall of ash surged with such ferocity that it destroyed three homes, including Schean's, which it carried about 40 feet and slammed against that embankment. The wave crumpled docks and wiped out roads and railroad tracks. It swallowed a small island, chewed up poplars and pines, and completely choked two sloughs where deer used to water. Miraculously, no one died; the breach occurred on one of the coldest nights of the year, when everyone was buttoned up indoors. But the devastation was overwhelming. When the ash finally settled, it looked "like the surface of the moon, all gray and craters and mounds," says Janice James, who owned one of the other destroyed homes and also managed to escape. "It was the saddest thing I've ever seen."
Yet the Kingston disaster had only begun to wreak its havoc. The largest industrial spill in U.S. history, it has created an environmental and engineering nightmare. The cleanup effort, which the Environmental Protection Agency is overseeing, could cost as much as $1 billion (though estimates continue to climb) and take years to complete. Meanwhile, the released ash—which is packed with toxins like arsenic, lead, and selenium—threatens to poison the air and water. Congressional committees are investigating the failure, some lawmakers are calling for greater regulation of utilities, and the EPA is probing about 400 other facilities across the country that store ash in similar ways. Yet the debacle has had another, potentially more far-reaching, impact: it has displayed in the most graphic manner imaginable just how dirty coal is. At a time when seemingly everyone from President Barack Obama on down is talking about "clean coal," the spill showed it's anything but. "Kingston opened people's eyes," says Lisa Evans of Earthjustice, a nonprofit environmental-law firm. "Clean coal is an impossibility."
Growing up in the Kingston area in the 1950s, Peggy Blanchard heard regularly about the virtues of coal and the Tennessee Valley Authority's mission to harness it for power. "The story I always heard," she says, "was that TVA provided jobs and electricity and flood control all throughout Appalachia, that that changed people's lives and made this a productive area." When TVA completed the Kingston plant in 1955, it was seen as a blessing. The smokestacks may have been unsightly, but the surrounding area was nevertheless stunning. Along Swan Pond Circle—a horseshoe-shaped road on a peninsula ringed by the Emory River—Blanchard would marvel at the rich variety of birds: cardinals, robins, great blue herons. Come April, she says, "you'd see beautiful colors reflected in the water, the tender green of spring leaves and redbud and dogwood."
Granted, the soot released from the plant could be unpleasant. It would drift down onto clothes left out to dry and would blanket vehicles so thickly that TVA used to provide free car washes. But over the years, as clean-air laws and regulations tightened, the utility cleaned up the emissions from the smokestacks. It installed scrubbers to filter out sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxide, which contribute to acid rain. And it added devices called electrostatic precipitators to trap fly ash, which is so fine that it would otherwise shoot out through the flues, float into the atmosphere, and potentially lodge itself in people's lungs.
But all that sequestered fly ash has to go somewhere. Many plants dispose of it using a "dry" method, piping it into storage silos and then trucking it off to landfills. More, like the Kingston facility, opt for the cheaper "wet" method, which environmentalists consider far worse. It involves mixing the ash with water and sluicing it into a collection pond. From there, the ash is dredged and dumped in an impoundment, which usually lacks a protective liner, meaning that over time all those toxins could leach into the groundwater or nearby streams. According to a 2007 EPA study, residents living near such unlined ash ponds face heightened cancer risks from drinking water polluted by arsenic, as well as increased chances of lung, liver, and other organ damage from metals like cadmium and cobalt. In a separate report that same year, the EPA documented 67 contaminated sites in 23 states where coal-combustion waste—including fly ash and bottom ash, the stuff left over in the boilers—contaminated the water.
Coal-industry groups dispute the depiction of fly ash as inherently noxious. "If coal ash is not managed appropriately, it can produce adverse effects," says Jim Roewer, executive director of the Utility Solid Waste Activities Group, a lobbying organization. But "we believe coal ash can be safely managed." Not only that, he notes, plenty of fly ash is repurposed for "beneficial uses," including as a replacement for Portland cement in concrete. Environmental groups, however, argue that there's no getting around the fact that fly ash is filthy. And the more utilities scrub the air emerging from the stacks, the filthier the ash gets. Basically, "you're transfering the problem from the air to the ground," says Jeffrey Stant of the Environmental Integrity Project, which advocates for stricter coal-ash regulations.
In the wake of the Kingston spill, the fight over how to regulate the 129 million tons of coal-combustion waste produced in the U.S. each year has intensified. The EPA came close to regulating it as a hazardous waste in 2000, during the final months of the Clinton administration—a decision that would almost certainly have mandated dry storage of ash in double-lined landfills. But after coal lobbyists howled in protest, the EPA backed off, deciding to regulate it as a nonhazardous waste instead—the option favored by pro–coal lobbying groups like Roewer's. The agency never followed through on that determination, though. And once the Bush administration came to power, all movement on the issue ceased, thereby preserving the status quo: a patchwork of inconsistent state regulations that environmental groups consider, for the most part, anemic (though Roewer would dispute that).
Under Obama's new EPA administrator, Lisa Jackson, the calculus has now changed. In March she announced that the agency will propose new rules by the end of the year, and her staff has made clear that all options, including regulation of coal ash as a hazardous waste, are back on the table. The EPA is also scrutinizing ash piles across the country. Of the 400 or so sites similar to Kingston's, the agency identified 44 that pose a "high hazard"—meaning that if they fail, they present a lethal threat to nearby communities. At first, the EPA declined to make the list public, citing national-security concerns raised by the Army Corps of Engineers and the Department of Homeland Security. But after Sen. Barbara Boxer, chair of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, raised a stink, the agency released the list last month. It catalogued ash dumps in 10 states, including Arizona, Kentucky, and North Carolina. Though no TVA sites were named, the company announced this week that four of its facilities—two in Tennessee (not including Kingston) and two in Alabama—should have been labeled "high hazard."
Under tighter controls, the Kingston impoundment may never have reached the proportions it did. Blanchard remembers when the spot where the mound rose up was still an actual pond. Over the years, she watched as TVA walled the area off and gradually filled it in. The pile grew 10 feet high, then 20, then 30—fed by more than 1,000 tons of fly ash per day when all the boilers were burning. Occasionally, Blanchard would ask herself: "How high are they going to build that?" By last year the pile had reached 60 feet, sculpted into a massive tiered plateau held back by a dike made of rolled earth and … more ash. In the wee hours of Dec. 22, the pressure of all that waste—five decades' worth—simply became too much to bear. A root cause analysis released last month cited a number of potential reasons for the failure, including the height of the pond, the high water content of the ash, and the construction of the sloping dikes.
In the immediate aftermath of the disaster, TVA strived to reassure the surrounding community. "We're going to clean it up right," vowed CEO Tom Kilgore. "We're going to make it whole" and compensate affected residents. Among the many who trusted him was Tom Grizzard, whose family has owned land in the Swan Pond area since 1802. "TVA has been good to our community," he says. Apart from delivering jobs and cheap electricity, it donated computers to schools, sponsored local charities, and built parks and playing fields.
But in the months since, that trust has steadily eroded. Documents surfaced showing that the ash pond suffered repeated failures over the years and that TVA responded with what appeared to be patch-up jobs. In 2003, for instance, dredging had to be halted because of a leak in the dike. Among the eight solutions that TVA considered, according to one of its reports, was converting to a dry-ash collection system, which would have cost $25 million. In a table listing the pros and cons of that proposal, the former included "Global Fix" and "Benefit to Marketing???" while the latter cited "High Cost." In the end, TVA chose the cheapest option: constructing a new dredge cell (a subdivision of the pond) for $480,000, even though it listed under cons that this would be a "Short Life/Term Fix." Asked by NEWSWEEK whether it might not have been wiser to pay $25 million in 2003 to guard against the potentially billion-dollar cleanup TVA now faces, Kilgore replied: "In 20/20 hindsight, we ask ourselves that question too."
TVA has fanned suspicions further by seeming to downplay the dangers of the released ash. Early on, a TVA spokesman declared that the material "does have some heavy metals within it, but it's not toxic or anything." The utility says that all its air, water, and soil samples have fallen within environmental standards, with only a handful of exceptions—a spike in arsenic in the river water near the spill and some high thallium readings in a few soil tests. Yet a number of scientists and environmental groups have released more-worrisome findings—for example, elevated levels of not just arsenic, but barium, cadmium, lead, and selenium in water at the spill site. All of which has prompted arcane debates over sampling methodologies, leaving everyone who's not a chemist utterly confused—and scared.
Charlotte Phillips, for one, doesn't know what to think. Her daughter, Autumn, 6, had always been a healthy girl, never battling more than a runny nose or pinkeye. But a few days after the disaster, which occurred a couple miles down the road, Autumn developed a dry hack and suffered persistent vomiting bouts. Her condition worsened in subsequent weeks, prompting multiple trips to the emergency room, the pediatrician, a gastroenterologist, and a pulmonologist—roughly $12,000 worth of treatment and counting. Eventually, Autumn was diagnosed with asthma and now uses an inhaler. Her doctors think the spill—either ash released into the air or dust kicked up by the hundreds of dump trucks working on the cleanup—might have triggered it. No one can say for sure. But Phillips says she certainly didn't get any answers from TVA. She visited the company's outreach center in town at least 10 times to file medical claims and explore the possibility of TVA buying her house so she could move Autumn out of the Swan Pond area. But the company maintained that she wasn't entitled to such compensation. (She has since joined one of the seven lawsuits against the utility.)
How TVA decides whether to purchase a particular property is an especially incendiary topic. The company immediately bought out people like Schean, whose homes were either ruined or damaged. Then it made offers on places that it judged would be affected by the recovery effort—all the dredging, hauling, and rebuilding. TVA has acquired more than 100 properties so far and may buy as many as 140 altogether. A lot of folks in the area, though, consider that far too limited. If property values were already sinking because of the economic crisis, living near an ecological calamity has sent them into free fall. "The community has a big X on it," says Grizzard, whose opinion of TVA has soured since those early days. "You couldn't give land away now." Considering how deep his roots run in Harriman, he wouldn't want to sell. But he thinks TVA should at least compensate him for the diminished value of his land—a request the company has ruled out. "How can they draw a line and say, 'Here is affected, and here isn't affected?' " asks Grizzard. To which Kilgore responds: "You have to draw the line somewhere."
Kilgore, understandably, has been concentrating on a far more urgent issue: how to mop up 1 billion gallons of coal ash. Roughly half of it gushed into the channel fronting Schean's property and into the nearby sloughs. The water is gone, replaced by an enormous expanse of ash that has been bulldozed and graded into a somewhat tidier plain. TVA's main priority: to keep the ash from fluttering into the wind and dispersing throughout eastern Tennessee. After trying early on to seed it with grass and cover it with hay, officials settled on spraying it with a fluorescent green substance called Flexterra (typically used for erosion control) that seals the ash in place. Workers reapply the material to a few acres per day, leaving behind neon stains that give the site an even more dystopian look.
Dealing with the other half of the ash presents a thornier problem. It poured into the main part of the Emory River, settling in layers as thick as 30 feet. Dredge it, and you risk sending a stream of toxins downriver. Leave it in place, and you allow fish and other aquatic species to feed on it and introduce those toxins into the food chain. Making matters worse, the fish were apparently already poisoned before the spill even happened. Shea Tuberty, a biologist at Appalachian State University whose research team sampled species from the river a few weeks after the disaster, found that their tissues had dangerously high levels of selenium. Since that element usually takes at least a month to accumulate in an organism, the contamination probably occurred much earlier. One possible explanation: according to a TVA document, the Kingston plant was discharging about three pounds of selenium per day as part of its routine operations. The spill probably added some 27 tons more, by Tuberty's estimates. He found one catfish whose gut was filled with ash and others whose gills were coated with it. The adults will likely survive, he says. It's their offspring he's worried about.
To get an idea of what could happen to them, ask A. Dennis Lemly. A researcher at Wake Forest University, he studied the impact of coal-ash contamination on fish in Belews Lake, N.C., in the 1970s. Selenium entered their reproductive systems and produced a host of defects in their young: bulging eyes, twisted spines, deformed heads. Out of 20 species in the lake, 19 were wiped out. Something similar could happen in Kingston, according to Lemly. "The system was already saturated" with selenium, he says. "If anything, the spill will increase levels above that threshold."
With no good options, TVA is just trying to dredge the ash out of the river as quickly and carefully as possible. But workers ran into difficulties from the start. The dredges vacuum up ash with long suction tubes, and at their tips are round cutter heads with claws that crunch up solids into a purée that can be piped out more easily. As the cleanup crews discovered, though, the ash slide swept up so much debris in its path that the riverbed is teeming with trees, rocks, and pipes. So the cutters regularly jam up, halting activity until a backhoe can be barged in to clear the clutter out of the way. "That slowed us down a lot," says Anda Ray, the TVA executive in charge of the recovery. By late April—four months after the spill—only about 26 million gallons, roughly 4 percent of the total that landed in the Emory, had been removed.
Around that time, Steve Scarborough sat on his office balcony, from which you can see the affected area in the distance, and explained why he was so worked up. It wasn't that he owned a few lots out there and now had little hope of unloading them any time soon. It was the glacial pace of the dredging operation. The rainy season was nowhere near over, and all it would take was one big downpour to power up the Emory and send it charging through all that ash, carrying the stuff miles downstream. "We're in a race against time to get [the ash] out of the channel before a flood moves it out of there," he said.
A few weeks later it began to rain—mostly showers, punctuated by periodic cloudbursts. On their own, they weren't much to worry about, but they persisted for about two weeks. Gradually, the ground became saturated. And right when the earth couldn't absorb much more, Mother Nature let loose. On the weekend of May 2, storms battered the region with three-and-a-half inches of rain in about 36 hours. By May 4 the Emory, which might flow at 1,000 cubic feet per second on a normal day, churned up to nearly 70,000 cubic feet per second—about four or five times the volume of the Colorado River as it charges through the Grand Canyon. "It was probably the fifth highest [rate] in as many years," says Ray.
The heightened flow generated chaos. One of the dredges tore loose and collided against an embankment. The torrent roiled up heaps of ash and propelled them past a weir (an underwater dam) that TVA had built downstream to try to keep the muck in place. That May 4 morning, one of Scarborough's friends called him in tears. "You've got to come out and look at this," said the friend, who lives on the Emory about a mile below the spill. When Scarborough arrived, he went out to the guy's dock. The river looked like a tar pit—dark gray and swirling with sludge. "Oh, my God," he thought. It was worse than even he had imagined. According to bathymetry studies conducted afterward, millions of gallons of ash were dislodged and sent downriver. "Everything that we were afraid was going to happen, happened," says Scarborough.
As TVA continues to grapple with the cleanup, Schean is working through his own form of recovery. His cream-colored cottage with red trim, his beloved pond where he cast lines at sunset, his plans to build a second deck overlooking the water—"all of it got swept away," he says. He has few complaints about TVA. In settlement talks "they told me, 'Come up with a figure,' and I did," he says. "They gave me what I asked for" (a number he can't disclose, under the terms of the agreement). He and Flinn bought a brand-new house on the other end of Swan Pond Circle Road that's double the size of the old place. But the view—not much more than a green field—is nothing like that pond.
One recent afternoon, the couple visited the site of their old home. Where it once stood, there are now a couple of yellow backhoes and a blue outhouse. Behind that, the ash stretches out toward the ragged remains of the impoundment. And beyond that, in the shadow of the smokestacks, lies an old soccer field that's gradually filling up with the dredged ash from the river (TVA has started shipping it by rail to a landfill in Alabama). Schean recalled Kilgore's words in the aftermath of the spill: "We're going to make it whole," the CEO had said. "I think they will," said Schean, as he gazed out at all that gray. But the look on his face said otherwise.
Find this article at
http://www.newsweek.com/id/207445
NEW JERSEY ENVIRONMENTAL AGENCY AT HEART OF BRIBERY SCANDAL
Comment: Do you thing "Pay-to-Play" happens in our state or local counties?
For Immediate Release: July 27, 2009
Contact: Jeff Ruch (202) 265-7337
NEW JERSEY ENVIRONMENTAL AGENCY AT HEART OF BRIBERY SCANDAL — New Rules Needed to Ban “Pay-to-Play” and Protect Staff from Strong-Arm Tactics
Washington, DC — Last week’s indictment of 44 people, including several New Jersey officials and two state legislators, underscores that “pay-to-play” is alive and well in the Garden State, especially within its Department of Environmental Protection , according Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER). Today PEER proposed new rules to end the closed door dealings within DEP that fuel corrupt practices and put its professional staff in an untenable position.
To facilitate development projects, state legislators pressure DEP to improperly approve permits, sign-off on incomplete clean-ups and shelve enforcement actions. Typically, legislators deliver their messages to the DEP Commissioner or the Assistant Commissioners, who in turn direct staff. As one of the indicted lawmakers, state Rep. Daniel Van Pelt, who sits on the committee overseeing DEP, bragged to the FBI confidential informant, he knows the “right guys” who “work” the “channels”.
“The back channels into DEP need to be shut down,” stated PEER Executive Director Jeff Ruch. “As long as DEP does its business behind closed doors, corruption will continue to blossom.”
Today PEER is proposing transparency rules for DEP that are virtually identical to ones which the agency rejected when PEER first proposed them in 2007. These rules would provide:
•Notice of Meetings. DEP convenes closed-door meetings with lobbyists, legislators and other insiders with no public attendance or publication of meeting agendas. The agency defends this secrecy as a matter of “executive privilege and the deliberative process privilege”;
•Publication of Top Officials’ Calendars. The DEP Commissioner and top deputies routinely make decisions on enforcement and other pollution control policies in meetings with legislators and corporate executives, often from the same companies charged with violations. DEP shields appointment calendars to protect “the privacy interests” of attendees; and
•Repeal Gag Orders Forbidding Staff from Talking to Media and Public. Under current DEP rules, agency scientists and other specialists are barred from speaking without prior approval from the agency Press Office. DEP says this is needed to enforce the chain-of-command.
“A big problem in New Jersey DEP is that the professional staff has little recourse when confronting management orders to less than faithfully execute the law,” Ruch added, noting that the state’s whistleblower law does not protect employee disclosures about threats to public health, manipulation of science, mismanagement or ethics violations. “Sunlight is the best hope for deterring sleazy deals.”
Political influence over DEP is now so deep that it is an accepted fact of life. For example, in a July 14, 2009 letter, DEP Acting Assistant Commissioner Scott Brubaker explained why he was setting aside water anti-pollution rules because legislators had introduce a bill to bully DEP to bend over for a favored project:
“The Department is also under pressure from the development community, which fears that the Department will unilaterally remove sewer service areas. Recently, legislation has been introduced that would extend the submission deadline…Together these added burdens would preclude the Department from adopting any new or updated wastewater management plan for the foreseeable future. Any Department effort to withdraw sewer service areas would encourage this legislation.”
“So long as DEP succumbs to political pressure, it invites that pressure,” Ruch concluded.
http://www.peer.org/news/news_id.php?row_id=1222
For Immediate Release: July 27, 2009
Contact: Jeff Ruch (202) 265-7337
NEW JERSEY ENVIRONMENTAL AGENCY AT HEART OF BRIBERY SCANDAL — New Rules Needed to Ban “Pay-to-Play” and Protect Staff from Strong-Arm Tactics
Washington, DC — Last week’s indictment of 44 people, including several New Jersey officials and two state legislators, underscores that “pay-to-play” is alive and well in the Garden State, especially within its Department of Environmental Protection , according Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER). Today PEER proposed new rules to end the closed door dealings within DEP that fuel corrupt practices and put its professional staff in an untenable position.
To facilitate development projects, state legislators pressure DEP to improperly approve permits, sign-off on incomplete clean-ups and shelve enforcement actions. Typically, legislators deliver their messages to the DEP Commissioner or the Assistant Commissioners, who in turn direct staff. As one of the indicted lawmakers, state Rep. Daniel Van Pelt, who sits on the committee overseeing DEP, bragged to the FBI confidential informant, he knows the “right guys” who “work” the “channels”.
“The back channels into DEP need to be shut down,” stated PEER Executive Director Jeff Ruch. “As long as DEP does its business behind closed doors, corruption will continue to blossom.”
Today PEER is proposing transparency rules for DEP that are virtually identical to ones which the agency rejected when PEER first proposed them in 2007. These rules would provide:
•Notice of Meetings. DEP convenes closed-door meetings with lobbyists, legislators and other insiders with no public attendance or publication of meeting agendas. The agency defends this secrecy as a matter of “executive privilege and the deliberative process privilege”;
•Publication of Top Officials’ Calendars. The DEP Commissioner and top deputies routinely make decisions on enforcement and other pollution control policies in meetings with legislators and corporate executives, often from the same companies charged with violations. DEP shields appointment calendars to protect “the privacy interests” of attendees; and
•Repeal Gag Orders Forbidding Staff from Talking to Media and Public. Under current DEP rules, agency scientists and other specialists are barred from speaking without prior approval from the agency Press Office. DEP says this is needed to enforce the chain-of-command.
“A big problem in New Jersey DEP is that the professional staff has little recourse when confronting management orders to less than faithfully execute the law,” Ruch added, noting that the state’s whistleblower law does not protect employee disclosures about threats to public health, manipulation of science, mismanagement or ethics violations. “Sunlight is the best hope for deterring sleazy deals.”
Political influence over DEP is now so deep that it is an accepted fact of life. For example, in a July 14, 2009 letter, DEP Acting Assistant Commissioner Scott Brubaker explained why he was setting aside water anti-pollution rules because legislators had introduce a bill to bully DEP to bend over for a favored project:
“The Department is also under pressure from the development community, which fears that the Department will unilaterally remove sewer service areas. Recently, legislation has been introduced that would extend the submission deadline…Together these added burdens would preclude the Department from adopting any new or updated wastewater management plan for the foreseeable future. Any Department effort to withdraw sewer service areas would encourage this legislation.”
“So long as DEP succumbs to political pressure, it invites that pressure,” Ruch concluded.
http://www.peer.org/news/news_id.php?row_id=1222
Water Problems From Drilling Are More Frequent Than PA Officials Said
Comment: Most states are not going to tell the truth about any type of water problems because they want the money over people's health, the state will protect the corporations and not us!
by Abrahm Lustgarten, ProPublica - July 31, 2009 11:29 am EDT
When methane began bubbling out of kitchen taps near a gas drilling site in Pennsylvania last winter, a state regulator described the problem as "an anomaly." But at the time he made that statement to ProPublica, that same official was investigating a similar case affecting more than a dozen homes near gas wells halfway across the state.
In fact, methane related to the natural gas industry has contaminated water wells in at least seven Pennsylvania counties since 2004 and is common enough that the state hired a full-time inspector dedicated to the issue in 2006. In one case, methane was detected in water sampled over 15 square miles. In another, a methane leak led to an explosion that killed a couple and their 17-month-old grandson [1].
Methane is the largest component of natural gas. Since it evaporates out of drinking water, it is not considered toxic, but in the air it can lead to explosions. When methane is found in water supplies, it can also signal that deeply drilled gas wells are linked with drinking water systems.
In many cases the methane seepage comes from thousands of old abandoned gas wells that riddle Pennsylvania's geology, state inspectors say. But other cases, including several this year and the 2004 disaster that left three people dead, were linked to problems with newly drilled, active natural gas wells.
Dimock resident Norma Fiorentino's drinking water well exploded on New Year's morning. The blast was so strong it tossed aside a several-thousand=pound concrete slab. Click to see more of Dimock's residents' stories. (Abrahm Lustgarten/ProPublica)The issue came to the forefront in January when methane was found in the water at 16 homes in the small town of Dimock [2], in northeastern Pennsylvania. State officials cited Cabot Oil & Gas for several violations they say allowed the gas to seep out of the well structures and into water supplies there. The Department of Environmental Protection asked the company to encase its lower well pipes completely in concrete — a process known in the industry as "cementing" — and assured the public that the contamination in Dimock was rare.
But according to a department spokeswoman, there have been at least 52 separate cases of what the state calls "methane migration" in the last five years. In two of the 2009 cases, regulators responded to complaints from more than 32 households and asked gas companies to supply clean water to at least a dozen homes with contaminated wells.
An undated report from the Pittsburgh Geological Society posted to the DEP's Web site makes it clear that old wells and new drilling can lead to stray gas problems. "Although it rarely makes headlines," the report reads, "damage or threats caused by gas migration is a common problem in Western Pennsylvania."
