THE ROYAL COMMISSION

The Royal Commission (RC) was biased ‒ the Royal Commissioner and most of the Expert Advisory Committee members were nuclear advocates, and there wasn’t a single nuclear critic on the RC staff to provide any balance. That bias is now being replicated with the SA government’s so-called ‘Consultation and Response Agency’ which is exerting influence on the Citizens’ Jury ‒ the Agency doesn’t have a single, token critic to provide balance.

The RC report is littered with misinformation and it repeatedly ignores important issues. A critique of the RC’s report is posted online, as is a detailed critique of the RC process (https://nuclear.foe.org.au/waste-import/). Using the RC report as a ‘factual’ basis for further discussions is highly problematic. The RC report should be read in conjunction with other literature such as the 257-page submission from national environment groups, the remarkable submission by British environmentalist Jean McSorley, reports by the Australia Institute, and David Noonan’s briefing papers. All of that material is posted at https://nuclear.foe.org.au/waste-import/. See also Prof. Richard Blandy’s important economic critique.[1]

Royal Commission misinformation is now being fed into the statewide ‘consultation’ exercise and the Citizens’ Jury. Statements made by Royal Commission personnel are at odds with established scientific knowledge. For example, Royal Commission personnel told the Citizens’ Jury that there is disagreement as to whether exposure to low level radiation can cause fatal cancers. But in fact, the overwhelming weight of scientific evidence holds that even the smallest doses can cause fatal cancers. As the U.N. Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation states: “The current balance of available evidence tends to favour a non-threshold response for the mutational component of radiation associated cancer induction at low doses and low dose rates.”

Recent scientific evidence finds that the radiogenic risks of leukemia among nuclear workers to be more than double the risk found in a previous similar study in 2005.[2] And in recent years the International Commission on Radiological Protection has upwardly revised (nearly doubled) its estimate of the carcinogenicity of radon.^[3]

The Citizens’ Jury was also told that there were only 28 radiation-related deaths from Chernobyl ‒ but scientific estimates of the Chernobyl death toll range from the UN’s estimate[4] of 9,000 deaths in the most contaminated parts of Eastern Europe, to estimates of 16,000 to 93,000 deaths across Europe.[5]

ABORIGINAL TRADITIONAL OWNERS

Judging from submissions to the Royal Commission, and from other sources, it is clear that the plan to import nuclear waste for storage and disposal in SA is overwhelmingly opposed by Aboriginal people. Please see the many statement of opposition posted at: www.anfa.org.au/traditional-owners-statements. Governments have a long history of promising to respect Aboriginal people, land rights and heritage protections ‒ and a long history of breaking those promises. A recent statement from Traditional Owners calls on the Citizens’ Jury to support them by rejecting Jay Weatherill’s plan to impose a nuclear waste dump on Aboriginal land: “Governments stripped Aboriginal people of land, land rights and heritage protections for atomic bomb tests and uranium mining, and exactly the same thing will happen with the high-level nuclear waste dump.”

INTERNATIONAL EXPERIENCE

The Royal Commission insists that a nuclear waste storage and dumping business could be carried out safely. But would it be carried out safely? The Royal Commission ought to have considered evidence that can be drawn upon to help answer the question ‒ but it failed to do so.

What sort of evidence might be considered? The experience of the world’s one and only deep underground nuclear waste dump ‒ the Waste Isolation Pilot Plan (WIPP) in the US ‒ is clearly relevant. And Australia’s past experience with nuclear waste management (and mismanagement) is clearly relevant.

WIPP is a case study of a sharp decline in safety and regulatory standards over a short space of time (https://nuclear.foe.org.au/wipp/). A chemical explosion in a nuclear waste barrel in February 2014 was followed by a failure of the filtration system, resulting in 22 workers receiving small doses of radiation and widespread contamination in the underground caverns. WIPP has been shut down for 2.5 years since the accident. The long-term costs could exceed US$2 billion.[6] A US government report details the many failings of the operator and the regulator.[7]

Kevin Scarce said that WIPP was ignored in the RC’s interim report because it involved different waste forms (long-lived intermediate level waste) of military origin. In fact, the high level nuclear waste that the RC recommends that SA import is vastly more hazardous than the waste managed at WIPP, so Scarce’s argument is disingenuous. WIPP gets one token paragraph in the RC’s final report ‒ that speaks volumes about the RC’s bias and selectivity.

Moreover the Royal Commission overlooks the fundamental lesson from the WIPP fiasco – initially high safety and regulatory standards gave way to complacency, cost-cutting and corner-cutting in the space of just 10–15 years. The Royal Commission notes that high level nuclear waste “requires isolation from the environment for many hundreds of thousands of years”. How can we be confident that high safety and regulatory standards would be maintained in SA over centuries and millennia when WIPP shows that the half-life of human complacency, cost-cutting and corner-cutting is measured in years or at most decades?

There is no logical reason to believe that the SA government would perform any better than the US government. On the contrary, there are good reasons to believe that nuclear waste management would be more difficult here given that the US has vastly more nuclear waste management expertise and experience than Australia.

While ignoring the world’s one and only existing deep underground nuclear waste dump, the RC talks at length about deep underground repositories under construction in Finland and Sweden. According to the RC, those two countries “have successfully developed long-term domestic solutions” for nuclear waste. But in fact, neither country has completed construction of a repository let alone demonstrated safe operation over any length of time.

The RC gives great weight to abstract, theoretical safety assessments while ignoring what is happening in the real world. It ignores examples of the spectacular mismatch between theoretical safety assessments and real-world experience. For example, a safety analysis conducted before WIPP opened predicted one radiation-release accident every 200,000 years. Yet WIPP was open for just 15 years before the chemical explosion in February 2014.

The Royal Commission had little or nothing to say about other problems overseas, e.g. fires at radioactive waste repositories[8], the current project to exhume 126,000 waste barrels from a dump in Germany following extensive water infiltration and corrosion, the liquid nuclear waste explosion at Mayak in the USSR, and many others.

Politicians are reinforcing the selectivity of the RC. Premier Weatherill recently visited the dump under construction in Finland (20 times smaller than that proposed for SA). Why didn’t he visit WIPP, or the German repository, or Mayak? Why didn’t he visit places whose names are synonymous with dangerous and hideously expensive nuclear waste mismanagement ‒ Dounreay, Sellafield, Hanford, etc.? Why didn’t he visit the wine producers in France who took the operator of a nuclear waste dump to court in a failed attempt to have the dump shut down?

The RC notes that most countries that have attempted to establish high level nuclear waste repositories have failed in those attempts. But it glosses over the implications of those failures. This is highly significant for the SA proposal since the plan is to import large amounts of nuclear waste before a repository is established.[9] This is incredibly irresponsible. Australia has not been able to establish a repository for domestic low and intermediate level waste, yet the RC proposal assumes that it will be possible to establish a repository for vast amounts of foreign high level nuclear waste ‒ 138,000 tonnes of high level nuclear waste and 390,000 cubic metres of intermediate level nuclear waste. No country has succeeded in completing construction and beginning operation of a repository for high level nuclear waste and many countries have failed, e.g. the USA wasted over 20 years and US$13.5 billion on the Yucca Mountain project before abandoning it. Yet the RC ‒ and now Jay Weatherill ‒ are so confident that it can be achieved in SA that they propose importing the waste on the assumption that a repository can be established.

AUSTRALIA’S HISTORY OF MISMANAGING RADIOACTIVE WASTE

“The disposal of radioactive waste in Australia is ill-considered and irresponsible. Whether it is short-lived waste from Commonwealth facilities, long-lived plutonium waste from an atomic bomb test site on Aboriginal land, or reactor waste from Lucas Heights. The government applies double standards to suit its own agenda; there is no consistency, and little evidence of logic.” ‒ Nuclear engineer Alan Parkinson[10]

The Royal Commission largely ignored the mismanagement of radioactive waste in SA ‒ and it did not recommend clean-up and rehabilitation of any contaminated sites.

A radioactive waste repository at Radium Hill “is not engineered to a standard consistent with current internationally accepted practice” according to a 2003 SA government audit.

The Port Pirie uranium treatment plant is still contaminated over 50 years after its closure. It took a six-year community campaign just to get the site fenced off and to carry out a partial rehabilitation. As of July 2015, the SA government’s website states that “a long-term management strategy for the former site” is being developed.[11]

SA regulators failed to detect Marathon Resource’s illegal dumping of low level radioactive waste in the Arkaroola Wilderness Sanctuary. If not for the detective work of the managers of the Arkaroola Wilderness Sanctuary, the illegal activities would likely be continuing to this day. The incident represents a serious failure of SA government regulation. The Royal Commission report dealt with this scandal in two sentences and failed to note that the SA government regulator did not detect the illegal dumping of radioactive waste.

The explosion of nuclear bombs at Maralinga in the 1950s has nothing to do with the current nuclear waste import proposal. However, aspects of the Maralinga experience are highly relevant. In particular, the ‘clean-up’ of nuclear waste at the Maralinga nuclear test site in the late 1990s is relevant and it was a fiasco:[12]

• Nuclear engineer Alan Parkinson said of the ‘clean-up’: “What was done at Maralinga was a cheap and nasty solution that wouldn’t be adopted on white-fellas land.”
• Scientist Dale Timmons said the government’s technical report was littered with “gross misinformation”.
• Dr Geoff Williams, an officer with the Commonwealth nuclear regulator ARPANSA, said that the ‘clean-up’ was beset by a “host of indiscretions, short-cuts and cover-ups”.
• Nuclear physicist Prof. Peter Johnston (now with ARPANSA) noted that there were “very large expenditures and significant hazards resulting from the deficient management of the project”.

The Maralinga experience is also relevant to current proposals because the racism associated with the bomb tests is just as acute now.[13] The federal government tried but failed to impose a national nuclear waste dump on Aboriginal land in SA from 1998‒2004, then tried but failed to impose a dump on Aboriginal land in the NT from 2005‒14, and now the federal government is trying to impose a dump on Aboriginal land in SA despite the near-unanimous opposition of Adnyamathanha Traditional Owners.[14]

Federal Labor and the Coalition both supported the profoundly racist National Radioactive Waste Management Act, which permits the imposition of a dump on Aboriginal land without any consultation with or consent from Aboriginal Traditional Owners (to be precise, the nomination of a site is not invalidated by a failure to consult or secure consent).

The Royal Commission claims that “South Australia has a unique combination of attributes which offer a safe, long-term capability for the disposal of used fuel”. But SA has a track record of mismanaging radioactive waste (Radium Hill, Maralinga, Port Pirie, Arkaroola, etc.) and no experience managing high level nuclear waste. The Royal Commission’s claim that SA has “a mature and stable political, social and economic structure” needs to be considered in the context of the longevity of nuclear waste. Australia has had one profound political revolution in the past 250 years (European invasion/settlement) and is therefore on track for 1,200 political revolutions over the 300,000-year lifespan of nuclear waste.

If there was some honesty about the mismanagement of radioactive waste in SA, coupled with remediation of contaminated sites, we might have some confidence that lessons have been learnt and that radioactive waste will be managed more responsibly in future. But there is no such honesty from the SA government or the Royal Commission, and there are no plans to clean up contaminated sites. On the contrary, the plan is to make a bad situation worse with the importation of vast amounts of intermediate and high level nuclear waste.

A MORAL RESPONSIBILITY?

