US Company Seeks Permit to Import Nuclear Waste

"libertas fugit February 4th, 2008 2:49 pm
Only if they will agree to store it in the White House basement, the cloak rooms of the House and Senate and in the Pentagon building. Then, at least it would be of some benefit."

Great idea,but they operate so secretly,the public wouldn't know about it. Those Depts. you mention,plus the (in)justice building too.

MiMiCcS,

Don't try confusing the posters here with "facts". Most don't have the scientific background to understand and almost all have opinions set in stone. It doesn't matter that I believe approximately 95% of what is beloved by the readers of Common Dreams (recycling, conservation, thermal, solar, tidal, etc.,etc.). I am constantly SHOUTED at, cursed, called a tool of the industry and worse, simply for insisting that science rather than histrionics should be the basis for discussion.

I don't know where I got such a ridiculous idea.

Where are they going to dump it near? An American-Indian reservation, as usual, to please the genocidal fascist maniacs?

We don't even know what to do with our waste and now we thinking of importing more. Perfect...

In the past, only a third world nation would consider doing this.

Still don't think the US is rapidly becoming a third world nation ?

With every insult from "our" government we get closer and closer to understanding how Native Americans have felt for about 500 years. "Hi Mr. Colonizer, so you ruined your own home and now you want ours...."

There is a lot of disinformation out there, and the article does not discuss quantities which are probably not very great and presumably the higher level waste can be reprocessed in some ways I read recently that we may have technlogy that can reduce the time nuclear waste will be radioactive. There are tons of low level waste be generated within the US daily from non-nuclear power plants. This anti-nuclear phobia is just a plot to keep us dependent on petroleum and keep Big oil rich. The below link has some decent debunking of some nuclear myths.

http://www.larouchepub.com/other/2007/3405_nuclear_myths.html

There is no such thing as nuclear "waste." This is a term used in popular parlance by anti-nuclear ideologues to frighten the public, and its elected representatives. More than 95% of the fission products created in commercial power plants can be reprocessed and recycled. The spent fuel from a typical 1,000 megawatt nuclear plant, which has operated over 40 years, can produce energy equal to 130 million barrels of oil, or 37 million tons of coal.

In reprocessing, fissionable uranium-235 and plutonium are separated from the high-level fission products. The plutonium can be used to make mixed-oxide fuel, which is currently used to produce electrical power in 35 European nuclear reactors. The fissionable uranium in the spent fuel can also be reused. From the remaining 3% of high-level radioactive products, valuable medical and other isotopes can be extracted.

Q: What about the stalemate over burying radioactive spent fuel in the Yucca Mountain geological depository in Nevada?

A: This is an irrational program which is a result of the success of the anti-nuclear nonproliferation lobby in the 1970s. The Department of Energy's Global Nuclear Energy Partnership proposes to spend billions of dollars, and more than a decade in research and development, to develop new, "proliferation proof," reprocessing technologies, under the guise of preventing the spread of plutonium and nuclear weapons, and bury the spent fuel at Yucca Mountain, in the meantime. This delay is unnecessary. Today, Britain, France, Russia, India, Japan, and China reprocess spent nuclear fuel, and technology today can be used here in the U.S. to eliminate the "nuclear waste" problem, in the short term.

Q: But if the United States goes ahead now with reprocessing, doesn't making this technology available increase the risk that other nations will develop nuclear weapons?

A: No nation has ever developed a nuclear weapon from a civilian nuclear power plant. If a nation has the intention to develop nuclear weapons, it must obtain the specific technology to do so. Israel is an example of a nation that has no civilian nuclear power plants, but has developed nuclear weapons.

The nonproliferation argument—that controlling technology will reduce the risk of weapons proliferation—is an historically demonstrable false one. Nations make decisions based on their security and military requirements, not on which technologies are available.

Q: Isn't it the case that nuclear energy is more expensive than fossil, or "alternative" fuels?

A: The radical escalation in the cost of building nuclear power plants in the late 1970s and 1980s was the result of political actions, not economics. Some plants projected to cost less than $1 billion ended up costing ten times that amount, because anti-nuclear "environmentalists," and legal intervenors were given free rein, using specious and ideological arguments, to delay plant construction for years, sometimes, for decades. Where there has been no political interference, new nuclear power plants have been built in 38 months, on schedule, and on budget, such as in Japan.