Craig Lobins, the DEP regional oil and gas manager who initially described the Dimock case as an anomaly in interviews with ProPublica, said he still believes the frequency of contamination incidents is statistically insignificant.
Records show there are roughly 58,000 active gas wells in Pennsylvania. "We are just dealing with a very small percentage," he said in a follow-up interview.
The case Lobins was investigating at the same time as the Dimock case concerned a string of problems in Bradford, a rural town 200 miles west of Dimock along the state's northern border. Shortly after a contractor for Schreiner Oil and Gas drilled several dozen wells in the area last spring, residents began complaining of murky and foul-smelling tap water. When the DEP investigated, it found methane in three water wells and metals in six others. It asked Schreiner to supply water to eight homes, and the company has begun installing water treatment systems at each house. While no new gas wells have been drilled in the Bradford area, according to the DEP, the existing ones continue to operate.
Michael Schreiner, Schreiner's president, declined to comment for this article.
Lobins said the problems in Bradford — as in many of the contamination cases across the state — stem from a bad cement job around the core of the well. In most gas drilling, the well pipe is encased in layers of concrete [3] to keep it isolated from surrounding groundwater. The concrete also contains the enormous pressure exerted on the system during the process of hydraulic fracturing [4], which pumps water, sand and chemicals to the well bottom to break up rock.
In Bradford, Lobins said, concrete was poured into the space around the wells but never filled the space — a sign of a possible leak. Because Pennsylvania does not have regulations that require inspections or testing of the concrete casing, the state didn't notice the problem until methane began showing up in water wells. By then, the suspected concrete error had been repeated in as many as 27 different places, Lobins said.
In most gas drilling, the well pipe is encased in layers of concrete to keep it isolated from groundwater. This practice of encasing the well is seen as key to protecting water supplies. (Graphic by Al Granberg/ProPublica)Controlling the quality of cementing and well casing is widely viewed as the most important factor in protecting water supplies and ensuring the integrity of a well. A recent federally funded study of state regulations across the country [5] (PDF), published by the Ground Water Protection Council, a consortium of state oil and gas regulators, industry representatives, and some environmental consultants, said that proper concrete casing is critical to environmental protection. While 96 percent of states, including Pennsylvania, have standards specifying that concrete be used to protect aquifers, the report found that one in five, also including Pennsylvania, do not require testing to confirm that the concrete used is strong enough for the job. That means that until water problems arose as a result of the casing problems in Bradford, the state had little recourse.
"What they are doing is not a violation until the gas is leaving the borehole," Lobins said. "We don't know that until it manifests itself somewhere else."
Lobins said the state is reviewing its regulations and that changes are planned to address both well casing and methane migration issues. But when asked what specific changes were being discussed, Lobins said he did not know. Similar questions went unanswered by Ron Gilius, the DEP's oil and gas director, after they were submitted by ProPublica both in interviews and in writing.
For their part, Bradford residents were surprised to learn that their problems were not unique.
"They didn't say that there were other problems similar to this," said Lori Trumbull, who complained about her water but later found that it was OK. "They said that the odds of having water contamination from drilling operations is very rare."
Fred Baldassare, the state's dedicated methane migration investigator, said he has investigated water contaminated with drilling-related methane in numerous places across the state in recent years. In Bridgeville, two homes exploded when a well casing failed and methane seeped into their basements, he said. In Dayton, he said, residents were evacuated after a well casing failed and methane migrated into an adjacent abandoned well, blowing out its casing and travelling a third of a mile underground.
In Vandergrift, drillers stumbled across an old gas well that no one knew was there. Baldassare said that when the new well was hydraulically fractured, the intense pressure forced gas into the adjacent wells. It then percolated up through water and mud until it surfaced just feet from homes in a heavily populated neighborhood.
The most tragic Pennsylvania methane case began on March 5, 2004 in Jefferson County, about 80 miles northeast of Pittsburgh. According to Baldassare, gas seeped into the home of 64-year-old Charles Harper and his 53-year-old wife, Dorothy, from one of several adjacent wells being drilled by Snyder Brothers. The gas collected until it exploded and, according to court records and news reports at the time, reduced the home to "a pile of rubble." Debris was found across the road, and insulation hung from trees 30 feet in the air. The bodies of the Harpers and their grandson, Baelee, were found buried in the debris.
Executives from Snyder Brothers did not return calls for comment. The company was sued in state court in Jefferson County and reached an undisclosed settlement with the Harper family.
State officials traced the methane's geochemical fingerprint and determined it had come from one of three Snyder wells nearby. The investigation, however, remains open in part because Snyder has yet to comply with state orders to conduct pressure tests on the wells — orders delivered in 2005, according to Baldassare. But that doesn't mean state officials aren't sure about what happened.
According to Baldassare, the Snyder methane caused the explosion.
"In my view," he said, "there was no uncertainty."
http://www.propublica.org/feature/water-problems-from-drilling-are-more-frequent-than-officials-said-731
by Abrahm Lustgarten, ProPublica - July 31, 2009 11:29 am EDT
When methane began bubbling out of kitchen taps near a gas drilling site in Pennsylvania last winter, a state regulator described the problem as "an anomaly." But at the time he made that statement to ProPublica, that same official was investigating a similar case affecting more than a dozen homes near gas wells halfway across the state.
In fact, methane related to the natural gas industry has contaminated water wells in at least seven Pennsylvania counties since 2004 and is common enough that the state hired a full-time inspector dedicated to the issue in 2006. In one case, methane was detected in water sampled over 15 square miles. In another, a methane leak led to an explosion that killed a couple and their 17-month-old grandson [1].
Methane is the largest component of natural gas. Since it evaporates out of drinking water, it is not considered toxic, but in the air it can lead to explosions. When methane is found in water supplies, it can also signal that deeply drilled gas wells are linked with drinking water systems.
In many cases the methane seepage comes from thousands of old abandoned gas wells that riddle Pennsylvania's geology, state inspectors say. But other cases, including several this year and the 2004 disaster that left three people dead, were linked to problems with newly drilled, active natural gas wells.
Dimock resident Norma Fiorentino's drinking water well exploded on New Year's morning. The blast was so strong it tossed aside a several-thousand=pound concrete slab. Click to see more of Dimock's residents' stories. (Abrahm Lustgarten/ProPublica)The issue came to the forefront in January when methane was found in the water at 16 homes in the small town of Dimock [2], in northeastern Pennsylvania. State officials cited Cabot Oil & Gas for several violations they say allowed the gas to seep out of the well structures and into water supplies there. The Department of Environmental Protection asked the company to encase its lower well pipes completely in concrete — a process known in the industry as "cementing" — and assured the public that the contamination in Dimock was rare.
But according to a department spokeswoman, there have been at least 52 separate cases of what the state calls "methane migration" in the last five years. In two of the 2009 cases, regulators responded to complaints from more than 32 households and asked gas companies to supply clean water to at least a dozen homes with contaminated wells.
An undated report from the Pittsburgh Geological Society posted to the DEP's Web site makes it clear that old wells and new drilling can lead to stray gas problems. "Although it rarely makes headlines," the report reads, "damage or threats caused by gas migration is a common problem in Western Pennsylvania."
Craig Lobins, the DEP regional oil and gas manager who initially described the Dimock case as an anomaly in interviews with ProPublica, said he still believes the frequency of contamination incidents is statistically insignificant.
Records show there are roughly 58,000 active gas wells in Pennsylvania. "We are just dealing with a very small percentage," he said in a follow-up interview.
The case Lobins was investigating at the same time as the Dimock case concerned a string of problems in Bradford, a rural town 200 miles west of Dimock along the state's northern border. Shortly after a contractor for Schreiner Oil and Gas drilled several dozen wells in the area last spring, residents began complaining of murky and foul-smelling tap water. When the DEP investigated, it found methane in three water wells and metals in six others. It asked Schreiner to supply water to eight homes, and the company has begun installing water treatment systems at each house. While no new gas wells have been drilled in the Bradford area, according to the DEP, the existing ones continue to operate.
Michael Schreiner, Schreiner's president, declined to comment for this article.
Lobins said the problems in Bradford — as in many of the contamination cases across the state — stem from a bad cement job around the core of the well. In most gas drilling, the well pipe is encased in layers of concrete [3] to keep it isolated from surrounding groundwater. The concrete also contains the enormous pressure exerted on the system during the process of hydraulic fracturing [4], which pumps water, sand and chemicals to the well bottom to break up rock.
In Bradford, Lobins said, concrete was poured into the space around the wells but never filled the space — a sign of a possible leak. Because Pennsylvania does not have regulations that require inspections or testing of the concrete casing, the state didn't notice the problem until methane began showing up in water wells. By then, the suspected concrete error had been repeated in as many as 27 different places, Lobins said.
In most gas drilling, the well pipe is encased in layers of concrete to keep it isolated from groundwater. This practice of encasing the well is seen as key to protecting water supplies. (Graphic by Al Granberg/ProPublica)Controlling the quality of cementing and well casing is widely viewed as the most important factor in protecting water supplies and ensuring the integrity of a well. A recent federally funded study of state regulations across the country [5] (PDF), published by the Ground Water Protection Council, a consortium of state oil and gas regulators, industry representatives, and some environmental consultants, said that proper concrete casing is critical to environmental protection. While 96 percent of states, including Pennsylvania, have standards specifying that concrete be used to protect aquifers, the report found that one in five, also including Pennsylvania, do not require testing to confirm that the concrete used is strong enough for the job. That means that until water problems arose as a result of the casing problems in Bradford, the state had little recourse.
"What they are doing is not a violation until the gas is leaving the borehole," Lobins said. "We don't know that until it manifests itself somewhere else."
Lobins said the state is reviewing its regulations and that changes are planned to address both well casing and methane migration issues. But when asked what specific changes were being discussed, Lobins said he did not know. Similar questions went unanswered by Ron Gilius, the DEP's oil and gas director, after they were submitted by ProPublica both in interviews and in writing.
For their part, Bradford residents were surprised to learn that their problems were not unique.
"They didn't say that there were other problems similar to this," said Lori Trumbull, who complained about her water but later found that it was OK. "They said that the odds of having water contamination from drilling operations is very rare."
Fred Baldassare, the state's dedicated methane migration investigator, said he has investigated water contaminated with drilling-related methane in numerous places across the state in recent years. In Bridgeville, two homes exploded when a well casing failed and methane seeped into their basements, he said. In Dayton, he said, residents were evacuated after a well casing failed and methane migrated into an adjacent abandoned well, blowing out its casing and travelling a third of a mile underground.
In Vandergrift, drillers stumbled across an old gas well that no one knew was there. Baldassare said that when the new well was hydraulically fractured, the intense pressure forced gas into the adjacent wells. It then percolated up through water and mud until it surfaced just feet from homes in a heavily populated neighborhood.
The most tragic Pennsylvania methane case began on March 5, 2004 in Jefferson County, about 80 miles northeast of Pittsburgh. According to Baldassare, gas seeped into the home of 64-year-old Charles Harper and his 53-year-old wife, Dorothy, from one of several adjacent wells being drilled by Snyder Brothers. The gas collected until it exploded and, according to court records and news reports at the time, reduced the home to "a pile of rubble." Debris was found across the road, and insulation hung from trees 30 feet in the air. The bodies of the Harpers and their grandson, Baelee, were found buried in the debris.
Executives from Snyder Brothers did not return calls for comment. The company was sued in state court in Jefferson County and reached an undisclosed settlement with the Harper family.
State officials traced the methane's geochemical fingerprint and determined it had come from one of three Snyder wells nearby. The investigation, however, remains open in part because Snyder has yet to comply with state orders to conduct pressure tests on the wells — orders delivered in 2005, according to Baldassare. But that doesn't mean state officials aren't sure about what happened.
According to Baldassare, the Snyder methane caused the explosion.
"In my view," he said, "there was no uncertainty."
http://www.propublica.org/feature/water-problems-from-drilling-are-more-frequent-than-officials-said-731
Nuclear plans hurting power companies' credit ratings
By Sue Sturgis on July 30, 2009 8:43 AM
Power companies pursuing construction of new nuclear plants may find it harder to get credit -- meaning ratepayers could end up shouldering a greater financial burden for the costly and environmentally harmful projects.
Moody's Investors Service, a leading independent credit rating firm, recently released a report that says it's considering taking a "more negative view" of debt obligations issued by companies seeking to build new nuclear plants.
Titled "New Nuclear Generation: Ratings Pressure Increasing," the report raises concerns that investing in new nuclear plants involves significant risks and huge capital costs at a time when national energy policy is uncertain. Yet companies investing in new nuclear projects -- cost estimates for which are hovering in the $6 billion range -- haven't adjusted their finances accordingly, according to Moody's:
Few, if any, of the issuers aspiring to build new nuclear power have meaningfully strengthened their balance sheets, and for several companies, key financial credit ratios have actually declined. Moreover, recent broad market turmoil calls into question whether new liquidity is even available to support such capital-intensive projects.
Fourteen companies have submitted applications to the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission to build 17 new reactors, with the first approvals expected beginning in 2011. Pursuing new nuclear generation increases a company's business and operating risk profile, which in turn puts pressure on credit ratings. While Moody's is optimistic that utility regulators will authorize recovery of costs, that ultimately means higher bills for ratepayers.
Indeed, the report warned of potential "future rate shock" for electricity customers. It also says that proposed federal loan guarantees for nuclear plant construction would "only modestly mitigate increasing risks."
Moody's distinguishes between new reactors located adjacent to existing units and brand-new projects, with the former benefiting from existing infrastructure. But the ratings service still views new nuclear plants as what it calls "bet-the-farm" endeavors, making it more likely that the projects will lead to ratings downgrades, as happened during the last round of plant construction in the 1970s and 1980s.
A step above junk
Of the 17 proposed reactor projects on Moody's list, two already have obligations rated speculative or "junk" grade, and both are in Texas: NRG Energy's South Texas Project in Bay City, which is rated Ba3 ("questionable credit quality"), and Energy Future Holdings' Comanche Peak in Somervell County, rated B3 ("generally poor credit quality"). For details about Moody's ratings, click here.
Thirteen other proposed nuclear construction projects have credit ratings between Baa1 and Baa3 -- one step above junk status. They include eight in the South: Dominion's North Anna in Louisa County, Va.; Duke Energy's William S. Lee in Cherokee County, S.C.; Entergy's Grand Gulf in Port Gibson, Miss. and River Bend in St. Francisville, La.; Exelon's proposed two-unit plant in Victoria County, Texas; Progress Energy's plant in Levy County, Fla. and its Shearon Harris plant in Wake County, N.C.; and SCANA's Virgil C. Summer plant in Fairfield County, S.C.
The financing problems have already caused some companies to back away from nuclear projects. Earlier this month, AmerenUE announced that it was suspending plans to build a new reactor at its Callaway plant in Missouri. A factor was that state's ban of "Construction Work in Progress," a financing scheme that allows a nuclear utility to recover the construction costs of a reactor from ratepayers before the reactor is up and running.
Earlier this year, Georgia passed a law embracing CWIP. Perhaps not so coincidentally, one of only two nuclear projects that Moody's report deemed investment-worthy was the Southern Co.'s planned reactor at Plant Vogtle in Burke County, Ga., which netted an upper-medium grade A3 rating. The report's top rating for a nuclear project -- Aaa or highest quality -- went to the Tennessee Valley Authority's proposal for two new reactors at its Bellefonte plant in Hollywood, Ala. TVA also wants to finish two partially completed units at the Bellefonte site that were canceled in the late 1980s after a $6 billion investment.
Moody's notes that new nuclear power construction "appears to enjoy strong political and regulatory support in a number of jurisdictions, especially in the southeastern states, where there is now legislation afoot to promote it."
Demanding divestment
The nuclear industry has been critical of Moody's report, with a Nuclear Energy Institute spokesperson telling the Charlotte Business Journal that it's based on old information.
But the report has already gotten the attention of anti-nuclear activists. The North Carolina Waste Awareness and Reduction Network sent a letter [pdf] to State Treasurer Janet Cowell citing the report and asking her to ensure state investment funds exclude the bonds issued by Duke Energy and Progress Energy, since North Carolina law requires all debt holdings to be in top-rated securities.
NC WARN recently appealed to the NRC [pdf] to stop the planned construction of two new reactors at Progress Energy's Shearon Harris plant, noting that the lack of a finalized design makes it impossible to accurately calculate costs.
The financial risks of nuclear power are not the watchdog group's only concern: NC WARN also points out that Duke Energy recently filed for an 18% rate increase in part to cover construction costs at its controversial new Cliffside coal-fired power plant in western North Carolina:
Although Duke has stated that it is financing Cliffside "from its balance sheet," utilities regularly borrow and roll various forms of debt; early this year, a bond sale attempted by Duke was "panned by investors," and the company had to repackage the offering, apparently with higher interest rates.
NC WARN recently asked the state Utilities Commission [pdf] to halt construction at Cliffside, citing the project's financial risks. Though the Moody's report focuses solely on nuclear generation, lenders have also warned about the increasing financial risks of coal plants given the uncertain regulatory environment. The commission has not yet ruled on NC WARN's motion.
"We really need Treasurer Cowell and the Utilities Commission to protect North Carolinians from the power companies' dreams of expansion," says NC WARN Executive Director Jim Warren, adding that officials "must ensure the public doesn't get burned by the utilities' actions."
http://www.southernstudies.org/2009/07/nuclear-plans-hurting-power-companies-credit-ratings.html
Power companies pursuing construction of new nuclear plants may find it harder to get credit -- meaning ratepayers could end up shouldering a greater financial burden for the costly and environmentally harmful projects.
Moody's Investors Service, a leading independent credit rating firm, recently released a report that says it's considering taking a "more negative view" of debt obligations issued by companies seeking to build new nuclear plants.
Titled "New Nuclear Generation: Ratings Pressure Increasing," the report raises concerns that investing in new nuclear plants involves significant risks and huge capital costs at a time when national energy policy is uncertain. Yet companies investing in new nuclear projects -- cost estimates for which are hovering in the $6 billion range -- haven't adjusted their finances accordingly, according to Moody's:
Few, if any, of the issuers aspiring to build new nuclear power have meaningfully strengthened their balance sheets, and for several companies, key financial credit ratios have actually declined. Moreover, recent broad market turmoil calls into question whether new liquidity is even available to support such capital-intensive projects.
Fourteen companies have submitted applications to the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission to build 17 new reactors, with the first approvals expected beginning in 2011. Pursuing new nuclear generation increases a company's business and operating risk profile, which in turn puts pressure on credit ratings. While Moody's is optimistic that utility regulators will authorize recovery of costs, that ultimately means higher bills for ratepayers.
Indeed, the report warned of potential "future rate shock" for electricity customers. It also says that proposed federal loan guarantees for nuclear plant construction would "only modestly mitigate increasing risks."
Moody's distinguishes between new reactors located adjacent to existing units and brand-new projects, with the former benefiting from existing infrastructure. But the ratings service still views new nuclear plants as what it calls "bet-the-farm" endeavors, making it more likely that the projects will lead to ratings downgrades, as happened during the last round of plant construction in the 1970s and 1980s.
A step above junk
Of the 17 proposed reactor projects on Moody's list, two already have obligations rated speculative or "junk" grade, and both are in Texas: NRG Energy's South Texas Project in Bay City, which is rated Ba3 ("questionable credit quality"), and Energy Future Holdings' Comanche Peak in Somervell County, rated B3 ("generally poor credit quality"). For details about Moody's ratings, click here.
Thirteen other proposed nuclear construction projects have credit ratings between Baa1 and Baa3 -- one step above junk status. They include eight in the South: Dominion's North Anna in Louisa County, Va.; Duke Energy's William S. Lee in Cherokee County, S.C.; Entergy's Grand Gulf in Port Gibson, Miss. and River Bend in St. Francisville, La.; Exelon's proposed two-unit plant in Victoria County, Texas; Progress Energy's plant in Levy County, Fla. and its Shearon Harris plant in Wake County, N.C.; and SCANA's Virgil C. Summer plant in Fairfield County, S.C.
The financing problems have already caused some companies to back away from nuclear projects. Earlier this month, AmerenUE announced that it was suspending plans to build a new reactor at its Callaway plant in Missouri. A factor was that state's ban of "Construction Work in Progress," a financing scheme that allows a nuclear utility to recover the construction costs of a reactor from ratepayers before the reactor is up and running.
Earlier this year, Georgia passed a law embracing CWIP. Perhaps not so coincidentally, one of only two nuclear projects that Moody's report deemed investment-worthy was the Southern Co.'s planned reactor at Plant Vogtle in Burke County, Ga., which netted an upper-medium grade A3 rating. The report's top rating for a nuclear project -- Aaa or highest quality -- went to the Tennessee Valley Authority's proposal for two new reactors at its Bellefonte plant in Hollywood, Ala. TVA also wants to finish two partially completed units at the Bellefonte site that were canceled in the late 1980s after a $6 billion investment.
Moody's notes that new nuclear power construction "appears to enjoy strong political and regulatory support in a number of jurisdictions, especially in the southeastern states, where there is now legislation afoot to promote it."
Demanding divestment
The nuclear industry has been critical of Moody's report, with a Nuclear Energy Institute spokesperson telling the Charlotte Business Journal that it's based on old information.
But the report has already gotten the attention of anti-nuclear activists. The North Carolina Waste Awareness and Reduction Network sent a letter [pdf] to State Treasurer Janet Cowell citing the report and asking her to ensure state investment funds exclude the bonds issued by Duke Energy and Progress Energy, since North Carolina law requires all debt holdings to be in top-rated securities.
NC WARN recently appealed to the NRC [pdf] to stop the planned construction of two new reactors at Progress Energy's Shearon Harris plant, noting that the lack of a finalized design makes it impossible to accurately calculate costs.
The financial risks of nuclear power are not the watchdog group's only concern: NC WARN also points out that Duke Energy recently filed for an 18% rate increase in part to cover construction costs at its controversial new Cliffside coal-fired power plant in western North Carolina:
Although Duke has stated that it is financing Cliffside "from its balance sheet," utilities regularly borrow and roll various forms of debt; early this year, a bond sale attempted by Duke was "panned by investors," and the company had to repackage the offering, apparently with higher interest rates.
NC WARN recently asked the state Utilities Commission [pdf] to halt construction at Cliffside, citing the project's financial risks. Though the Moody's report focuses solely on nuclear generation, lenders have also warned about the increasing financial risks of coal plants given the uncertain regulatory environment. The commission has not yet ruled on NC WARN's motion.
"We really need Treasurer Cowell and the Utilities Commission to protect North Carolinians from the power companies' dreams of expansion," says NC WARN Executive Director Jim Warren, adding that officials "must ensure the public doesn't get burned by the utilities' actions."
http://www.southernstudies.org/2009/07/nuclear-plans-hurting-power-companies-credit-ratings.html
Plan to Pay Sick Nuclear Workers Unfairly Rejects Many, Doctor Says
by Laura Frank, Special to ProPublica - July 31, 2009 11:00 am EDT
Dr. Eugene Schwartz (Andrew Greto/ProPublica)Carla McCabe spent a decade building nuclear bombs at the sprawling Rocky Flats complex near Denver. When she developed a brain tumor and asked for help, federal officials told her that none of the toxic substances used at the top-secret bomb factory could have caused her cancer.
Now, on the eighth anniversary of the federal program created to help sick nuclear weapons workers, the man who until recently was the program's top doctor says that McCabe, now 55, and many others like her are being improperly rejected.
The doctor, Eugene Schwartz, recently resigned [1] (PDF) and in his first interview since quitting, he said many of the complaints that workers, advocates and lawmakers have leveled at the controversial program are valid. For instance, Schwartz said he repeatedly warned the U.S. Department of Labor that it is ignoring established medical knowledge about the dangers of bomb work.
"I was muzzled," said Schwartz, a Harvard-trained doctor with a master's degree in nuclear engineering, whose job was overseeing medical decisions at the federal compensation program.
The Labor Department took charge of the program, the Energy Employees Occupational Illness Compensation Program, at its creation on July 31, 2001. Today, it boasts that it has paid $5 billion in compensation and medical costs to more than 52,600 former workers or their survivors. That averages to $95,000 each.
