Beyond Nuclear International
Still no country for old nuclear waste
Major challenges remain unaddressed says new report
By Dr. David Lowry
A very important, path-breaking report on radioactive waste was released in Berlin on November 11, 2019 at a press conference held at the headquarters of the Heinrich Böll Foundation, major sponsors of the research that informs the content of the study, titled World Nuclear Waste Report (WNWR).
It is the brain-child of former German Green Party/ Alliance 90 MEP, Rebecca Harms – a forty year campaigner against nuclear power – and independent Paris-based international energy consultant, Mycle Schneider, the team behind the now internationally respected and encyclopedically comprehensive annual World Nuclear Industry Status Report.
The WNWR concludes “The final disposal of high-level radioactive waste presents governments worldwide with major challenges that have not yet been addressed, and entails incalculable technical, logistical, and financial risks.”
Creative expression of protest in Germany against the annual “Castor” nuclear waste transports to an interim storage facility. (Photo: Christian Fischer/Wikimedia Commons)
It spells out in nearly 150 pages of detailed analysis that over 60,000 tons of spent nuclear fuel (one type of highly dangerous and long-lived) alone are stored in interim storage facilities across Europe (excluding Russia and Slovakia, as the data published by these two countries is inadequate, according to the authors). It adds that within the European Union, France accounts for 25% of the current spent nuclear fuel generated, followed by Germany (15%) and the United Kingdom (14%).
According to the WNWR press release, “In addition, more than 2.5 million m³ of low- and intermediate-level waste has been generated in Europe (excluding Slovakia and Russia). Over its lifetime, the European nuclear reactor fleet will produce an estimated 6.6 million m³ of nuclear waste. Four countries are responsible for most of this waste: France (30%), the UK (20%), the Ukraine (18%) and Germany (8%).”
Jane Fonda lights up Fire Drill Fridays
“We’re going to have to be very brave and very united and very determined”
By Linda Pentz Gunter
When at last she raised her fist in a trademark salute, then held out her hands to be zip-tied by police, it was the end of another long day for Jane Fonda, 81.
The two-time Academy Award and BAFTA winning actress has spent four of the last five Fridays getting herself arrested in Washington, DC, protesting for action — or against what she sees as inaction — on climate change.
It’s a script for which this long-time activist needs no rehearsal. For Fonda, this is now the most important role of her life.
Fonda is participating in a weekly protest she has dubbed Fire Drill Fridays — in a nod to teenage climate activist Greta Thunberg’s warning that our house is on fire. She has moved temporarily to Washington, DC and, sporting a fiery red coat, has vowed to demonstrate and face arrest every Friday until mid-January when she must resume filming her hit television show, Grace and Frankie. The first Fire Drill Friday was October 11.
Jane Fonda is arrested for the fourth straight week protesting climate inaction. (Photo courtesy Fire Drill Fridays.)
They came to stop a crime
Instead, seven Catholic peacemakers were convicted and now await sentencing
By Jack Cohen-Joppa, The Nuclear Resister
“…You are the hope you have arrived to find.”
So ended a brief message that Fr. Steve Kelly wrote from jail last month to be read to more than 100 friends and supporters. We had travelled from across the United States for a Festival of Hope on the eve of the trial of the Kings Bay Plowshares in coastal Brunswick, Georgia.
While many of us hoped for their acquittal, Steve reminded us that hope in the nuclear age comes first from building community, and hope is sustained every time we act together for a nuclear-free future.
The 70-year-old Jesuit knows something about sustaining hope in hard places. This time, he’s already been in jail for over a year and a half. He was arrested with six other Catholic nuclear abolitionists – Mark Colville, Clare Grady, Martha Hennessy, Elizabeth McAlister, Patrick O’Neill and Carmen Trotta – in the wee hours of April 5, 2018, inside the United States’ Submarine Base Kings Bay. There they cut fences and used hand tools, paint and human blood to condemn nuclear weapons and carry out symbolic acts of disarmament.
The Kings Bay Plowshares joined a nearly 40-year tradition of more than 100 nonviolent direct actions where participants give form to the Biblical prophecy of Isaiah and “beat swords into plowshares.” Five of the seven took part in earlier Plowshares actions and have spent time in federal prison – in Steve’s case, more than ten years.
The Kings Bay Plowshares 7 pre-action. Left to right: Clare Grady, Patrick O’Neill, Liz McAlister, Fr. Steve Kelly, Martha Hennessy, Mark Colville and Carmen Trotta.(Photo: KBP7)
The delusion of thorium
After 50 years and four failures, the US abandoned thorium reactors
By Helen Caldicott
As Australia is grappling with the notion of introducing nuclear power into the country, it seems imperative the general public understand the intricacies of these technologies so they can make informed decisions. Thorium reactors are amongst those being suggested at this time.
