By Matthew McClearn

External experts looking into the unexpectedly rapid deterioration of key components in nuclear power reactors have concluded that the plants can operate safely, although they say it’s unclear what caused the problem in the first place.

The External Advisory Committee on Pressure Tubes was convened in the summer of 2021 to help the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission after the discovery of unexpectedly high levels of deuterium (an isotope of hydrogen) in pressure tubes at the Bruce Nuclear Generating Station, violating the terms of its operating license.

After two years, the committee agreed with all the conclusions previously arrived at by industry representatives and commission staff.

In a final report dated July 4 and published without fanfare last month, the committee declared that while “a great deal of work” remains to be done to understand the problem’s cause, “enough has been done by the licensees to definitively provide assurance that the plants can operate safely.”

The committee included Mark Daymond, a professor at Queen’s University’s engineering and physics departments, and Paul Spekkens, a former employee of Ontario Power Generation. (Its chair, John Luxat of McMaster University, withdrew for health reasons in January.) Their final report is a boon for Bruce Power, which has an application before the CNSC seeking to remove limits in its operating license that its pressure tubes violated more than two years ago.

Continue reading this article at The Globe and Mail →

Dr. Gordon Edwards, Media conference presentation,
New York State, August 23 2023,
Re: Plans to dump radioactive wastewater into the Hudson River

In 2017, I was invited to give a talk on the shores of the Hudson River. At that time, I began by saying “The age of nuclear power is winding down, but the age of nuclear waste is just beginning.”

Well, here we are. Welcome to the brave new world of human-made radioactive waste. It is a toxic legacy that will last for a hundred thousand years and more, because no one knows how to turn off radioactivity. The only thing we can do is keep it out of the environment. Keep it out of the food we eat, the water we drink, and the air we breathe.

Chronic exposure to radioactivity is harmful to all living things even in small amounts, causing cancers and other diseases. It also damages the reproductive abilities of all species.

Continue reading this article at Canadian Coalition for Nuclear Responsibility →

BY RON JACOBS

Janice Haaken’s new film Atomic Bamboozle: The False Promise of a Nuclear Renaissance begins with a nuclear engineer stating that if he were “czar of the world,” he would ban nuclear weapons and all other uses with the possible exception of research. That comment is almost immediately followed by an overconfident and smiling former Texas governor and Secretary of Energy, Rick Perry, introducing what he calls the millennial brain trust of nuclear energy. The haughty self-assuredness of the young people in this “brain trust” is apparent in their business suits and well-fed faces. This group, Perry tells us, will “make nuclear energy cool again.”

The film is about what nuclear energy and its supplicant media tell us is a nuclear renaissance. As Attorney Greg Kafoury makes clear, not even two minutes in, this so-called renaissance is nothing but the same old routine where the industry and government pretend they have come up with solutions to the problem of nuclear waste storage. This solution then turns out to be letting future generations deal with it, which is no solution. Like so many other ongoing issues related to climate change and capitalism, Atomic Bamboozle makes it very clear that the pursuit of the dollar trumps all other possibilities.

Continue reading this article at CounterPunch →

By Dr Jim Green

Bipartisan efforts by successive federal governments to impose a national nuclear waste dump on the land of Barngarla Aboriginal traditional owners in South Australia (SA) have been upended by a federal court decision in favour of the Barngarla people.

Australians will have their say in a referendum about whether to change their constitution to recognise the First Nations of Australia by establishing an Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Voice later this year.

The Voice would be an independent and permanent advisory body giving advice to the Australian parliament and government on matters that affect the lives of first nations peoples. 

Continue reading this article at The Ecologist →

By Kierstin Williams

By Oregon Department of Energy

In late June, the U.S. Department of Energy reported that radioactive contamination beneath a building at the Hanford Nuclear Site is worse than originally thought.

The Hanford 324 Building is located on the south end of Hanford – in what’s known as the 300 Area – just 1,000 feet from the Columbia River. The US DOE has known about one spill under the building for over a decade, and has been working on a plan for cleanup of the area while also making progress in other areas of Hanford since production turned to cleanup at the site in the 1980s.

The agency knew the contamination in the soil was serious, but sampling this spring found unexpected contamination deeper in the soil and outside the previously known spill area. So what does that mean? Oregon Department of Energy Assistant Director for Nuclear Safety and Emergency Preparedness Maxwell Woods and Hanford Hydrogeologist Tom Sicilia weigh in.

Continue reading this article at Oregon Department of Energy →

By Robert Alvarez

Over the past 40 years, Arjun Makhijani has provided clear, concise, and important scientific insights that have enriched our understanding of the nuclear age. In doing so, Makhijani—now president of the Institute for Energy and Environmental Research—has built a solid reputation as a scientist working in the public interest. His most recent contribution to public discourse, Exploring Tritium’s Dangers, adds to this fine tradition.