But sick workers, who have banded together in multiple advocacy groups across the nation, point out that the Labor Department has denied nearly three out of four claims — 127,000 filed on behalf of sick nuclear weapons workers or their survivors in the past eight years.
The sick workers and their advocates say they feel vindicated that Schwartz confirms many of the complaints they've raised previously about waste, bias and bad science within the program.
"He is saying what we've been saying is true," said Harry Williams, a sick worker from Oak Ridge, Tenn., who helped found the national Alliance for Nuclear Workers Advocacy Groups and has spent more than a decade trying to help others. "With his credentials, the people in power will definitely have to pay attention."
Schwartz said Labor continues to incorrectly tell weapons workers with multiple diseases — including cancers of the brain, breast or bones — that radiation and other toxic substances that permeated the bomb factories could not have made them sick.
"That's madness," said Dr. Daniel Teitelbaum, a nationally recognized toxicologist who helped review cases when the federal government began compensating its sick nuclear weapons workers in 2001. In addition to working for the government, Teitlebaum also has testified on behalf of sick workers in other industries.
Teitelbaum and Schwartz said that multiple studies have found links between brain, breast and bone cancers and exposure to toxic substances such as plutonium, PCBs, and mixtures of chemicals and radiation — all key bomb ingredients.
Those studies were subjected to scrutiny by other experts, what is known as "peer review," before they were published in scientific journals.
But it has not been enough for the Labor Department.
When an official punched McCabe's diagnosis into the Labor Department's $11 million database of nuclear-related illnesses, nothing came back, her records show.
A Labor Department document regarding her case reads: "The research did not identify any toxic substances at the Rocky Flats Plant which are linked to ... any form of brain tumor."
The database did not include several peer-reviewed studies that have linked glial brain tumors like McCabe's to radiation and chemicals known to have been used at Rocky Flats. At least one of those studies, Teitelbaum said, was done on workers at the now-demolished Rocky Flats site itself. McCabe said she knows of at least eight coworkers who suffered similar brain tumors.
Program officials said they would send her case to another agency for analysis of her radiation exposures. But she's not holding her breath. That process takes on average two years, and none of her coworkers with brain tumors — most of whom are now dead — have been compensated through that process either.
The Labor Department declined to answer questions about its database or make public the grounds on which it includes some diseases and excludes others. It could not be learned how much consideration the peer-reviewed studies of brain cancers received.
"Somebody needs to do something about this," Teitelbaum said.
Schwartz said he tried but failed.
The McCabe case, he said, illustrates the flaws he tried to address. Schwartz said he began documenting his concerns shortly after he began work as medical director at the compensation program in March 2008.
A former epidemiologist for the World Health Organization, the physician and nuclear engineer from South Hadley, Mass., spent more than 30 years working in his field, which assesses the effects of industrial processes on workers. His research has focused on the causes and prevention of cancer and occupational diseases.
But Schwartz said his bosses at the Labor Department largely ignored the issues he raised, and then tried to silence him.
"The program needs scientific oversight," Schwartz said. "I was told they're not going to do that — repeatedly."
Sen. Mark Udall, D-Colo., answers a reporter's question during a news conference. (Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)U.S. Sen. Mark Udall, a freshman Democrat from Colorado, helped push for the program as a congressman in 2000. This year, he introduced legislation to reform it. He said Schwartz's statements confirm what he and others have long believed.
"It is what I've suspected all along — an attempt by the agencies to delay and deny benefits to workers of nuclear facilities," Udall said.
The most serious allegations Schwartz raised involve what are arguably the two most important steps on the path to compensation and medical care.
One involves the very first step: Determining whether a worker was exposed to toxic substances that could have caused the disease in question. The other involves what is often the last step: Seeing whether a government-hired doctor agrees that the worker's exposures did, in fact, cause his or her disease.
In the first step, the Labor Department is supposed to use its database of diseases and exposures to screen which cases deserve further investigation. That initial screening is performed by a Labor Department employee, not a doctor.
Sick workers have previously complained that some cases are wrongly rejected for compensation because the database, created in 2006, is missing information about both exposures and their links to disease.
Schwartz said they have a point.
"Claims are being denied because of these problems," Schwartz said.
Labor Department rules say the database should be used for guidance and that the claims examiners should dig deeper if they suspect an illness arose from work at a bomb factory.
Schwartz, however, said some claims examiners told him they had used the database to decide cases without further review.
"The issue is how it is used — or misused," Schwartz said.
According to Schwartz, the disease-exposure links in the database were decided by one doctor: Jay Brown, an occupational medicine physician from Tacoma, Wash., who has a background in family medicine.
While the database has "this aura of scientific validity," Schwartz said, it has never been peer reviewed and does not take into account the combined effects of low-level radiation and toxic chemicals.
When asked about Schwartz's concerns, Brown replied via e-mail: "I don't work on SEM," the Labor Department's acronym for the database, called the Site Exposure Matrix. He referred all further questions to the Labor Department.
Labor Department officials would comment only through a spokeswoman, who said in an e-mail that Schwartz's concerns "were reviewed, discussed, and addressed appropriately."
The agency spokeswoman added that Labor pays Brown to conduct "independent research to identify established chemical-disease links specifically focused on materials used in the Department of Energy complex." Brown puts the links into a database he developed, called Haz-Map. He began compiling Haz-Map in 1991 as a way to identify and prevent occupational disease, according to his Web site. Haz-Map is published there and on the National Library of Medicine Web site.
The Labor Department says Haz-Map automatically feeds its information into the Labor database. Beyond that, Labor has released very little information about it. Officials there declined to release Brown's contract or give details about it.
Schwartz said that, before he resigned, he learned that the Labor Department was poised to remove from the database more than 100 toxic exposures it previously considered linked to disease.
"I asked about a half-dozen times to see the more than 100 links being removed," Schwartz said. "I was rebuffed." He added, sardonically: "Talk about scientific validity and transparency. Based on what science?"
More than half a million people have worked to build the nation's nuclear arsenal since World War II. Less than 15 percent of them have filed claims for aid, but that's still more than 180,000 former nuclear weapons workers — or their survivors — and they are from every state in the nation.
The compensation program was created after the federal government admitted that nuclear weapons workers had been exposed to dangerous levels of toxic substances at more than 300 weapons sites across the country.
But only 29 percent of those who applied have been approved for aid, and many of those received aid only after years of appealing.
The Labor Department, citing national security, has declined to provide the entire database to sick workers who've asked for it.
As for the government-contracted doctors who help decide who gets compensation, Schwartz said he examined the cases handled by doctors who review claims and found a pattern in the denials from some high-volume doctors. But he says Labor never investigated potential bias among these so-called "district medical consultants."
Labor has never checked the credentials of these 80 or so medical consultants, Schwartz said. He also says Labor was overstating the expertise of some doctors.
"This is no small issue," Schwartz said. "If a doctor were being hired by a hospital, his name would be checked through the National Practitioner Data Bank, state licensure and board certification would be checked, and he'd be asked to provide information on malpractice claims and Medicare sanctions.
"This program hasn't done that."
The compensation program divides sick workers into two groups. Scientists assess whether workers were exposed to high enough doses of radiation so that it was "at least as likely as not" the cause of their cancer.
The cases of workers who believe their cancer or other diseases were caused by chemical exposure — or a combination of chemicals and radiation — are weighed separately.
Schwartz said this second category is where he found most of the problems. According to Schwartz, the Labor Department has decided on its own that radiation exposures can be ignored if they weren't high enough to be the sole cause of a cancer.
Labor's rule book says "DOL has not found scientific evidence to date establishing a synergistic or additive effect" between exposure to radiation and other toxic chemicals.
Schwartz says this flies in the face of known science about how toxic chemicals and radiation can work together.
"It is generally accepted that the effect of combined exposure will likely be greater than either exposure separately," he said.
Schwartz showed ProPublica a document he says Labor sent to a medical contractor who was reviewing the case of a worker with skin cancer that could not be traced to radiation exposure alone.
The Feb. 19, 2009, letter [2] (PDF) said that in such an instance: "Radiation should not be considered a toxic substance for any cancer and should not be a part of the medical opinion that is being requested of you."
Advocates for the sick workers say that instruction is illegal because the law requires the contribution of all toxic substances be considered — and that includes radiation.
"It is against the law," said Terrie Barrie, who leads the national Alliance for Nuclear Workers Advocacy Groups, from her home in Craig, Colo. "Congress has told them that. But it's like talking to a brick wall."
The Obama administration's new Labor secretary, Hilda Solis, received a detailed letter recently from Barrie's group complaining about what they see as "woefully inaccurate" information being used to wrongly deny claims.
One such case was that of Melissa Webb, whose job at the Mound nuclear facility near Dayton, Ohio, involved taking samples from 55-gallon drums of nuclear weapons waste at a top-secret facility five stories underground.
Webb was 33 when she learned she had Parkinson's disease. When she filed for compensation in 2007, she listed exposure to the solvent carbon disulfide as a possible cause. The Labor Department sent her a letter saying its records showed she was indeed exposed to carbon disulfide at her Ohio nuclear weapons site, but that there were no known links between the poisonous substance and Parkinson's.
However, the Labor Department's own Occupational Safety and Health Administration recognizes carbon disulfide's link to Parkinson's. And a bulletin issued by the same program that denied Webb's claim lists carbon disulfide at the top of its list of toxic links to Parkinson's.
"You'd think mine would be an open and shut case," said Webb, now 48, who first filed for compensation in 2004.
On Jan. 9 of this year, the same day the Labor Department sent Webb a letter saying it could find no toxic link to Parkinson's, Schwartz penned a memo [3] (PDF) to his bosses at the Labor Department. One of his top concerns was the "scientific integrity and validity" of the database because it failed to find well-known links between toxic exposure and multiple diseases.
In the memo, Schwartz also called for the Labor Department to submit the program to outside peer review, in which independent experts would validate the conclusions in the database.
Schwartz said none of his bosses, all longtime program employees, ever responded.
But after he sent the memo, Labor Department officials put new demands on his work schedule and, records show, planned to have a manager accompany Schwartz on training trips to make sure he didn't raise issues about the scientific validity of the program.
Then, on April 16, Schwartz gave testimony about his allegations to the Government Accountability Office, the investigative arm of Congress, which has a continuing probe into problems with the compensation program.
The day after his GAO testimony, Schwartz got a memo from one of his bosses, policy chief Mike Chance, who had listened in on the GAO call. Chance told Schwartz that Labor was changing his previous work agreement, which had guaranteed he would not be sent on the road more than three times a month. The change was "non-negotiable," Schwartz said he was told.
"My current situation is the response" to his memo, Schwartz said. "I believe I was forced out."
When asked for a response, Rachel Leiton, director of the compensation program, sent this statement through a spokeswoman:
"While it is not our policy to discuss personnel matters, in this case we can emphatically state that Dr. Schwartz was not forced to resign. Rather, he submitted his letter of resignation on a completely voluntary basis."
When asked for elaboration, the same spokeswoman did not reply. But she did send out a press release on the amount of money collected so far by claimants in Colorado, where a bipartisan group of Congress members has introduced legislation to reform the national program.
The payments — some $400 million — are a lot of money, said Carla McCabe, the former bomb builder from Rocky Flats suffering from a brain tumor she believes is linked to her work.
"But they're denying people like crazy," she said. "I don't know how they keep denying us. I hope finally a whistleblower can help us get some answers."
http://www.propublica.org/feature/plan-to-pay-sick-nuclear-workers-unfairly-rejects-many-doctor-says-731
Dr. Eugene Schwartz (Andrew Greto/ProPublica)Carla McCabe spent a decade building nuclear bombs at the sprawling Rocky Flats complex near Denver. When she developed a brain tumor and asked for help, federal officials told her that none of the toxic substances used at the top-secret bomb factory could have caused her cancer.
Now, on the eighth anniversary of the federal program created to help sick nuclear weapons workers, the man who until recently was the program's top doctor says that McCabe, now 55, and many others like her are being improperly rejected.
The doctor, Eugene Schwartz, recently resigned [1] (PDF) and in his first interview since quitting, he said many of the complaints that workers, advocates and lawmakers have leveled at the controversial program are valid. For instance, Schwartz said he repeatedly warned the U.S. Department of Labor that it is ignoring established medical knowledge about the dangers of bomb work.
"I was muzzled," said Schwartz, a Harvard-trained doctor with a master's degree in nuclear engineering, whose job was overseeing medical decisions at the federal compensation program.
The Labor Department took charge of the program, the Energy Employees Occupational Illness Compensation Program, at its creation on July 31, 2001. Today, it boasts that it has paid $5 billion in compensation and medical costs to more than 52,600 former workers or their survivors. That averages to $95,000 each.
But sick workers, who have banded together in multiple advocacy groups across the nation, point out that the Labor Department has denied nearly three out of four claims — 127,000 filed on behalf of sick nuclear weapons workers or their survivors in the past eight years.
The sick workers and their advocates say they feel vindicated that Schwartz confirms many of the complaints they've raised previously about waste, bias and bad science within the program.
"He is saying what we've been saying is true," said Harry Williams, a sick worker from Oak Ridge, Tenn., who helped found the national Alliance for Nuclear Workers Advocacy Groups and has spent more than a decade trying to help others. "With his credentials, the people in power will definitely have to pay attention."
Schwartz said Labor continues to incorrectly tell weapons workers with multiple diseases — including cancers of the brain, breast or bones — that radiation and other toxic substances that permeated the bomb factories could not have made them sick.
"That's madness," said Dr. Daniel Teitelbaum, a nationally recognized toxicologist who helped review cases when the federal government began compensating its sick nuclear weapons workers in 2001. In addition to working for the government, Teitlebaum also has testified on behalf of sick workers in other industries.
Teitelbaum and Schwartz said that multiple studies have found links between brain, breast and bone cancers and exposure to toxic substances such as plutonium, PCBs, and mixtures of chemicals and radiation — all key bomb ingredients.
Those studies were subjected to scrutiny by other experts, what is known as "peer review," before they were published in scientific journals.
But it has not been enough for the Labor Department.
When an official punched McCabe's diagnosis into the Labor Department's $11 million database of nuclear-related illnesses, nothing came back, her records show.
A Labor Department document regarding her case reads: "The research did not identify any toxic substances at the Rocky Flats Plant which are linked to ... any form of brain tumor."
The database did not include several peer-reviewed studies that have linked glial brain tumors like McCabe's to radiation and chemicals known to have been used at Rocky Flats. At least one of those studies, Teitelbaum said, was done on workers at the now-demolished Rocky Flats site itself. McCabe said she knows of at least eight coworkers who suffered similar brain tumors.
Program officials said they would send her case to another agency for analysis of her radiation exposures. But she's not holding her breath. That process takes on average two years, and none of her coworkers with brain tumors — most of whom are now dead — have been compensated through that process either.
The Labor Department declined to answer questions about its database or make public the grounds on which it includes some diseases and excludes others. It could not be learned how much consideration the peer-reviewed studies of brain cancers received.
"Somebody needs to do something about this," Teitelbaum said.
Schwartz said he tried but failed.
The McCabe case, he said, illustrates the flaws he tried to address. Schwartz said he began documenting his concerns shortly after he began work as medical director at the compensation program in March 2008.
A former epidemiologist for the World Health Organization, the physician and nuclear engineer from South Hadley, Mass., spent more than 30 years working in his field, which assesses the effects of industrial processes on workers. His research has focused on the causes and prevention of cancer and occupational diseases.
But Schwartz said his bosses at the Labor Department largely ignored the issues he raised, and then tried to silence him.
"The program needs scientific oversight," Schwartz said. "I was told they're not going to do that — repeatedly."
Sen. Mark Udall, D-Colo., answers a reporter's question during a news conference. (Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)U.S. Sen. Mark Udall, a freshman Democrat from Colorado, helped push for the program as a congressman in 2000. This year, he introduced legislation to reform it. He said Schwartz's statements confirm what he and others have long believed.
"It is what I've suspected all along — an attempt by the agencies to delay and deny benefits to workers of nuclear facilities," Udall said.
The most serious allegations Schwartz raised involve what are arguably the two most important steps on the path to compensation and medical care.
One involves the very first step: Determining whether a worker was exposed to toxic substances that could have caused the disease in question. The other involves what is often the last step: Seeing whether a government-hired doctor agrees that the worker's exposures did, in fact, cause his or her disease.
In the first step, the Labor Department is supposed to use its database of diseases and exposures to screen which cases deserve further investigation. That initial screening is performed by a Labor Department employee, not a doctor.
Sick workers have previously complained that some cases are wrongly rejected for compensation because the database, created in 2006, is missing information about both exposures and their links to disease.
Schwartz said they have a point.
"Claims are being denied because of these problems," Schwartz said.
Labor Department rules say the database should be used for guidance and that the claims examiners should dig deeper if they suspect an illness arose from work at a bomb factory.
Schwartz, however, said some claims examiners told him they had used the database to decide cases without further review.
"The issue is how it is used — or misused," Schwartz said.
According to Schwartz, the disease-exposure links in the database were decided by one doctor: Jay Brown, an occupational medicine physician from Tacoma, Wash., who has a background in family medicine.
While the database has "this aura of scientific validity," Schwartz said, it has never been peer reviewed and does not take into account the combined effects of low-level radiation and toxic chemicals.
When asked about Schwartz's concerns, Brown replied via e-mail: "I don't work on SEM," the Labor Department's acronym for the database, called the Site Exposure Matrix. He referred all further questions to the Labor Department.
Labor Department officials would comment only through a spokeswoman, who said in an e-mail that Schwartz's concerns "were reviewed, discussed, and addressed appropriately."
The agency spokeswoman added that Labor pays Brown to conduct "independent research to identify established chemical-disease links specifically focused on materials used in the Department of Energy complex." Brown puts the links into a database he developed, called Haz-Map. He began compiling Haz-Map in 1991 as a way to identify and prevent occupational disease, according to his Web site. Haz-Map is published there and on the National Library of Medicine Web site.
The Labor Department says Haz-Map automatically feeds its information into the Labor database. Beyond that, Labor has released very little information about it. Officials there declined to release Brown's contract or give details about it.
Schwartz said that, before he resigned, he learned that the Labor Department was poised to remove from the database more than 100 toxic exposures it previously considered linked to disease.
"I asked about a half-dozen times to see the more than 100 links being removed," Schwartz said. "I was rebuffed." He added, sardonically: "Talk about scientific validity and transparency. Based on what science?"
More than half a million people have worked to build the nation's nuclear arsenal since World War II. Less than 15 percent of them have filed claims for aid, but that's still more than 180,000 former nuclear weapons workers — or their survivors — and they are from every state in the nation.
The compensation program was created after the federal government admitted that nuclear weapons workers had been exposed to dangerous levels of toxic substances at more than 300 weapons sites across the country.
But only 29 percent of those who applied have been approved for aid, and many of those received aid only after years of appealing.
The Labor Department, citing national security, has declined to provide the entire database to sick workers who've asked for it.
As for the government-contracted doctors who help decide who gets compensation, Schwartz said he examined the cases handled by doctors who review claims and found a pattern in the denials from some high-volume doctors. But he says Labor never investigated potential bias among these so-called "district medical consultants."
Labor has never checked the credentials of these 80 or so medical consultants, Schwartz said. He also says Labor was overstating the expertise of some doctors.
"This is no small issue," Schwartz said. "If a doctor were being hired by a hospital, his name would be checked through the National Practitioner Data Bank, state licensure and board certification would be checked, and he'd be asked to provide information on malpractice claims and Medicare sanctions.
"This program hasn't done that."
The compensation program divides sick workers into two groups. Scientists assess whether workers were exposed to high enough doses of radiation so that it was "at least as likely as not" the cause of their cancer.
The cases of workers who believe their cancer or other diseases were caused by chemical exposure — or a combination of chemicals and radiation — are weighed separately.
Schwartz said this second category is where he found most of the problems. According to Schwartz, the Labor Department has decided on its own that radiation exposures can be ignored if they weren't high enough to be the sole cause of a cancer.
Labor's rule book says "DOL has not found scientific evidence to date establishing a synergistic or additive effect" between exposure to radiation and other toxic chemicals.
Schwartz says this flies in the face of known science about how toxic chemicals and radiation can work together.
"It is generally accepted that the effect of combined exposure will likely be greater than either exposure separately," he said.
Schwartz showed ProPublica a document he says Labor sent to a medical contractor who was reviewing the case of a worker with skin cancer that could not be traced to radiation exposure alone.
The Feb. 19, 2009, letter [2] (PDF) said that in such an instance: "Radiation should not be considered a toxic substance for any cancer and should not be a part of the medical opinion that is being requested of you."
Advocates for the sick workers say that instruction is illegal because the law requires the contribution of all toxic substances be considered — and that includes radiation.
"It is against the law," said Terrie Barrie, who leads the national Alliance for Nuclear Workers Advocacy Groups, from her home in Craig, Colo. "Congress has told them that. But it's like talking to a brick wall."
The Obama administration's new Labor secretary, Hilda Solis, received a detailed letter recently from Barrie's group complaining about what they see as "woefully inaccurate" information being used to wrongly deny claims.
One such case was that of Melissa Webb, whose job at the Mound nuclear facility near Dayton, Ohio, involved taking samples from 55-gallon drums of nuclear weapons waste at a top-secret facility five stories underground.
Webb was 33 when she learned she had Parkinson's disease. When she filed for compensation in 2007, she listed exposure to the solvent carbon disulfide as a possible cause. The Labor Department sent her a letter saying its records showed she was indeed exposed to carbon disulfide at her Ohio nuclear weapons site, but that there were no known links between the poisonous substance and Parkinson's.
However, the Labor Department's own Occupational Safety and Health Administration recognizes carbon disulfide's link to Parkinson's. And a bulletin issued by the same program that denied Webb's claim lists carbon disulfide at the top of its list of toxic links to Parkinson's.
"You'd think mine would be an open and shut case," said Webb, now 48, who first filed for compensation in 2004.
On Jan. 9 of this year, the same day the Labor Department sent Webb a letter saying it could find no toxic link to Parkinson's, Schwartz penned a memo [3] (PDF) to his bosses at the Labor Department. One of his top concerns was the "scientific integrity and validity" of the database because it failed to find well-known links between toxic exposure and multiple diseases.
In the memo, Schwartz also called for the Labor Department to submit the program to outside peer review, in which independent experts would validate the conclusions in the database.
Schwartz said none of his bosses, all longtime program employees, ever responded.
But after he sent the memo, Labor Department officials put new demands on his work schedule and, records show, planned to have a manager accompany Schwartz on training trips to make sure he didn't raise issues about the scientific validity of the program.
Then, on April 16, Schwartz gave testimony about his allegations to the Government Accountability Office, the investigative arm of Congress, which has a continuing probe into problems with the compensation program.
The day after his GAO testimony, Schwartz got a memo from one of his bosses, policy chief Mike Chance, who had listened in on the GAO call. Chance told Schwartz that Labor was changing his previous work agreement, which had guaranteed he would not be sent on the road more than three times a month. The change was "non-negotiable," Schwartz said he was told.
"My current situation is the response" to his memo, Schwartz said. "I believe I was forced out."
When asked for a response, Rachel Leiton, director of the compensation program, sent this statement through a spokeswoman:
"While it is not our policy to discuss personnel matters, in this case we can emphatically state that Dr. Schwartz was not forced to resign. Rather, he submitted his letter of resignation on a completely voluntary basis."
When asked for elaboration, the same spokeswoman did not reply. But she did send out a press release on the amount of money collected so far by claimants in Colorado, where a bipartisan group of Congress members has introduced legislation to reform the national program.
The payments — some $400 million — are a lot of money, said Carla McCabe, the former bomb builder from Rocky Flats suffering from a brain tumor she believes is linked to her work.
"But they're denying people like crazy," she said. "I don't know how they keep denying us. I hope finally a whistleblower can help us get some answers."
http://www.propublica.org/feature/plan-to-pay-sick-nuclear-workers-unfairly-rejects-many-doctor-says-731
Thursday, July 30, 2009
Questions for Secretary of Energy about Uranium Mining and Milling in Virginia
Chatham, VAComment: Another great letter Ms. Maute! Please Secretary of Energy, answer our questions about uranium mining and milling in our Lovely State of Virginia! Most citizens of this state do not want uranium mining or nuclear power! Only Corp Virginia and greedy Canadian uranium mining companies want to sell uranium to the highest bidder in the world!