The U.S. tried for 50 years to create thorium reactors, without success. Four commercial thorium reactors were constructed, all of which failed. And because of the complexity of problems listed below, thorium reactors are far more expensive than uranium fueled reactors.
The longstanding effort to produce these reactors cost the U.S. taxpayers billions of dollars, while billions more dollars are still required to dispose of the highly toxic waste emanating from these failed trials.
The truth is, thorium is not a naturally fissionable material. It is, therefore, necessary to mix thorium with either enriched uranium-235 (up to 20 per cent enrichment) or with plutonium – both of which are innately fissionable – to get the process going.
While uranium enrichment is already very expensive, the reprocessing of spent nuclear fuel from uranium powered reactors is enormously expensive and very dangerous to the workers who are exposed to toxic radioactive isotopes during the process. Reprocessing spent fuel requires chopping up radioactive fuel rods by remote control, then dissolving them in concentrated nitric acid from which plutonium is precipitated out by complex chemical means.
Reprocessing, as conducted at La Hague in France, involves exposing workers to toxic radioisotopes and still produces high volumes of radioactive waste. (Photo: Jean-Marie Taillat for WikiMedia Commons)
Vast quantities of highly acidic, highly radioactive liquid waste then remain to be disposed of. (Only 6 kilograms of plutonium-239 can fuel a nuclear weapon, while each reactor makes 250 kilos of plutonium per year. One-millionth of a gram of plutonium, if inhaled, is carcinogenic.)
Uranium mining and my family’s story
The 1,000 uranium mines of “John Wayne country” and their terrible legacy
By Tommy Rock, Ph.D.
My name is Tommy Rock, PhD., and I am from the Navajo tribe in the southwest U.S. I live in Monument Valley, Utah, which is in southeastern Utah near the Four Corners area (where the states of Colorado, New Mexico, Arizona, and Utah meet). Monument Valley is also on the Navajo Nation. Monument Valley was made famous by John Wayne and John Ford when it appeared in their western movies such as She Wore A Yellow Ribbon and Fort Apache, just to name a few. This place has a beautiful red stone hovering above the arid desert landscape.
Growing Up With My Grandparents
My story begins with my being raised by my grandparents. During the winter months, we lived in Copper Canyon, which is in the northwestern part of Monument Valley. Copper Canyon has a spring that flows year-round. We have our livestock there, our cattle and horses. The area is surrounded by redstone walls like a corral with two ways out. The area is also arid with desert shrubs. During the summer we went to our summer camp out of Copper Canyon.
The wooden shack that I grew up in with my grandparents. Located in Copper Canyon. The cabin had no running water and no electricity. (Photo: Tommy Rock)
We lived in a wooden shack. I think my grandfather built it long ago. Seems like the structure was there an eternity because that is all I remember. My grandmother was the only one that had a bed. My grandfather and I had a sheepskin that we slept on. Every morning my grandfather would tell me to go run, and, if I did not get up, he poured water on me. He said that it would make me strong.
Humans of the Polygon
The dark legacy of Soviet atomic testing
By Dr. Togzhan Kassenova
It has been thirty years since the last Soviet test rocked the Semipalatinsk Polygon in Kazakhstan, but its dark legacy still haunts people who live nearby. The victims, now in their fourth generation, continue to pay the price for the Soviet nuclear might. Together, with two colleagues, we embark to meet them in the villages of Karaul, Znamenka (Kokentau), and Sarzhal.
The first and youngest victim we meet is a sweet six-month-old baby boy named after Kazakhstan’s first president. Nursultan has a benign tumor of bright red color on his head and six fingers on his left hand. His mom, a young woman in her 20s, tells us she heard that the extra limb could be removed with a laser. When I do my research later, I cannot find any references to that being possible with a laser. Instead, traditional surgery is recommended within the first month of birth.
We do not know if Nursultan’s parents will go for a surgery, but his mom worries that, if left like that, her boy will be teased later in life. Nursultan smiles at us with his happy toothless smile, unaware of his predicament. The disease, known by its scientific name of polydactyly, is caused by a genetic mutation.
Visiting families in Karaul
The same day we meet a small girl who is missing four fingers on her hand, a genetic mutation similar to Nursultan’s. Her family is kind enough to receive us and share their story. Their other daughter faced cancer and survived after persevering through two years of chemotherapy. Now she is free of cancer but needs regular checks for the benign tumor that remains on her face bone. These checks can only be done in larger cities, and travel requires financial resources that the family does not have. “We reached out to a charity organization, but they told us because she was cancer-free, they couldn’t help,” they tell us. A few years ago, these parents already lost another daughter to sudden pneumonia. She was six.
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