Some argue that Australia has a moral responsibility to accept the nuclear waste arising from the use of Australian uranium in power reactors overseas. But there are no precedents for Australia or any other country being morally or legally responsible for managing wastes arising from the use of exported fuels, or from the export of any other products. The responsibility for managing nuclear waste lies with the countries that make use of Australian uranium.

The World Nuclear Association ‒ the industry’s main international representative body ‒ states: “At present there is clear and unequivocal understanding that each country is ethically and legally responsible for its own wastes, therefore the default position is that all nuclear wastes will be disposed of in each of the 50 or so countries concerned.”[15]

If any moral responsibility lies with Australia, that responsibility rests with the uranium mining companies (which are foreign-owned or majority foreign-owned) rather than with Australian citizens or federal or state governments.

One plausible scenario is uranium being mined on Aboriginal land regardless of Aboriginal opposition, and high level nuclear waste being dumped on Aboriginal land, again without consent. That scenario is immoral twice over.

It is also argued that Australia has a moral responsibility to accept high level nuclear waste because Australia has more suitable geology than other countries, and/or or a more stable political system. Those arguments rest on questionable assumptions. Australia is less tectonically stable than a number of other continental regions according to Dr Mike Sandiford.[16] And there are social as well as technical dimensions to risk assessment. On the basis of Australia’s track record of mismanaging domestic low and intermediate level waste, there is no reason to believe that a high level nuclear repository would be carefully and responsibly managed in Australia, or that regulation would be rigorous and independent.

 

Average annual expenditure on tourism in the Flinders Ranges: $304 million. (Source: SA Tourism Commission, http://tourism.sa.gov.au/assets/documents/Flinders_Ranges_and_Outback.pdf)

The tourism industry directly employs approximately 1,400 people in the Flinders Ranges. (Source: ‘Regional Tourism Satellite Account: Flinders Ranges and Outback 2013-14’, http://tourism.sa.gov.au/assets/documents/Flinders_Ranges_and_Outback_factsheet_18Aug2015.pdf)

So:

— If the proposed national nuclear waste dump in the Flinders Ranges reduces tourism by just 1% ($3 million / year), the $10 million compensation package for the nuclear waste dump is swallowed up in just over three years … and the Flinders Ranges continues to lose $3 million / year for decades beyond that.

— If a nuclear waste dump reduces tourism employment by just 1%, that’s a loss of 14 jobs … the same number as the government says the nuclear waste dump will provide.

— If a nuclear waste dump reduces tourism by 5%, the $10 million compensation package for the nuclear waste dump is swallowed up in less than one year … and the Flinders Ranges continues to lose $15 million / year for decades beyond that.

— If a nuclear waste dump reduces tourism employment by 5%, there will be a net loss of approx. 55 jobs.

This is an excerpt from a joint submission to SA Nuclear Fuel Cycle Royal Commission by Friends of the Earth, Australian Conservation Foundation and Conservation SA.

In 1998, the Howard government announced its intention to build a radioactive waste repository near Woomera in South Australia. Leading the battle against the dump were the Kupa Piti Kungka Tjuta[1], a council of senior Aboriginal women from northern SA. Many of the Kungkas personally suffered the impacts of the British nuclear bomb tests at Maralinga and Emu in the 1950s.

The late Mrs. Eileen Kampakuta Brown, a member of the Kungka Tjuta, was awarded an Order of Australia on Australia Day in 2003 for her service to the community “through the preservation, revival and teaching of traditional Anangu (Aboriginal) culture and as an advocate for indigenous communities in Central Australia”. On 5 March 2003, the Australian Senate passed a resolution noting “the hypocrisy of the Government in giving an award for services to the community to Mrs. Brown but taking no notice of her objection, and that of the Yankunytjatjara/Antikarinya community, to its decision to construct a national repository on this land.”

The proposed repository was also opposed by Native Title claimant groups, namely the Kokatha and the Barngala.

The proposed repository was opposed by the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission. (ATSIC). Acting Chair of ATSIC, Lionel Quartermaine, argued in a submission to ARPANSA in 2003:[2]

“The Nulla Wimila Kutju Regional Council is fully supportive of the Kupa Piti Kungka Tjuta … who have been vocal in their opposition to the proposed [repository] siting. Many witnessed the effects on their people of the Atomic Tests conducted in their country in the 1950s. It is patently unfair that these should now once again face the prospect of being at risk of radiation exposure.”

A 14 April 2003 letter from the Federal Environment Department’s Indigenous Advisory Committee stated:

“The Kupa Piti Kungka Tjuta, senior Aboriginal women of north SA, fundamentally oppose this nuclear waste dump which they see as the imposition of poison ground onto their traditional lands.

The Kokatha people, as registered native title claimants, oppose the nuclear waste dump and the intended acquisition and annulment of their native title rights and interests.

Throughout the EIS process under the EPBC Act, the Native Title claimants and other community members feel that there has not been adequate consultation. Traditional owners have also not been able to find out about the intended legal approach of the Commonwealth Government in carrying out key aspects of the proposed project.”

All of these clear and public objections were ignored by the federal government.

Public relations

The proposed dump generated such controversy in SA that the federal government hired a public relations company.[3] Correspondence between the company and the government was released under Freedom of Information laws. In one exchange, a government official asks the PR company to remove sand-dunes from a photo to be used in a brochure.[4] The explanation provided by the government official was that: “Dunes are a sensitive area with respect to Aboriginal Heritage”. The sand-dunes were removed from the photo, only for the government official to ask if the horizon could be straightened up as well.

False consultation and coercion

The Federal Government’s approach to ‘consultation’ was spelt out in a document leaked in 2002.[5] The document states: “Tactics to reach Indigenous audiences will be informed by extensive consultations currently being undertaken … with Indigenous groups.” In other words, sham ‘consultation’ was used to fine-tune the government’s promotion of the repository.

Aboriginal groups were coerced into signing agreements consenting to test drilling of short-listed sites for the proposed dump. The Federal Government made it clear that if consent for test drilling was not granted by Aboriginal groups, that drilling would take place anyway. A clear signal of the Government’s intent to proceed regardless of Aboriginal support for or engagement in the process came on 30 April 1999, when the Federal Government issued a Section 9 notice under the Land Acquisition Act 1989 which gave the government legal powers to conduct work on land that it might acquire to site the dump.

Aboriginal groups were put in an invidious position:

• they could attempt to protect specific cultural sites by engaging with the Federal Government and signing agreements, at the risk of having that engagement being misrepresented or misunderstood as consent the dump per sé; or
• they could refuse to engage in the process, thereby having no say in the process whatsoever.

It is important to note that given the current absence of any effective veto right over mining proposal on their lands – with the exception of some provisions on the Aboriginal Land Rights Act – this unsatisfactory and fundamentally unfair power imbalance remains the common Aboriginal experience today.

Aboriginal groups were between “a rock and a hard place” according to Stewart Motha from the Aboriginal Legal Rights Movement, which represented the Antakirinja, Barngarla, and Kokatha people in negotiations over the dump. Mr. Motha said:

“If Aboriginal groups do get involved in clearances [for test drilling] they face the possibility that the Government will point to that involvement as an indication of consent for the project. If they refuse to participate, who will protect Aboriginal heritage, dreaming and sacred sites?”

Parry Agius, manager of the Aboriginal Legal Rights Movement’s Native Title Unit, said:

“The nuclear waste repository issue highlights the inadequacy of native title rights as they are currently constituted under the Native Title Act and is a showcase for the consequences of the 10 Point Plan. While native title purports to recognise Aboriginal peoples’ particular relationship to the land, and the negotiations we are currently undertaking are aimed at protecting Aboriginal heritage, the commonwealth government may extinguish these rights by compulsory acquisition.”

Dr. Roger Thomas, a Kokatha man, told an ARPANSA forum on 25 February 2004[6]:

“The Commonwealth sought from the native title claim group the opportunity to carry out site clearances. They presented to us, as a native title group, some 58 sites that they would like us to consider for the purpose of cultural significance clearance. Of the 58, there were seven sites that they saw as being the priority locations for where they had intentions to want to locate the waste repository. I would like it to be registered that, of the 58, the senior law men and women had difficulty and made it quite clear that there was no intent on their part to want to give any agreement to any of those sites. … The point of concern and controversy for us is that we were advised − and we were told this by the various agencies involved − ‘If you don’t proceed with signing the agreement, the Federal Government will acquire it under the constitution legislation.’ From our point of view, we not only had the shotgun at our head, we also were put in a situation where we were deemed powerless. If this is an example of the whitefella process and system that we’ve got to comply with as Indigenous Australians, then we attest that this whole process needs to be reviewed and looked at and we need to be given under the convention of the United Nations the appropriate rights as Indigenous first nation people. Our bottom line position is that we do not agree with any waste material of any level being dumped, located or deposited in any part of this country.”

Aboriginal groups did reluctantly engage in surveys resulting in the signing of so-called Heritage Clearance Agreements. Heritage assessment surveys were conducted by three groups:

• Antakirinja, Barngala and Kokatha Native Title Claimant Groups;
• Andamooka Land Council Association; and
• Kuyani Association.

One risk was that those Heritage Clearance Agreements would be misrepresented by the Federal Government as amounting to Aboriginal consent to or even support for the dump per sé. That risk was in fact realised. Federal Government politicians and bureaucrats repeatedly made reference to the surveys and the resulting Agreements without noting that those Agreements in no way amount to consent to the dump. The following excerpt from Senate Hansard provides an example of this type of misrepresentation-by-omission (30 October, 2003, p.16813, question 2118):

Senator Allison (Australian Democrats) asked the Minister representing the Minister for Science, upon notice, on 18 September 2003:

(e) have any Indigenous groups consented to the construction and operation of the repository at the site known as Site 40a; if so, which groups;

(f) have any Indigenous groups stated that Site 40a has no particular Indigenous heritage values; if so, which groups;

Senator Vanstone — The Minister for Science has provided the following answer to the honourable senator’s question:

(e) The site has been cleared for all works associated with the construction and operation of a national repository, with regard to Aboriginal heritage, by the Aboriginal groups with native title claims over the relative site as well as other groups with heritage interests in the region. These groups are the Antakirinja, Barngala and Kokotha Native Title Claimant Groups, the Andamooka Land Council Association and the Kuyani Association.

(f) See answer to (e).

There was no recognition in the above statement of Aboriginal opposition to the dump.

The same misrepresentation-by-omission occurred in the Environment Department’s Environmental Assessment Report regarding the planned dump and in numerous other Federal Government statements.

Jeff Harris, an official with the federal government, told an ARPANSA forum that: “… those Aboriginal groups that have heritage interests in those lands we have consulted extensively with them, and each of the three sites that are going through environmental impact assessment has been inspected by these Aboriginal groups and have cleared for the construction and operation of the repository.”[7]

The claim that the sites were “cleared for the construction and operation of the repository” was false.

The conflation between Heritage Clearance Agreements and consent for the construction and operation of a radioactive waste repository occurred repeatedly despite the fact that the Heritage Clearance Agreements specifically noted Aboriginal opposition. One such Agreement, between the Federal Government and the Antakarinja Native Title Group, the Barngarla Native Title Group and the Kokatha Native Title Claimant Group, dated May 12, 2000, included the following clauses:

E. The agreement to undertake Work Area Clearances is not to be deemed as consent, and the COMMONWEALTH do not under this Agreement seek such consent, by the Claimants to the establishment of a NRWR in the Central North Region of South Australia.