Sent: Thursday, July 30, 2009 5:30 PM
Subject: Thank you, Mister Secretary GoDanRiver
Honorable Secretary Chu,
Thank you for visiting Virginia.
Most of us in Virginia as are welcoming to federal dignitaries.
However, we do not generally take kindly to their attempting to set state policy. We're even less excited to have to have an industry do it for us.
The letter from which I cite (printed in its entirty below) leads one to believe that perhaps that may be occurring.
Mr. Norm W. Reynolds has written a letter to local papers (Danville and Pittsylvania County) which appears to take liberties the purpose of your visit and President Obama's energy agenda.
I am hoping you can set the record straight. I, and many others, await answers to the questions posed below.
Sincerely,
K. Maute
Letter: Thank you, Mister Secretary
Mr. Reynolds states, "U.S. Energy Secretary Steven Chu could not have picked a better spot than Pittsylvania County to sound his ringing call for “restarting” our nation’s nuclear energy program, as well as endorsing Virginia’s state-sanctioned study to assess the safety and feasibility of mining and milling uranium in the commonwealth.
Question: Was the purpose of your visit to Pittsylvania County, VA to"sound his ringing call for "restarting" our America's nuclear program?
Mr. Reynolds writes, Speaking to concerns that have been raised about mining in Virginia, Chu — a Nobel laureate in physics — explained that in “any kind of mining, whether it’s uranium, coal or nickel, or you name it, it has to be done in a way that protects the environment and protects the people. … there’s a study going on as to whether uranium mining in Virginia is going to do that. … we will wait for the results of that study.”
Question: Do you consider the coal industry as an example of mining in a way that protects the environment and people?
Question: To your knowledge where has uranium been mined and milled safely with a climate, watersheds and density of population similar to Virginia?
Question: Thousands of new uranium claims exist in historically mined areas in the US. Density of population appears less and the areas more arid.
Question: Why encourage mining in Virginia where millions stand to suffer water contamination if mining and milling of uranium occurs?
Mr. Reynolds states, "The Virginia Coal and Energy Commission is working with the National Academy of Sciences to conduct an independent study to address concerns of Virginians about safety to people, livestock, crops and the environment."
Question: Has the National Academy of Sciences entered into contract to conduct the proposed study?
Question: If so, with whom did they contract and how is the study being funded?
Mr. Reynolds writes,The secretary’s position on the uranium potential at Coles Hill seemed to reflect that of his boss, President Barack Obama. When the president was campaigning in Virginia last year, The Roanoke Times carried the following report:
“According to an e-mail from his Virginia communications director, Obama supports a proposed study of the (Coles Hill) site to evaluate the potential environmental effects of mining. But, he adds, ‘Virginia has the potential to be a national leader in uranium mining, and development of uranium resources in Pittsylvania County could create hundreds of jobs in that part of the state.’”
Question:Who was the communications director who sent the e-mail stating that Obama supports a proposed study of the (Coles Hill) site to evaluate the potential environmental effects of mining?
Question: Is this President Obama's quote or from the un-named communications director, "‘Virginia has the potential to be a national leader in uranium mining, and development of uranium resources in Pittsylvania County could create hundreds of jobs in that part of the state.’”
Mr. Reynolds writes, "On the larger subject of using nuclear energy to power America, Chu told the local audience of about 275 people that the Obama administration and the U.S. Department of Energy are “very supportive of restarting the nuclear power industry,” adding that he believes it can be done safely."
Question: Does this mean that you, Secretary Chu, believe mining and milling of uranium can be done safely? If so, please elaborate reasons for that belief.
Mr. Reynolds writes, "For those of us who have worked long and hard on the Coles Hill project, it is gratifying that the nation’s highest energy official saw fit to come to Pittsylvania County and to endorse the scientific study and to state so unequivocally the Obama administration’s high commitment to getting nuclear back on track in the United States. We look forward to moving ahead hand in hand with such enlightened thinking."
Question: To what extent is the Obama administration involved with the uranium industry ?
Mr. Reynolds writes, "What Dr. Chu is talking about goes straight to the heart of energy independence for our nation. Yes, we need to move ahead on all fronts that make sense. But let us keep in mind that of the 55 million pounds of uranium needed to operate nuclear facilities for one year in this country, over 50 million pounds are imported. That is a frightening statistic in a world as unpredictable as the one in which we are living."
Question: Will the Obama administration and subsequent administrations require uranium mined at Coles Hill or in the United States to remain in the states for the sole purpose of American energy use?
Question: Can sale to foreign countries be prohibited?
Question: Why is the Virginia Coal and Energy Commission studying market trends for the uranium industry as part of its invironmental study?
Sent: Thursday, July 30, 2009 5:30 PM
Subject: Thank you, Mister Secretary GoDanRiver
Honorable Secretary Chu,
Thank you for visiting Virginia.
Most of us in Virginia as are welcoming to federal dignitaries.
However, we do not generally take kindly to their attempting to set state policy. We're even less excited to have to have an industry do it for us.
The letter from which I cite (printed in its entirty below) leads one to believe that perhaps that may be occurring.
Mr. Norm W. Reynolds has written a letter to local papers (Danville and Pittsylvania County) which appears to take liberties the purpose of your visit and President Obama's energy agenda.
I am hoping you can set the record straight. I, and many others, await answers to the questions posed below.
Sincerely,
K. Maute
Letter: Thank you, Mister Secretary
Mr. Reynolds states, "U.S. Energy Secretary Steven Chu could not have picked a better spot than Pittsylvania County to sound his ringing call for “restarting” our nation’s nuclear energy program, as well as endorsing Virginia’s state-sanctioned study to assess the safety and feasibility of mining and milling uranium in the commonwealth.
Question: Was the purpose of your visit to Pittsylvania County, VA to"sound his ringing call for "restarting" our America's nuclear program?
Mr. Reynolds writes, Speaking to concerns that have been raised about mining in Virginia, Chu — a Nobel laureate in physics — explained that in “any kind of mining, whether it’s uranium, coal or nickel, or you name it, it has to be done in a way that protects the environment and protects the people. … there’s a study going on as to whether uranium mining in Virginia is going to do that. … we will wait for the results of that study.”
Question: Do you consider the coal industry as an example of mining in a way that protects the environment and people?
Question: To your knowledge where has uranium been mined and milled safely with a climate, watersheds and density of population similar to Virginia?
Question: Thousands of new uranium claims exist in historically mined areas in the US. Density of population appears less and the areas more arid.
Question: Why encourage mining in Virginia where millions stand to suffer water contamination if mining and milling of uranium occurs?
Mr. Reynolds states, "The Virginia Coal and Energy Commission is working with the National Academy of Sciences to conduct an independent study to address concerns of Virginians about safety to people, livestock, crops and the environment."
Question: Has the National Academy of Sciences entered into contract to conduct the proposed study?
Question: If so, with whom did they contract and how is the study being funded?
Mr. Reynolds writes,The secretary’s position on the uranium potential at Coles Hill seemed to reflect that of his boss, President Barack Obama. When the president was campaigning in Virginia last year, The Roanoke Times carried the following report:
“According to an e-mail from his Virginia communications director, Obama supports a proposed study of the (Coles Hill) site to evaluate the potential environmental effects of mining. But, he adds, ‘Virginia has the potential to be a national leader in uranium mining, and development of uranium resources in Pittsylvania County could create hundreds of jobs in that part of the state.’”
Question:Who was the communications director who sent the e-mail stating that Obama supports a proposed study of the (Coles Hill) site to evaluate the potential environmental effects of mining?
Question: Is this President Obama's quote or from the un-named communications director, "‘Virginia has the potential to be a national leader in uranium mining, and development of uranium resources in Pittsylvania County could create hundreds of jobs in that part of the state.’”
Mr. Reynolds writes, "On the larger subject of using nuclear energy to power America, Chu told the local audience of about 275 people that the Obama administration and the U.S. Department of Energy are “very supportive of restarting the nuclear power industry,” adding that he believes it can be done safely."
Question: Does this mean that you, Secretary Chu, believe mining and milling of uranium can be done safely? If so, please elaborate reasons for that belief.
Mr. Reynolds writes, "For those of us who have worked long and hard on the Coles Hill project, it is gratifying that the nation’s highest energy official saw fit to come to Pittsylvania County and to endorse the scientific study and to state so unequivocally the Obama administration’s high commitment to getting nuclear back on track in the United States. We look forward to moving ahead hand in hand with such enlightened thinking."
Question: To what extent is the Obama administration involved with the uranium industry ?
Mr. Reynolds writes, "What Dr. Chu is talking about goes straight to the heart of energy independence for our nation. Yes, we need to move ahead on all fronts that make sense. But let us keep in mind that of the 55 million pounds of uranium needed to operate nuclear facilities for one year in this country, over 50 million pounds are imported. That is a frightening statistic in a world as unpredictable as the one in which we are living."
Question: Will the Obama administration and subsequent administrations require uranium mined at Coles Hill or in the United States to remain in the states for the sole purpose of American energy use?
Question: Can sale to foreign countries be prohibited?
Question: Why is the Virginia Coal and Energy Commission studying market trends for the uranium industry as part of its invironmental study?
Supervisors to meet Monday
Comment: We must attend these meetings to protest against uranium mining and give facts about the problems of uranium mining!
Wednesday, July 29, 2009 10:10 AM EDT
The Pittsylvania County Board of Supervisors will meet Monday, Aug. 3, at 7 p.m. in the General District Courtroom of the Edwin R. Shields Courthouse Addition in Chatham.
The agenda includes:
_ Public hearing on restricted truck traffic on Ringgold Road;
_ Pittsylvania Youth Sports;
_ Workforce Investment Act;
_ Electronic poll books and printers.
http://www.wpcva.com/articles/2009/07/30/chatham/news/news63.txt
Wednesday, July 29, 2009 10:10 AM EDT
The Pittsylvania County Board of Supervisors will meet Monday, Aug. 3, at 7 p.m. in the General District Courtroom of the Edwin R. Shields Courthouse Addition in Chatham.
The agenda includes:
_ Public hearing on restricted truck traffic on Ringgold Road;
_ Pittsylvania Youth Sports;
_ Workforce Investment Act;
_ Electronic poll books and printers.
http://www.wpcva.com/articles/2009/07/30/chatham/news/news63.txt
Congressman Tom Perriello
Comment: Again, we all need to attend meetings to inform people the problems of uranium mining and milling!
Attend one of Tom’s Constituent Meetings in August:
August 3, 6:00 – 8:00 PM
Martinsville: Martinsville High School (Library), 351 Commonwealth Blvd.
August 4, 6:00 – 8:00 PM
Henry County: Laurel Park Middle School (Library), 280 Laurel Park Ave., Martinsville
August 5, 6:00 – 8:00 PM
Danville: O.T. Bonner Middle School (Auditorium), 300 Apollo Drive
August 6, 6:00 – 8:00 PM
Pittsylvania County: Chatham Middle School (Cafetorium), 11650 Hwy 29 N, Chatham
August 7, 6:00 – 8:00 PM
Halifax County: Halifax High School (Auditorium Balcony), 310 High School Circle, South Boston
Check Congressman Perriello’s website for location:
08/03/09 -- Martinsville 6:00 - 8:00 PM
08/04/09 -- Henry County 6:00 - 8:00 PM
08/05/09 -- Danville 6:00 - 8:00 PM
08/06/09 -- Pittsylvania County 6:00 - 8:00 PM
08/07/09 -- Halifax County 6:00 - 8:00 PM
08/08/09 -- Bedford 11:00 AM - 1:00 PM
08/10/09 -- Greene County 6:00 - 8:00 PM
08/11/09 -- Charlottesville 6:00 - 8:00 PM
08/17/09 -- Fluvanna County 6:00 - 8:00 PM
08/18/09 -- Charlottesville 6:00 – 8:00 PM
08/19/09 -- Lunenburg County 6:00 - 8:00 PM
08/20/09 -- Nelson County 5:30 - 7:30 PM
08/21/09 -- Mecklenburg County 6:00 - 8:00 PM
08/22/09 -- Brunswick County 1:00 - 3:00 PM
08/24/09 -- Buckingham County 6:00 - 8:00 PM
08/25/09 -- Prince Edward County 6:00 - 8:00 PM
08/26/09 -- Cumberland County 6:00 - 8:00 PM
08/27/09 –- Albemarle County 6:00 – 8:00 PM
08/28/09 -- Campbell County 6:00 - 8:00 PM
08/29/09 –- Franklin County 1:00 – 3:00 PM
08/31/09 -- Appomattox County 6:00 - 8:00 PM
www.perriello.house.gov
Attend one of Tom’s Constituent Meetings in August:
August 3, 6:00 – 8:00 PM
Martinsville: Martinsville High School (Library), 351 Commonwealth Blvd.
August 4, 6:00 – 8:00 PM
Henry County: Laurel Park Middle School (Library), 280 Laurel Park Ave., Martinsville
August 5, 6:00 – 8:00 PM
Danville: O.T. Bonner Middle School (Auditorium), 300 Apollo Drive
August 6, 6:00 – 8:00 PM
Pittsylvania County: Chatham Middle School (Cafetorium), 11650 Hwy 29 N, Chatham
August 7, 6:00 – 8:00 PM
Halifax County: Halifax High School (Auditorium Balcony), 310 High School Circle, South Boston
Check Congressman Perriello’s website for location:
08/03/09 -- Martinsville 6:00 - 8:00 PM
08/04/09 -- Henry County 6:00 - 8:00 PM
08/05/09 -- Danville 6:00 - 8:00 PM
08/06/09 -- Pittsylvania County 6:00 - 8:00 PM
08/07/09 -- Halifax County 6:00 - 8:00 PM
08/08/09 -- Bedford 11:00 AM - 1:00 PM
08/10/09 -- Greene County 6:00 - 8:00 PM
08/11/09 -- Charlottesville 6:00 - 8:00 PM
08/17/09 -- Fluvanna County 6:00 - 8:00 PM
08/18/09 -- Charlottesville 6:00 – 8:00 PM
08/19/09 -- Lunenburg County 6:00 - 8:00 PM
08/20/09 -- Nelson County 5:30 - 7:30 PM
08/21/09 -- Mecklenburg County 6:00 - 8:00 PM
08/22/09 -- Brunswick County 1:00 - 3:00 PM
08/24/09 -- Buckingham County 6:00 - 8:00 PM
08/25/09 -- Prince Edward County 6:00 - 8:00 PM
08/26/09 -- Cumberland County 6:00 - 8:00 PM
08/27/09 –- Albemarle County 6:00 – 8:00 PM
08/28/09 -- Campbell County 6:00 - 8:00 PM
08/29/09 –- Franklin County 1:00 – 3:00 PM
08/31/09 -- Appomattox County 6:00 - 8:00 PM
www.perriello.house.gov
Meeting of the Roanoke River Basin Bi-State Commission
Comment: Everyone should attend, this is the way to get the uranium mining issue out to people!
The next meeting of the Roanoke River Basin Bi-State Commission will be held on Friday, August 21, 2009 from 10:00 a.m. until 12:00 p.m. at the Pepsi Building in Danville, VA (directions attached).
The City of Danville will provide lunch. Please respond to Tammy Stephenson by email or phone by Friday, August 14, 2009 if you plan to attend and stay for lunch so we can get a lunch count.
The Virginia Roanoke River Basin Advisory Committee will hold a meeting immediately following lunch, from 1:00 p.m. until 3:00 p.m. A presentation on the Virginia’s biosolids program is planned for the afternoon meeting.
Please mark your calendar for the meetings. Agendas and related materials will be sent out in the near future.
Scott W. Kudlas
Director, Office of Surface and Ground Water Supply Planning
Department of Environmental Quality
P.O. Box 1105
Richmond, VA 23218
scott.kudlas@deq.virginia.gov
Phone=(804) 698-4456
The next meeting of the Roanoke River Basin Bi-State Commission will be held on Friday, August 21, 2009 from 10:00 a.m. until 12:00 p.m. at the Pepsi Building in Danville, VA (directions attached).
The City of Danville will provide lunch. Please respond to Tammy Stephenson by email or phone by Friday, August 14, 2009 if you plan to attend and stay for lunch so we can get a lunch count.
The Virginia Roanoke River Basin Advisory Committee will hold a meeting immediately following lunch, from 1:00 p.m. until 3:00 p.m. A presentation on the Virginia’s biosolids program is planned for the afternoon meeting.
Please mark your calendar for the meetings. Agendas and related materials will be sent out in the near future.
Scott W. Kudlas
Director, Office of Surface and Ground Water Supply Planning
Department of Environmental Quality
P.O. Box 1105
Richmond, VA 23218
scott.kudlas@deq.virginia.gov
Phone=(804) 698-4456
Uranium mining, milling brings more than money
Comment: Great Letter Mr. Lovelace about what uranium mining will do to our lovely state of Virginia for the price of greed of uranium companies and Corp. Virginia!
Wednesday, July 29, 2009 9:44 AM EDT
It saddens me to think some can only think of dollar signs and not the contamination and sickness from uranium mining and milling. We, the citizens, have nothing to gain and everything to lose.
I would like to know when the price of uranium drops, whether Virginia Uranium Inc. or any other uranium mining companies handle their mining and milling operations like all the other mining companies in the world do. Will you stop operations temporarily or permanently until the price of uranium rises again?
Keep in mind even if you are an experienced miner, these jobs could be part-time. You might be laid off for months. Can you support your family on a part-time job? Would you try and build or buy a house or buy a new vehicle knowing you might only work three or four months a year? The only milling facility (White Mesa) in the United States has only operated a few months this year and announced in May it would not process ore for the remainder of 2009 because the cost is higher than the spot price of uranium, according to the owner, Denison Mines President Ron Hochstein.
Let's not forget about all the part-time tax revenue for our county and state. My understanding of the tax revenue with mining and milling operations is the company has to be running and the jobs being worked to get the tax revenue. Our great state and county are not run on part-time taxes and jobs. It might help, but it does not outweigh the contamination of our drinking water and land, the sickness to our families and the tax increases to clean up this mess if it ever could be cleaned up.
Mr. Roach, haven't you been working on and off? Well, let me say this another way. Haven't you worked part-time for Virginia Uranium Inc. over the last several years? I am sure you have not depended on this solely to support your family. You also speak of us having a thriving community, I wonder if the Navaho Indians would agree with you on this issue.
All I hear is we need to mine this uranium, get it out of the ground, it's a matter of national security, and we need to dig so we can power our nuclear plants now. Well, watch the price drop and you will see the mining stop. The nuclear plants still need the uranium whether the price is high or low, but we have an excess of uranium and the mining and milling will stop and start with the greed and costs of operations. If dug up, the radon released would be 10,000, yes that is 10,000, times more than if left in the ground.
What I feel is a matter of national security is destroying your own water and agricultural land and depending on foreign countries to feed you or provide you with drinking water.
Phillip Lovelace
Gretna
Wednesday, July 29, 2009 9:44 AM EDT
It saddens me to think some can only think of dollar signs and not the contamination and sickness from uranium mining and milling. We, the citizens, have nothing to gain and everything to lose.
I would like to know when the price of uranium drops, whether Virginia Uranium Inc. or any other uranium mining companies handle their mining and milling operations like all the other mining companies in the world do. Will you stop operations temporarily or permanently until the price of uranium rises again?
Keep in mind even if you are an experienced miner, these jobs could be part-time. You might be laid off for months. Can you support your family on a part-time job? Would you try and build or buy a house or buy a new vehicle knowing you might only work three or four months a year? The only milling facility (White Mesa) in the United States has only operated a few months this year and announced in May it would not process ore for the remainder of 2009 because the cost is higher than the spot price of uranium, according to the owner, Denison Mines President Ron Hochstein.
Let's not forget about all the part-time tax revenue for our county and state. My understanding of the tax revenue with mining and milling operations is the company has to be running and the jobs being worked to get the tax revenue. Our great state and county are not run on part-time taxes and jobs. It might help, but it does not outweigh the contamination of our drinking water and land, the sickness to our families and the tax increases to clean up this mess if it ever could be cleaned up.
Mr. Roach, haven't you been working on and off? Well, let me say this another way. Haven't you worked part-time for Virginia Uranium Inc. over the last several years? I am sure you have not depended on this solely to support your family. You also speak of us having a thriving community, I wonder if the Navaho Indians would agree with you on this issue.
All I hear is we need to mine this uranium, get it out of the ground, it's a matter of national security, and we need to dig so we can power our nuclear plants now. Well, watch the price drop and you will see the mining stop. The nuclear plants still need the uranium whether the price is high or low, but we have an excess of uranium and the mining and milling will stop and start with the greed and costs of operations. If dug up, the radon released would be 10,000, yes that is 10,000, times more than if left in the ground.
What I feel is a matter of national security is destroying your own water and agricultural land and depending on foreign countries to feed you or provide you with drinking water.
Phillip Lovelace
Gretna
Massey rehires miners to meet demand from Asia
Comment: Couple of articles to explain the thinking of Corporate Mine companies and the claims of the Energy for Virginia! No one will know except the Federal government and Canada where the uranium from Virginia may go!
Massey rehires miners to meet demand from Asia
http://news.ino.com/headlines/?newsid=68997966268791
22 hours ago
By TIM HUBER
AP Business Writer
(AP:CHARLESTON, West Virginia) Massey Energy Co. said Wednesday it's begun rehiring miners amid growing demand for coking coal from Asian steelmakers.
Officials with the Richmond, Virginia-based coal producer also told analysts they've been seeing promising signs that U.S. demand for coking coal to fire blast furnaces is recovering. Both are positive signs for U.S. coal producers and the ailing economy, which has left towering stockpiles of coal at power plants and in coal-producing states this summer.
"As China and India consume more coal, we believe our opportunity may be greater to sell our coal directly into these markets or to displace Australian and South African coal in the market as that production remains in Asia," Massey Chief Executive Don Blankenship said.
Massey's coking coal shipments to Asia are growing and should account for about half its exports over the final six months of the year, he said. "Used to be sometimes there wasn't anything going to Asia."
Coking coal imports to China have soared as the country's steel mills have cranked up production this summer, said industry analyst Charles Bradford of Affiliated Research Group.
"They imported 4.6 million metric tons last month," Bradford said. "For the first six months (of 2009) they only imported 12.7 million tons, so you did a third of the six months in one month."
Activity also is picking up in the United States, where steel mills are operating at more than 52 percent of capacity, up from 47 percent in June, Bradford said.
"A lot of people are bringing facilities back online," he said. "They're all saying they're see no economic recovery, yet they're reopening capacity."
Massey, too, has seen positive signs from U.S. steel producers. Coking coal accounted for 19 percent of the 9.4 million tons of coal Massey produced from mines in West Virginia, Kentucky and Virginia in the second quarter.
"We have seen at least two significant accounts change their shipment schedule positively, even at some fairly healthy prices," Blankenship said. "So I don't think we're going to sell any more coal at high prices but I think people that have commitments to us appear to be more able to fulfill those commitments and so, therefore, you could see a better volume and second half met situation than we forecasted.
"On the utility side," he said, "I expect it to be very ugly for the next 18 months."
Still, Massey President Baxter Phillips said the company began rehiring a few laid-off workers during the second quarter, but still ended the period with 639 fewer miners.
Libya and Canada sign nuclear deal
http://ca.news.yahoo.com/s/afp/090730/canada/libya_canada_energy_nuclear_1
TRIPOLI (AFP) - Libya and Canada have signed a memorandum of intent on nuclear power, the fourth signed by Tripoli in the past two years, an official said on Thursday.
The memorandum foresees cooperation between the two countries in research and the mining, processing and transport of uranium, as well as its use in medicine and desalination projects.
Since July 2007, Libya has signed another three similar agreements with France, Russia and Ukraine.
OPEC member Libya is also the African continent's third largest oil producer after Nigeria and Angola, pumping nearly two million barrels of crude oil per day. It hopes to increase production to three million bpd by 2013.
Australia’s new uranium mine linked to arms sales and spying
http://nuclearnewsaustralia.wordpress.com/2009/07/29/australias-new-uranium-mine-linked-to-arms-sales-and-spying/
The company with the right contacts
The Brisbane Times, Ben Cubby, 30 July 09
GENERAL ATOMICS, the company behind the nation’s newest uranium mine, has been patiently lobbying Australian politicians for more than a decade to encourage it to allow mining, to develop nuclear reactors and buy high-tech weapons.