While it does require less up-front capital investment to build a gas-fired power plant than a nuclear plant, the operational cost over the 30-or-more-year lifetime of the gas plant swings heavily in favor of nuclear power. And compared to coal, the overall economy is not taxed to transport millions of tons of fuel.

In 2002, faced with increasing demand, and after careful economic analysis, the Tennessee Valley Authority decided that it was more economical to spend $1.8 billion to refurbish its Browns Ferry nuclear plant, which had been shut down since 1986, than build a gas-fired unit.

So-called renewable energy sources, such as solar and wind, are not only inefficient because their energy is so dispersed, (see EIR Jan. 19) for discussion of energy flux density), they are so unreliable that back-up power supplies (fossil or nuclear) must be available for any time it is not sunny or windy. So, not only do consumers bear the expense of inefficiency, the entire electric grid system pays the price of having to provide stand-by redundant power-generating capacity to ensure grid reliability.

It was determined in the 1970s, that alternative, "soft" energy sources would only be competitive with fossil and nuclear plants, when energy costs reached a $100/barrel oil-equivalent price. To bring these uneconomical sources on line before then, political decisions were made to spend $20 billion in Federal subsidies for alternative energy, while Federal expenditures for advanced nuclear technologies came to a screeching halt. It has been this irrational investment policy that has made nuclear power "expensive."
Q: But the immediate energy crisis is our dependence upon petroleum. How does nuclear energy alleviate that problem?

A: In two ways. In the long term, the only sensible and renewable replacement for petroleum-based liquid fuels is hydrogen. When next-generation, high-temperature nuclear fission reactors (which are under development now in South Africa and China) come on line, splitting water into its constituents elements will make hydrogen available as a versatile and universally available transportation fuel.

In the near term, petroleum consumption could be dramatically reduced through large-scale investment in mass transit and rail. Our decrepit diesel-fueled rail system should be electrified. Half of the nation's truck-hauled freight should be taken off the road and put on the rails. Millions of miles, and hours, of commuters driving automobiles should be eliminated, by using public transportation. A crash program to build conventional intra-city commuter trains, and magnetic levitation (maglev) systems for inter-city transport, would replace finite and polluting fossil fuel-based transport with nuclear power.

shipping by air would be out.

what if the ship broke apart on rocks?

and Bush is concerned about terrorists and dirty bombs.

RE: 4thefuture February 5th, 2008 2:35 am
Ramblinrose said: "Can't they just shoot the darn stuff into the sun…" I think there are some problems of practicality.

"This is probably not the answer to this serious problem."
You're probably right, but there might be a possible solution readily available to conquer the economics of the situation. The ecological ramifications & potential disaster hazard are something else, at the moment, and could exist indefinitely. Take a look:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_driver

"A mass driver is essentially a coil gun that magnetically accelerates a package consisting of a magnetisable holder containing a payload. Once the payload has been accelerated, the two separate, and the holder is slowed and recycled for another payload.
The first mass driver known in print was actually called the "electric gun" and described in detail as a way to launch vehicles into outer space from the earth's surface in the 1897 science fiction novel A Trip to Venus by John Munro and published in 1897 by Jarrold & Sons, London.
In the book Munro describes in great detail multiple coils fired in sequence by solenoids at proper timing to achieve acceleration without too high g forces to the passengers. The gun would be angled on a hillside if desired. Amazingly this book also describes in detail combinations of electric gun launch for a passenger capsule with onboard rockets, compressed gas jets and even retrofired bullets as a means to increase velocity and change direction and the use of planetary atmosphere aerobraking and parachutes for landing on a planet.
Prototype mass drivers have existed since 1976 (Mass Driver 1). Most were constructed by the US Space Studies Institute in order to prove their properties and practicality. Mass drivers can be used to propel spacecraft in two different ways: A large, ground-based mass driver could be used to launch spacecraft away from the Earth or another planet. A spacecraft could have a mass driver on board, flinging large pieces of material into space to propel itself. A hybrid design is also possible (see coil gun, railgun, or helical railgun)"

I believe Arthur C. Clarke & Carl Sagan have written about this device.

MIT built a six-foot model years ago with a 100 MPH exit velocity in that length.

Hey Billy!
"Envirocare would not seek to receive used fuel."

