France sees the light re: nuclear power.
A COSTLY MISTAKE
► The state-owned French nuclear industry has
cost taxpayers billions, including huge export
losses, construction and shutdown costs.
►The breeder reactor – on which the French
nuclear hopes were based – was an expensive
gamble. The Superphenix breeder averaged a
7% capacity factor over its 14 years of operation.
FRENCH PUBLIC OPPOSITION
►60,000 people rallied in five cities in March
2007 in opposition to a proposed new European
Pressurized Reactor (EPR) in Northern France.
►Annual polls show at least 60% of French
citizens would like to see nuclear power phased
out and a shift made to renewable energy.
► In 2007, 50,000 French citizens signed a
petition demanding a referendum on radioactive
waste dumping in their communities.
FRENCH CORPORATIONS IN THE U.S.
► Two majority French-government-owned
corporations – Areva and Électricité de France –
would reap huge U.S. taxpayer funds if nuclear
power is expanded in the U.S.
► Areva would be the beneficiary of U.S. tax
dollars should a proposed uranium enrichment
facility – owned by Areva – go forward in Idaho.
► EDF, a partner with Constellation, is applying
to build EPR reactors in Maryland and in upstate
New York. At least five additional EPRs are also
under consideration in the US.
AREVA IN NIGER
► In Niger – as in many countries – uranium mining
has disproportionately affected indigenous peoples
who have seen none of the economic benefits but
have suffered from health and environmental impacts.
Proposed new mines across northern Niger have
sparked opposition from tribespeople who have been
arbitrarily arrested, tortured and executed without trial.
► Areva has mined uranium for 40 years in Niger,
West Africa, creating radioactively-contaminated air,
soil and water. Discarded radioactive metals from the
mining operation are sold in public marketplaces.
► Areva has signed a deal for a huge new uranium
mine in Niger that, if opened, would be the second
largest in the world. Uranium mining threatens to
deplete the Sahara Desert area water supply.
France gets nearly 80% of its electricity
from its 58 nuclear reactors. However, its
heavy reliance on nuclear power creates
safety and environmental risks, including an
unresolved radioactive waste problem.
REPROCESSING
► France reprocesses its own, and some
foreign, irradiated reactor fuel. That is, the
fuel is cut up and soaked in acid to extract
plutonium and fissile uranium. This results
in massive releases of radioactive gases,
solids, and liquids into the environment.
► One hundred million gallons of
radioactively contaminated liquids are
discharged annually into the English
Channel from the La Hague reprocessing
center. Dumping these same wastes into
the sea in containers would violate the
1970 London Dumping Convention.
► The claim that France “recycles” its
irradiated nuclear fuel is a major
exaggeration. Only about 1% of the
reprocessed fuel is used as reactor fuel
while 99% remains as radioactive waste.
► A plane crashing on a La Hague
irradiated fuel storage pond could release
radioactivity more than six times the
equivalent released at Chernobyl.
► Radioactive discharges from La Hague
have contaminated area beaches and
waters as far as the Arctic and beyond.
These discharges likely caused the
elevated rates of leukemia near La Hague
found by two independent medical studies.
► La Hague routinely releases radioactive
gases including concentrations of krypton-
85 found at levels 90,000 times higher than
in nature.
►Aerial discharges of carbon-14,
considered to be one of the most damaging
radioactive isotopes to human health, have
also been detected in the La Hague area.
Radioactive carbon dioxide — the leading
climate change culprit, is also released.
RADIOACTIVE WASTE PROBLEMS
► France has no high-level radioactive waste
repository and faces public opposition to the
only one it is exploring, at Bure.
► Reprocessing has created large quantities of
solid waste contaminated with plutonium that
will need to be isolated permanently.
► Much of the waste remaining in France from
the reprocessing of foreign fuel has never been
returned to the country of origin, rendering
France a de facto international dump site.
► The so-called low- and intermediate-level
radioactive waste dump sites that do exist –
including in the important Champagne region –
are leaking radioactivity into the groundwater.
► Radioactive tailings from the 210
abandoned uranium mines in France have
been used in public areas, including school
playgrounds and public parking lots.
PLUTONIUM PRODUCTION
► After plutonium and uranium are extracted
during reprocessing, they can be combined into
mixed-oxide (MOX) fuel. This is used in fewer
than 20 MOX reactors which generate less
than 10% of French nuclear electricity.
► MOX reactors, like all reactors, also
generate plutonium. There is no significant net
reduction of plutonium from using MOX fuel.
► Dangerous plutonium oxide powder is
transported regularly from La Hague to the
MOX fuel fabrication plants in Belgium and
Southern France.
NUCLEAR WEAPONS LINK
►The 80-plus metric tons of plutonium
stockpiled at La Hague in hundreds of
vulnerable containers are enough to make
at least 10,000 bombs.
►France has exported civilian nuclear
technology and training to, or assisted in
the nuclear programs of, Pakistan, Israel,
India and South Africa, all of which
developed nuclear weapons.
►France exported nuclear technology to
Iran, now the subject of international
controversy about whether Iran is also
developing nuclear weapons.
► France has sent shipments of
plutonium fuel overseas, risking hijacking,
accident or diversion.
► France delivered and helped build
Iraq’s Osirak reactor that was
subsequently bombed by Israel in 1981.
►French president, Nicolas Sarkozy, has
toured the globe promoting nuclear power
as a “bridge to the Islamic world.” France
is marketing nuclear technology to much
of the Middle East and North Africa.
FLAWED REACTOR TECHNOLOGY
►The French European Pressurized
Reactors (EPR) under construction in
France and Finland have encountered
serious technical flaws including
substandard parts.By July 2009, the
Finnish reactor was already at least three
years behind schedule and 60% over
budget.