The company has ferried members of the US Congress, their families and aides to Australia for high-level talks. It has paid for Labor MPs to travel to the United States to see its weapons and nuclear reactors first-hand, as well as hosting taxpayer funded trips……………………………………
To put its case for more mines and more weapons in Canberra, the company uses Hawker Britton, a lobbying firm that includes many former ALP staffers and MPs.
But among the biggest supporters of uranium mining expansion is the South Australian Premier, Mike Rann, who was on the Greenpeace executive that launched the Rainbow Warrior protest ship to try to block French nuclear weapons tests in 1972……………………………….
General Atomics flew a group from the US Congress to Australia, accompanied by company executives, to persuade the Federal Government to buy the company’s Predator unmanned aircraft………………………….
As well as its interest in unmanned spy planes, General Atomics has employed human spies. Last year it was caught hiring a former undercover police officer turned private investigator to infiltrate Australian environment groups and report on their actions. The former officer was posing as a Kurdish refugee and feeding information back to General Atomics.
http://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/national/the-company-with-the-right-contacts-20090729-e1lk.html
Massey rehires miners to meet demand from Asia
http://news.ino.com/headlines/?newsid=68997966268791
22 hours ago
By TIM HUBER
AP Business Writer
(AP:CHARLESTON, West Virginia) Massey Energy Co. said Wednesday it's begun rehiring miners amid growing demand for coking coal from Asian steelmakers.
Officials with the Richmond, Virginia-based coal producer also told analysts they've been seeing promising signs that U.S. demand for coking coal to fire blast furnaces is recovering. Both are positive signs for U.S. coal producers and the ailing economy, which has left towering stockpiles of coal at power plants and in coal-producing states this summer.
"As China and India consume more coal, we believe our opportunity may be greater to sell our coal directly into these markets or to displace Australian and South African coal in the market as that production remains in Asia," Massey Chief Executive Don Blankenship said.
Massey's coking coal shipments to Asia are growing and should account for about half its exports over the final six months of the year, he said. "Used to be sometimes there wasn't anything going to Asia."
Coking coal imports to China have soared as the country's steel mills have cranked up production this summer, said industry analyst Charles Bradford of Affiliated Research Group.
"They imported 4.6 million metric tons last month," Bradford said. "For the first six months (of 2009) they only imported 12.7 million tons, so you did a third of the six months in one month."
Activity also is picking up in the United States, where steel mills are operating at more than 52 percent of capacity, up from 47 percent in June, Bradford said.
"A lot of people are bringing facilities back online," he said. "They're all saying they're see no economic recovery, yet they're reopening capacity."
Massey, too, has seen positive signs from U.S. steel producers. Coking coal accounted for 19 percent of the 9.4 million tons of coal Massey produced from mines in West Virginia, Kentucky and Virginia in the second quarter.
"We have seen at least two significant accounts change their shipment schedule positively, even at some fairly healthy prices," Blankenship said. "So I don't think we're going to sell any more coal at high prices but I think people that have commitments to us appear to be more able to fulfill those commitments and so, therefore, you could see a better volume and second half met situation than we forecasted.
"On the utility side," he said, "I expect it to be very ugly for the next 18 months."
Still, Massey President Baxter Phillips said the company began rehiring a few laid-off workers during the second quarter, but still ended the period with 639 fewer miners.
Libya and Canada sign nuclear deal
http://ca.news.yahoo.com/s/afp/090730/canada/libya_canada_energy_nuclear_1
TRIPOLI (AFP) - Libya and Canada have signed a memorandum of intent on nuclear power, the fourth signed by Tripoli in the past two years, an official said on Thursday.
The memorandum foresees cooperation between the two countries in research and the mining, processing and transport of uranium, as well as its use in medicine and desalination projects.
Since July 2007, Libya has signed another three similar agreements with France, Russia and Ukraine.
OPEC member Libya is also the African continent's third largest oil producer after Nigeria and Angola, pumping nearly two million barrels of crude oil per day. It hopes to increase production to three million bpd by 2013.
Australia’s new uranium mine linked to arms sales and spying
http://nuclearnewsaustralia.wordpress.com/2009/07/29/australias-new-uranium-mine-linked-to-arms-sales-and-spying/
The company with the right contacts
The Brisbane Times, Ben Cubby, 30 July 09
GENERAL ATOMICS, the company behind the nation’s newest uranium mine, has been patiently lobbying Australian politicians for more than a decade to encourage it to allow mining, to develop nuclear reactors and buy high-tech weapons.
The company has ferried members of the US Congress, their families and aides to Australia for high-level talks. It has paid for Labor MPs to travel to the United States to see its weapons and nuclear reactors first-hand, as well as hosting taxpayer funded trips……………………………………
To put its case for more mines and more weapons in Canberra, the company uses Hawker Britton, a lobbying firm that includes many former ALP staffers and MPs.
But among the biggest supporters of uranium mining expansion is the South Australian Premier, Mike Rann, who was on the Greenpeace executive that launched the Rainbow Warrior protest ship to try to block French nuclear weapons tests in 1972……………………………….
General Atomics flew a group from the US Congress to Australia, accompanied by company executives, to persuade the Federal Government to buy the company’s Predator unmanned aircraft………………………….
As well as its interest in unmanned spy planes, General Atomics has employed human spies. Last year it was caught hiring a former undercover police officer turned private investigator to infiltrate Australian environment groups and report on their actions. The former officer was posing as a Kurdish refugee and feeding information back to General Atomics.
http://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/national/the-company-with-the-right-contacts-20090729-e1lk.html
TSX Venture Exchange Daily Bulletins
VIRGINIA ENERGY RESOURCES INC. ("VAE") (formerly Santoy Resources Ltd. ("SAN"))
BULLETIN TYPE: Private Placement-Non-Brokered, Amendment BULLETIN DATE: July 29, 2009 TSX Venture Tier 2 Company Further to the TSX Venture Exchange bulletin dated July 22, 2009, the Non-Brokered Private Placement announced July 16, 2009 has been amended as follows: Finders' Fees: $30,205 cash and 258,900 warrants payable to Union Securities Ltd. $6,728.40 cash and 57,672 warrants payable to Blackmont Capital Inc. $10,500 cash and 90,000 warrants payable to NBCN $14,000 cash and 120,000 warrants payable to Cormark Securities $69,833.40 cash payable to Acamar Asia Consultants Inc. (Alimohamid and Nadia Fayyaz) *
All placees receive subscription receipts upon closing.
The subscription receipts will be exchanged for private placement units consisting of the above-described shares and warrants upon the closing of the Plan of Arrangement with Virginia Uranium Ltd.
As the Company will be completing a one for five consolidation immediately following closing of the Plan of Arrangement, these shares and warrants will be issued on the same consolidation ratio. TSX-X
http://www.tradingmarkets.com/.site/news/Stock%20News/2449242/
BULLETIN TYPE: Private Placement-Non-Brokered, Amendment BULLETIN DATE: July 29, 2009 TSX Venture Tier 2 Company Further to the TSX Venture Exchange bulletin dated July 22, 2009, the Non-Brokered Private Placement announced July 16, 2009 has been amended as follows: Finders' Fees: $30,205 cash and 258,900 warrants payable to Union Securities Ltd. $6,728.40 cash and 57,672 warrants payable to Blackmont Capital Inc. $10,500 cash and 90,000 warrants payable to NBCN $14,000 cash and 120,000 warrants payable to Cormark Securities $69,833.40 cash payable to Acamar Asia Consultants Inc. (Alimohamid and Nadia Fayyaz) *
All placees receive subscription receipts upon closing.
The subscription receipts will be exchanged for private placement units consisting of the above-described shares and warrants upon the closing of the Plan of Arrangement with Virginia Uranium Ltd.
As the Company will be completing a one for five consolidation immediately following closing of the Plan of Arrangement, these shares and warrants will be issued on the same consolidation ratio. TSX-X
http://www.tradingmarkets.com/.site/news/Stock%20News/2449242/
Boycott Denison Mines
Comment: Remember last week about protecting the Grand Canyon from uranium mining, the key word: "new," while the old permits are going to happen according to the article below!
By Brenda Norrell
Censored News
http://www.bsnorrell.blogspot.com/
RED BUTTE, HAVASUPAI TERRITORY -- Toronto-based Denison Mines (International Uranium Corporation) is threatening to reopen Canyon mine and drill for uranium at the south rim of the Grand Canyon.
It only takes a quick look at the company to see that it has targeted Indigenous Peoples around the world with mining, poison and death.
Denison uranium mines and explorations are in White Mesa, Utah, McClean Lake in Saskatchewan, Australia, Mongolia and the Mutanga Project in Zambia.
Leaving a trail of disease and death around the world from mining, the stockholders of Denison need to know that their wealth streams from the poisoned water and lands of Indigenous Peoples.
In White Mesa Ute country, near the Navajo Nation, the uranium mine was built on sacred kiva grounds and left a toxic dump of radioactivity.
During the Havasupai Gathering to halt uranium mining in the Grand Canyon last weekend, Supai Waters, carrier of the water songs, spoke of the unseen and how the Supai Guardians of the Canyon are maintaining the balance, not just here, but for the Earth.
If sacred Red Butte is violated, it will not just be the Supai and the crowds of tourists who are poisoned. It will not just be the Colorado River in Arizona and the drinking water of southern Nevada that is poisoned, the Earth will be in a state of dis-ease, imbalance.
Matthew Putesoy, vice chairman of the Havasupai Nation, said Red Butte is a traditional site sacred to the Havasuw 'Baaja.' Located in the Kaibab National Forest, Red Butte is known as Wii'i Gdwiisa, meaning "clenched-fist mountain." Havasupai leader Rex Tilousi says, "Red Butte is the lungs of our Grandmother Canyon."
Denison has staked 110 claims within the 1 million-acre area around the Grand Canyon and plans to produce nearly 110,000 tons per year of uranium ore at its Arizona 1 site over 10 years. During hearings, a water utility manager said virtually all of Southern Nevada would be left without water supplies if a mining disaster should occur. Recent legislation to protect the Grand Canyon does not apply to existing claims.
According to Denison Mines, "The company was formed through the combination of the business and operations of Denison Mines Inc. and International Uranium Corporation on December 1, 2006. Denison’s assets include an interest in two of the four licensed and operating conventional uranium mills in North America, with its 100% ownership of the White Mesa mill in Utah and its 22.5% ownership of the McClean Lake mill in Saskatchewan."
Another Canadian corporation, Cameco, is targeting Lakota lands for uranium mining. One year ago, in July, 2008, the US secretly transported 500 tons of yellowcake from Tuwaitha, Iraq, to Montreal, for the private company Cameco in Canada, according to CNN.
Cameco said it was for nuclear power generation. But no doubt, there is more to this story of a secret shipment of yellowcake:
http://www.cnn.com/2008/US/07/07/iraq.uranium/index.html
Also, read how uranium mining has poisoned Lakotas and the region of the Black Hills:
http://www.culturechange.org/cms/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=336&Itemid=1
http://bsnorrell.blogspot.com/2009/07/boycott-denison-mines.html
By Brenda Norrell
Censored News
http://www.bsnorrell.blogspot.com/
RED BUTTE, HAVASUPAI TERRITORY -- Toronto-based Denison Mines (International Uranium Corporation) is threatening to reopen Canyon mine and drill for uranium at the south rim of the Grand Canyon.
It only takes a quick look at the company to see that it has targeted Indigenous Peoples around the world with mining, poison and death.
Denison uranium mines and explorations are in White Mesa, Utah, McClean Lake in Saskatchewan, Australia, Mongolia and the Mutanga Project in Zambia.
Leaving a trail of disease and death around the world from mining, the stockholders of Denison need to know that their wealth streams from the poisoned water and lands of Indigenous Peoples.
In White Mesa Ute country, near the Navajo Nation, the uranium mine was built on sacred kiva grounds and left a toxic dump of radioactivity.
During the Havasupai Gathering to halt uranium mining in the Grand Canyon last weekend, Supai Waters, carrier of the water songs, spoke of the unseen and how the Supai Guardians of the Canyon are maintaining the balance, not just here, but for the Earth.
If sacred Red Butte is violated, it will not just be the Supai and the crowds of tourists who are poisoned. It will not just be the Colorado River in Arizona and the drinking water of southern Nevada that is poisoned, the Earth will be in a state of dis-ease, imbalance.
Matthew Putesoy, vice chairman of the Havasupai Nation, said Red Butte is a traditional site sacred to the Havasuw 'Baaja.' Located in the Kaibab National Forest, Red Butte is known as Wii'i Gdwiisa, meaning "clenched-fist mountain." Havasupai leader Rex Tilousi says, "Red Butte is the lungs of our Grandmother Canyon."
Denison has staked 110 claims within the 1 million-acre area around the Grand Canyon and plans to produce nearly 110,000 tons per year of uranium ore at its Arizona 1 site over 10 years. During hearings, a water utility manager said virtually all of Southern Nevada would be left without water supplies if a mining disaster should occur. Recent legislation to protect the Grand Canyon does not apply to existing claims.
According to Denison Mines, "The company was formed through the combination of the business and operations of Denison Mines Inc. and International Uranium Corporation on December 1, 2006. Denison’s assets include an interest in two of the four licensed and operating conventional uranium mills in North America, with its 100% ownership of the White Mesa mill in Utah and its 22.5% ownership of the McClean Lake mill in Saskatchewan."
Another Canadian corporation, Cameco, is targeting Lakota lands for uranium mining. One year ago, in July, 2008, the US secretly transported 500 tons of yellowcake from Tuwaitha, Iraq, to Montreal, for the private company Cameco in Canada, according to CNN.
Cameco said it was for nuclear power generation. But no doubt, there is more to this story of a secret shipment of yellowcake:
http://www.cnn.com/2008/US/07/07/iraq.uranium/index.html
Also, read how uranium mining has poisoned Lakotas and the region of the Black Hills:
http://www.culturechange.org/cms/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=336&Itemid=1
http://bsnorrell.blogspot.com/2009/07/boycott-denison-mines.html
Thank you, Mister Secretary
Comment: Rarely, this blog post anything the uranium group publishes, however, following articles will list of facts about Nuke Power group ever tells us! By the way, did the Secretary of Energy go to Coles Hill; was this the purpose of the whole Rural Tour? Not very nice!
Comments: Now facts about the so call modern Uranium mining problems!
America:
Environmental Problems and Violations Accumulate for Uranium Mining and Processing
While the uranium mining industry insists that the in-situ leaching process for extracting uranium is environmentally safe, mining violations and associated fines imposed by mining regulatory agencies continue to accumulate. To avoid violations, some mining companies request more lax environmental standards. Significant problems also occur with uranium processing and transportation.
Here are some recent examples:
•Uranium Mine (Power Resources, Inc.) to pay $1.4 million settlement. See http://www.trib.com/articles/2008/07/10/news/breaking/doc4876424160775926209366.txt.
•Cameco Resources agrees to pay $50,000 fine for deficienies identified during abandoned drill hole inspection at Smith Ranch ISL site. See http://www.wise-uranium.org/umopwy.html#SMITHR.
•According to Texas Commission on Environmental Quality records, 51 requests for “amended restoration tables to make them higher” have been granted out of 80 uranium mining production areas. See http://www.victoriaadvocate.com/goliad_county/story/323434.html.
•Strathmore pays $18,000 fine for numerous violations connected to exploration activities at Sky ISL project site (Wyoming). See http://www.wise-uranium.org/upusawy.html#SKY.
•The Cotter Corp. uranium mill has been cited by the state for radioactive contamination at the adjacent Shadow Hills Golf Club. See http://www.rockymountainnews.com/news/2008/aug/14/uranium-mill-cited-for-new-contamination/.
•$50,000 penalty imposed on Cameco's subsidiary Crow Butte Resources for violations at ISL uranium mine (Nebraska). See http://www.wise-uranium.org/umopusa.html#CROWBCD080523.
•Wyoming DEQ issues Notice of Violation to Cameco Resources for deficienies identified during abandoned drill hole inspection. See http://www.wise-uranium.org/umopwy.html#SMITHR.
•Cameco Resources Reaches Settlement with Wyoming Department of Environmental Quality. See http://www.cameco.com/media_gateway/news_releases/2008/news_release.php?id=236.
•Wyoming Model In Situ Uranium Mine Under Scrutiny for an Alarming Volume of Environmental Violations. See http://www.nunnglow.com/latest/wyoming-deq-sanctions-uranium-mine.html.
•WISE Uranium Reports Cogema Seeks Approval for Groundwater Restoration. See http://www.nunnglow.com/latest/wise-uranium-reports-cogema-seeks-approval-for-groundwater-restoration.html
•Probe finds uranium mine violations. See http://www.nunnglow.com/probe-finds-uranium-mine-violations.html
PROBLEMS WITH Australia:
The requirement to manage the radioactive tailings and all other solid wastes to minimise both long-term environmental as well as radiological releases and impacts makes uranium mining fundamentally different to other types of mining.”
“The long-term management of uranium mill tailings present a major environmental challenge. Given the tailings contain most of the original radioactivity of the ore (i.e. the decay products), they must be isolated from the environment for periods of at least tens of thousands of years – a time scale which is beyond collective human experience and certainly challenges engineering approaches for waste containment.” Gavin M. Mudd.
So, what is our record as a nation of Uranium miners?
Ranger:
• despite being expected to operate under a “no-release” water management system, incidents involving misplaced low grade ores or failures in water control bunds have led on numerous occasions to contaminated runoff waters being leaked into adjacent creeks (especially Corridoor Creek, a tributary of Magela Creek).
• in early 2004 incorrect plumbing saw the process water circuit being connected to the potable drinking water circuit – leading to rapid and significant toxic process water being mixed with drinking water, and much of the Ranger workforce being potentially exposed to both acute chemical and radiological exposure.
Olympic Dam:
• after operating for nearly a decade, a major ongoing leak from the tailings dam was revealed, amounting to the loss of billions of litres of tailings water to groundwater.
• in March 1999, and again October 2001, major explosions and fires caused substantive damage to the mill and smelter complexes, including major releases of noxious fumes – though the extent of radiological releases remains highly contentious, the fact that the uranium solvent extraction circuit in the 2001 incident was on fire raises serious concerns about how these incidents are handled by current regulators.
Beverley:
• numerous spills and leaks from pipelines have occurred.
Nabarlek (now closed):
• due to the need to reduce the inventory of contaminated mine site waters, evaporation pond water was irrigated over an area adjacent to the mine/mill and led to significant tree deaths and lasting impacts on water quality in the adjacent creek which have taken nearly two decades to flush through.
Can uranium mines be satisfactorily rehabilitated?
The experience of rehabilitating uranium mines to date in Australia is questionable. The first generation of uranium mines from the Cold War, namely Rum Jungle, Radium Hill, Mary Kathleen and the South Alligator group of mines, all still present environmental and radiological management problems and require constant vigilence and maintenance.
Examples include:
• Rum Jungle – despite extensive remediation/rehabilitation works in the early 1980’s, including excavating remnant tailings and disposal into former pits, re-contouring and engineering soil covers over low grade ore and waste rock dumps, acid mine drainage continues to pollute the Finniss River, and the complete site still urgently requires more remediation/rehabilitation works.
• Radium Hill – after being abandoned in early 1962, minimal earth works were undertaken in the early 1980’s, mainly just engineering soil covers over the tailings piles – erosion is a continual problem and tailings requires ongoing maintenance.
• Mary Kathleen – operating in both the Cold War phase of the late 1950’s to mid-1960’s as well as again in the commercial era of the late 1970’s, the mid-1980’s rehabilitation of the mine won an engineering excellence award for its perceived quality – despite internal concerns by the regulators about potential for long-term seepage from the tailings dam. Recent field studies in the late 1990’s have validated this concern and shown ongoing seepage of saline, metal and radionuclide rich waters from the tailings dam – well above the quantities predicted at the time of rehabilitation – impacting on the local creek.
Conclusion;
Overall, the experience to date with uranium mining does not give rise to any sufficient degree of confidence, as past sites – even after significant rehabilitation works – are still showing problems with erosion and seepage and ongoing impacts on water quality.
Problems with CANADA:
“Modern” mines: All are in northern Saskatchewan. Open pit and underground operations, some using freezing and remote control mining techniques; tailings in surface dams and mined-out pits using “hydraulic containment” to control groundwater contamination:6
Cluff Lake (Areva):
o Discovered in 1971
o Mining began in 1980
o Deposits include: OP underground mine (1983-85), Dominique-Janine open pit mine (1989-90) and extension (1994-97), Janine North open pit mine (1990-91), Dominique Peter and Dominique Janine West mines (1998-1999), and West Dominique Janine underground mine (1994-2002)7
o Mill initially separated radioactive components of tailings for storage in concrete barrels, which leaked.
o On March 24, 1998, the AECB (Atomic Energy Control Board) denied a two year licence renewal. Instead, AECB approved an extension to the licence expiring March 31, 1998 for nine months, subject to several conditions. This decision reflects a number of deficiencies identified by AECB at the Cluff Lake site:
the recent detection of increased radium levels in a lake located next to the tailings
management facility,
6 Ore reserves and details of processing and tailings disposal are not included here.
7 http://www.ir.gov.sk.ca/dbsearch/MinDepositQuery/default.aspx?ID=2153 \
IWUS: Uranium Extraction Methods and Regulatory Issues in Canada page 4
the recent twofold increase in workers’ radiation exposure,
the insufficience of the tailings management facility’s capacity (by the end of 1996, there was capacity for a production of one more year, while mining is scheduled to continue for ten years),
Cogema’s inadequate project management capabilities at Cluff Lake.8
o Closed 2002
Key Lake (Cameco/Areva):
o Discovered in 1975
o Mining began in 1983
o Open pit mines and mill
o Gaertner ore body mined out in 1987
o In September, 2004, the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission approved the renewal of the mining operating licence for the Key Lake Operation although the tailings disposal in the Deilmann open pit suffers from periodic sloughing of the pit sidewalls. One million cubic metres of sand have already slumped into the tailings, and another half a million cubic metres may follow. This sloughing not only decreases the capacity of the tailings disposal facility, it moreover distorts the performance of the facility in the long term which is based on the impermeability of the tailings.
o Still operating as mill for McArthur River ore; Deilmann pit to receive tailings
Rabbit Lake/Collins Bay (Cameco):
o Discovered in 1968
o Mining started in 1975
o Deposits include mined-out original Rabbit Lake open pit and Collins Bay A-, B- and D-zone pits as well as Eagle Point underground (incline access) mine
o In 1989, 2 million litres of radioactive water spilled into Wollaston Lake; the company was charged and eventually pled guilty, attracting a $5000 federal and a $55,000 provincial fine.
o Eagle Point still in operation
o Mill to process half of Cigar Lake ore
McArthur River (Cameco/Areva):
o Discovered in 1988
o Mining began in 1999
o Ore is frozen and removed by raise boring and boxhole boring remote mining methods and slurried to surface for milling
o On April 7, 2003, Cameco suspended production due to underground flood; resumed operation on July 2, 2003.
McClean Lake (Areva):
o Discovered in 1979
o Mining began in 1995
o JEB open pit, McClean North & South underground mines, Sue C open pit
o Open pit and underground mines
Cigar Lake (Cameco/Areva/Idemitsu/KEPCO)
o Discovered in 1981
o Jet boring remote mining method proposed
o Underground flooded October 23, 2006 – production development delayed at least 2 years
8 AECB News Release 98-07 http://www.aecb-ccea.gc.ca/news_rel/9807_e.htm
Comment: Heard Nukes say Nuke Plants will not hurt ya! NOT!
Push For New Nuclear Power Sputters, But Old Reactors Still Pose Cancer Risks
CHICAGO, Illinois, July 27, 2009 --/WORLD-WIRE/-- Nuclear reactors in the United States should be phased out, and replaced by technologies that don’t threaten public health with the emission of radioactive chemicals, urges the Cancer Prevention Coalition.
A recent energy bill sponsored by Congressional Republicans proposed building 100 new nuclear reactors across the United States in the next 20 years.
The proposal, which would double the current U.S. total of 104 operating nuclear reactors, would amount to a nuclear renaissance, as no new reactors have been ordered since 1978.
