Combined News Posts January 2017

U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission reviewing reapproval of nuclear waste shipments route from Canada and the port of Charleston, SC to be dumped at the Savannah River Site

NRC letters of January 25, 2017 to Secured Transportation Services:

“ACCEPTANCE OF HIGHWAY ROUTE DETOUR APPLICATION FOR ROUTES
217 (MIT), 231 (BUFFALO POE) AND 246 (PORT ALEXANDRIA BAY POE) TO
THE DEPARTMENT OF ENERGY SAVANNAH RIVER SITE, AIKEN, SOUTH
CAROLINA, DOCKET NUMBER: 070-07011” – linked here

“ROUTE RE-APPROVAL APPLICATION (NRC ROUTE NO. 192) ROUTE:
JOINT BASE CHARLESTON-WEAPONS STATION, GOOSE CREEK, SOUTH
CAROLINA, TO THE DEPARTMENT OF ENERGY SAVANNAH RIVER SITE,
AIKEN, SOUTH CAROLINA, DOCKET NUMBER: 070-07011” – linked here

photo: truck and shipping container with Canadian liquid high-level nuclear waste to be unnecessarily dumped at SRS, from DOE’s “SUPPLEMENT ANALYSIS FOR THE FOREIGN RESEARCH REACTOR SPENT NUCLEAR FUEL ACCEPTANCE PROGRAM – Highly Enriched Uranium Target Residue Material Transportation,” November 2015; DOE has refused for almost four years to honor a public interest group request to prepare an Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) on the matter, resulting in a self-inflicted delay in the unjustified shipments

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At SRS, the closed building that processed Pu-238 for RTGs remains a challenge to clean up – see October 4, 2016 presentation to SRS Citizens Advisory Board:  “Status Building 235-F Project.”  An accident with aerial release of the plutonium-238 would pose a risk to workers at the nearby plutonium-239 MOX debacle, also in the F-Area.

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See the 2017 “Savannah River Site Community Preparedness Information” calendar for details. SRS Watch has an extra copy that can be mailed to a local SRS resident. If more than one person wants the calendar we’ll hold a drawing.

Or, contact:  Offsite Emergency Management, Programs Coordinator Bldg 703-45A, Savannah River Site, PO Box 616, Aiken, SC 29802-9975

​2013 presentation to SRS Citizens Advisory Board (SRS CAB) on emergency planning – linked here

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• 4147 DWPF canisters have been filled to date;
• Goal for canisters to be filled in FY 2017:  80;
• Number of DWPF canisters that have so far been “double stacked” in the first canister storage building:  87;
• HB-Line in “sustained operation” and producing plutonium oxide;
• Downblending plutonium as waste continuing in the K-Area glovebox – plutonium is mixed with a secret, inert material known as “stardust” and packaged in “Criticality Control Overpacks” (CCOs), which can hold up to 380 grams of plutonium;
• Trump transitions people have asked SRS about infrastructure needs (but no indication about funding for this).
• SRS Watch public comment included informing CAB members of these outstanding SRS Watch Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests, for which there has as of yet been no response:

              1.  SRS “Nuclear Materials Management Plan” for 2015 and 2016;
2.  Documents, reports and photos on the SRS “Drone Scare                               2016;”
3.  Request for the CD-0 documents on expanding plutonium                             downblending capacity at SRS;
4.  Reports prepared for German entities on processing and                               dumping of German AVR & THTR reactor spent fuel &                                     documents on any transfer of funds to support Savannah                           River Nuclear Lab (SRNL) research into reprocessing and                              dumping of the spent fuel into aging SRS waste tanks;
5.  Documents on CB&I AREVA MOX Services MOX Fiscal Year                            2016 “award fee” (bonus) documents – OK, we also wonder                            how the mismanaged project could get even a penny from                                DOE/NNSA as a bonus.  The full bonus amount should go into                             investigations into waste, fraud, abuse & mismanagement by                          MOX Services and contractors such as Superior Air Handling                              (rumored to have badly botched the HVAC work).