I. The COMMONWEALTH acknowledges that there is “considerable opposition” to the NRWR within the Aboriginal community of the region, but notwithstanding that the Claimants have made a commitment that the heritage clearance and the contents of the Work Area Clearance Report will not be influenced by such opposition.

The Federal government never publicly released those clauses of the Agreement.

Land seizure

In 2002, the Federal Government tried to buy-off Aboriginal opposition to the dump. Three Native Title claimant groups − the Kokatha, Kuyani and Barngala − were offered $90,000 to surrender their native title rights, but only on the condition that all three groups agreed. Two of the groups − the Kokatha and Barngala − refused, so the government’s ploy failed.

Dr. Roger Thomas, a Kokatha man, told an ARPANSA forum on February 25, 2004[8]:

“The most disappointing aspect to the negotiations that the Commonwealth had with us, as Kokatha, is to try to buy our agreement. This was most insulting to us as Aboriginal people and particularly to our elders. For the sake of ensuring that I don’t further create any embarrassment, I will not quote the figure, but let me tell you, our land is not for sale. Our Native Title rights are not for sale. We are talking about our culture, our lore and our dreaming. We are talking about our future generations we’re protecting here. We do not have a “for sale” sign up and we never will.”

According to The Age, the meetings took place at a Port Augusta motel in September 2002 and the Commonwealth delegation included representatives of the Department of the Attorney-General, the Department of Finance and the Department of Education and Science and Training.[9]

Dr. Thomas said: “The insult of it, it was just so insulting. I told the Commonwealth officers to stop being so disrespectful and rude to us by offering us $90,000 to pay out our country and our culture.”[10] Andrew Starkey, another Kokatha man, said: “It was just shameful. They were wanting people to sign off their cultural heritage rights for a minuscule amount of money. We would not do that for any amount of money.”[11]

In July 2003, the federal government used the Lands Acquisition Act 1989 to seize land for the dump. Native Title rights and interests were extinguished with the stroke of a pen.[12] This took place with no forewarning and no consultation with affected Aboriginal people.

Victory for the Kungkas

The Kupa Piti Kungka Tjuta continued to implore the federal government to ‘get their ears out of their pockets’, and after six long years the government did just that. In the lead-up to the 2004 federal election, with the repository issue deeply unpopular, and the Federal Court having rejected the government’s use of urgency provisions in the Lands Acquisition Act, the Howard government decided to abandon the dump plan.

The Kungkas wrote in an open letter: “People said that you can’t win against the Government. Just a few women. We just kept talking and telling them to get their ears out of their pockets and listen. We never said we were going to give up. Government has big money to buy their way out but we never gave up.”[13]

 

Tim Wright

From Chain Reaction #126, April 2016, national magazine of Friends of the Earth, Australia www.foe.org.au/chain-reaction

Among those most vociferous in condemning North Korea’s nuclear test in January and its rocket launch in February were the leaders of nations that themselves possess nuclear weapons. Nations that, over half a century, mastered the art of mass destruction by exploding atomic and hydrogen bombs off Pacific atolls and in the Australian outback.

Were these nations now on the path to disarmament, in full compliance with their obligations under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, one might overlook their double standard. But all are instead bolstering their nuclear forces – “refurbishing” old warheads and developing new missiles, submarines and bombers to deliver them.

While North Korea may be the only nation to have conducted a full-scale nuclear test this century, the United States, Russia and China continue to conduct sub-critical nuclear tests – where no chain reaction occurs – allowing them to enhance their nuclear forces without violating the global norm against nuclear testing.

In the world of nuclear diplomacy, it’s do as we say, not as we do. The deal to curtail Iran’s nuclear program is another illustration of this. When the agreement was struck last July, five nuclear-armed nations and Germany, which hosts US nuclear bombs on its soil, sat opposite Iran at the negotiating table – all demanding of Iran what they will not accept for themselves.

To be sure, it was a diplomatic triumph: membership of the “nuclear club” remains at nine, a potentially catastrophic military intervention has been averted, and crippling economic sanctions have been lifted. But the Iran deal does nothing to diminish the grave threat to humanity from the 15,800 nuclear weapons that already exist in the world. On the iconic Doomsday Clock, we remain just three minutes from midnight.

Among the largest nuclear stockpiles is that of the United States, a chief architect of the Iran deal. It maintains some 7,200 warheads, amassed during the Cold War, and is now trialling new “low-yield” warhead designs, with the purported aim of minimising “collateral damage”. Yet experts warn that this development will serve only to lower the threshold for initiating a nuclear strike.

In the words of General James E. Cartwright, a retired vice-chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, “what going smaller does is to make the weapon more thinkable”. Smaller, though, is perhaps an inapt term. With an explosive yield of up to 50 kilotons, these new weapons could be three times more destructive than the atomic device detonated over Hiroshima seven decades ago, killing 140,000 people.

A ‘rogue state’ such as North Korea – with its much feared, reviled and mocked leader, Kim Jong-un – provides useful cover for alarming developments of this kind. So long as the spotlight shines elsewhere, few will worry about, let alone protest against, the actions of the more ‘responsible’ nuclear powers – nations that, truth be told, have time and again brought us within a hair’s breadth of catastrophe.

Most governments, however, do accept that there are “no right hands for wrong weapons”, to use a phrase of the United Nations secretary-general, Ban Ki-moon. Regrettably, Australia is not yet among them. While the foreign minister, Julie Bishop, was swift to condemn North Korea’s test, her department claims that US nuclear weapons protect Australia from attack and even “guarantee our prosperity”.

This longstanding policy, known as extended nuclear deterrence, implies that nuclear weapons are legitimate, useful and necessary war-fighting instruments. It incites proliferation and undermines disarmament. It renders Australia an outcast in our immediate region, where all other nations have rejected the bomb outright.

Over the past year, 122 nations have formally pledged to work together to prohibit nuclear weapons through a new treaty. To place them on the same legal footing as other indiscriminate, inhumane weapons – from chemical and biological agents to anti-personnel landmines and cluster munitions.

If we are to succeed in eliminating the nuclear threat, we must begin by challenging the double standards that, throughout the nuclear age, have so plagued disarmament efforts. We must declare nuclear weapons unacceptable not just for North Korea and Iran, but for Australia and its allies, too.

Tim Wright is Asia-Pacific director of the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN).

---

Hypocrisy – Australia’s support for nuclear weapons

Robin Taubenfeld

From Chain Reaction #126, April 2016, national magazine of Friends of the Earth, Australia www.foe.org.au/chain_reaction

Over the past two years Food Standards Australia New Zealand (FSANZ) has supported a push to significantly expand the list of foods permitted to be irradiated in Australia and New Zealand. At the same time, aware of consumer resistance, irradiation proponents have been embarking on a cynical marketing strategy: the removal of mandatory labelling requirements.

FSANZ is undertaking a review of mandatory labelling requirements for irradiated food to assess the need for the mandatory labelling requirement for all irradiated food to continue, and to assess whether there is a more effective approach to communicate the safety and benefits of irradiation to consumers.

The words are telling. Labelling is identified as an impediment to “uptake” of food irradiation, a process unfamiliar to most Australians and New Zealanders, which the government deems to be safe. Safe or not, global standards require irradiated food to be labelled.

In fact, removing labelling would make Australia the odd-ball amongst its trading partners – and possibly increase costs for food producers who need to ensure their export products are labelled appropriately for overseas markets.

In its consultation paper, FSANZ states:

“FSANZ has reviewed the requirements for food irradiation label information in a number of countries. Most of the countries reviewed appear to have based their requirements on the Codex Standard, although some variations occur.

“For irradiated whole foods that are packaged, it is common for a mandatory statement to indicate that the food has been irradiated. …

“For packaged foods that contain an irradiated ingredient(s), most countries require that the ingredient(s) be identified on the label, usually in the list of ingredients. …

“Most countries require specific signage for unpackaged foods that have been irradiated (e.g. whole produce) and are sold in bulk.”

If labelling is the norm and no-one else is considering getting rid of it, why is there a push to do so in Australia and New Zealand? Who wants to keep us in the dark about irradiation?

The irradiation of fruits and vegetables typically involves their exposure to the energy equivalent of between 1.5 and 10 million x-rays. Now promoted as a fruit fly “treatment”, food irradiation also extends shelf life, sanitises, and alters the nutritional value of the treated foods. The changes made cannot be discerned with our ordinary senses.

At best, scientific opinion around irradiation remains divided. Irradiation causes vitamin and amino acid depletion in food. It changes the molecular structure of food potentially forming toxic chemicals linked to cancer, organ damage, genetic mutations, immune system disorders, tumours, stunted growth, reproductive problems and nutritional deficiencies.¹

Even the Australian government acknowledges that irradiation has adverse effects (while claiming that other processing methods and technologies may have similar effects). The Department of Agriculture and Water Resources states: “It is now well established that irradiation does affect certain vitamins and other nutrients and does produce peroxides and other radiolytic by-products, some of which may be toxic and/or carcinogenic, and that these effects are dose related.”²

There is no data to support the claim that irradiated food is safe as no long-term studies of human consumption of irradiated food have been carried out. In fact, a recent document produced by FSANZ in support of irradiating 12 fruits states clearly that “consumption data are not available.”³ With no consumption data available, a statement as to the safe consumption is insubstantial.

The “safety and benefits” that FSANZ want to “communicate” are also unspecified.

“Safety” may refer to the safety of the industry – which in Australia is a nuclear industry carrying its associated risks around the transportation, use and storage of radioactive materials.

Or safety may refer to the inferred “wholesomeness” of irradiated foods – which is at best questionable.

Or safety may refer to the decontamination aspects of some irradiation – which can neutralise but not remove some pathogens from food. The fact is that for the most part, irradiation in Australia has not been authorised for food safety reasons – which could call for higher doses of radiation exposure – but for trade/quarantine purposes which, while possibly beneficial to local environments, are ultimately aimed at increasing profit for food producers, not at benefitting the consumer.

Most Australians and New Zealanders have little experience with irradiated food as little has been put on the market. Australian consumer acceptance cannot be assumed, while their resistance to the technology is well documented.

In recent polling in New Zealand ‒ where irradiated Australian produce is being marketed – 72% of respondents expressed concern.⁴

Research commissioned by irradiation supporters themselves reveals little public awareness about irradiation and consumer’s desire to be informed through labelling. FSANZ’s consultation papers confirm this.⁵

“In October 2001, FSANZ commissioned qualitative research to examine Australian and New Zealand consumer understanding and use of various label elements … the general consensus was that even though the word was alarming and off-putting, that it should be used on packaging rather than a symbol, again because people had a right to know what has been done to their food …

“Tomatoes NZ (the industry body that represents the fresh tomato sector) commissioned a telephone poll of 1000 New Zealand adults in April 2015. Poll participants were asked if they would like:

• the fruit and vegetables they buy that have been treated with irradiation to be clearly labelled as irradiated. (Eighty-five per cent of participants responded that they would).
• to know if a dish they ordered in a restaurant, café or takeaways includes irradiated food. (Seventy-eight per cent of participants responded that they would).”

The public wants irradiated food to be labelled. To date, all irradiation approvals have been premised on the statement that irradiated foods would be labelled.

Industry sees the use of irradiation as a fruit fly control and shelf-life extender. And industry understands that people have an aversion to food exposed to radiation. At a 2012 Horticulture Australia Limited Forum in Sydney, Paul Harker, head of produce at Woolworths, said the industry needed a united voice on the subject before it proceeds.