Concerns about global warming gave utilities the idea for this revival since reactors don’t emit greenhouse gases while generating power, and utilities have stopped closing old reactors while proposing 33 new ones to be sited in New England, throughout the South and Southeast, and in Texas, Utah and Idaho.
(For a list of applications to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission for approval of new reactors click here. http://www.nrc.gov/reactors/new-reactors/new-licensing-files/expected-new-rx-applications.pdf)
But this month, two Swedish scientists published an article concluding that a large increase in nuclear reactors will not solve global warming.
The utilities, of course, fail to report that greenhouse gases are emitted throughout the entire nuclear fuel cycle, and operating the reactor itself is the only exception. Both the nuclear reactor industry and its support industries spew radioactive materials into local air and water, posing a serious health hazard, warns Dr. Samuel S. Epstein, chairman of the Cancer Prevention Coalition and Professor emeritus Environmental & Occupational Medicine at the University of Illinois at Chicago School of Public Health.
In the 1970s, Wall Street investors stopped funding new reactor projects due to cost and safety concerns. Today, these issues are unchanged, and private investors again gave a thumbs-down to nuclear power. A 2005 law authorizing $18.5 billion in federal loan guarantees would only cover two reactors.
The Bush administration was a willing partner in the nuclear revival. George W. Bush became the first sitting U.S. president to visit a nuclear plant since a grim-faced President James Carter toured the damaged Three Mile Island reactor on April 1, 1979.
President Barack Obama has poured cold water on the renaissance. He rejected a request for $50 billion in loan guarantees in the stimulus package. Additionally, he rejected further funding for developing the nuclear waste dump at Yucca Mountain Nevada, leaving utilities with no place to permanently store their highly radioactive nuclear waste. It is now being held temporarily at 55 storage sites licensed by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and at Department of Defense sites and national laboratories across the country.
The major threat posed by nuclear reactors is not the addition of new reactors, but continuing to operate old and corroding ones, says Dr. Epstein. U.S. reactors are granted licenses for 40 years, and many are approaching that mark. Many utilities have asked regulators to extend their licenses for an additional 20 years.
"Each of the first 52 requests has been given a rubber-stamp approval, even though operating a 60 year old reactor would be a huge risk to human health," says Joseph Mangano, MPH, MBA, executive director of the Radiation and Public Health Project.
Notable exceptions are state government officials in New York and New Jersey, who are opposing the attempts to extend licenses for reactors in their states.
About 80 million Americans in 37 states live within 40 miles of a nuclear reactor, including residents of New York City, Chicago, Philadelphia, Detroit, Miami, Phoenix, Cleveland, and Boston. "If a meltdown were to occur, safe evacuation would be impossible and many thousands would suffer from radiation poisoning or cancer," warns Dr. Epstein. "The horrifying specter of Chernobyl, or of terrorists attacking a nuclear plant, is not lost on concerned Americans."
Reactors are a real health threat, not just a potential one, a fact largely ignored by mainstream media, he declares.
To generate electricity, over 100 radioactive chemicals are created – among the most dangerous chemicals on Earth, and the same toxic mix in atomic bomb test fallout. These gases and particles, including Strontium-90, Cesium-137, and Plutonium-239, are mostly stored as waste. But some must be routinely released into air and water. Humans breathe, eat, and drink them - just as they did bomb fallout - raising the cancer risk, especially to children.
Industry and government officials argue that reactor emissions are too small to cause harm. But for years, scientists have produced study after study documenting high cancer rates near reactors. For example, a 2007 review of the scientific literature by researchers from the University of South Carolina found elevated rates of childhood cancers, particularly leukemia and brain cancers, in nearly all 17 studies examined. A 2008 study of German reactors was one of the largest ever done, and it also found high local rates of child cancer.
Mangano and colleagues published a January 2002 article in the journal "Archives of Environmental Health," showing that local infant deaths and child cancer cases plunged dramatically right after shut down whenever a U.S. reactor closed. Because the very young suffer most from radiation exposures, they benefit most when exposures are removed. This research indicated that there would be approximately 18,000 fewer infant deaths and 6,000 fewer child cancer cases over the next 20 years if all nuclear reactors were closed.
Over half the states in the United States, 31, currently host nuclear power plants. Illinois has the most with 11, Pennsylvania has nine, New Jersey has four.
While waiting for the federal government to phase out nuclear power in favor of safer alternatives, state governments should act to warn and protect their citizens, urges the Cancer Prevention Coalition.
Governors have responsibilities to take whatever political action they can to phase-out nuclear plants. In the first instance, governors should tell their citizens of the danger.
In 1954, Atomic Energy Chairman Lewis Strauss declared nuclear power “too cheap to meter.” President Richard Nixon envisioned that the nation would have 1,000 reactors by this time. But the dreams of people like Strauss and Nixon were dashed by staggering costs and built-in dangers.
The attempt to revive this Cold War-era dream has been, and still is, largely talk. While the talk goes on, the nation is fast developing technologies like solar and wind power, which never run out and don’t pollute. Putting millions of Americans at risk of cancer by hanging on to old reactors – that produce only 19% of America's electricity and 8% of the country's total energy – is a reckless gamble. Nuclear reactors in the U.S. should be phased out, and replaced by options that don’t threaten public health.
CONTACT:
Samuel S. Epstein, MD
Professor emeritus Environmental & Occupational Medicine
University of Illinois at Chicago School of Public Health
Chairman, Cancer Prevention Coalition
Chicago, Illinois
www.preventcancer.com epstein@uic.edu
312-996-2297
Rosalie Bertell, PhD
Founding Member European Committee on Radiation Risk
International Association for Humanitarian Medicine
http://www.iahm.org/eng/home.htm
Founder and President emeritus International Institute of Concern for Public Health
http://iicph.org/
rosaliebertell@greynun.org
Joseph Mangano, MPH, MBA
Executive Director Radiation and Public Health Project
http://www.radiation.org/
Odiejoe@aol.com
Comment: Nuke Power CO2 Free, NOT!!!
26 July 2009
Why nuclear energy is not the answer to Climate Change.
by Ben Williams Original article at : examiner.com
It’s funny. People really believe that nuclear power is emissions free. Powering cities with nuclear, they propound, is the panacea to climate change. And yet, if you really take a look at the fuel cycle, it is obvious nuclear energy is, in fact, emissions intensive.
First off the ore needs to be mined. This involves drilling, explosions, heavy equipment. Even at the EPA standard of 15 grams of carbon per break horsepower engine hour, this translates to a lot of carbon. Then the ore needs to be shipped to a processing facility, or mill.
Here, twenty-four hours a day, heavy equipment loads the ore into a hopper, the intake into the semi-autogenous grinding mill. This grinding mill uses electricity (coal) to turn an enormous steel drum filled with metal tumbling balls. Additionally, tons — yes tons — of concentrated sulfuric acid are needed to help leach the uranium from the ore, among quantities of other highly caustic chemicals, all of which must be prepared on industrial scales and shipped to the facility.
After a number of other mechanical operations, all of them energy intensive, the ore must be dried in an oven, where, twenty-four hours a day, countless kilo-watt hours are burned heating the rock to temperature.
Finally, the processed ore, now ‘yellow cake’, has to be boxed up, sealed in steel drums (refined and produced industrially), and then shipped to market.
Then, of course, it needs to be reacted with hexaflourine, or some other chemical, to be refined and turned into the uranium rods that are used in the reactor core. Only now can the power be said to be emissions free: once the rods are installed and operational, powering generators with their nuclear heat.
Of course, after a few months the rods are spent. They then need to be safely disposed of — or, more accurately, buried somewhere where no one will notice them, contained for 1,000 years, after which they become someone else’s problem (probably the DOE or EPA). They must be safely interred for over four billion years. Yes, they need to be baby-sat for an amount of time that exceeds the current age of the Earth.
Because a nuclear core demands fresh, refined uranium, there is a constant use-cycle — an unstoppable appetite — that, ultimately pollutes in manifold ways:
1.The diesel burned in extracting the ore produces CO2, CO, NOX, SOX, dioxins, VOCs among the other expected particulates from incomplete combustion of fossil fuels.
2.The dust produced from mining becomes airborne and settles on downwind communities, increasing the cancer rate noticeably.
3.The diesel burnt in shipping the heavy rock to processing produces the same slew of pollutants as the heavy mining machinery, while trailing radioactive dust along the way.
4.The mill itself burns up millions of KWh every year, KWh generated, in this day and age, almost exclusively from burning coal — high SO2, H2SO3 and H2SO4 meet heavy metals like Hg with the clouds of greenhouse gases.
5.The mill must vent many toxic gases as it processes the ore. It must store radioactive slurry in the ground, hoping it will evaporate so the tailings can be capped. Groundwater and runoff pollution occurs. Once capped, the tailings are radioactive for billions of years. Future contamination becomes a certainty. (Just, the mill operators hope, not in their lifetime.)
6.Shipping the yellow cake to market. There are only two enrichment plants in the Northern United States, and one of them is in Canada. Long trips equal large emissions. Much of the yellow cake will be shipped overseas, adding emissions from large container vessels and potential maritime spills to the list.
7.The enrichment facility then vents toxic gases from the reagents used in reducing the yellow cake to weapons-grade uranium.
8.The rods are shipped to power plants, necessitating the fourth round of distribution-related emissions.
9.The rods are used, then spent, sealed up, and transported to a nuclear waste dump — more emissions, more radioactive decay along public roads and waterways.
10.Countless emissions result from policing the waste site.
Of course, none of this includes the emissions from the industrial-scale production of the reagents needed by the uranium refining cycle. Not to mention their weekly delivery to processing mills and enrichment facilities.
Nor does it take into account the ‘depleted’ uranium used as munitions (which, despite what you might infer from its name, is actually enriched — it is depleted of the less radioactive isotopes). That causes enough pollution to contaminate our armed-forces personnel before it’s even fired! Let alone the land where it is unleashed.
The whole thing is utterly non-sustainable. And no model on which to base future, responsible energy production. So why all the hoo-ha? Simple. Uranium allows, not so much for clean energy, but centralized energy production. Centralized energy production — aside from being grossly inefficient from the distribution angle, losing more than 7% of all energy generated — means centralized profits. Same, boring story we’re all tired of hearing about. Corporate profits should no longer trump the public right to choose viable, alternative energy. Making the right choice means sharing the benefits of energy production: Not letting a small group of corporate elitists eat the whole pie while pushing the future costs (which approach infinity) onto every subsequent generation of human beings, ever.
Wake up. This is madness. And it won’t stop until we hold CORPORATE GREED accountable. Haven’t you had enough of this yet?
Related stories:
Atomic Nightmare: Krümmel Accident Puts Question Mark over Germany’s Nuclear Future
By SPIEGEL Staff
The recent accident at the Krümmel nuclear power plant in northern Germany was more serious than was previously known. Anglea Merkel’s Christian Democrats are now finding themselves on the defensive with their plans to extend the life of German nuclear reactors…
Read more…
Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Nuclear Power* but were afraid to ask (Includes a text transcript of the entire video)
The compelling new video, Everything Nuclear, produced by David Weisman and the Alliance for Nuclear Responsibility, is packed with… authoritative interviews of experts on the myriad problems of nuclear power. Featured here is a transcription of the highly informative speakers juxtaposed against industry promotional videos and government propaganda videos.
Read more…
Living with Chernobyl – The Future of Nuclear Power
This documentary by Berkeley filmmakers and journalists Cliff Orloff and Olga Shalygin covers disadvantages and advantages of nuclear power, and includes interviews with scientists, environmentalists and Chernobyl survivors about the world’s worst nuclear accident.
Comment: History of the so call New Reactor and the French that the state of Virginia has fallen in love with:
May 29, 2009
America:
Environmental Problems and Violations Accumulate for Uranium Mining and Processing
While the uranium mining industry insists that the in-situ leaching process for extracting uranium is environmentally safe, mining violations and associated fines imposed by mining regulatory agencies continue to accumulate. To avoid violations, some mining companies request more lax environmental standards. Significant problems also occur with uranium processing and transportation.
Here are some recent examples:
•Uranium Mine (Power Resources, Inc.) to pay $1.4 million settlement. See http://www.trib.com/articles/2008/07/10/news/breaking/doc4876424160775926209366.txt.
•Cameco Resources agrees to pay $50,000 fine for deficienies identified during abandoned drill hole inspection at Smith Ranch ISL site. See http://www.wise-uranium.org/umopwy.html#SMITHR.
•According to Texas Commission on Environmental Quality records, 51 requests for “amended restoration tables to make them higher” have been granted out of 80 uranium mining production areas. See http://www.victoriaadvocate.com/goliad_county/story/323434.html.
•Strathmore pays $18,000 fine for numerous violations connected to exploration activities at Sky ISL project site (Wyoming). See http://www.wise-uranium.org/upusawy.html#SKY.
•The Cotter Corp. uranium mill has been cited by the state for radioactive contamination at the adjacent Shadow Hills Golf Club. See http://www.rockymountainnews.com/news/2008/aug/14/uranium-mill-cited-for-new-contamination/.
•$50,000 penalty imposed on Cameco's subsidiary Crow Butte Resources for violations at ISL uranium mine (Nebraska). See http://www.wise-uranium.org/umopusa.html#CROWBCD080523.
•Wyoming DEQ issues Notice of Violation to Cameco Resources for deficienies identified during abandoned drill hole inspection. See http://www.wise-uranium.org/umopwy.html#SMITHR.
•Cameco Resources Reaches Settlement with Wyoming Department of Environmental Quality. See http://www.cameco.com/media_gateway/news_releases/2008/news_release.php?id=236.
•Wyoming Model In Situ Uranium Mine Under Scrutiny for an Alarming Volume of Environmental Violations. See http://www.nunnglow.com/latest/wyoming-deq-sanctions-uranium-mine.html.
•WISE Uranium Reports Cogema Seeks Approval for Groundwater Restoration. See http://www.nunnglow.com/latest/wise-uranium-reports-cogema-seeks-approval-for-groundwater-restoration.html
•Probe finds uranium mine violations. See http://www.nunnglow.com/probe-finds-uranium-mine-violations.html
PROBLEMS WITH Australia:
The requirement to manage the radioactive tailings and all other solid wastes to minimise both long-term environmental as well as radiological releases and impacts makes uranium mining fundamentally different to other types of mining.”
“The long-term management of uranium mill tailings present a major environmental challenge. Given the tailings contain most of the original radioactivity of the ore (i.e. the decay products), they must be isolated from the environment for periods of at least tens of thousands of years – a time scale which is beyond collective human experience and certainly challenges engineering approaches for waste containment.” Gavin M. Mudd.
So, what is our record as a nation of Uranium miners?
Ranger:
• despite being expected to operate under a “no-release” water management system, incidents involving misplaced low grade ores or failures in water control bunds have led on numerous occasions to contaminated runoff waters being leaked into adjacent creeks (especially Corridoor Creek, a tributary of Magela Creek).
• in early 2004 incorrect plumbing saw the process water circuit being connected to the potable drinking water circuit – leading to rapid and significant toxic process water being mixed with drinking water, and much of the Ranger workforce being potentially exposed to both acute chemical and radiological exposure.
Olympic Dam:
• after operating for nearly a decade, a major ongoing leak from the tailings dam was revealed, amounting to the loss of billions of litres of tailings water to groundwater.
• in March 1999, and again October 2001, major explosions and fires caused substantive damage to the mill and smelter complexes, including major releases of noxious fumes – though the extent of radiological releases remains highly contentious, the fact that the uranium solvent extraction circuit in the 2001 incident was on fire raises serious concerns about how these incidents are handled by current regulators.
Beverley:
• numerous spills and leaks from pipelines have occurred.
Nabarlek (now closed):
• due to the need to reduce the inventory of contaminated mine site waters, evaporation pond water was irrigated over an area adjacent to the mine/mill and led to significant tree deaths and lasting impacts on water quality in the adjacent creek which have taken nearly two decades to flush through.
Can uranium mines be satisfactorily rehabilitated?
The experience of rehabilitating uranium mines to date in Australia is questionable. The first generation of uranium mines from the Cold War, namely Rum Jungle, Radium Hill, Mary Kathleen and the South Alligator group of mines, all still present environmental and radiological management problems and require constant vigilence and maintenance.
Examples include:
• Rum Jungle – despite extensive remediation/rehabilitation works in the early 1980’s, including excavating remnant tailings and disposal into former pits, re-contouring and engineering soil covers over low grade ore and waste rock dumps, acid mine drainage continues to pollute the Finniss River, and the complete site still urgently requires more remediation/rehabilitation works.
• Radium Hill – after being abandoned in early 1962, minimal earth works were undertaken in the early 1980’s, mainly just engineering soil covers over the tailings piles – erosion is a continual problem and tailings requires ongoing maintenance.
• Mary Kathleen – operating in both the Cold War phase of the late 1950’s to mid-1960’s as well as again in the commercial era of the late 1970’s, the mid-1980’s rehabilitation of the mine won an engineering excellence award for its perceived quality – despite internal concerns by the regulators about potential for long-term seepage from the tailings dam. Recent field studies in the late 1990’s have validated this concern and shown ongoing seepage of saline, metal and radionuclide rich waters from the tailings dam – well above the quantities predicted at the time of rehabilitation – impacting on the local creek.
Conclusion;
Overall, the experience to date with uranium mining does not give rise to any sufficient degree of confidence, as past sites – even after significant rehabilitation works – are still showing problems with erosion and seepage and ongoing impacts on water quality.
Problems with CANADA:
“Modern” mines: All are in northern Saskatchewan. Open pit and underground operations, some using freezing and remote control mining techniques; tailings in surface dams and mined-out pits using “hydraulic containment” to control groundwater contamination:6
Cluff Lake (Areva):
o Discovered in 1971
o Mining began in 1980
o Deposits include: OP underground mine (1983-85), Dominique-Janine open pit mine (1989-90) and extension (1994-97), Janine North open pit mine (1990-91), Dominique Peter and Dominique Janine West mines (1998-1999), and West Dominique Janine underground mine (1994-2002)7
o Mill initially separated radioactive components of tailings for storage in concrete barrels, which leaked.
o On March 24, 1998, the AECB (Atomic Energy Control Board) denied a two year licence renewal. Instead, AECB approved an extension to the licence expiring March 31, 1998 for nine months, subject to several conditions. This decision reflects a number of deficiencies identified by AECB at the Cluff Lake site:
the recent detection of increased radium levels in a lake located next to the tailings
management facility,
6 Ore reserves and details of processing and tailings disposal are not included here.
7 http://www.ir.gov.sk.ca/dbsearch/MinDepositQuery/default.aspx?ID=2153 \
IWUS: Uranium Extraction Methods and Regulatory Issues in Canada page 4
the recent twofold increase in workers’ radiation exposure,
the insufficience of the tailings management facility’s capacity (by the end of 1996, there was capacity for a production of one more year, while mining is scheduled to continue for ten years),
Cogema’s inadequate project management capabilities at Cluff Lake.8
o Closed 2002
Key Lake (Cameco/Areva):
o Discovered in 1975
o Mining began in 1983
o Open pit mines and mill
o Gaertner ore body mined out in 1987
o In September, 2004, the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission approved the renewal of the mining operating licence for the Key Lake Operation although the tailings disposal in the Deilmann open pit suffers from periodic sloughing of the pit sidewalls. One million cubic metres of sand have already slumped into the tailings, and another half a million cubic metres may follow. This sloughing not only decreases the capacity of the tailings disposal facility, it moreover distorts the performance of the facility in the long term which is based on the impermeability of the tailings.
o Still operating as mill for McArthur River ore; Deilmann pit to receive tailings
Rabbit Lake/Collins Bay (Cameco):
o Discovered in 1968
o Mining started in 1975
o Deposits include mined-out original Rabbit Lake open pit and Collins Bay A-, B- and D-zone pits as well as Eagle Point underground (incline access) mine
o In 1989, 2 million litres of radioactive water spilled into Wollaston Lake; the company was charged and eventually pled guilty, attracting a $5000 federal and a $55,000 provincial fine.
o Eagle Point still in operation
o Mill to process half of Cigar Lake ore
McArthur River (Cameco/Areva):
o Discovered in 1988
o Mining began in 1999
o Ore is frozen and removed by raise boring and boxhole boring remote mining methods and slurried to surface for milling
o On April 7, 2003, Cameco suspended production due to underground flood; resumed operation on July 2, 2003.
McClean Lake (Areva):
o Discovered in 1979
o Mining began in 1995
o JEB open pit, McClean North & South underground mines, Sue C open pit
o Open pit and underground mines
Cigar Lake (Cameco/Areva/Idemitsu/KEPCO)
o Discovered in 1981
o Jet boring remote mining method proposed
o Underground flooded October 23, 2006 – production development delayed at least 2 years
8 AECB News Release 98-07 http://www.aecb-ccea.gc.ca/news_rel/9807_e.htm
Comment: Heard Nukes say Nuke Plants will not hurt ya! NOT!
Push For New Nuclear Power Sputters, But Old Reactors Still Pose Cancer Risks
CHICAGO, Illinois, July 27, 2009 --/WORLD-WIRE/-- Nuclear reactors in the United States should be phased out, and replaced by technologies that don’t threaten public health with the emission of radioactive chemicals, urges the Cancer Prevention Coalition.
A recent energy bill sponsored by Congressional Republicans proposed building 100 new nuclear reactors across the United States in the next 20 years.
The proposal, which would double the current U.S. total of 104 operating nuclear reactors, would amount to a nuclear renaissance, as no new reactors have been ordered since 1978.
Concerns about global warming gave utilities the idea for this revival since reactors don’t emit greenhouse gases while generating power, and utilities have stopped closing old reactors while proposing 33 new ones to be sited in New England, throughout the South and Southeast, and in Texas, Utah and Idaho.
(For a list of applications to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission for approval of new reactors click here. http://www.nrc.gov/reactors/new-reactors/new-licensing-files/expected-new-rx-applications.pdf)
But this month, two Swedish scientists published an article concluding that a large increase in nuclear reactors will not solve global warming.
The utilities, of course, fail to report that greenhouse gases are emitted throughout the entire nuclear fuel cycle, and operating the reactor itself is the only exception. Both the nuclear reactor industry and its support industries spew radioactive materials into local air and water, posing a serious health hazard, warns Dr. Samuel S. Epstein, chairman of the Cancer Prevention Coalition and Professor emeritus Environmental & Occupational Medicine at the University of Illinois at Chicago School of Public Health.
In the 1970s, Wall Street investors stopped funding new reactor projects due to cost and safety concerns. Today, these issues are unchanged, and private investors again gave a thumbs-down to nuclear power. A 2005 law authorizing $18.5 billion in federal loan guarantees would only cover two reactors.
The Bush administration was a willing partner in the nuclear revival. George W. Bush became the first sitting U.S. president to visit a nuclear plant since a grim-faced President James Carter toured the damaged Three Mile Island reactor on April 1, 1979.
President Barack Obama has poured cold water on the renaissance. He rejected a request for $50 billion in loan guarantees in the stimulus package. Additionally, he rejected further funding for developing the nuclear waste dump at Yucca Mountain Nevada, leaving utilities with no place to permanently store their highly radioactive nuclear waste. It is now being held temporarily at 55 storage sites licensed by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and at Department of Defense sites and national laboratories across the country.
The major threat posed by nuclear reactors is not the addition of new reactors, but continuing to operate old and corroding ones, says Dr. Epstein. U.S. reactors are granted licenses for 40 years, and many are approaching that mark. Many utilities have asked regulators to extend their licenses for an additional 20 years.
"Each of the first 52 requests has been given a rubber-stamp approval, even though operating a 60 year old reactor would be a huge risk to human health," says Joseph Mangano, MPH, MBA, executive director of the Radiation and Public Health Project.
Notable exceptions are state government officials in New York and New Jersey, who are opposing the attempts to extend licenses for reactors in their states.
About 80 million Americans in 37 states live within 40 miles of a nuclear reactor, including residents of New York City, Chicago, Philadelphia, Detroit, Miami, Phoenix, Cleveland, and Boston. "If a meltdown were to occur, safe evacuation would be impossible and many thousands would suffer from radiation poisoning or cancer," warns Dr. Epstein. "The horrifying specter of Chernobyl, or of terrorists attacking a nuclear plant, is not lost on concerned Americans."