You, I, Kem, Siouxrose, and now millions of others know corporate America (corporate international, too) can not be trusted to be responsible to their mass minions (read serfs here) when the bottom line can be fattened up a bit, now can they? When billions are involved it's the public be damned, "I got mine, so fuck you!". Pretty blunt, but the indisputable truth.

As an Australian I would like to personally apologise to you all for us voting out our friendly right wing government. We were setting ourselves up to take all the waste from the world and bury it in the outback but this is now on the back burner now that we have voted for our own personal selfish interests.

Ramblinrose said: "Can't they just shoot the darn stuff into the sun..." I think there are some problems of practicality. First, the sheer amount of such wastes would require an almost constant launch of rockets. We don't have that many and the costs would be incredibly high. Perhaps we could divert the missile defense program to pay for it? Second, we would still have the problem of transporting the wastes to the launch sites. Third, the success rate for rocket launches leaves open the concern that one of those babies might re-enter and crash, perhaps causing the container/s to break open releasing the radiation over quite a large area. If it didn't break open, then a treasure hunt for terrorists? Fourth, the safety issues, pre-launch, would increase considerably as the wastes would need to be stored for the future launches which might be in the distant future. Who's going to pay for all of the costs?

This is probably not the answer to this serious problem.

Could it get dumped in the White House during the dinner hour and Halls of Congress when it is in session?

This is absolutely insane! Can't they just shoot the darn stuff into the sun where there are millions of nuclear explosions going on all the time. Then all we would have to do is shut down all nuclear plants, weapons ect. and use solor energy as in solor panels.
Our Sun is just waiting to be used for low-cost electricity, including the electric car. Simple as that.
ramblnrose(.)blogspot(.)com

Write-in Dennis J. Kucinich/Rep. Robert Wexler

This is utterly insane. America has enough problems "disposing" of the nuclear waste it generates on its' own, as nobody wants to be the redux of Yucca Valley. This deal is also a sad sign of the US $ decline, as the Italians would probably be paying for the waste disposal in Euros.

I'm just glad that Bart Gordon wants to stop this. In this day and age, where our elected representatives seem not to care about our concerns, it is refreshing to know that my congressman is actually looking out for his constituents.

Siouxrose,

There are many different types and forms of nuclear waste.

Many people consider used nuclear fuel to be waste. This material is intensely radioactive and the radioactivity will last for a long time. This material stirs the greatest passion but there is not really all that much of it.

Used nuclear reactor parts (other than the fuel) is quite radioactive at first but will be nearly inert within a hundred years.

Used medical equipment contaminated with radioactivity will generally be inert within 25 years. The radioisotopes used in medicine are almost all very short lived.

Envirocare would not seek to receive used fuel. They, in fact, bury what they receive and simple burial is not appropriate for used fuel. The material going to Envirocare is really quite low level.

Yucca mountain is controversial but it is a more suitable repository for used fuel (If you are not going to recycle it).

Bill

Why not? Hasn't the world done enough for the US to get a little back? Utah sounds like a good place if the people there agree. Surely American technology can take care of disposing of this properly.

Nuclear or oil?
Neither.

But the waste is there and has to be put somewhere.
Do the people have any say in the matter?

By importing nuclear waste we can keep it out of the hands of those who might want to refine it to weapons grade (except of course for us).

I might think this is a workable plan if they store it in the Whitehouse basement.

bikerdude February 4th, 2008 5:50 pm

"Maybe they could put this waste facility in Crawford, T"

Steve Creamer's back yard would be my first choice....after they put the capitalist-lunatic into a strait jacket.

I lived in Ashland VA four years, with 32 trains daily running up the middle of the street in front of the historic house I lived in (originally owned by Edgar Allen Poe's fiancee).

Then some idiot in the state legislature (Republican capitalist) had the brilliant idea of accepting numerous trainloads of New York garbage to be disposed of in Virginia's already crowded landfills. We all could tell it was a garbage train, because it stunk up the whole sleepy little town every time one rumbled through.

I shudder at the thought of hazardous nuclear waste rolling by less than a hundred feet from my front door (or anyones actually). Nuclear waste wouldn't be nearly as detectable as the smelly mess in those train cars, but far more deadly, and most people wouldn't even realize the threat until far too late.