“It’s going to be an extremely emotional product and we are not going to stand alone trying to convince Australian consumers that there is nothing wrong with irradiation,” Harker said.⁶ “We’ve communicated that back to industry and we said unless there is a concerted campaign that is led not only by the people peddling irradiation as an alternative, but unless the government and everyone else is involved in actually talking to the customer about it, the last thing I am going to do is plonk it on my shelf because I can tell you that fresh produce sales will die. People won’t shop there.”

In its review document, FSANZ and the Ministerial Council clearly link labelling to the low “uptake” of irradiation foods.

Should labelling be removed so that people will buy irradiated food?

Australian and New Zealand labelling standards already fall short of world standards. Rather than being removed, labelling should be improved to prescribe clear and accurate statements such as “Irradiated”, or “Treated with irradiation”.

In a free market economy, the demand for irradiated products should be driven by consumers making informed and intentional decisions to purchase such products. Irradiators who are confident that their products are wholesome, healthy and desirable should be proud to label their products irradiated and let the market play out.

With Australia and New Zealand increasing the amount of irradiated foods available on the market and in people’s diets, the push to remove mandatory labelling and signage requirements is unacceptable ‒ and must be stopped.

Take action! The public comment period on FSANZ’s labelling review “consultation paper” has ended. However each state and territory has representatives on the Ministerial Council who have the power to determine what happens next. Let them know that you care:

https://friendsoftheearthmelbourne.good.do/keep-labels-on-irradiated-foods/emailfsanznow/

More information:

www.foodirradiationwatch.org

www.facebook.com/notofoodirradiation

Robin Taubenfeld is a national nuclear spokesperson for Friends of the Earth, Australia.

References:

1. Public Citizen, Questioning Food Irradiation, April 2003, www.citizen.org/cmep

2. www.agriculture.gov.au/biosecurity/risk-analysis/reviews/final-animal/gamma-irradiation/questions-and-answers

3. FSANZ A1092: SD1, p.3

4. www.nzherald.co.nz/opinion/news/article.cfm?c_id=466&objectid=10892295

5. FSANZ Review document, p.14‒15

6. www.theland.com.au/news/agriculture/horticulture/general-news/irradiation-pros-and-cons/2665981.aspx?storypage=0

Jim Green

From Chain Reaction #126, April 2016, national magazine of Friends of the Earth, Australia www.foe.org.au/chain_reaction

Five years have passed since the meltdowns, fires and explosions at the Fukushima nuclear power plant in Japan. Cleaning up the Fukushima plant – and in particular the stricken reactors – will take several decades, at least. “If I may put this in terms of mountain climbing, we’ve just passed the first station on a mountain of 10 stations,” said TEPCO’s Akira Ono in February.¹

TEPCO hopes to begin removal of reactor fuel, and melted fuel fused to other materials, in five years or so. But little is known about the state of the fuel – one of many problems is that camera’s fail due to the intense radiation.²

TEPCO has little idea how it might remove the nuclear fuel and associated debris. To put the situation in a positive light, the problem will drive innovation in robotics since current technology is not up to the task. Akira Ono says the aim of decommissioning the plant in 40 years may be impossible without a giant technological leap: “There are so many uncertainties involved. We need to develop many, many technologies.”³

TEPCO has no idea what it might do with the nuclear fuel and debris if and when it is removed from the reactor buildings. There is no repository for high level nuclear waste. The Japanese government is considering building a repository under the seabed, about 13 km off the Fukushima coast. The repository would be connected to the land by a tunnel so it arguably would not contravene international regulations on disposing of nuclear waste into the sea. There is staunch opposition from the fishing industry and many others to the idea of burying nuclear waste at sea in a seismically active area.⁴

Nuclear Regulatory Authority (NRA) Commissioner Toyoshi Fuketa recently questioned whether the plan to remove all fuel and debris will be possible and whether it is the best course of action. “I wonder if the situation would be desired that work is still underway to extract fuel debris 70 or 80 years after,” he said, adding that it may be preferable to remove as much fuel and debris as possible and solidify the rest.⁵

Off-site clean-up

As of the end of September 2015, a total of about nine million cubic meters of contaminated solid and other waste were being stored in about 115,000 locations around Fukushima. Government officials estimate that a total of 22 million cubic meters of contaminated soil will eventually be collected.⁶

The off-site contamination work has been punctuated with revelations of sloppy work. The latest was the revelation in early February that 310 cubic meters of contaminated wood waste was illegally dumped in a riverbed in the Shiga Prefecture city of Takashima.⁷

Last September, as many as 439 bags containing contaminated soil, grass and tree branches were swept away when torrential rains hit Iitate Village, Fukushima Prefecture.⁸ Environment Ministry officials said that nearly 400 bags were recovered but many were empty.⁹

The government hopes to secure about 16 sq km to build interim storage facilities for the contaminated soil in the Fukushima towns of Okuma and Futaba. But less than 1% of the land needed for the facilities has been acquired. The plan is to leave contaminated soil at the interim facilities for a maximum of 30 years before processing it somewhere outside of Fukushima Prefecture.⁶

Another plan being considered is to recycle the material. The government believes that as radioactive decay reduces the hazard posed by contaminated soil, it will eventually be possible to recycle it as construction material for public works projects. In the coming months the Environment Ministry will begin development of the technology and model projects for recycling contaminated soil.¹⁰

Contaminated soil exceeding 8,000 Bq/kg is called ‘designated waste’ under the Law on Special Measures Concerning Contamination by Radioactive Materials. For this waste, the original plan was to build one disposal site in each of five prefectures – Tochigi, Miyagi, Ibaraki, Gunma, and Chiba. But the plans have met opposition and are a long way from being realised.^8,11

In Kami, Miyagi Prefecture, residents forcibly blocked Environment Ministry officials from entering a potential storage site. “What is causing our anxiety is that it remains unclear who will take ultimate responsibility in solving this problem and how,” said one local resident.¹²

Evacuees

About 100,000 people are still living as evacuees as a consequence of the Fukushima disaster, comprising about 82,000 who previously lived in designated evacuation zones, and about 18,000 evacuees who acted on their own initiative and fled from the 23 municipalities in Fukushima Prefecture that are outside government-designated evacuation zones.¹³

According to Japan Times, of the 100,000 evacuees (down from 122,000 in January 2015), 56% moved elsewhere in Fukushima Prefecture and the rest moved beyond the Prefecture. The 100,000 evacuees include those staying in temporary housing facilities or taking shelter at relatives’ houses and other places; the figure does not include those who have bought houses and settled elsewhere or who have settled in public housing for disaster victims.¹⁴

The Asahi Shimbun newspaper reported in January on the payment of compensation to victims of the disaster:¹³

“Compensation payments to victims of the nuclear disaster, such as evacuees and affected businesses, come out of a 9 trillion yen [US80 billion; €73 billion] treasure chest provided by the government to TEPCO.

“With its management priority placed on its own early recovery from the consequences of the accident, however, the electric utility has been trying to terminate the payments as soon as possible and keep the amounts within the framework set by the guidelines. The company’s compensation policy has been criticized for failing to make the benefit of residents a primary consideration.

“About 10,000 evacuees are involved as plaintiffs in damages suits filed with 21 district courts and branches around the country. This points to the high level of discontent with the compensation payments that have been paid out.”

The government’s evacuation order is still in place for nine Fukushima municipalities, and the government is expected to lift evacuation orders for three of those municipalities in the first half of 2016.¹⁵ The government hopes to lift other evacuation orders by March 2017 provided that the annual air dose rate is no greater than 20 mSv/yr¹¹, but concedes that “difficult-to-return zones” will still be subject to evacuation orders beyond then.¹⁶

Associated with the lifting of evacuation orders comes the reduction and cessation of housing subsidies. Evacuees have to decide whether to return to their former towns or to rebuild their lives elsewhere; some will have little choice but to return because of their financial situation. Voluntary evacuees will be the first to face the cessation of housing subsidies.¹⁷

The Fukushima-related suicide toll continues to rise, with 19 such suicides in Fukushima Prefecture from Jan–Nov 2015. Police determine if a suicide was related to the Fukushima disaster and subsequent evacuation after talking to bereaved family members. As of February 2016, a total of 154 suicides have been linked to the disaster in the three prefectures most heavily hit by the nuclear disaster – Fukushima, Miyagi and Iwate.¹⁸

References:

1. Yoko Wakatsuki and Elaine Yu, 11 Feb 2016, ‘Japan: Fukushima clean-up may take up to 40 years, plant’s operator says’, http://edition.cnn.com/2016/02/11/asia/japan-inside-fukushima-cleanup/

2. Kiyoshi Ando, 19 Feb 2016, ‘Long road ahead for Fukushima cleanup’, http://asia.nikkei.com/Tech-Science/Tech/Long-road-ahead-for-Fukushima-cleanup

3. 27 March 2015, ‘Japan faces 200-year wait for Fukushima clean-up’, www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/news/world/asia/article4394978.ece

4. Anna Fifield, 10 Feb 2016, ‘How is Fukushima’s cleanup going five years after its meltdown? Not so well’, www.washingtonpost.com/world/asia_pacific/five-years-after-nuclear-meltdown-no-one-knows-what-to-do-with-fukushima/2016/02/10/a9682194-c9dc-11e5-b9ab-26591104bb19_story.html

5. Kyodo, 20 Feb 2016, ‘NRA commissioner suggests plan to remove all fuel debris at Fukushima plant may not be best option’, www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2016/02/20/national/nra-commissioner-suggests-plan-remove-fuel-debris-fukushima-plant-may-not-best-option/

6. Yu Kotsubo and Yoshitaka Ito, 14 Feb 2016, ‘Little progress made in securing land for interim storage facilities for radioactive soil’, http://ajw.asahi.com/article/0311disaster/fukushima/AJ201602140022

7. 8 Feb 2016, ‘5,300 tons of radioactive wood waste taken into 5 prefectures besides Shiga’, http://mainichi.jp/english/articles/20160208/p2a/00m/0na/004000c

8. Kazuhide Sueda, 30 Nov 2015, ‘Selection of disposal sites for radioactive materials from the Fukushima nuclear plant and designation of some areas as candidate sites should be retracted’, Nuke Info Tokyo No. 169, www.cnic.jp/english/?p=3204

9. 25 Sept 2015, ‘Radioactive soil bags to be moved to high ground’, http://www3.nhk.or.jp/nhkworld/english/news/nuclear.html

10. 22 Dec 2015, ‘Government estimate: Almost 100 percent of contaminated soil can be recycled’, http://ajw.asahi.com/article/0311disaster/fukushima/AJ201512220042

11. Yukio Yamaguchi, 2 Feb 2016, ‘Fukushima Daiichi NPS today- 5 years since the disaster began’, Nuke Info Tokyo No. 170, www.cnic.jp/english/?p=3271

12. Yusuke Fukudone, 24 Nov 2015, ‘Radioactive waste mounts up as residents resist post-Fukushima disposal plans’, http://ajw.asahi.com/article/0311disaster/fukushima/AJ201511240005

13. 20 Feb 2016, ‘Editorial: Extent of suffering key to compensating Fukushima evacuees’, http://ajw.asahi.com/article/views/editorial/AJ201602200024

14. 9 Jan 2016, ‘Fukushima nuclear evacuees fall below 100,000’, www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2016/01/09/national/fukushima-nuclear-evacuees-fall-100000/

15. 2 Jan 2016, ‘100,000 still displaced 5 yrs after nuclear crisis’, http://www3.nhk.or.jp/nhkworld/english/news/20160102_02.html