Reactors are a real health threat, not just a potential one, a fact largely ignored by mainstream media, he declares.
To generate electricity, over 100 radioactive chemicals are created – among the most dangerous chemicals on Earth, and the same toxic mix in atomic bomb test fallout. These gases and particles, including Strontium-90, Cesium-137, and Plutonium-239, are mostly stored as waste. But some must be routinely released into air and water. Humans breathe, eat, and drink them - just as they did bomb fallout - raising the cancer risk, especially to children.
Industry and government officials argue that reactor emissions are too small to cause harm. But for years, scientists have produced study after study documenting high cancer rates near reactors. For example, a 2007 review of the scientific literature by researchers from the University of South Carolina found elevated rates of childhood cancers, particularly leukemia and brain cancers, in nearly all 17 studies examined. A 2008 study of German reactors was one of the largest ever done, and it also found high local rates of child cancer.
Mangano and colleagues published a January 2002 article in the journal "Archives of Environmental Health," showing that local infant deaths and child cancer cases plunged dramatically right after shut down whenever a U.S. reactor closed. Because the very young suffer most from radiation exposures, they benefit most when exposures are removed. This research indicated that there would be approximately 18,000 fewer infant deaths and 6,000 fewer child cancer cases over the next 20 years if all nuclear reactors were closed.
Over half the states in the United States, 31, currently host nuclear power plants. Illinois has the most with 11, Pennsylvania has nine, New Jersey has four.
While waiting for the federal government to phase out nuclear power in favor of safer alternatives, state governments should act to warn and protect their citizens, urges the Cancer Prevention Coalition.
Governors have responsibilities to take whatever political action they can to phase-out nuclear plants. In the first instance, governors should tell their citizens of the danger.
In 1954, Atomic Energy Chairman Lewis Strauss declared nuclear power “too cheap to meter.” President Richard Nixon envisioned that the nation would have 1,000 reactors by this time. But the dreams of people like Strauss and Nixon were dashed by staggering costs and built-in dangers.
The attempt to revive this Cold War-era dream has been, and still is, largely talk. While the talk goes on, the nation is fast developing technologies like solar and wind power, which never run out and don’t pollute. Putting millions of Americans at risk of cancer by hanging on to old reactors – that produce only 19% of America's electricity and 8% of the country's total energy – is a reckless gamble. Nuclear reactors in the U.S. should be phased out, and replaced by options that don’t threaten public health.
CONTACT:
Samuel S. Epstein, MD
Professor emeritus Environmental & Occupational Medicine
University of Illinois at Chicago School of Public Health
Chairman, Cancer Prevention Coalition
Chicago, Illinois
www.preventcancer.com epstein@uic.edu
312-996-2297
Rosalie Bertell, PhD
Founding Member European Committee on Radiation Risk
International Association for Humanitarian Medicine
http://www.iahm.org/eng/home.htm
Founder and President emeritus International Institute of Concern for Public Health
http://iicph.org/
rosaliebertell@greynun.org
Joseph Mangano, MPH, MBA
Executive Director Radiation and Public Health Project
http://www.radiation.org/
Odiejoe@aol.com
Comment: Nuke Power CO2 Free, NOT!!!
26 July 2009
Why nuclear energy is not the answer to Climate Change.
by Ben Williams Original article at : examiner.com
It’s funny. People really believe that nuclear power is emissions free. Powering cities with nuclear, they propound, is the panacea to climate change. And yet, if you really take a look at the fuel cycle, it is obvious nuclear energy is, in fact, emissions intensive.
First off the ore needs to be mined. This involves drilling, explosions, heavy equipment. Even at the EPA standard of 15 grams of carbon per break horsepower engine hour, this translates to a lot of carbon. Then the ore needs to be shipped to a processing facility, or mill.
Here, twenty-four hours a day, heavy equipment loads the ore into a hopper, the intake into the semi-autogenous grinding mill. This grinding mill uses electricity (coal) to turn an enormous steel drum filled with metal tumbling balls. Additionally, tons — yes tons — of concentrated sulfuric acid are needed to help leach the uranium from the ore, among quantities of other highly caustic chemicals, all of which must be prepared on industrial scales and shipped to the facility.
After a number of other mechanical operations, all of them energy intensive, the ore must be dried in an oven, where, twenty-four hours a day, countless kilo-watt hours are burned heating the rock to temperature.
Finally, the processed ore, now ‘yellow cake’, has to be boxed up, sealed in steel drums (refined and produced industrially), and then shipped to market.
Then, of course, it needs to be reacted with hexaflourine, or some other chemical, to be refined and turned into the uranium rods that are used in the reactor core. Only now can the power be said to be emissions free: once the rods are installed and operational, powering generators with their nuclear heat.
Of course, after a few months the rods are spent. They then need to be safely disposed of — or, more accurately, buried somewhere where no one will notice them, contained for 1,000 years, after which they become someone else’s problem (probably the DOE or EPA). They must be safely interred for over four billion years. Yes, they need to be baby-sat for an amount of time that exceeds the current age of the Earth.
Because a nuclear core demands fresh, refined uranium, there is a constant use-cycle — an unstoppable appetite — that, ultimately pollutes in manifold ways:
1.The diesel burned in extracting the ore produces CO2, CO, NOX, SOX, dioxins, VOCs among the other expected particulates from incomplete combustion of fossil fuels.
2.The dust produced from mining becomes airborne and settles on downwind communities, increasing the cancer rate noticeably.
3.The diesel burnt in shipping the heavy rock to processing produces the same slew of pollutants as the heavy mining machinery, while trailing radioactive dust along the way.
4.The mill itself burns up millions of KWh every year, KWh generated, in this day and age, almost exclusively from burning coal — high SO2, H2SO3 and H2SO4 meet heavy metals like Hg with the clouds of greenhouse gases.
5.The mill must vent many toxic gases as it processes the ore. It must store radioactive slurry in the ground, hoping it will evaporate so the tailings can be capped. Groundwater and runoff pollution occurs. Once capped, the tailings are radioactive for billions of years. Future contamination becomes a certainty. (Just, the mill operators hope, not in their lifetime.)
6.Shipping the yellow cake to market. There are only two enrichment plants in the Northern United States, and one of them is in Canada. Long trips equal large emissions. Much of the yellow cake will be shipped overseas, adding emissions from large container vessels and potential maritime spills to the list.
7.The enrichment facility then vents toxic gases from the reagents used in reducing the yellow cake to weapons-grade uranium.
8.The rods are shipped to power plants, necessitating the fourth round of distribution-related emissions.
9.The rods are used, then spent, sealed up, and transported to a nuclear waste dump — more emissions, more radioactive decay along public roads and waterways.
10.Countless emissions result from policing the waste site.
Of course, none of this includes the emissions from the industrial-scale production of the reagents needed by the uranium refining cycle. Not to mention their weekly delivery to processing mills and enrichment facilities.
Nor does it take into account the ‘depleted’ uranium used as munitions (which, despite what you might infer from its name, is actually enriched — it is depleted of the less radioactive isotopes). That causes enough pollution to contaminate our armed-forces personnel before it’s even fired! Let alone the land where it is unleashed.
The whole thing is utterly non-sustainable. And no model on which to base future, responsible energy production. So why all the hoo-ha? Simple. Uranium allows, not so much for clean energy, but centralized energy production. Centralized energy production — aside from being grossly inefficient from the distribution angle, losing more than 7% of all energy generated — means centralized profits. Same, boring story we’re all tired of hearing about. Corporate profits should no longer trump the public right to choose viable, alternative energy. Making the right choice means sharing the benefits of energy production: Not letting a small group of corporate elitists eat the whole pie while pushing the future costs (which approach infinity) onto every subsequent generation of human beings, ever.
Wake up. This is madness. And it won’t stop until we hold CORPORATE GREED accountable. Haven’t you had enough of this yet?
Related stories:
Atomic Nightmare: Krümmel Accident Puts Question Mark over Germany’s Nuclear Future
By SPIEGEL Staff
The recent accident at the Krümmel nuclear power plant in northern Germany was more serious than was previously known. Anglea Merkel’s Christian Democrats are now finding themselves on the defensive with their plans to extend the life of German nuclear reactors…
Read more…
Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Nuclear Power* but were afraid to ask (Includes a text transcript of the entire video)
The compelling new video, Everything Nuclear, produced by David Weisman and the Alliance for Nuclear Responsibility, is packed with… authoritative interviews of experts on the myriad problems of nuclear power. Featured here is a transcription of the highly informative speakers juxtaposed against industry promotional videos and government propaganda videos.
Read more…
Living with Chernobyl – The Future of Nuclear Power
This documentary by Berkeley filmmakers and journalists Cliff Orloff and Olga Shalygin covers disadvantages and advantages of nuclear power, and includes interviews with scientists, environmentalists and Chernobyl survivors about the world’s worst nuclear accident.
Comment: History of the so call New Reactor and the French that the state of Virginia has fallen in love with:
May 29, 2009
In Finland, Nuclear Renaissance Runs Into Trouble
By JAMES KANTER
OLKILUOTO, Finland — As the Obama administration tries to steer America toward cleaner sources of energy, it would do well to consider the cautionary tale of this new-generation nuclear reactor site.
The massive power plant under construction on muddy terrain on this Finnish island was supposed to be the showpiece of a nuclear renaissance. The most powerful reactor ever built, its modular design was supposed to make it faster and cheaper to build. And it was supposed to be safer, too.
But things have not gone as planned.
After four years of construction and thousands of defects and deficiencies, the reactor’s 3 billion euro price tag, about $4.2 billion, has climbed at least 50 percent. And while the reactor was originally meant to be completed this summer, Areva, the French company building it, and the utility that ordered it, are no longer willing to make certain predictions on when it will go online.
While the American nuclear industry has predicted clear sailing after its first plants are built, the problems in Europe suggest these obstacles may be hard to avoid.
A new fleet of reactors would be standardized down to “the carpeting and wallpaper,” as Michael J. Wallace, the chairman of UniStar Nuclear Energy — a joint venture between EDF Group and Constellation Energy, the Maryland-based utility — has said repeatedly.
In the end, he says, that standardization will lead to significant savings.
But early experience suggests these new reactors will be no easier or cheaper to build than the ones of a generation ago, when cost overruns — and then accidents at Three Mile Island and Chernobyl — ended the last nuclear construction boom.
In Flamanville, France, a clone of the Finnish reactor now under construction is also behind schedule and overbudget.
In the United States, Florida and Georgia have changed state laws to raise electricity rates so that consumers will foot some of the bill for new nuclear plants in advance, before construction even begins.
“A number of U.S. companies have looked with trepidation on the situation in Finland and at the magnitude of the investment there,” said Paul L. Joskow, a professor of economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, a co-author of an influential report on the future of nuclear power in 2003. “The rollout of new nuclear reactors will be a good deal slower than a lot of people were assuming.”
For nuclear power to have a high impact on reducing greenhouse gases, an average of 12 reactors would have to be built worldwide each year until 2030, according to the Nuclear Energy Agency at the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. Right now, there are not even enough reactors under construction to replace those that are reaching the end of their lives.
And of the 45 reactors being built around the world, 22 have encountered construction delays, according to an analysis prepared this year for the German government by Mycle Schneider, an energy analyst and a critic of the nuclear industry. He added that nine do not have official start-up dates.
Most of the new construction is underway in countries like China and Russia, where strong central governments have made nuclear energy a national priority. India also has long seen nuclear as part of a national drive for self-sufficiency and now is seeking new nuclear technologies to reduce its reliance on imported uranium.
By comparison, “the state has been all over the place in the United States and Europe on nuclear power,” Mr. Joskow said.
The United States generates about one-fifth of its electricity from a fleet of 104 reactors, most built in the 1960s and 1970s. Coal still provides about half the country’s power.
To streamline construction, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission in Washington has worked with the industry to approve a handful of designs. Even so, the schedule to certify the most advanced model from Westinghouse, a unit of Toshiba, has slipped during an ongoing review of its ability to withstand the impact of an airliner.
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission has also not yet approved the so-called EPR design under construction in Finland for the American market.
This month, the United States Energy Department produced a short list of four reactor projects eligible for some loan guarantees. In the 2005 energy bill, Congress provided $18.5 billion, but the industry’s hope of winning an additional $50 billion worth of loan guarantees evaporated when that money was stripped from President Obama’s economic stimulus bill.
The industry has had more success in getting states to help raise money. This year, authorities permitted Florida Power & Light to start charging millions of customers several dollars a month to finance four new reactors. Customers of Georgia Power, a subsidiary of the Southern Co., will pay on average $1.30 a month more in 2011, rising to $9.10 by 2017, to help pay for two reactors expected to go online in 2016 or later.
But resistance is mounting. In April, Missouri legislators balked at a preconstruction rate increase, prompting the state’s largest electric utility, Ameren UE, to suspend plans for a $6 billion copy of Areva’s Finnish reactor.
Areva, a conglomerate largely owned by the French state, is heir to that nation’s experience in building nuclear plants. France gets about 80 percent of its power from 58 reactors. But even France has not completed a new reactor since 1999.
After designing an updated plant originally called the European Pressurized Reactor with German participation during the 1990s, the French had trouble selling it at home because of a saturated energy market as well as opposition from Green Party members in the then-coalition government.
So Areva turned to Finland, where utilities and energy-hungry industries like pulp and paper had been lobbying for 15 years for more nuclear power. The project was initially budgeted at $4 billion and Teollisuuden Voima, the Finnish utility, pledged it would be ready in time to help the Finnish government meet its greenhouse gas targets under the Kyoto climate treaty, which runs through 2012.
Areva promised electricity from the reactor could be generated more cheaply than from natural gas plants. Areva also said its model would deliver 1,600 megawatts, or about 10 percent of Finnish power needs.
In 2001, the Finnish parliament narrowly approved construction of a reactor at Olkiluoto, an island on the Baltic Sea. Construction began four years later.
Serious problems first arose over the vast concrete base slab for the foundation of the reactor building, which the country’s Radiation and Nuclear Safety Authority found too porous and prone to corrosion. Since then, the authority has blamed Areva for allowing inexperienced subcontractors to drill holes in the wrong places on a vast steel container that seals the reactor.
In December, the authority warned Anne Lauvergeon, the chief executive of Areva, that “the attitude or lack of professional knowledge of some persons” at Areva was holding up work on safety systems.
Today, the site still teems with 4,000 workmen on round-the-clock shifts. Banners from dozens of subcontractors around Europe flutter in the breeze above temporary offices and makeshift canteens. Some 10,000 people speaking at least eight different languages have worked at the site. About 30 percent of the workforce is Polish, and communication has posed significant challenges.
Areva has acknowledged that the cost of a new reactor today would be as much as 6 billion euros, or $8 billion, double the price offered to the Finns. But Areva said it was not cutting any corners in Finland. The two sides have agreed to arbitration, where they are both claiming more than 1 billion euros in compensation. (Areva blames the Finnish authorities for impeding construction and increasing costs for work it agreed to complete at a fixed price.)
Areva announced a steep drop in earnings last year, which it blamed mostly on mounting losses from the project.
In addition, nuclear safety inspectors in France have found cracks in the concrete base and steel reinforcements in the wrong places at the site in Flamanville. They also have warned Électricité de France, the utility building the reactor, that welders working on the steel container were not properly qualified.
On top of such problems come the recession, weaker energy demand, tight credit and uncertainty over future policies, said Caren Byrd, an executive director of the global utility and power group at Morgan Stanley in New York.
“The warning lights now are flashing more brightly than just a year ago about the cost of new nuclear,” she said.
And Jouni Silvennoinen, the project manager at Olkiluoto, said, “We have had it easy here.” Olkiluoto is at least a geologically stable site. Earthquake risks in places like China and the United States or even the threat of storm surges mean building these reactors will be even trickier elsewhere.
Matthew L. Wald contributed reporting from Washington.
A little history of Secretary of Energy:
Steven Chu, Ph.D (born February 28, 1948),[3] is an American physicist and currently the 12th United States Secretary of Energy. As a scientist, Chu is known for his research in cooling and trapping of atoms with laser light, which won him the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1997.[3] At the time of his appointment as Energy Secretary, he was a professor of physics and molecular and cellular biology at the University of California, Berkeley and the director of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, where his research was concerned primarily with the study of biological systems at the single molecule level.[1] He is a vocal advocate for more research into alternative energy and nuclear power, arguing that a shift away from fossil fuels is essential to combat global warming
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steven_Chu
Comment: Interesting Nuke Connection:
The U.S. Department of Energy; nuclear by nature, forever?
by Ann Garrison
On March 11, 2009, Barack Obama's Energy Secretary, Stephen Chu, announced his support for a new generation of nuclear power , but Terry Macallester, writing five days later, on March 16, 2009, in Common Dreams, warned that these new power plant designs could, by 2075, produce enough plutonium to make a million nuclear bombs, and cause nuclear anarchy.
The next day, March 17, 2009, New York Times ran Stephanie Cooke's well-reasoned, but, nevertheless curious, op-ed about Barack Obama and Steven Chu, beginning thus:
"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."
It seemed a bit strange, or disingenuous, of Stephanie Cooke, to suggest that Energy Secretary Stephen Chu, former head of Berkeley's Lawrence Livermore Labs, really wants to "avoid getting dragged down by the nuclear undertow," since Chu, a physicist, has openly advocated a nuclear renaissance.
Now we need an honest update on the Reliable Replacement Nuclear Warhead (RRW)
Bush's former Defense Secretary Robert Gates is now Obama's, and he has often pitched for continuing to develop the Reliable Replacement Nuclear Warhead:
Chu headed Lawrence Livermore Labs while it led development of the design for the Reliable Replacement Nuclear Warhead (RRW), a new strategic tactical nuclear weapon, under Bush. The RRW would have, and still may be, the first new nuclear weapon in the U.S. arsenal in many years. Los Alamos National Labs (LANL) worked on the RRW, first in competition with Livermore, and then, under the direction of Livermore, then headed by Chu, from 2006 until 2008, when Congress defunded further development, The London Guardian reported recently that RRW developers in the U.S. had simply moved to Britain's Aldermaston nuke bomb factory, to work alongside British scientists in finishing the design, with British and who knows what other, funding, quite likely slush funding. There are quite a few very slushy funds scattered throughout the military and intelligence departments of the U.S. national security state.
It's virtually inconceivable that the U.S. could have continued development of the Reliable Replacement Nuclear Warhead without Chu's knowledge, either before or after he became Secretary of Energy, which is to say, of Nuclear Power, Weapons, and Waste, because, before becoming the top nuclear power and weapons official in the U.S., he headed the lab overseeing the RRW design. And he most certainly knows now, since this 02/09/2009 London Guardian exposé. There seems, however, to be no evidence that he has made any evidence to halt the RRW's ongoing development at Aldermaston.
Chu's official statement on the RRW says that, "Under this budget, development work on the Reliable Replacement Warhead will cease," but "under this budget" sounds like a very convenient way of taking credit for Congress's vote to defund RRW's development, without acknowledging that he's overseeing its continuation, covertly, in cooperation with Britain, at Aldermaston.
Did Congress simply get fed up with funding the development of a new nuclear weapon, in hard times, or, did they decide it was a lousy, hugely toxic, and dangerous idea, discouraging to the goal of world peace, which most of the world embraces, honestly or not?
Cooke seems either to have skipped research into Chu's background, even so recent as his 03/11/2009 embrace of next generation nuclear power. Or, she may have intended, for whatever reason, to greenwash, and apologize, for Obama and Chu's nuclear predilections, by saying that there's just no changing the U.S. Department of Energy and its nuclear DNA, no matter how one might want to.
Or, she may even have meant to encourage whatever renewables interest Obama and Chu may have, with flattery. This might be a logical, persuasive rather than confrontational strategy, but, nevertheless, these important question still hangs:
How are Steven Chu and Barack Obama involved with the U.S.-British, Reliable Replacement Nucleaer Warhead development in Britain, now, even though this obviously began after Congress defunded the new nuclear weapon, and before George Bush left office? They essentially have to pick up where George left off, to complete it, or abandon it, as much of the world, including many of us in the U.S.A., which they would.
Do they have any intention of shutting it down, over, no doubt, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates's objections? And, who is managing and funding this nuclear weapons development now, at Britain's Aldermaston. And, to what strategic purpose?
This is serious business, designing and building the first new nuclear weapon in the U.S. arsenal, in years. Not a decision that U.S. and British national security state cabals should make without public approval or oversight.
The U.S. Department of Energy, nuclear by nature?
Cooke, again, writing in the NY Times, was most certainly correct that, in the unlikely event that Chu choose to emphasize solar, wind, and other forms of renewable power over nuclear, he would have to recreate or even rename, the U.S. Energy Department, because it is and always has been, above all, the Department of Nuclear Power, Nuclear Weapons, and, Nuclear Waste; it grew out of the Atomic Energy Commission, created to oversee the creation of U.S. nuclear weapons and nuclear power infrastructure after the end of World War II.
There are more nuclear, and coal-fired, power plants in Barack Obama's Illinois than in any other state in the union; and Chicago-based http://www.exeloncorp.com/, the largest nuclear power corporation in the U.S., gave Obama's campaign over $200,000 in bundled contributions.
However, Obama did, very shortly after taking office, and, at long last, shut down the longstanding DOE plan to make one of Native America's most sacred sites, Yucca Mountain, a big high radiation nuclear waste dump, in Nevada. By doing so, he handed a hard, lifelong won victory to the Western Shoshone people, and, to Carrie Dann, lifelong Native American environmental and indigenous rights activist, and, defender of indigenous sacred sites.
By convening a "panel on nuclear waste," to choose the best way to dispose of waste generated by the next generation of nuclear reactors, Obama's Energy Secretary, Steven Chu unfortunately implied that there is a "best way, " or, rather, a rational way. But, whatever their panel's conclusion, Obama and Chu have at least promised that it will not mean the nuclear disposal of the magnificent Carrie Dann's sacred mountain. Turning Yucca Mountain into a High Radiation Nuclear Waste Dump had been a pillar of the Global Nuclear Energy Project since its inception under Bush; Carrie, the Western Shoshone, and the rest of the Native Southwest fought to save their sacred mountain for 22 years, so this was a huge victory, even as the Navajo and other Native Americans continue to battle uranium mining leases expanded by the Energy Department under George Bush.
Is the Energy Department nuclear by nature, now and forever, amen?
Stephanie Cooke aptly said that the U.S. Department of Energy has "nuclear weapons in its DNA"; it grew out of the Atomic Energy Commission, created to manage and build atomic weapons after World War II, after the U.S. dropped the first atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and nation states raced to build and place their own weapons on the global nuclear chessboard.
"Today, the department’s main task is managing the thousands of facilities involved in producing nuclear weapons during the cold war, and the associated cleanup of dozens of contaminated sites. Approximately two-thirds of its annual budget, which is roughly $27 billion, is spent on these activities, while only 15 percent is allocated for all energy programs, including managing the Strategic Petroleum Reserve and researching and developing new technologies."
The name of the Energy Department seems incidental to the central questions:
1) How will we develop and energy resources, now, to what purpose?
2) Will our energy resources sustain life and future generations?
With these questions in mind, however, I'll gladly agree that "the Energy Department must be relieved of duties that aren’t related to energy"---i.e., that it must be relieved of its primary task, nuclear weapons handling, which Obama's Office of Management and Budget Director Peter Orszag has suggested moving into the equally misnamed, but, better understood, Department of Defense (DOD).
This is a good idea, a damn good, and most excellent idea. Obama's OMB Budget Director Peter Orszag should be applauded for championing such rare honesty and focus in Washington D.C. Let's do indeed pass the U.S. nuclear weapons stockpile to the "Defense Department" and, finally turn the Energy Department into the Real Energy Department, and hopefully even: the Renewable, Sustainable Energy Department, mandated to build renewable energy and sustain life. Yeah Peter Orszag!!! The new Chief of the OBM is not only intelligent but rational!!! He's tacking the logical contradiction of an "Energy Department" whose primary task is management of our nuclear weapons arsenal. This is the best idea I've heard out of Team Obama yet.
We've still got these problems, Energy Secretary Stephen Chu, overseer of Lawrence Livermore Labs during the design of the Reliable Replacement Nuclear Warhead (RRW), and the covert continuation of the RRW development, at Aldermaston, but perhaps they could both, at least be moved over and locked up at DOD, with the rest of the nuclear weapons, to give Energy a chance.