A radioactive isotope of hydrogen, tritium is one the most expensive, rare, and potentially harmful elements in the world. Its rarity is underscored by its price—$30,000 per gram—which is projected to rise from $100,000 to $200,000 per gram by mid-century.

Although its rarity and usefulness in some applications gives it a high monetary value, tritium is also a radioactive contaminant that has been released widely to the air and water from nuclear power and spent nuclear fuel reprocessing plants. Makhijani points out that “one teaspoon of tritiated water (as HTO) would contaminate about 100 billion gallons of water to the US drinking water limit; that is enough to supply about 1 million homes with water for a year.”

Continue reading this article at Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists →

By WLEN News Staff

Lansing, MI – U.S. Senator Debbie Stabenow, from Michigan, announced that the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works passed her provision requiring the Biden Administration to work with Canada on an alternative location to permanently store nuclear waste.

For years, Stabenow has opposed Canada’s plan to permanently store high-level nuclear waste in the Great Lakes Basin.

Stabenow’s provision, which passed as part of the Advance Act of 2023, requires the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to provide an update to Congress on engagement between the Commission and the Government of Canada regarding nuclear waste storage in the Great Lakes Basin.

Continue reading this article at WLEN-FM Radio 103.9 →

Joint Media Release –

1 June 2023

In an act of international solidarity, British anti-nuclear campaigners have written to the Premier of Ontario in support of fellow Canadian activists who on 30 May presented a petition to the Legislative Assembly of that state opposing the transportation and dumping of nuclear waste.

The Chair of the Nuclear Free Local Authorities (NFLA) English Forum, Cllr David Blackburn, was joined by co-signatories Marianne Birkby from Radiation Free Lakeland / Lakes against the Nuclear Dump; Jan Bridget from Millom against the Nuclear Dump / South Copeland against the Geological Disposal Facility; and Ken Smith from Guardians of the East Coast in making an appeal to Premier Doug Ford calling for Canadian nuclear waste to be retained at the sites at which it was generated and stored in purpose-built secure facilities coupled with constant monitoring and active stewardship, rather than trucked for thousands of miles and dumped underground.

In Canada, the Nuclear Waste Management Organisation (NWMO), established by that nation’s nuclear power plant operators, is seeking a site for a so-called Deep Geological Repository for all of Canada’s nuclear fuel waste. As 90% of the waste is held by Ontario Power Generation, a major shareholder in the NWMO, two sites in that state have been short-listed.

Campaigners here in the UK face a similar threat from a Geological Disposal Facility with government-funded Nuclear Waste Services currently investigating the possibility of locating an underground / undersea nuclear waste dump in West Cumbria or East Lincolnshire. As in Canada, many people bitterly object to the plans and have coalesced around local campaigns to oppose them. It is therefore natural that British campaigners should want to express support for Canadian colleagues facing a similar threat.

The petition was formally presented to the Assembly by three elected representatives, Lise Vaugeois, Sol Mamakwa and Mike Schreiner on behalf of the people of Ontario and ‘We the Nuclear Free North’ an alliance of people and groups opposing a nuclear waste dump, or in Canada a Deep Geological Repository, in Northern Ontario. Members of the Alliance include Indigenous Canadians from the First Nations.

Commenting Cllr David Blackburn, Chair of the NFLA English Forum, said: “Our Canadian counterparts are calling specifically for a ‘proximity principle’ to be adopted by the State of Ontario in the storage and stewardship of nuclear waste. This mirrors the position of the Nuclear Free Local Authorities and the Scottish Government that waste should be kept ‘near to the site where it was produced and on or near the surface’ so that it can be continually monitored and retrieved and repackaged in the event of an accident”.

The NWMO in Canada and Nuclear Waste Services in the UK have been liaising recently for the purposes of knowledge sharing, and anti-nuclear campaigners in both nations are now looking to set up an early meeting to discuss their own ideas for international collaboration.

Ends://

For more information, please contact Richard Outram, Secretary, UK/Ireland Nuclear Free Local Authorities by email to [email protected], telephone +44 (0) 7583 097793

Notes to Editors – Our websites are:

https://www.nuclearpolicy.info/

UK / Ireland Nuclear Free Local Authorities https://www.nuclearpolicy.info/

Radiation Free Lakeland, Lakes Against Nuclear Dump Campaign

https://mariannewildart.wordpress.com/

Millom against the Nuclear Dump / South Copeland against the GDF https://southcopelandagainstgdf.org.uk/

Guardians of the East Coast https://www.gotec.org.uk/

We the Nuclear Free North https://wethenuclearfreenorth.ca/

Protect Our Waterways - No Nuclear Waste https://www.protectourwaterways.org/

Continue reading this on the release →

Video: Lise's introduction of those seating in the members gallery while parliament is in session