16. 18 Feb 2016, ‘Speakers raise issues haunting Fukushima in finance panel public hearing’, http://ajw.asahi.com/article/0311disaster/recovery/AJ201602180062

17. Jun Sato, 8 Feb 2016, ‘‘Voluntary’ Fukushima evacuees denounce end of free housing, new assistance plan’, http://ajw.asahi.com/article/0311disaster/fukushima/AJ201602080054

18. Mana Nagano, 28 Dec 2015, ‘Suicides rise among Fukushima nuclear disaster evacuees’, http://ajw.asahi.com/article/0311disaster/fukushima/AJ201512280026

Jim Green

From Chain Reaction #126, April 2016, national magazine of Friends of the Earth, Australia www.foe.org.au/chain_reaction

The nuclear industry and its supporters were busily promoting nuclear power − and attacking environmentalists − before and during the COP21 UN climate conference in Paris in December. All the usual suspects were promoting nuclear power as a climate-friendly energy source: the World Nuclear Association, the International Atomic Energy Agency, the International Energy Agency, the OECD’s Nuclear Energy Agency, the U.S. Nuclear Energy Institute, and so on.¹

The Breakthrough Institute has been promoting its pro-nuclear “paradigm-shifting advocacy for an ecomodernist future” and arguing against the “reactionary apocalyptic pastoralism” of anyone who disagrees with them.² In reality the Breakthrough Institute is anything but ‘paradigm shifting’. A glowing endorsement in the right-wing National Review states: “Ecomodernists are pro-fracking. They advocate genetically engineered crops (GMOs) … Most distinctively, the ecomodernists are pro-growth and pro-free markets. “The Kardashians are not the reason Africans are starving,” chides Alex Trembath, a senior researcher at the Breakthrough Institute …”³

Bill Gates was in Paris to announce the formation of the Breakthrough Energy Coalition. Gates was promoting ‘clean energy’ but it seems likely the capital the Coalition attracts will be directed disproportionately to nuclear R&D.⁴

Robert Stone, director of the Pandora’s Promise pro-nuclear propaganda film⁵, launched a ‘resource hub’ called Energy For Humanity, promoting “more advanced, mass-producible, passively safe, reactor designs”.⁶

Rauli Partanen and Janne Korhonen, members of the Finnish Ecomodernist Society, were attacking environmentalists for opposing nuclear power. Rebutting⁷ a rebuttal⁸ by Michael Mariotte from Nuclear Information and Resource Service, Partanen and Korhonen offer this gem: “even the much-maligned Olkiluoto 3 nuclear project [in Finland] turns out to be very fast way of adding low-carbon energy production when compared to any real-world combination of alternatives.” A single reactor that will take well over a decade to build (and is three times over budget) is a “very fast way” of adding low-carbon energy? Huh?

Partanen and Korhanan authored a booklet called Climate Gamble: Is Anti-Nuclear Activism Endangering Our Future?, and crowdfunded the printing of 5,000 copies which were distributed for free at the COP21 conference.⁹

James Hansen and three other climate scientists were in Paris to promote nuclear power. Hansen attacks the “intransigent network of anti-nukes” that has “grown to include ‘Big Green,’ huge groups such as the Natural Resources Defense Council, Environmental Defense Fund and World Wide Fund for Nature. They have trained lawyers, scientists, and media staff ready to denounce any positive news about nuclear power.”¹⁰

By way of sharp contrast to ‘Big Green’, the impoverished U.S. nuclear industry could only rustle up US$60 million to lobby Congress and federal agencies in 2013−14.¹¹

So is there an undercurrent of grassroots pro-nuclear environmentalism waiting to burst forth if only their voice could cut through Big Green hegemony? Perhaps Nuclear for Climate¹², promoted as a “grassroots organization”¹, is the environmental network to take on Big Green? Well, no. Nuclear for Climate isn’t a network of grassroots environmentalists, it’s a network of more than 140 nuclear societies. It isn’t grassroots environmentalism, it’s corporate astroturf. And the list of 140 ‘societies’ includes 36 chapters of the ‘Women in Nuclear’ organisation and 43 chapters of the ‘Young Generation Network’.¹³ One wonders whether these organisations have any meaningful existence. Does Tanzania, for example, really have a pro-nuclear Young Generation Network?

Nuclear for Climate has a website, a hashtag, a twitter handle and all the modern social media sine qua non. But it has some work to do with its messaging. One of its COP21 memes was: ‘The radioactive waste are not good for the climate? Wrong!’ So radioactive waste is good for the climate?!

Has the nuclear lobby achieved anything?

The nuclear industry’s hopes for the COP21 conference were dashed. Michael Mariotte from the Nuclear Information & Resource Service wrote:¹⁴

“The international Don’t Nuke the Climate campaign had two major goals for COP 21: 1) to ensure that any agreement reached would not encourage use of nuclear power and, preferably, to keep any pro-nuclear statement out of the text entirely; and 2) along with the rest of the environmental community, to achieve the strongest possible agreement generally.

“The first goal was certainly met. The word “nuclear” does not appear in the text and there are no incentives whatsoever for use of nuclear power. That was a clear victory. But that is due not only to a global lack of consensus on nuclear power, but to the fact that the document does not specifically endorse or reject any technology (although it does implicitly reject continued sustained use of fossil fuels). Rather, each nation brought its own greenhouse gas reduction plan to the conference. “Details,” for example whether there should be incentives for any particular technology, will be addressed at follow-up meetings over the next few years. So it is imperative that the Don’t Nuke the Climate campaign continue, and grow, and be directly involved at every step of the way − both inside and outside the meetings.

“As for the strongest possible agreement, well, it may have been the “strongest possible” that could be agreed to by 195 nations in 2015. By at least recognizing that the real goal should be limiting global temperature rise to 1.5 degrees Centigrade rather than the 2 degrees previously considered by most nations to be the top limit, the final document was stronger than many believed possible going into the negotiations. That said, the environmental community agrees that the agreement doesn’t go far enough and, importantly, that the commitments made to date do not meet even this document’s aspirations.”

There is a strong push from the nuclear lobby for nuclear power to be included in the UN’s Green Climate Fund. This would enable subsidies for nuclear power − subsidies that would come at the expense of renewables and other climate change mitigation programs.

So the nuclear industry didn’t make any gains at COP21, but is it making any progress in its broader efforts to attract public support? It’s hard to say, but there’s no evidence of a shift in public opinion. A 2005 IAEA-commissioned survey of 18 countries found that there was majority opposition to new reactors in all but one of the 18 countries.¹⁵ A 2011 IPSOS survey of nearly 19,000 people in 24 countries found 69% opposition to new reactors, and majority opposition to new reactors in all but one of the 24 countries.¹⁶

Is the nuclear industry having any success winning over environmentalists? Around the margins, perhaps, but the ranks of ‘pro-nuclear environmentalists’ are very thin. As James Hansen complained in the lead-up to COP21, the Climate Action Network, representing all the major environmental groups, opposes nuclear power. ‘Big Green’ opposes nuclear power, and so does small green. Efforts by nuclear lobbyists to split the environment movement have failed.

And the nuclear lobby certainly isn’t winning where it matters. One of the recurring claims in the pro-nuclear propaganda surrounding COP21 is the claim that renewables can’t be deployed quickly enough whereas nuclear can. But nuclear power has been stagnant for the past 20 years and costs are rising, whereas the growth of renewables has been spectacular ‒ 783 gigawatts of new renewable power capacity were installed in the decade from 2005−2014^{17 ‒} and costs are falling.

The nuclear lobby didn’t even win the battle of the celebrities at COP21. James Hansen, Bill Gates and other pro-nuclear celebrities put up a good fight against pro-renewable celebrities such as conservationist David Attenborough. But the pro-renewable celebrities raising their voice during COP21 included Pope Francis … and he’s infallible.

References:

1. Nuclear Energy Institute, 3 Dec 2015, ‘Pro-Nuclear Voices Raised at Paris Climate Talks’, www.nei.org/News-Media/News/News-Archives/Pro-Nuclear-Voices-Raised-at-Paris-Climate-Talks

2. Will Boisvert 18 Sept 2014, ‘The Left vs. the Climate’, http://thebreakthrough.org/index.php/programs/energy-and-climate/the-left-vs.-the-climate

3. Julie Kelly, 2 Dec 2015, ‘A New Breed of American Environmentalists Challenges the Stale Dogma of the Left’, www.nationalreview.com/article/427855/new-breed-greens-pro-capitalism-pro-fracking-patriotic

4. Tina Casey, 3 Dec 2015, ‘COP21 Gets a Spark of Nuclear Energy from Breakthrough Energy Coalition’, http://cleantechnica.com/2015/12/03/cop21-gets-spark-nuclear-energy-breakthrough-energy-coalition/

5. ‘Pandora’s Propaganda’, Nuclear Monitor #773, 21 Nov 2013, www.wiseinternational.org/nuclear-monitor/773/pandoras-propaganda

‘Pandora’s Promise’ Propaganda, Nuclear Monitor #764, 28 June 2013, www.wiseinternational.org/nuclear-monitor/764/pandoras-promise-propaganda

6. http://energyforhumanity.org

7. Rauli Partanen and Janne M. Korhonen, 2 Dec 2015, ‘Don’t Nuke the Climate: A Response’, http://energyforhumanity.org/featured/dont-nuke-the-climate-a-response/

8. Michael Mariotte, 30 Nov 2015, ‘When a campaign strikes a nerve’, http://safeenergy.org/2015/11/30/when-a-campaign-strikes-a-nerve/

9. http://climategamble.net

10. Jarret Adams, 26 Nov 2015, ‘No Climate Solution Without Nuclear, Experts Say’, www.theenergycollective.com/jarretadams1/2293694/no-climate-solution-without-nuclear-experts-say

11. Daniel Stevens, 17 Feb 2015, ‘Platts’ Nuclear Conference Attended by Companies Spending Millions on Lobbying’, http://maplight.org/content/platts-nuclear-conference-attended-by-companies-spending-millions-on-lobbying

12. http://nuclearforclimate.org

13. www.sfen.org/sites/default/files/public/atoms/files/nuclear4climate_press_release.pdf

14. Michael Mariotte, 12 Dec 2015, “The Paris Agreement on climate — a good start, but …”, http://safeenergy.org/2015/12/15/the-paris-agreement-on-climate/

15. Globescan, 2005, ‘Global Public Opinion on Nuclear Issues and the IAEA: Final report from 18 countries’, prepared for the IAEA, https://ideas.repec.org/p/ess/wpaper/id362.html

16. IPSOS, June 2011, ‘Global Citizen Reaction to the Fukushima Nuclear Plant Disaster’, www.ipsos-mori.com/Assets/Docs/Polls/ipsos-global-advisor-nuclear-power-june-2011.pdf

17. Greenpeace International, September 2015, ‘Energy [R]evolution: A sustainable world energy outlook 2015’, www.greenpeace.org/international/en/publications/Campaign-reports/Climate-Reports/Energy-Revolution-2015/

From Chain Reaction #126, April 2016, national magazine of Friends of the Earth, Australia www.foe.org.au/chain_reaction

On Valentine’s Day 2014, a drum of packaged waste from the Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) ruptured 2,150 feet (655 metres) underground in New Mexico’s nuclear waste repository known as the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) which is carved from ancient salt beds. The incident was described as a heat-generating chemical reaction – the US Department of Energy (DOE) called it a deflagration rather than an explosion.