► The summer of 2008 saw a cascade of
nuclear accidents in France. Drinking and
bathing in the water was banned after
radioactive spills at the Tricastin nuclear
complex contaminated rivers.
http://www.beyondnuclear.org/storage/France_pamphlet_July09.pdf
Showing posts with label Radioactive. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Radioactive. Show all posts
Friday, September 25, 2009
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An underground container that holds about half of the world’s supply of radium may be leaking into groundwater in northwestern Niagara County, an advisory group to federal regulators warns.
The Army Corps of Engineers, the federal agency responsible for investigating an area in the towns of Lewiston and Porter holding leftovers from the Manhattan Project, has found uranium contamination beneath ground level in portions of a former federal weapons site.
But corps officials insist there are no leaks in a 10-acre cell, known as the Interim Waste Containment Structure, constructed in the mid- 1980s on the 191-acre Niagara Falls Storage Site as a temporary container for various radioactive wastes and other radiological materials.
Those substances include uranium and about half the world’s supply of radium.
Joseph A. Gardella Jr., chairman of the Lake Ontario Ordnance Works Restoration Advisory Board — a group of residents, academics and industry professionals—believes the issue plays a major role in the ultimate decision on the future of the radioactive substances buried in Niagara County.
“The big question is: If the storage site is already showing some evidence of wear,” Gardella said, “isn’t that something that we should be concerned about?”
Input from the advisory board, which includes faculty from area universities with technical expertise, has been minimized by the corps for the past several years. Early last year, corps officials said the group no longer met the corps’ guidelines.
Despite being virtually ignored, advisory board members have continued to closely monitor issues related to both chemical and radiological contamination at the site.
“It’s really important for the community to be paying attention,” said Gardella, a chemistry professor at the University at Buffalo with decades of experience working on environmental issues in Western New York.
“If you’re minimizing the potential for leaks,” he continued, “that starts to factor into the argument
about the stability of the temporary storage site. And the stability of the storage site is going to be critical in arguing whether [the radioactive material] stays here or not.”
Neither the Corps of Engineers nor the advisory board has said it believes conditions constitute a public health risk at this time.
But the results of a plethora of studies and risk analyses are the building blocks for the final decision on whether to keep the radioactive materials buried in Western New York or to ship them somewhere else for disposal.
Since 1997, when Congress passed responsibility for cleanup of former Department of Defense sites to the Corps of Engineers, the agency has been investigating conditions at the former Lake Ontario Ordnance Works, which includes the Niagara Falls Storage Site. The former ordnance site began with TNT production prior to World War II on a portion of 7,500 acres in Lewiston and Porter. Work on the country’s atomic project officially began there in 1944.
The materials buried in the waste cell come from ore mined in Africa and brought to the United States.
They are unique in a global sense because of the concentration of uranium that was initially found within them, said William L. Boeck, an advisory board member and professor of physics and computer and information sciences at Niagara University.
While the radioactive substances in this case are naturally occurring— as opposed to being the by-products of a nuclear reactor — they are still “more than 10 times richer than anything that’s been found on earth,” Boeck said.
Between 30 and 65 percent of what was mined was uranium, a concentration far greater than anything found in current mining activities in places like Canada and Australia, Boeck said.
“There is nothing like this left on earth,” he said.
Uranium, a high energy and unstable radioactive material, changes into radium as part of a natural decay process.
The corps plans additional investigation related to the radioactive contamination on the Niagara Falls Storage Site. The agency has said it is currently evaluating the available options that would address site contamination.
Sampling could begin as early as this fall, Michelle Rhodes, acting program manager for the project, said via e-mail.
The corps said last year that it spends about $3 million annually on cleanup efforts at the storage site.
Though the additional work is planned, the head of the advisory board is raising questions about the quality of the agency’s study of the radiological contamination.
Gardella contends the corps “didn’t do anything scientific” in evaluating the underground uranium levels.
“I’m not saying they’re incompetent, but this isn’t world-class science and engineering,” Gardella said.
Corps representatives, in a public presentation last month, said their study indicates “no short-term competency issues” related to the interim containment cell.
Study of the contamination shows “no increasing trend in concentration of uranium that would be indicative of a breach,” Rhodes said in her e-mail.
The sides also differ on what uranium levels they accept as typical for the area, also known as “background” levels.
For more than a year, the advisory board has called on regulators to dig into the cell as part of their study. That is the only way to know if groundwater has infiltrated the structure, the board contends.
Corps officials have refused, saying that the procedure would be unsafe for workers who conduct the analysis and that they have “minimized, to the extent possible,” the limitations of the survey methods they did use.
“There is no need to compromise the integrity of the [cell] cap for data not needed at this time,” Rhodes said.
Boeck, the Niagara University professor, disagrees.
The cell boundary is about 50 feet from an area known as the Central Drainage Ditch, which drains into Lake Ontario, he said.
Corps officials say if data is needed later, possibly if the agency decides to remove the radioactive material, the intrusive sampling can be done then.
Gardella said the corps’ analysis— and resulting determination that there is no leak — is based more on computer simulations than actual data. He also said he is not diminishing the challenges that exist if the radioactive storage cell is penetrated; corps officials have not provided a list of pros and cons on the issue, he said.
Performing the intrusive action is necessary if anyone ultimately wants to know about conditions at the site, Gardella said.
The board believes the uranium contamination may have spread outside the storage site property. An investigation of whether it has spread is planned as part of the work that could begin in the fall.
Any discussion about a final decision on what happens at the Niagara Falls Storage Site is done in terms of years, not months.
“To the people in the community,” Gardella said, “the question is, ‘Is it going to be left there or is it going to be excavated and taken out?’ ”
http://www.buffalonews.com/cityregion/story/738086.html