Solution? Let Italy & New York figure out what to do with their own crap, and maybe they will be hard pressed to find ways not to create so much of it. If you don't make a mess (recycle effectively & dismantle nuclear plants ASAP) there is no worry about cleaning one up. Some things just can't be swept under the carpet...truth included.

Jean Schneider from Ohio wants to dumpt it in eastern Ohio!!!

This is an amazing line from the above article:
"U.S. low-level waste is typically stored on-site by licensees, according to the NRC, either until it has decayed away and can be disposed of as ordinary trash,"... UNTIL??????????? like how many thousands of years until the radioactive half-life is reached? With the way these company mergers operate, any "ownership" of accountability will become jelly by the time a chain of responsible command is needed to make public-health oriented decisions.

BBR001 says, "Organized crime has completely infitrated the waste handling business." I remember a documentary hosted by David Suzuki that looked at pollution of the North East. It stated that organized crime was big into waste removal in the NY, NJ and CT areas, and that they were known to take BIOHAZARD wastes and put them inside a land fill with only a plastic bottom liner that over the course of not too many years would erode leaving the rain to move through these toxic substances back eventually into the water table.

I also recall an article in Public Citizen's periodical stating that there were ALREADY programs "recycling" some of the materials from nuclear plants and melding them into metals that would be used in baby carriages, dental braces, and toaster ovens. Because the burden of proof requires that reasonable doubt be dismissed and now we have so many DOUBT-FULL polluters in our bodies, streams, air and soil... in effect the community of trespassers grants each other a free pass while the cancer rates go up, and big pharma bamboozles the public on this or that prospective cure. Sure. It's the chemicals CAUSING the cancers, and no chemicals are ever going to cure them. ONLY well nourished balanced bodies given time and support to HEAL can overcome the trespass of all these things Nature never intended that now are very much a part of us all. Check out "body burden" to obtain your personal chemical quotient, a whole new genetic take on "better living through chemistry."

The Garbage Industry as all the other racketeer industries that are regulated to guarantee them a profit seem to operate under the De-regulation racket. The game is De-regulated as to whom will own and sell the franchise, a system that has gauranteed untold profits. Energy Solutions sounds to much like Sempra Energy Solutions, a Carlyle Group Bushco outfit. Only a few weeks ago, a Spanish Company from Spain purchased a Utility called Energy East. Energy East supplied power to some millions of homes on the East Coast.
Under local rules, Energy companies can buy and sell themselves at outlandish prices showing profits unheard of in the Regulation period. Since Electric suppliers of Energy are guaranteed a profit by the local rules under "the make believe" Regulatory Agencies, the Public Utilities Angencies will give them increase Electric Rates that will be forced on the poor consumers of Electricity, that guarantees the power suppliers a profitable return on their investment, that includes the millions of dollars in profits distributed to the sellers and the Politically connected Lawyers that made this deal happen. This type of behaviour will keep going on as our government is for sale to the highest bidder.

This paragon of industry is a real piece of work:
"As the country looks to alternative energy assets such as ethanol, solar, wind, and nuclear energy to both reduce our dependence on foreign resources and protect the environment, Energy Solutions is proud to be a part of this industry which is providing long term energy solutions to the nation."--Steve Creamer, CEO of ES

http://www.mormonmentality.org/2006/11/30/a-prophecy.htm
http://thinkexist.com/quotes/steve_creamer/

Maybe they could put this waste facility in Crawford, TX.

rtdrury - You are spot on!

Check out The Story of Stuff, great educational material for the kiddies. My 8 year old loved it!
http://www.storyofstuff.com/

It would be good for the Italians. Organized crime has completely infitrated the waste handling business, and people are dropping like flies outside some landfills near Naples.

Does anyone on here remember something about Howard Dean as Gov contracting to have Vermont waste dumped in some very poor part of TX?

I have no problem with their importing Nuke waste, as long as they dump it in Crawford Texas and under the White House.
A long time ago I did a stand up comedy routine and said, In a radio contest, I won a Nuclear waste garbage disposal unit and a years supply of garbage.

Everything, whether radioactive or not, should be returned to sender. This has to be public policy, worldwide.

The engineering of anything, everything, is incomplete until the design accomodates safe and efficient recycling of the materials.