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“That truck next to you on the highway may contain “the most radioactively hazardous materials on Earth.””

reposted on Ecowatch: Most Radioactive Waste on Earth May Soon Roll Through Your Town              

Argonne National Lab report on solidification of of similar medical isotope liquid waste:  “WASTE TREATMENT OF ACIDIC SOLUTIONS FROM THE DISSOLUTION OF IRRADIATED LEU TARGETS FOR 99MO PRODUCTION”:  http://www.ipd.anl.gov/anlpubs/2016/10/130886.pdf

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“Our meeting on March 12 will feature Tom Clements of SRS Watch who will give a presentation on various current issues at SRS including high-level waste management, the imports of nuclear waste and plutonium, the status of the MOX project, nuclear weapons. terminating nuclear imports.”

Those interested in and concerned about the future of the Savannah River Site, including critics of SRS, those concerned about nuclear waste import, workers at SRS clean-up projects and workers at the mismanaged MOX project are encouraged to attend and engage in constructive discussion about the future of the site.

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photo: @Carolina Peace Resource Center (CPRC), by Paul Palmer, June 30, 2016 in front of federal court house in Columbia, South Carolina
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The Hill, January 19, 2017 – linked here

photo above from Friends of the Earth video on MOX pork: “Oink: Stop Sen. Graham’s plutonium pork boondoggle“ – click on image for link to MOX video or here

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“US Justice and FBI Investigate Areva”

“The Department of Justice has asked the FBI to investigate the acquisition of Uramin by Areva in 2007. The operation could fall under the Anti-Corruption Act.”

in French, Le Journal du Dimanche , January 15, 2017

“La justice américaine et le FBI vont enquêter sur Areva
Le département de la Justice a demandé au FBI d’enquêter sur l’acquisition d’Uramin par Areva en 2007. L’opération pourrait tomber sous le coup de la loi anticorruption.”

article linked here

Note:  This article and an article in the French magazine Capital in January 2017 are prompting a long-delayed look into AREVA’s role in the US MOX debacle.

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If DOE/SRNL think they can continue to pursue the proposal to dump AVR and THTR reactor spent fuel at SRS they should become informed about legal problems and spent fuel transportation concerns in Germany, a heavy lift for DOE to overcome. The logical conclusion remains: terminate the unjustified spent fuel dumping scheme.

SRS schedule for environmental documents, including the German spent fuel dumping EA – linked here

In the list linked above, see “EA for the Acceptance and Disposition of Used Nuclear Fuel Containing U.S.-Origin Highly Enriched Uranium from the Federal Republic of GermanyDOE/EA-1977SR POCs: Maxcine Maxted, Nuclear Material Programs Division Tracy Williams, EQMDEM POC: Edgard Espinosa, EM-22GC POC: Carrie Abravanel, GC-54(http://energy.gov/sites/prod/files/2014/06/f16/EA-1977-NOI-2014.pdf)”

“A date for issuance of the final EA was not available at the time this status report was prepared.“

An SRS Watch Freedom of Information Act request for recent SRS-Germany documents is still pending.  See the initial DOE response of December 7, 2016 linked here. 

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​Bellona blog linked here

“Alexei Yablokov, grandfather of Russian environmentalism, dies at 83”

“Alexei Yablokov, the towering grandfather of Russian ecology who worked with Bellona to unmask Cold War nuclear dumping practices in the Arctic, has died in Moscow after a long illness. He was 83.”

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See court document of January 6, 2017 here in the following case:

UNITED STATES ex rel. DEBORAH W. COOK, Relator,
v.
ENERGY & PROCESS CORPORATION

See fraud symbol just below for more court documents as well as documents in the other MOX fraud case in federal court.