Explosion or not, the chemical reaction compromised the integrity of a barrel and spread contaminants through more than 3,000 feet of tunnels, up the exhaust shaft, into the environment, and to air monitoring equipment approximately 3,000 feet north-west of the exhaust shaft. The accident resulted in 21 workers receiving low-level internal radiation exposure.

It later transpired that LANL had improperly packaged hundreds of waste drums with a combustible mix of nitrate salts – a byproduct of nuclear weapons production – and organic cat litter, causing a hot reaction in one drum that cracked the lid. The rupture released americium and plutonium into the deep salt mine and, in small amounts, into the environment.¹ The repository is still closed two years later, and a March 2016 date for re-opening has been pushed back to later this year.

“These accidents during the first 15 years of operation really illustrate the challenge of predicting the behavior of the repository over 10,000 years,” said Rod Ewing, the Frank Stanton Professor in Nuclear Security at Stanford and a senior fellow at the Center for International Security and Cooperation.

The Stanford experts also suggest more attention should be paid to how the buried materials may interact with each other, particularly with salty brine, over centuries. A single storage drum may contain a variety of materials, such as lab coats, gloves and laboratory instruments; thus, the chemistry is complex. Ewing said that the complacency that led to the accidents at WIPP can also occur in the safety analysis. Therefore, he advises, it is important to carefully review the safety analysis as new proposals for more plutonium disposal are considered.²

Asse, Germany

Now, 500 metres beneath the forests of northern Germany, in an old salt mine, another nightmare is playing out, according to Fred Pearce in the New Scientist. Enough plutonium bearing radioactive waste is stored here to fill 20 Olympic swimming pools. When engineers backfilled the chambers containing 126,000 drums in the 1970s, they thought they had put it out of harm’s way forever.

But now, the walls of the Asse mine are collapsing and cracks forming, thanks to pressure from surrounding rocks. So the race is on to dig it all up before radioactive residues are flushed to the surface. It could take decades to resolve. In the meantime, excavations needed to extract the drums could cause new collapses and make the problem worse.³

Some 300,000 cubic metres of low and intermediate-level waste, including the waste dug from the Asse mine, is earmarked for final burial at the Konrad iron mine in Lower Saxony. But Germany still has no plan for dealing with high-level waste and spent fuel. Later this year, a Final Storage Commission of politicians and scientists will advise on criteria for choosing a site where deep burial or long-term storage should be under way by 2050.

But its own chairman, veteran parliamentarian Michael Muller, says that timetable is unlikely to be met. “We all believe deep geology is the best option, but I’m not sure if there is enough [public] trust to get the job done,” he says. Many anti-nuclear groups are boycotting the Commission. The problems at the Asse salt mine have led to further distrust of engineers and their solutions.

The problems at Asse became public knowledge in 2008. Despite hurried backfilling of much of the mine, the degradation continues. Brine seeps in at a rate of around 12,000 litres a day, threatening to flush radioactive material to the surface. In 2011, the Federal Office for Radiation Protection (BfS) ruled that the waste had to be removed. But this is likely to take decades.

Just checking the state of the 13 chambers holding the waste drums is painfully slow. Engineers drilling to reach them through 20 metres of rock don’t know whether the drums have leaked, and of course they cannot risk a release of radioactivity. And unless care is taken to keep clear of the geological barrier, the excavations risk allowing more water in, and flooding of the mine can’t be ruled out.

Nothing will be moved until at least 2033. Meanwhile the bill keeps rising. It costs €140 million a year just to keep the mine safe for work to continue. The final bill will run into many billions. Is it worth it? Many experts fear that digging up the drums, with consequent risks of radioactive leaks, could create a much greater hazard than leaving them where they are.

Tunnel collapse and fatality at French repository site

Meanwhile one worker has been killed and another injured in a tunnel collapse at France’s planned nuclear waste repository at Bure, in north-eastern France. According to French waste management agency Andra, geophysical surveys were being carried out at the time of the collapse and the rockfall is believed to have happened as drilling was taking place. Scheduled for an authorization decree in 2018 and industrial commissioning in 2025, the facility – if approved – is expected to bury France’s highly-radioactive nuclear waste.⁴

Reprinted from nuClear news with minor editing. nuClear news, No.82, February 2016, www.no2nuclearpower.org.uk/nuclearnews/NuClearNewsNo82.pdf

References:
1. Albuquerque Journal, 19 October 2015, www.abqjournal.com/661954/news/safety-top-dog-innew-wipp-culture.html
2. Stanford News, 15 Jan 2016, http://news.stanford.edu/news/2016/january/waste-nuclear-material-
011516.html and Nature 13 Jan 2016, www.nature.com/news/policy-reassess-new-mexico-snuclear-waste-repository-1.19135
3. New Scientist, 29 Jan 2016, www.newscientist.com/article/2075615-radioactive-wastedogs-germany-despite-abandoning-nuclear-power/
4. Cumbria Trust, 27 Jan 2016, https://cumbriatrust.wordpress.com/2016/01/27/at-least-1-killed-intunnel-collapse-at-frances-planned-nuclear-waste-storage-site/
WNN, 26 Jan 2016, ‘Fatal rockfall at planned French repository site’, www.world-nuclear-news.org/RS-Fatal-landslide-at-planned-French-repository-site-2601165.html

From Chain Reaction #126, April 2016, national magazine of Friends of the Earth, Australia www.foe.org.au/chain_reaction

Global 2000 / Friends of the Earth Austria has released an updated dated version of an important report on the health impacts of the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear disaster. Written by radiation biologist Dr Ian Fairlie, the report incorporates the findings of many relevant studies produced in the 10 years since the original report was published.

The subject matter is inordinately complex but Fairlie explains a host of technicalities in language that anyone can understand. Thus the report is not only an up-to-date, expert report on the health effects of the Chernobyl disaster, but it also doubles as a primer on the radiation/health debates.

Fairlie summarises the main impacts:

• 5 million people in Belarus, Ukraine and Russia still live in highly contaminated areas, and 400 million people in less contaminated areas.
• 37% of Chernobyl’s fallout deposited on western Europe; 42% of western Europe contaminated.
• Initially, about 116,000 people were evacuated, and later an additional 230,000 people were resettled.
• 40,000 fatal cancers predicted across Europe (based on an estimated collective dose of 400,000 person-Sieverts and a linear no-threshold derived risk estimate of 0.1 fatal cancers per person-Sievert).
• 6,000 thyroid cancer cases to date, 16,000 more expected.
• Increased radiogenic thyroid cancers now seen in Austria: 8–41% of increased thyroid cancer cases after 1990 in Austria may be due to Chernobyl.
• Increased incidences of leukemia well established among the clean-up workers in Ukraine and Russia with very high risk factors. Slightly lower leukemia risks were observed among residents of seriously contaminated areas in Ukraine and Belarus.
• Increases in solid cancers were observed among clean-up workers in Belarus and Ukraine but their relative risks (20% to 50%) were considerably lower than the 700% increases observed for thyroid cancer, and the 200% to 500% increases observed for leukemia.
• Several new studies have confirmed increased risks of cardiovascular disease and stroke after Chernobyl. It is recommended that further studies be funded and carried out on radiogenic cardiovascular diseases. As current radiation dose limits around the world are based on cancer risks alone, it is recommended that they should be tightened to take into account cardiovascular disease and stroke risks as well.
• A recent very large study observed statistically significant increases in nervous system birth defects in highly contaminated areas in Russia, similar to the elevated rates of such birth defects observed in highly contaminated areas in Ukraine. The International Agency for Research on Cancer should be funded to carry out a comprehensive study of birth defects, particularly nervous system defects and Down Syndrome after Chernobyl.

Ian Fairlie, March 2016, ‘TORCH-2016: An independent scientific evaluation of the health-related effects of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster’,

www.global2000.at/en/node/4417

www.global2000.at/sites/global/files/TORCH%20-%20The%20other%20Report%20of%20Chernobyl.pdf

Sources of information on accidents at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant, New Mexico

Department of Energy: www.wipp.energy.gov

DoE, 30 Sept 2014, ‘Waste Isolation Pilot Plant Recovery Plan’, www.wipp.energy.gov/Special/WIPP%20Recovery%20Plan.pdf

DoE, April 2014, ‘Radiological Release Accident Investigation Report’. www.wipp.energy.gov/Special/AIB_Final_WIPP_Rad_Release_Phase1_04_22_2014.pdf

US EPA: 

www.epa.gov/radiation/wipp/index.html

www.epa.gov/radiation/news/wipp-news.html

Southwest Research and Information Center (SRIC):

www.sric.org/nuclear/wippleak2014.php

SRIC, ‘WIPP Radiation Release’, 12 Sept 2014, www.sric.org/nuclear/docs/WIPP_Leak_09122014.pdf

SRIC, ‘Nuclear Waste Documents’, www.sric.org/nuclear/nuclear2.php

SRIC, ‘What the WIPP Recovery Plan Says − And What It Doesn’t’, 10 Oct 2014, www.sric.org/nuclear/docs/WIPP_Leak_10102014.pdf

Carlsbad Environment Monitoring & Research Center − New Mexico State University: www.cemrc.org

New Mexico Environment Department: www.nmenv.state.nm.us/wipp/index.html

www.nmenv.state.nm.us/NMED/Issues/WIPP2014.html

‘LANL Documents Related to WIPP’: www.nmenv.state.nm.us/NMED/Issues/LANL-WIPPDocs.html

Santa Fe New Mexican: www.santafenewmexican.com/special_reports/from_lanl_to_leak/

Nuclear Watch New Mexico: http://nukewatch.org/activemap/NWC-WIPP.html

Los Alamos Study Group: www.lasg.org, www.lasg.org/waste.htm

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New Mexico nuclear waste accident a ‘horrific comedy of errors’ that exposes deeper problems

27 Nov 2014, The Ecologist

www.theecologist.org/News/news_analysis/2642182/new_mexico_nuclear_waste_accident_a_horrific_comedy_of_errors_that_exposes_deeper_problems.html

The precise cause of the February 14 accident involving a radioactive waste barrel at the world’s only deep geological radioactive waste repository has yet to be determined, but information about the accident continues to come to light.

The Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) in New Mexico, USA, is a dump site for long-lived intermediate-level waste from the US nuclear weapons program. More than 171,000 waste containers are stored in salt caverns 2,100 feet (640 metres) underground.

On February 14, a heat-generating chemical reaction − the Department of Energy (DOE) calls it a ‘deflagration’ rather than an explosion − compromised the integrity of a barrel and spread contaminants through more than 3,000 feet of tunnels, up the exhaust shaft, into the environment, and to an air monitoring approximately 3,000 feet north-west of the exhaust shaft.[1] The accident resulted in 22 workers receiving low-level internal radiation exposure.