Notice how mother nature ensures that she can recycle everything she makes. Homo sapien with all your intelligence, do you have the humility to start with such a well-proven process design and build on it? Can you stand on the shoulders of this giant? Nope! Stupid!!

So let's: 1.) get some humility, 2.) get some responsibility, 3.) drown the capitalists in the Potomac, 4.) set public policy to require closed loops in the industrial cycles (wastes to factory), ecological cycles (waste to soil), economic/political cycles (decisions made by those affected, i.e. PEOPLE).

Heard any capitalist jokes lately?

See, they tried to dump this waste in my home state, South Carolina, years ago. Our Democratic governor then, Jim Hodges, put up roadblocks and stood in the middle of the road himself to keep the federal government from dumping at Savanna River Site. What happened to him for protecting our state? He was ousted at the next election and replaced by libertarian-style Republican Mark Sanford, who deregulates everything and allows all sorts of crap to come into the state. Including nuclear waste.

Hey, Chunga's Revenge. Back at cha. Altho I did like liberatis fugit's idea a lot -- store it under the WH and Congress. Only kidding. That would end the notion in a hurry.

Dang Meg - You beat me to the punch, and with much more vigor. I like it!

No kendpotter, what folks are saying, not to presume to speak for others (but what the hell), is that it would be better not to create this waste in the first place.....

But if Italy is going to create it let them dispose of it in their own country, preferably under conditions agreed to under an international treaty based on the health, safety, and best interest of the Italian people. If one can not manage ones waste in an appropriately safe manner, then one should not make the mess in the first place.....

But then that is the a big part of the argument against Nuclear Power, now isn't it?

NO KENDPOTTER. I THINK EVERYONE IS SAYING THIS STUFF SHOULDN'T EXIST AT ALL AND NO ONE INCLUDING US WANTS IT HERE. LET THE ITALIANS DEAL WITH THEIR TRASH AND WE DEAL WITH OURS.

So then, what you are all saying is that it would be better to dump all this Italian stuff somewhere in the third world (Bangladesh?) like we (the West) have been doing with so much of our E-waste?

The Neo-Con payday - growing Mormon crickets under Mushroom clouds.

What a clever plot by the terrorists! Getting us to process and store our own destruction probably occurred to them when they saw the type of elected officials we have. The kind of money spent to put Bush the inferior in office shows that we will spare no expense to do the most stupid and destructive thing possible.

Hey--anyone told Obama about this problem? He's still not on board to STOP nuclear power plants and seems to think that they can be made safe.

If anyone from the campaign monitors blogs, you should be forwarding this article to his top energy advisors...and hopefully they aren't former big oil execs. We've had enough of them steering our energy policy.
###

Hellodarling, The sign over the gate should be that which is said to be over the Great Gate of Hell, "Abandon hope, all ye who enter here."

This plan, although sickening and having a chance of killing many in the future, will no doubt enrich a few men loyal to the current regime.

When will social justice become a reality instead of an "issue" in a politician's speech?

A capitalist society is no place to raise children. People should be given a choice. Any capitalist society open to people should have a sign above the entrance that reads: "Must be 18 or over to enter".

Basic sketch of the company, plus links to company website and company owned
sports arena are included in the wiki page below:

"Steve Creamer is the founder and current CEO of the company, which formed from the merger
of four waste disposal companies: Envirocare, Scientech D&D, BNG America, and Duratek"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EnergySolutions

Only if they will agree to store it in the White House basement, the cloak rooms of the House and Senate and in the Pentagon building. Then, at least it would be of some benefit.

What insanity! I guess that since bushco wants a 3 trillion dollar budget, we have to get the money from somebody other than only China, huh?

Further proof that the zionist-neocons under bush have reduced the US into a third world country. The empire is dead and the world is doing all it can to keep it that way. Now, what nation will finance president ding-dong's $3.1 trillion budget and if they do, what do they get in return?

The corporations have sent many of our jobs overseas leaving the U.S. with few options to make money other than war profiteering. Importing garbage from Canada, selling water, and now importing necular waste. This country is becomming a dumping ground for biological, mining, human, and necular waste

"Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore."

Gives whole new meaning to Emma Lazarus, eh?

This is a good example of why we shouldn't be ruled by the market.

Market fundamentalism is just as dangerous as religious fundamentalism.

Neither wants democracy getting in the way of the favored value.

anything for a buck, eh?