Though the DOE’s Office of Inspector General has been dragging its feet in investigating waste, fraud, abuse and mismanagment at the MOX project, report concerns to the OIG’s hotline:  https://energy.gov/ig/office-inspector-general

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State-owned (socialist) nuclear company AREVA, teetering on brink of finacial disaster, has French government bailout approved by European Commission

EC news release of January 10, 2016 – linked here

“State aid: Commission approves restructuring plan of French Areva group”

“The European Commission has concluded that French plans to grant a capital injection of €4.5 billion to Areva are in line with EU state aid rules. Areva’s restructuring plan will allow the company to become viable without unduly distorting competition in the Single Market.”

“Areva is a listed group, of which the French state owns, directly and indirectly, 86.5%. The group is active in the whole range of activities around the full nuclear fuel cycle. The situation of the civil nuclear market post-Fukushima, together with the firm’s own structural problems and business choices, led to Areva experiencing serious financial difficulties for over five years.”

Recall that the US MOX boondoggle has failed under CB&I AREVA MOX Services.  The failure, in part, is because the design of the US MOX plant is based on AREVA’s MELOX plant and the MELOX design has not been readily transferrable to handle weapon-grade plutonium and to US operational standards. A burning question lingers:  Was the DOE’s National Nuclear Security Administration tricked into buying an inferior, dated AREVA technology that would never work in the US?  Who is investigating this pressing matter?  Let us know your thoughts about the problems with the design of the US MOX plant:  srswatch@gmail.com

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The article below is misleading as SRS Watch has no knowledge of potentially faulty AREVA-supplied components to the MOX project or other US nuclear projects. Likewise, we have not said anything about the matter (about which the NRC blogged on January 10).  We will continue to call for necessary investigations into waste, fraud, abuse and mismanagement at the MOX project, whether it be of CB&I AREVA MOX Services or such contractors as Superior Air Handling (rumored to have botched the HVAC work, possibly with knowledge of MOX Services.)  We ask MOX Services and DOE/NNSA: what do you know about possible waste, fraud, abuse & mismanagement at the MOX projects since its inception and why the lengthy and disturbing silence on the matter?  Who is blocking such necessary investigations and protecting more wasteful spending on MOX?

“AREVA material problems raise concerns at Savannah River Site’s MOX project”    

Aiken (South Carolina) Standard, January 10, 2017 – article linked here

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About the film – check local listings in US – Containment website linked here

How can we contain some of the deadliest, most long-lasting substances ever produced? Toxic remnants from the Cold War remain in millions of gallons of highly radioactive sludge, thousands of acres of radioactive land, tens of thousands of unused hot buildings, and  some slowly spreading deltas of contaminated groundwater. Governments around the world, desperate to protect future generations, have begun imagining society 10,000 years from now in order to create warning monuments that will speak across time to mark waste repositories.
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Containment moves from a nuclear weapon facility in South Carolina where toxic swamps have led to radioactive animals, to a deep underground burial site in New Mexico, to Fukushima, Japan, where a triple meltdown occurred after the cooling systems at the Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant were interrupted, leaving that city a ghost town. The film is part graphic novel and part observational essay mixed with sci-fi that is more science than fiction, weaving between an uneasy present and an imaginative, troubled distant future, exploring the struggle to keep waste confined over millennia.

http://www.pbs.org/independentlens/films/containment/

Containment trailer –  linked here

“Containment Filmmakers Go into the Future to Read the Warning Signs” – January 6, 2017 blog on PBS about the film – linked here

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re: “Edlow International Company (Export of 93.20% Enriched Uranium)
(Docket No. 11006235, Lic. Application No. XSNM-3771)”

“Putting aside the question of whether the BR-2 reactor could be converted to LEU fuel sooner, as the petition contends, the Belgian government now has told its Parliament that conversion to LEU fuel might be feasible as soon as 2022, which is only five years from now. This reinforces the petition’s contention that the proposed ten-year license for export of HEU to fuel the BR-2 reactor is neither warranted nor permitted under U.S. law. It also underscores that there is no justification for the amount of HEU in the proposed license, which the applicant says is sufficient for six years of operation, given that the Belgian government says the reactor might be converted to LEU within five years, and considering that the reactor could have extended outages during that time.”

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