Comment: Rarely, this blog post anything the uranium group publishes, however, following articles will list of facts about Nuke Power group ever tells us! By the way, did the Secretary of Energy go to Coles Hill; was this the purpose of the whole Rural Tour? Not very nice!
By Norman W. Reynolds
Wednesday, July 29, 2009 10:10 AM EDT
U. S. Energy Secretary Steven Chu could not have picked a better spot than Pittsylvania County to sound his ringing call for "restarting" our nation's nuclear energy program, as well as endorsing Virginia's state-sanctioned study to assess the safety and feasibility of mining and milling uranium in the commonwealth.
The setting for Dr. Chu's speech at a local farm last Saturday was just 10 miles south of the Coles Hill uranium site and 50 miles south of the City of Lynchburg, one of the most dynamic hubs of advanced nuclear technology in Virginia.
Coles Hill is where Virginia Uranium proposes to mine and mill the largest known undeveloped uranium deposit in the United States.
Speaking to concerns that have been raised about mining in Virginia, Dr. Chu, a Nobel laureate in physics, explained that in "any kind of mining, whether it's uranium, coal or nickel, or you name it, it has to be done in a way that protects the environment and protects the people....there's a study going on as to whether uranium mining in Virginia is going to do that....we will wait for the results of that study."
The Virginia Coal and Energy Commission is working with the National Academy of Sciences to conduct an independent study to address concerns of Virginians about safety to people, livestock, crops and the environment.
The secretary's position on the uranium potential at Coles Hill seemed to reflect that of his boss, President Obama. When the President was campaigning in Virginia last year, the Roanoke Times carried the following report:
"According to an e-mail from his Virginia communications director, Obama supports a proposed study of the [Coles Hill] site to evaluate the potential environmental effects of mining. But, he adds, 'Virginia has the potential to be a national leader in uranium mining, and development of uranium resources in Pittsylvania County could create hundreds of jobs in that part of the state.'"
On the larger subject of using nuclear energy to power America, Dr. Chu told the local audience of around 275 people that the Obama Administration and the U.S. Department of Energy are "very supportive of restarting the nuclear power industry," adding that he believes it can be done safely.
Secretary Chu's comments echo those heard from various Virginia officials over the past two years, starting with the Virginia Energy Plan released in the fall of 2007. In addition to numerous references to the massive uranium deposit in Southside Virginia, the energy plan states:
"There are sufficient resources to support a uranium mining industry in Pittsylvania County with enough to meet the fuel needs of Virginia's current generation. Significant work to assess the risk from mining and need for regulatory controls must be completed before any decision can be made whether such mining should take place."
For those of us who have worked long and hard on the Coles Hill project, it is gratifying that the nation's highest energy official saw fit to come to Pittsylvania County and to endorse the scientific study and to state so unequivocally the Obama Administration's high commitment to getting nuclear back on track in the United States. We look forward to moving ahead hand in hand with such enlightened thinking.
We haven't the slightest doubt that all aspects of the nuclear cycle-from mining to operating reactors-can be done as safely as any other industrial undertaking. When the same safety issues were studied by the state 25 years ago, scientists found that under well-defined guidelines our project could go forward safely. I am confident that similar findings will be reached this go-around.
What Dr. Chu is talking about goes straight to the heart of energy independence for our nation. Yes, we need to move ahead on all fronts that make sense. But let us keep in mind that of the 55 million pounds of uranium needed to operate nuclear facilities for one year in this country, over 50 million pounds are imported. That is a frightening statistic in a world as unpredictable as the one in which we are living.
We should be grateful for the enlightened approach expressed by Secretary Chu. And we should support sensible efforts to achieve greater energy independence, including the full development of our nuclear resources.
Norman Reynolds of Chatham is president and chief executive officer of Virginia Uranium Inc., as well as Virginia Energy Resources.
http://www.wpcva.com/articles/2009/07/29/chatham/opinion/opinion01.txt
http://coloredopinions.blogspot.com/2009/03/nuclear-by-nature-us-dept-of-energy.html
http://www.sustainabilitank.info/2009/07/29/culture-change-brought-to-our-attention-the-ben-williams-article-why-nuclear-energy-is-not-the-answer-to-climate-change-it-is-rather-extermely-uninformed-to-think-otherwise/
http://world-wire.com/news/0907270001.html
http://www.nunnglow.com/latest/violations-accumulate-for-uranium-isl-mining.html
http://archiearchive.wordpress.com/2009/07/24/uranium-mining-and-a-national-park-2/
OLKILUOTO, Finland — As the Obama administration tries to steer America toward cleaner sources of energy, it would do well to consider the cautionary tale of this new-generation nuclear reactor site.
The massive power plant under construction on muddy terrain on this Finnish island was supposed to be the showpiece of a nuclear renaissance. The most powerful reactor ever built, its modular design was supposed to make it faster and cheaper to build. And it was supposed to be safer, too.
But things have not gone as planned.
After four years of construction and thousands of defects and deficiencies, the reactor’s 3 billion euro price tag, about $4.2 billion, has climbed at least 50 percent. And while the reactor was originally meant to be completed this summer, Areva, the French company building it, and the utility that ordered it, are no longer willing to make certain predictions on when it will go online.
While the American nuclear industry has predicted clear sailing after its first plants are built, the problems in Europe suggest these obstacles may be hard to avoid.
A new fleet of reactors would be standardized down to “the carpeting and wallpaper,” as Michael J. Wallace, the chairman of UniStar Nuclear Energy — a joint venture between EDF Group and Constellation Energy, the Maryland-based utility — has said repeatedly.
In the end, he says, that standardization will lead to significant savings.
But early experience suggests these new reactors will be no easier or cheaper to build than the ones of a generation ago, when cost overruns — and then accidents at Three Mile Island and Chernobyl — ended the last nuclear construction boom.
In Flamanville, France, a clone of the Finnish reactor now under construction is also behind schedule and overbudget.
In the United States, Florida and Georgia have changed state laws to raise electricity rates so that consumers will foot some of the bill for new nuclear plants in advance, before construction even begins.
“A number of U.S. companies have looked with trepidation on the situation in Finland and at the magnitude of the investment there,” said Paul L. Joskow, a professor of economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, a co-author of an influential report on the future of nuclear power in 2003. “The rollout of new nuclear reactors will be a good deal slower than a lot of people were assuming.”
For nuclear power to have a high impact on reducing greenhouse gases, an average of 12 reactors would have to be built worldwide each year until 2030, according to the Nuclear Energy Agency at the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. Right now, there are not even enough reactors under construction to replace those that are reaching the end of their lives.
And of the 45 reactors being built around the world, 22 have encountered construction delays, according to an analysis prepared this year for the German government by Mycle Schneider, an energy analyst and a critic of the nuclear industry. He added that nine do not have official start-up dates.
Most of the new construction is underway in countries like China and Russia, where strong central governments have made nuclear energy a national priority. India also has long seen nuclear as part of a national drive for self-sufficiency and now is seeking new nuclear technologies to reduce its reliance on imported uranium.
By comparison, “the state has been all over the place in the United States and Europe on nuclear power,” Mr. Joskow said.
The United States generates about one-fifth of its electricity from a fleet of 104 reactors, most built in the 1960s and 1970s. Coal still provides about half the country’s power.
To streamline construction, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission in Washington has worked with the industry to approve a handful of designs. Even so, the schedule to certify the most advanced model from Westinghouse, a unit of Toshiba, has slipped during an ongoing review of its ability to withstand the impact of an airliner.
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission has also not yet approved the so-called EPR design under construction in Finland for the American market.
This month, the United States Energy Department produced a short list of four reactor projects eligible for some loan guarantees. In the 2005 energy bill, Congress provided $18.5 billion, but the industry’s hope of winning an additional $50 billion worth of loan guarantees evaporated when that money was stripped from President Obama’s economic stimulus bill.
The industry has had more success in getting states to help raise money. This year, authorities permitted Florida Power & Light to start charging millions of customers several dollars a month to finance four new reactors. Customers of Georgia Power, a subsidiary of the Southern Co., will pay on average $1.30 a month more in 2011, rising to $9.10 by 2017, to help pay for two reactors expected to go online in 2016 or later.
But resistance is mounting. In April, Missouri legislators balked at a preconstruction rate increase, prompting the state’s largest electric utility, Ameren UE, to suspend plans for a $6 billion copy of Areva’s Finnish reactor.
Areva, a conglomerate largely owned by the French state, is heir to that nation’s experience in building nuclear plants. France gets about 80 percent of its power from 58 reactors. But even France has not completed a new reactor since 1999.
After designing an updated plant originally called the European Pressurized Reactor with German participation during the 1990s, the French had trouble selling it at home because of a saturated energy market as well as opposition from Green Party members in the then-coalition government.
So Areva turned to Finland, where utilities and energy-hungry industries like pulp and paper had been lobbying for 15 years for more nuclear power. The project was initially budgeted at $4 billion and Teollisuuden Voima, the Finnish utility, pledged it would be ready in time to help the Finnish government meet its greenhouse gas targets under the Kyoto climate treaty, which runs through 2012.
Areva promised electricity from the reactor could be generated more cheaply than from natural gas plants. Areva also said its model would deliver 1,600 megawatts, or about 10 percent of Finnish power needs.
In 2001, the Finnish parliament narrowly approved construction of a reactor at Olkiluoto, an island on the Baltic Sea. Construction began four years later.
Serious problems first arose over the vast concrete base slab for the foundation of the reactor building, which the country’s Radiation and Nuclear Safety Authority found too porous and prone to corrosion. Since then, the authority has blamed Areva for allowing inexperienced subcontractors to drill holes in the wrong places on a vast steel container that seals the reactor.
In December, the authority warned Anne Lauvergeon, the chief executive of Areva, that “the attitude or lack of professional knowledge of some persons” at Areva was holding up work on safety systems.
Today, the site still teems with 4,000 workmen on round-the-clock shifts. Banners from dozens of subcontractors around Europe flutter in the breeze above temporary offices and makeshift canteens. Some 10,000 people speaking at least eight different languages have worked at the site. About 30 percent of the workforce is Polish, and communication has posed significant challenges.
Areva has acknowledged that the cost of a new reactor today would be as much as 6 billion euros, or $8 billion, double the price offered to the Finns. But Areva said it was not cutting any corners in Finland. The two sides have agreed to arbitration, where they are both claiming more than 1 billion euros in compensation. (Areva blames the Finnish authorities for impeding construction and increasing costs for work it agreed to complete at a fixed price.)
Areva announced a steep drop in earnings last year, which it blamed mostly on mounting losses from the project.
In addition, nuclear safety inspectors in France have found cracks in the concrete base and steel reinforcements in the wrong places at the site in Flamanville. They also have warned Électricité de France, the utility building the reactor, that welders working on the steel container were not properly qualified.
On top of such problems come the recession, weaker energy demand, tight credit and uncertainty over future policies, said Caren Byrd, an executive director of the global utility and power group at Morgan Stanley in New York.
“The warning lights now are flashing more brightly than just a year ago about the cost of new nuclear,” she said.
And Jouni Silvennoinen, the project manager at Olkiluoto, said, “We have had it easy here.” Olkiluoto is at least a geologically stable site. Earthquake risks in places like China and the United States or even the threat of storm surges mean building these reactors will be even trickier elsewhere.
Matthew L. Wald contributed reporting from Washington.
A little history of Secretary of Energy:
Steven Chu, Ph.D (born February 28, 1948),[3] is an American physicist and currently the 12th United States Secretary of Energy. As a scientist, Chu is known for his research in cooling and trapping of atoms with laser light, which won him the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1997.[3] At the time of his appointment as Energy Secretary, he was a professor of physics and molecular and cellular biology at the University of California, Berkeley and the director of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, where his research was concerned primarily with the study of biological systems at the single molecule level.[1] He is a vocal advocate for more research into alternative energy and nuclear power, arguing that a shift away from fossil fuels is essential to combat global warming
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steven_Chu
Comment: Interesting Nuke Connection:
The U.S. Department of Energy; nuclear by nature, forever?
by Ann Garrison
On March 11, 2009, Barack Obama's Energy Secretary, Stephen Chu, announced his support for a new generation of nuclear power , but Terry Macallester, writing five days later, on March 16, 2009, in Common Dreams, warned that these new power plant designs could, by 2075, produce enough plutonium to make a million nuclear bombs, and cause nuclear anarchy.
The next day, March 17, 2009, New York Times ran Stephanie Cooke's well-reasoned, but, nevertheless curious, op-ed about Barack Obama and Steven Chu, beginning thus:
"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."
It seemed a bit strange, or disingenuous, of Stephanie Cooke, to suggest that Energy Secretary Stephen Chu, former head of Berkeley's Lawrence Livermore Labs, really wants to "avoid getting dragged down by the nuclear undertow," since Chu, a physicist, has openly advocated a nuclear renaissance.
Now we need an honest update on the Reliable Replacement Nuclear Warhead (RRW)
Bush's former Defense Secretary Robert Gates is now Obama's, and he has often pitched for continuing to develop the Reliable Replacement Nuclear Warhead:
Chu headed Lawrence Livermore Labs while it led development of the design for the Reliable Replacement Nuclear Warhead (RRW), a new strategic tactical nuclear weapon, under Bush. The RRW would have, and still may be, the first new nuclear weapon in the U.S. arsenal in many years. Los Alamos National Labs (LANL) worked on the RRW, first in competition with Livermore, and then, under the direction of Livermore, then headed by Chu, from 2006 until 2008, when Congress defunded further development, The London Guardian reported recently that RRW developers in the U.S. had simply moved to Britain's Aldermaston nuke bomb factory, to work alongside British scientists in finishing the design, with British and who knows what other, funding, quite likely slush funding. There are quite a few very slushy funds scattered throughout the military and intelligence departments of the U.S. national security state.
It's virtually inconceivable that the U.S. could have continued development of the Reliable Replacement Nuclear Warhead without Chu's knowledge, either before or after he became Secretary of Energy, which is to say, of Nuclear Power, Weapons, and Waste, because, before becoming the top nuclear power and weapons official in the U.S., he headed the lab overseeing the RRW design. And he most certainly knows now, since this 02/09/2009 London Guardian exposé. There seems, however, to be no evidence that he has made any evidence to halt the RRW's ongoing development at Aldermaston.
Chu's official statement on the RRW says that, "Under this budget, development work on the Reliable Replacement Warhead will cease," but "under this budget" sounds like a very convenient way of taking credit for Congress's vote to defund RRW's development, without acknowledging that he's overseeing its continuation, covertly, in cooperation with Britain, at Aldermaston.
Did Congress simply get fed up with funding the development of a new nuclear weapon, in hard times, or, did they decide it was a lousy, hugely toxic, and dangerous idea, discouraging to the goal of world peace, which most of the world embraces, honestly or not?
Cooke seems either to have skipped research into Chu's background, even so recent as his 03/11/2009 embrace of next generation nuclear power. Or, she may have intended, for whatever reason, to greenwash, and apologize, for Obama and Chu's nuclear predilections, by saying that there's just no changing the U.S. Department of Energy and its nuclear DNA, no matter how one might want to.
Or, she may even have meant to encourage whatever renewables interest Obama and Chu may have, with flattery. This might be a logical, persuasive rather than confrontational strategy, but, nevertheless, these important question still hangs:
How are Steven Chu and Barack Obama involved with the U.S.-British, Reliable Replacement Nucleaer Warhead development in Britain, now, even though this obviously began after Congress defunded the new nuclear weapon, and before George Bush left office? They essentially have to pick up where George left off, to complete it, or abandon it, as much of the world, including many of us in the U.S.A., which they would.
Do they have any intention of shutting it down, over, no doubt, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates's objections? And, who is managing and funding this nuclear weapons development now, at Britain's Aldermaston. And, to what strategic purpose?
This is serious business, designing and building the first new nuclear weapon in the U.S. arsenal, in years. Not a decision that U.S. and British national security state cabals should make without public approval or oversight.
The U.S. Department of Energy, nuclear by nature?
Cooke, again, writing in the NY Times, was most certainly correct that, in the unlikely event that Chu choose to emphasize solar, wind, and other forms of renewable power over nuclear, he would have to recreate or even rename, the U.S. Energy Department, because it is and always has been, above all, the Department of Nuclear Power, Nuclear Weapons, and, Nuclear Waste; it grew out of the Atomic Energy Commission, created to oversee the creation of U.S. nuclear weapons and nuclear power infrastructure after the end of World War II.
There are more nuclear, and coal-fired, power plants in Barack Obama's Illinois than in any other state in the union; and Chicago-based http://www.exeloncorp.com/, the largest nuclear power corporation in the U.S., gave Obama's campaign over $200,000 in bundled contributions.
However, Obama did, very shortly after taking office, and, at long last, shut down the longstanding DOE plan to make one of Native America's most sacred sites, Yucca Mountain, a big high radiation nuclear waste dump, in Nevada. By doing so, he handed a hard, lifelong won victory to the Western Shoshone people, and, to Carrie Dann, lifelong Native American environmental and indigenous rights activist, and, defender of indigenous sacred sites.
By convening a "panel on nuclear waste," to choose the best way to dispose of waste generated by the next generation of nuclear reactors, Obama's Energy Secretary, Steven Chu unfortunately implied that there is a "best way, " or, rather, a rational way. But, whatever their panel's conclusion, Obama and Chu have at least promised that it will not mean the nuclear disposal of the magnificent Carrie Dann's sacred mountain. Turning Yucca Mountain into a High Radiation Nuclear Waste Dump had been a pillar of the Global Nuclear Energy Project since its inception under Bush; Carrie, the Western Shoshone, and the rest of the Native Southwest fought to save their sacred mountain for 22 years, so this was a huge victory, even as the Navajo and other Native Americans continue to battle uranium mining leases expanded by the Energy Department under George Bush.
Is the Energy Department nuclear by nature, now and forever, amen?
Stephanie Cooke aptly said that the U.S. Department of Energy has "nuclear weapons in its DNA"; it grew out of the Atomic Energy Commission, created to manage and build atomic weapons after World War II, after the U.S. dropped the first atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and nation states raced to build and place their own weapons on the global nuclear chessboard.
"Today, the department’s main task is managing the thousands of facilities involved in producing nuclear weapons during the cold war, and the associated cleanup of dozens of contaminated sites. Approximately two-thirds of its annual budget, which is roughly $27 billion, is spent on these activities, while only 15 percent is allocated for all energy programs, including managing the Strategic Petroleum Reserve and researching and developing new technologies."
The name of the Energy Department seems incidental to the central questions:
1) How will we develop and energy resources, now, to what purpose?
2) Will our energy resources sustain life and future generations?
With these questions in mind, however, I'll gladly agree that "the Energy Department must be relieved of duties that aren’t related to energy"---i.e., that it must be relieved of its primary task, nuclear weapons handling, which Obama's Office of Management and Budget Director Peter Orszag has suggested moving into the equally misnamed, but, better understood, Department of Defense (DOD).
This is a good idea, a damn good, and most excellent idea. Obama's OMB Budget Director Peter Orszag should be applauded for championing such rare honesty and focus in Washington D.C. Let's do indeed pass the U.S. nuclear weapons stockpile to the "Defense Department" and, finally turn the Energy Department into the Real Energy Department, and hopefully even: the Renewable, Sustainable Energy Department, mandated to build renewable energy and sustain life. Yeah Peter Orszag!!! The new Chief of the OBM is not only intelligent but rational!!! He's tacking the logical contradiction of an "Energy Department" whose primary task is management of our nuclear weapons arsenal. This is the best idea I've heard out of Team Obama yet.
We've still got these problems, Energy Secretary Stephen Chu, overseer of Lawrence Livermore Labs during the design of the Reliable Replacement Nuclear Warhead (RRW), and the covert continuation of the RRW development, at Aldermaston, but perhaps they could both, at least be moved over and locked up at DOD, with the rest of the nuclear weapons, to give Energy a chance.
Comment: Rarely, this blog post anything the uranium group publishes, however, following articles will list of facts about Nuke Power group ever tells us! By the way, did the Secretary of Energy go to Coles Hill; was this the purpose of the whole Rural Tour? Not very nice!
By Norman W. Reynolds
Wednesday, July 29, 2009 10:10 AM EDT
U. S. Energy Secretary Steven Chu could not have picked a better spot than Pittsylvania County to sound his ringing call for "restarting" our nation's nuclear energy program, as well as endorsing Virginia's state-sanctioned study to assess the safety and feasibility of mining and milling uranium in the commonwealth.
The setting for Dr. Chu's speech at a local farm last Saturday was just 10 miles south of the Coles Hill uranium site and 50 miles south of the City of Lynchburg, one of the most dynamic hubs of advanced nuclear technology in Virginia.
Coles Hill is where Virginia Uranium proposes to mine and mill the largest known undeveloped uranium deposit in the United States.
Speaking to concerns that have been raised about mining in Virginia, Dr. Chu, a Nobel laureate in physics, explained that in "any kind of mining, whether it's uranium, coal or nickel, or you name it, it has to be done in a way that protects the environment and protects the people....there's a study going on as to whether uranium mining in Virginia is going to do that....we will wait for the results of that study."
The Virginia Coal and Energy Commission is working with the National Academy of Sciences to conduct an independent study to address concerns of Virginians about safety to people, livestock, crops and the environment.
The secretary's position on the uranium potential at Coles Hill seemed to reflect that of his boss, President Obama. When the President was campaigning in Virginia last year, the Roanoke Times carried the following report:
"According to an e-mail from his Virginia communications director, Obama supports a proposed study of the [Coles Hill] site to evaluate the potential environmental effects of mining. But, he adds, 'Virginia has the potential to be a national leader in uranium mining, and development of uranium resources in Pittsylvania County could create hundreds of jobs in that part of the state.'"
On the larger subject of using nuclear energy to power America, Dr. Chu told the local audience of around 275 people that the Obama Administration and the U.S. Department of Energy are "very supportive of restarting the nuclear power industry," adding that he believes it can be done safely.
Secretary Chu's comments echo those heard from various Virginia officials over the past two years, starting with the Virginia Energy Plan released in the fall of 2007. In addition to numerous references to the massive uranium deposit in Southside Virginia, the energy plan states:
"There are sufficient resources to support a uranium mining industry in Pittsylvania County with enough to meet the fuel needs of Virginia's current generation. Significant work to assess the risk from mining and need for regulatory controls must be completed before any decision can be made whether such mining should take place."
For those of us who have worked long and hard on the Coles Hill project, it is gratifying that the nation's highest energy official saw fit to come to Pittsylvania County and to endorse the scientific study and to state so unequivocally the Obama Administration's high commitment to getting nuclear back on track in the United States. We look forward to moving ahead hand in hand with such enlightened thinking.
We haven't the slightest doubt that all aspects of the nuclear cycle-from mining to operating reactors-can be done as safely as any other industrial undertaking. When the same safety issues were studied by the state 25 years ago, scientists found that under well-defined guidelines our project could go forward safely. I am confident that similar findings will be reached this go-around.
What Dr. Chu is talking about goes straight to the heart of energy independence for our nation. Yes, we need to move ahead on all fronts that make sense. But let us keep in mind that of the 55 million pounds of uranium needed to operate nuclear facilities for one year in this country, over 50 million pounds are imported. That is a frightening statistic in a world as unpredictable as the one in which we are living.
We should be grateful for the enlightened approach expressed by Secretary Chu. And we should support sensible efforts to achieve greater energy independence, including the full development of our nuclear resources.
Norman Reynolds of Chatham is president and chief executive officer of Virginia Uranium Inc., as well as Virginia Energy Resources.
http://www.wpcva.com/articles/2009/07/29/chatham/opinion/opinion01.txt
http://coloredopinions.blogspot.com/2009/03/nuclear-by-nature-us-dept-of-energy.html
http://www.sustainabilitank.info/2009/07/29/culture-change-brought-to-our-attention-the-ben-williams-article-why-nuclear-energy-is-not-the-answer-to-climate-change-it-is-rather-extermely-uninformed-to-think-otherwise/
http://world-wire.com/news/0907270001.html
http://www.nunnglow.com/latest/violations-accumulate-for-uranium-isl-mining.html
http://archiearchive.wordpress.com/2009/07/24/uranium-mining-and-a-national-park-2/
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