Investigators believe a chemical reaction between nitrate salts and organic ‘kitty litter’ used as an absorbent generated sufficient heat to melt seals on at least one barrel. But experiments have failed to reproduce the chemical reaction, and hundreds of drums of similarly packaged nuclear waste are still intact, said DOE spokesperson Lindsey Geisler. “There’s still a lot we don’t know”, she said.[2]

Terry Wallace from Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) said: “LANL did not consider the chemical reactions that unique combinations of radionuclides, acids, salts, liquids and organics might create.”[3]

Determining the cause of the accident has been made all the more difficult because the precise composition of the waste in the damaged barrel is unknown.[4,5] A former WIPP official said: “The DOE sites that sent in the waste got careless in documenting what was being shipped in … The contractors at the sites packing the waste were not exactly meticulous. When we complained to DOE, it was made clear we were just to keep taking the waste and to shut up.” [6]

Operations to enable WIPP to reopen will cost approximately US$242 million according to preliminary estimates by the DOE. In addition, a new ventilation system is required which will cost US$65-261 million.[7] Taking into account indirect costs such as delays with the national nuclear weapons clean-up program, the total cost could approach US$1 billion.[4] Further costs could be incurred if the State of New Mexico fines DOE for its safety lapses at WIPP.[5]

The DOE hopes WIPP will reopen in 2016 but the shut-down could extend to 2017 or beyond.[8]

A ‘horrific comedy of errors’

British academic Rebecca Lunn, a professor of engineering geosciences, describes how waste repositories would work in a perfect world. “Geological disposal of nuclear waste involves the construction of a precision-engineered facility deep below the ground into which waste canisters are carefully manoeuvred. Before construction of a geological repository can even be considered, an environmental safety case must be developed that proves the facility will be safe over millions of years.”[9]

Prof. Lunn’s description is far removed from the situation that prevails at WIPP. Robert Alvarez, a former assistant to the energy secretary, said that a safety analysis conducted before WIPP opened predicted accidents such as the February 14 deflagration once every 200,000 years. Yet WIPP has been open for merely 15 years.[5] WIPP is on track for not one but over 13,000 radiation release accidents over a 200,000 year period.

The WIPP accident resulted from a “horrific comedy of errors” according to James Conca, a scientific adviser and WIPP expert: “This was the flagship of the Energy Department, the most successful program it had. The ramifications of this are going to be huge.” [4]

The problems began long before February 14, and they extend beyond WIPP. Serious problems have been evident across the US nuclear weapons program. Systemic problems have been evident with DOE oversight.

The problematic role of the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) − a semi-autonomous agency within the DOE − is emphasised in a detailed analysis by investigative journalist Joseph Trento.[6] A DOE official quoted by Trento said a root problem is “the fact that DOE has no real operational control over the NNSA. Under the guise of national security, NNSA runs the contractors, covers up accidents and massive cost overruns and can fire any DOE employee who tries to point out a problem. Because they control so many jobs and contractors, every administration refuses to take them on.”

Trento explains the realpolitik:

“The contractor game at NNSA is played this way: Major corporations form LLC’s [limited liability companies] and bid for NNSA and DOE contracts. For example, at SRS [Savannah River Site] they bid to clean up waste and get some of the billions of dollars from Obama’s first term stimulus money. Things go wrong, little gets cleaned up, workers get injured or exposed to radiation and outraged NNSA management cancels the contract. A new LLC is formed by the same NNSA list of corporate partners and they are asked to bid on a new management contract. The new LLC hires the same workers as the old management company and the process gets repeated again and again. The same mistakes are made and the process keeps repeating itself. These politically connected DOE contractors, responsible for tens of billions of dollars in failed projects and mishandling of the most deadly materials science has created, have been protected by the biggest names in both the Republican and Democratic parties at an enormous cost to the US taxpayers, public health and the environment.”

Major deficiencies at Los Alamos National Laboratory

Of immediate relevance to the February 14 WIPP accident are problems at Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL). The waste barrel involved in the accident was sent from LANL to WIPP. LANL staff approved the switch from an inorganic clay absorbent to an organic material in September 2013. That switch is believed to be one of the causes of the February 14 accident. LANL also approved the use of a neutraliser that manufacturers warned shouldn’t be mixed with certain chemicals.[10]

A September 30 report by the DOE’s Office of Inspector General identifies “several major deficiencies in LANL’s procedures for the development and approval of waste packaging and remediation techniques that may have contributed” to the February 14 WIPP accident.[11]

The report states:

“Of particular concern, not all waste management procedures at LANL were properly vetted through the established procedure revision process nor did they conform to established environmental requirements.

“In our view, immediate action is necessary to ensure that these matters are addressed and fully resolved before TRU [transuranic] waste operations are resumed, or, for that matter, before future mixed radioactive hazardous waste operations are initiated.

“In particular, we noted that:

• Despite specific direction to the contrary, LANL made a procedural change to its existing waste procedures that did not conform to technical guidance provided by the Department for the processing of nitrate salt waste; and
• Contractor officials failed to ensure that changes to waste treatment procedures were properly documented, reviewed and approved, and that they incorporated all environmental requirements for TRU waste processing. These weaknesses led to an environment that permitted the introduction of potentially incompatible materials to TRU storage drums. Although yet to be finally confirmed, this action may have led to an adverse chemical reaction within the drums resulting in serious safety implications.”

WIPP failings

The February 14 accident has shone a light on multiple problems at WIPP (discussed in greater detail in Nuclear Monitor #787).[12] A DOE-appointed Accident Investigation Board released a report into the accident in April.[13] The report identified the “root cause” of the accident to be the many failings of Nuclear Waste Partnership, the contractor that operates the WIPP site, and DOE’s Carlsbad Field Office. The report criticised their “failure to fully understand, characterize, and control the radiological hazard. The cumulative effect of inadequacies in ventilation system design and operability compounded by degradation of key safety management programs and safety culture resulted in the release of radioactive material from the underground to the environment, and the delayed / ineffective recognition and response to the release.”

The Accident Investigation Board report states that personnel did not adequately recognise, categorise, or classify the emergency and did not implement adequate protective actions in a timely manner. It further noted that there is a lack of a questioning attitude at WIPP; a reluctance to bring up and document issues; an acceptance and normalisation of degraded equipment and conditions; and a reluctance to report issues to management, indicating a chilled work environment.

Trento said: “The report has a familiar litany and tone: Ignored warnings from the Defense Facilities Board, lack of DOE contractor supervision, and a missing safety culture. There are hundreds of similar reports about the Savannah River Site, LANL, Oak Ridge, Hanford and other DOE national laboratories and sensitive national security sites. The Department of Energy is in serious trouble.”[6]

A US Environmental Protection Agency review of air testing at WIPP in February and March found discrepancies in recorded times and dates of sample collections, flawed calculation methods, conflicting data and missing documents. It also found that WIPP managers sometimes said air samples contained no detectable levels of radiation when measurable levels were present.[14]

Compromised response to the accident

A degraded safety culture was responsible for the accident, and the same failings inevitably compromised the response to the accident. Among other problems:[4,6]

• The DOE contractor could not easily locate plutonium waste canisters because the DOE did not install an upgraded computer system to track the waste inside WIPP.
• The lack of an underground video surveillance system made it impossible to determine if a waste container had been breached until long after the accident. A worker inspection team did not enter the underground caverns until April 4 − seven weeks after the accident.
• The WIPP computerised Central Monitoring System has not been updated to reflect the current underground configuration of underground vaults with waste containers.
• 12 out of 40 phones did not work so emergency communications could not reach all parts of WIPP in the immediate aftermath of the accident.
• WIPP’s ventilation and filtration system did not prevent radiation reaching the surface, due to neglect.
• The emergency response moved in slow motion. The first radiation alarm sounded at 11.14pm. Not until 9.34am did managers order workers on the surface of the site to move to a safe location.

Everything that was supposed to happen, didn’t. Everything that wasn’t supposed to happen, did.

References:

1. Southwest Research and Information Center, 12 Sept 2014, ‘WIPP Radiation Release‘.

2. Laura Zuckerman / Reuters, 30 June 2014, ‘Scientists unable to recreate chemical reaction suspected in New Mexico radiation leak‘.

3. Alex Jacobs, 1 Oct 2014, ‘Radiation Leak Linked to Los Alamos; Do We Really Want Biological Agents There?‘

4. Ralph Vartabedian, 24 Aug 2014, ‘Cause of New Mexico nuclear waste accident remains a mystery‘.

5. Matthew Wald, 29 Oct 2014, ‘In U.S. Cleanup Efforts, Accident at Nuclear Site Points to Cost of Lapses‘.

6. Joseph Trento, 5 June 2014, ‘Breaking Bad: A Nuclear Waste Disaster‘.

7. Department of Energy, 30 Sept 2014, ‘Waste Isolation Pilot Plant Recovery Plan‘.

8. Caty Enders, 30 Sept 2014, ‘Congress pushes nuclear expansion despite accidents at weapons lab‘.

9. Rebecca Bell, 2 Nov 2014, ‘Nuclear waste must be out of sight, but not out of mind‘.

10. Staci Matlock, 2 Sept 2014, ‘Review, relabeling of LANL waste raises questions about scope of problem‘.

11. DOE Office of Inspector General, 30 Sept 2014, ‘Remediation of Selected Transuranic Waste Drums at Los Alamos National Laboratory − Potential Impact on the Shutdown of the Department’s Waste Isolation Plant‘.

12. ‘Fire and leaks at the world’s only deep geological waste repository‘, 6 June 2014, Nuclear Monitor #787.

13. DoE ‘Radiological Release Accident Investigation Report‘.

14. Laura Zuckerman / Reuters, 22 Aug 2014, ‘Air Testing Lapse At New Mexico Nuclear Waste Dump Blamed On Staff Vacancy‘.

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One deep underground dump, one dud

Nuclear Monitor #801, 9 April 2015

www.wiseinternational.org/nuclear-monitor/801/one-deep-underground-dump-one-dud

There is only one deep underground dump (DUD) for nuclear waste anywhere in the world, and it’s a dud. The broad outline of this dud DUD story is simple and predictable: over a period of 10−15 years, high standards gave way to complacency, cost-cutting and corner-cutting.

The Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) in New Mexico, USA, is a burial site for long-lived intermediate-level waste from the US nuclear weapons program. More than 171,000 waste drums have been stored in salt caverns 2,100 feet (640 metres) underground since WIPP opened in 1999.

Earl Potter, a lawyer who represented Westinghouse, WIPP’s first operating contractor, said: “At the beginning, there was an almost fanatical attention to safety. I’m afraid the emphasis shifted to looking at how quickly and how inexpensively they could dispose of this waste.”¹

Likewise, Rick Fuentes, president of the Carlsbad chapter of the United Steelworkers union, said: “In the early days, we had to prove to the stakeholders that we could operate this place safely for both people and the environment. After time, complacency set in. Money didn’t get invested into the equipment and the things it should have.”¹

Before WIPP opened, sceptical locals were invited to watch experiments to assure them how safe the facility would be. Waste containers were dropped from great heights onto metal spikes, submerged in water and rammed by trains.¹ Little did they know that a typo and kitty litter would be the undoing of WIPP.

On 14 February 2014, a drum rupture spread contaminants through about one-third of the underground caverns and tunnels, up the exhaust shaft, and into the outside environment. Twenty-two people were contaminated with low-level radioactivity.

A Technical Assessment Team convened by the US Department of Energy (DoE) has recently released a report into the February 2014 accident.² The report concludes that just one drum was the source of radioactive contamination, and that the drum rupture resulted from internal chemical reactions.

Chemically incompatible contents in the drum − nitrate salt residues, organic sorbent and an acid neutralization agent − supported heat-generating chemical reactions which led to the creation of gases within the drum. The build-up of gases displaced the drum lid, venting radioactive material and hot matter that further reacted with the air or other materials outside the drum to cause the observed damage.

Kitty litter

The problems began at Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL), where the drum was packed. One of the problems at LANL was the replacement of inorganic absorbent with an organic absorbent − kitty litter. Carbohydrates in the kitty litter provided fuel for a chemical reaction with metal nitrate salts being disposed of.

The switch to kitty litter took effect on 1 August 2012. LANL staff were explicitly directed to “ENSURE an organic absorbent (kitty litter) is added to the waste” when packaging drums of nitrate salts. LANL’s use of organic kitty litter defied clear instructions from WIPP to use an inorganic absorbent.³

Why switch from inorganic absorbent to organic kitty litter? The most likely explanation is that the problem originated with a typo in notes from a meeting at LANL about how to package “difficult” waste for shipment to WIPP − and the subsequent failure of anyone at LANL to correct the error. In email correspondence, Mark Pearcy, a member of the team that reviews waste to ensure it is acceptable to be stored at WIPP, said: “General consensus is that the ‘organic’ designation was a typo that wasn’t caught.”³

LANL officials have since acknowledged several violations of its Hazardous Waste Facility Permit including the failure to follow proper procedures in making the switch to organic litter, and the lack of follow-up on waste that tests showed to be highly acidic.⁴

Ongoing risks

The heat generated by the rupture of drum #68660 may have destabilized up to 55 other drums that were in close proximity. A June 2014 report by LANL staff based at WIPP said the heat “may have dried out some of the unreacted oxidizer-organic mixtures increasing their potential for spontaneous reaction. The dehydration of the fuel-oxidizer mixtures caused by the heating of the drums is recognized as a condition known to increase the potential for reaction.”⁵

The Albuquerque Journal reported on March 15 that 368 drums with waste comparable to drum #68660 are stored underground at WIPP − 313 in Panel 6, and 55 in Room 7 of Panel 7, the same room as drum #68660. WIPP operators are trying to isolate areas considered to be at risk with chain links, brattice cloth to restrict air flow, mined salt buffers and steel bulkheads. Efforts to shut off particular rooms and panels have been delayed and complicated by radiological contamination, limitations on the number of workers and equipment that can be used due to poor ventilation, and months of missed maintenance that followed the February 2014 accident.⁶

An Associated Press report states that since September 2012, LANL packed up to 5,565 drums with organic kitty litter. Of particular concern are 16 drums with highly acidic contents as well as nitrate salts. Of those 16 drums, 11 are underground at WIPP (one of them is drum #68660), and the other five are in temporary storage at a private waste facility in Andrews, Texas.⁴

Freedom of Information revelations

The Santa Fe New Mexican newspaper has revealed further details about problems before and after the February 2014 accident, based on material from a Freedom of Information Act request.³

The New Mexican reports that LANL workers came across a batch of waste that was highly acidic, making it unsafe for shipping. A careful review of treatment options should have followed, but instead LANL and its contractors took shortcuts, adding acid neutralizer as well as kitty litter to absorb excess liquid. The wrong neutralizer was used, exacerbating the problem.³

One of these waste drums was #68660. Documents accompanying the drum from LANL to WIPP made no mention of the high acidity or the neutralizer, and they said that it contained an inorganic absorbent.³

The decision to take shortcuts was likely motivated by pressure to meet a deadline to remove waste from an area at LANL considered vulnerable to fire. Meeting the deadline would have helped LANL contractors’ extend their lucrative contracts to package waste at LANL and transport it to WIPP.³

For two years preceding the February 2014 incident, LANL refused to allow inspectors conducting annual audits for the New Mexico Environment Department (NMED) inside the facility where waste was treated, saying the auditors did not have appropriate training to be around radioactive waste. The NMED did not insist on gaining access because, in the words of a departmental spokesperson, it was “working on higher priority duties at the time that mandated our attention.”³

There were further lapses after the drum rupture. The New Mexican reported:

“Documents and internal emails show that even after the radiation leak, lab officials downplayed the dangers of the waste − even to the Carlsbad managers whose staff members were endangered by its presence − and withheld critical information from regulators and WIPP officials investigating the leak. Internal emails, harshly worded at times, convey a tone of exasperation with LANL from WIPP personnel, primarily employees of the Department of Energy and Nuclear Waste Partnership, the contractor that operates the repository.”³

Several months after the rupture of drum #68660, an LANL chemist discovered that the contents of the drum matched those of a patented explosive. Personnel at WIPP were not informed of the potential for an explosive reaction for nearly another week − and they only learned about the problem after a DoE employee leaked a copy of the chemist’s memo to a colleague in Carlsbad the night before a planned entry into the room that held the ruptured drum. That planned entry was cancelled. Workers in protective suits entered the underground area several days later to collect samples.³

“I am appalled that LANL didn’t provide us this information,” Dana Bryson from DoE’s Carlsbad Field Office wrote in an email when she learned of the memo.³

The DoE employee who first alerted WIPP personnel to the threat was reprimanded by the DoE’s Los Alamos Site Office for sharing the information.³

Contamination

Inevitably the clean-up has faced problems due to radioactive contamination in the underground panels and tunnels, and delays in routine underground maintenance because of the contamination. The Santa Fe New Mexican reported on some of these problems:

“In October, when a fan was tested for the first time since the accident, it kicked up low levels of radioactive materials that escaped from the mine. Waste drums that normally would have been permanently disposed of within days of their arrival at WIPP instead were housed in an above-ground holding area for months and leaked harmful but nonradioactive vapors that sickened four workers. A chunk of the cavern’s ceiling crashed to the ground after the contamination delayed for months the routine bolting that would have stabilized the roof.”¹

Another problem is that workers are entering underground areas that are not being monitored for carcinogenic volatile organic compounds. Monitoring of these compounds, a condition of WIPP’s permit from the state of New Mexico, has not been taking place since February 2014 because of limited access to contaminated underground areas.⁵

Don Hancock from the Southwest Research and Information Center said:

“They have no intention of starting to do the volatile organic compound monitoring in the underground at least until January of 2016. They fully intend to keep sending workers into the underground with no intention of following this requirement. It’s in violation of the permit, and the Environment Department should say so.”⁵

Fines

The NMED has fined the DoE US$54 million (€49.2m). The Department identified 13 violations at WIPP, and imposed penalties of US$17.7 million (€16.1m). The Department identified 24 violations at LANL, and imposed penalties of US$36.6 million (€33.3m).⁷ The DoE is appealing the fines.⁸

The DoE says that any state fines it pays for the WIPP accident will come from money appropriated to clean up nuclear weapons sites in New Mexico. A 2016 budget year summary presented in February by DoE’s Office of Environmental Management says: “Any fines and penalties assessed on the EM [environmental management] program would be provided by cleanup dollars, resulting in reduced funding for cleanup activities.”⁸

NMED Secretary Ryan Flynn responded:

“Essentially, DoE is threatening to punish states by doing less cleanup work if states attempt to hold it accountable for violating federal and state environmental laws. States like New Mexico welcome federal facilities into our communities with the understanding that these facilities will respect the health and safety of our citizens by complying with federal and state laws.”⁸

The NMED is working on a new compliance order that could include fines of more than US$100 million (€91.1m). Flynn said:

“We’ve indicated all along that if DoE is willing to take accountability for the events that caused the release and work with the state then we’d be willing to release them from any further liability at Los Alamos and WIPP. If DoE is not willing to take accountability for what’s occurred, then they are going to face significant additional penalties.”⁹

A February 22 editorial in the Albuquerque Journal states:

“It would behoove the DoE to quit poisoning the well when it doesn’t have another option for disposing of this kind of waste underground. … So the DOE should start paying up and playing fair with the only game in town.”¹⁰

Greg Mello from the Los Alamos Study Group said that an increase in weapons spending proposed by the Obama administration would pay “all the NMED-proposed fines a few times over.”⁸

Clean-up costs

Costs associated with the February 2014 accident include clean-up costs, fines, and costs associated with managing the backlog of waste at other sites until it can be sent to WIPP. Total costs will be at least US$500 million (€455m).¹

WIPP is unlikely to be fully operational until at least 2018 according to federal Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz. “We are targeting 2018 but I have to admit that that remains a little uncertain; the key project is the new ventilation system and that is still undergoing engineering analysis,” Moniz said in February.

Don Hancock doubts that the 2018 timeline can be met. Salt mines exist across the world, he said, but reopening a contaminated salt mine following a radiological release is unprecedented and the government has no model to follow.¹¹

Earl Potter, the former Westinghouse lawyer with a long association with WIPP, told the New Mexican that he doubted whether WIPP could continue if another radiation leak happened during the recovery process. “We can survive one,” he said, “but two, I don’t think so.”¹

References:

1. Patrick Malone, 14 Feb 2015, ‘Repository’s future uncertain, but New Mexico town still believes’, www.santafenewmexican.com/special_reports/from_lanl_to_leak/repository-s-future-uncertain-but-new-mexico-town-still-believes/article_38b0e57b-2d4e-5476-b3f5-0cfe81ce94cc.html

2. Technical Assessment Team, March 2015, ‘Investigation of Incident at Waste Isolation Pilot Plant’

Summary: http://energy.gov/sites/prod/files/2015/03/f20/TAT_Fact_sheet%2032615%20FINAL.pdf

Full report: http://energy.gov/sites/prod/files/2015/03/f20/MARCH%202015%20-%20FINAL%20TECHNICAL%20ASSESSMENT%20TEAM%20REPORT.pdf

3. Patrick Malone, 15 Nov 2014, ‘LANL officials downplayed waste’s dangers even after leak’, www.santafenewmexican.com/special_reports/from_lanl_to_leak/lanl-officials-downplayed-waste-s-dangers-even-after-leak/article_54d7f3d2-8c99-5793-8c17-c4bdb0b72ef1.html

4. Jeri Clausing / Associated Press, 4 July 2014, ‘U.S. lab admits violating nuke-waste permit’, www.sltrib.com/sltrib/world/58150394-68/waste-lab-wallace-acidic.html.csp

5. Patrick Malone, 29 Nov 2014, ‘Emails raise questions about risks to WIPP workers sent underground’, www.santafenewmexican.com/news/local_news/emails-raise-questions-about-safety-of-wipp-workers-in-underground/article_0cb47b4d-5af1-51bc-8cf3-bcf150b3a65e.html

6. Lauren Villagran, 15 March 2015, ‘Roof collapses pose safety risk for workers at WIPP’, www.abqjournal.com/555711/news/roof-collapses-pose-safety-risk-at-wipp.html

7. WNN, 8 Dec 2014, ‘Fines follow WIPP incidents’, www.world-nuclear-news.org/RS-Fines-follow-WIPP-incidents-0812147.html

8. Mark Oswald, 20 Feb 2015, ‘DOE says any fines for WIPP leak will come from clean-up money’, www.abqjournal.com/544461/news/doe-says-any-fines-for-wipp-leak-will-come-from-clean-up-money.html

9. 10 Feb 2015, ‘New Mexico Considers More Fines Over Nuke Leak’, www.nytimes.com/aponline/2015/02/10/us/ap-us-nuke-repository-recovery.html?_r=0

10. Albuquerque Journal Editorial Board, 22 Feb 2015, ‘Editorial: Balking at fines won’t help DOE reach a nuke solution’, www.abqjournal.com/544790/opinion/balking-at-fines-wont-help-doe-reach-a-nuke-solution.html

11. Meg Mirshak, 24 March 2015, ‘New Mexico group doubts WIPP repository will reopen by deadline, leaving waste stranded at Savannah River Site’, http://chronicle.augusta.com/news/metro/2015-03-24/new-mexico-group-doubts-wipp-repository-will-reopen-deadline-leaving-waste