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| | | published Friday, February 12, 2010 | 394 Views :: 0 Comments |
Op-Ed from Dan Yoken
On February 4, 2010, Secretary of Energy Chu testified before the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee to discuss the President’s FY2011 budget request. While we agree with many of Chu’s commitments to clean energy and environmental cleanup, the focus on nuclear energy projects, the imbalance of the Nuclear Waste Panel and the hefty commitment to MOX in the Nonproliferation budget present problems that could lead to debilitating results in coming years.
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| | | published Friday, January 29, 2010 | 737 Views :: 0 Comments |
By Patrick Oppmann, CNN
January 29, 2010 8:02 a.m. EST
Hanford Nuclear Site, Washington (CNN) -- The federal government has set aside nearly $2 billion in stimulus funds to clean up Washington State's decommissioned Hanford nuclear site, once the center of the country's Cold War plutonium production.
That is more stimulus funding than some entire states have received, which has triggered a debate as to whether the money is being properly spent.
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| | | published Wednesday, January 27, 2010 | 1550 Views :: 2 Comments |
Alliance for Nuclear Accountability a national network of organizations working to address issues of nuclear weapons production and waste cleanup
http://www.ananuclear.org
for further information, contact:
Nickolas Roth 914-673-6666
Susan Gordon 505-577-8438
or local contacts listed at end of advisory
for immediate release Wednesday, January 27, 2010
WHAT TO LOOK FOR IN THE U.S. DEPT. OF ENERGY FY 2011
NUCLEAR WEAPONS BUDGET REQUEST
The FY 2011 budget request will be released on Monday, February 1,
2010. The Obama administration has laid out an aggressive
nonproliferation agenda that includes deep reductions in nuclear
stockpiles, ratification of a nuclear test ban, and decreased
prominence for nuclear weapons in US defense policy. Despite this
agenda, the Department of Energy’s (DOE) budget request will ask
Congress to significantly increase nuclear weapons activities,
including funding for construction of new facilities that will expand
U.S. warhead production capacity. The DOE request will not reflect
recent independent scientific conclusions that existing nuclear weapons
can be reliably maintained for decades under current, well-established
programs.
The Alliance for Nuclear Accountability (ANA), a
national network representing communities downwind and downstream from
U.S. nuclear weapons facilities, is concerned that increased funding
for nuclear energy and weapons research and production will rob
precious resources for needed environmental cleanup and clean,
sustainable energy solutions.
Items of interest:
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| | | published Friday, January 22, 2010 | 358 Views :: 0 Comments |
Beyond Nuclear Bulletin
January 21, 2010
“The Hidden and Not-So-Hidden Costs
of Entergy’s Vermont Yankee”
Background:
Despite assuring the State of Vermont for more than a year that it had
no buried pipes carrying radioactivity, Entergy Nuclear’s Vermont
Yankee reactor has revealed it is leaking radioactive tritium, almost
certainly from underground pipes that it now admits do exist. In fact,
Vermont Yankee has even announced the discovery of “highly radioactive
water,” 50 times more radioactive than would be allowed in drinking
water by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Nuclear expert Arnie
Gundersen has made clear that Entergy Nuclear Vermont Yankee has indeed
lied about the existence of buried pipes over the course of many months.
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| | | published Monday, December 21, 2009 | 827 Views :: 0 Comments |
The Modernization of the US Nuclear Weapons Complex in Light of the Renewal of the START Treaty
December 16, 2009
The United States nuclear stockpile of more than 2,000 warheads is
safe, secure and reliable; over the next ten years, the number of
warheads in our deployed stockpile will drop by twenty-five to thirty
percent, and both the US and Russia have indicated these reductions are
only a first step toward deeper reductions. Even so, as long as the US
relies on a nuclear deterrent, the need for confidence in our arsenal
increases as the number of warheads in our arsenal decreases. The
recently released JASON report on Stockpile Stewardship indicates that
the US stockpile is, at present, safe, secure and reliable. That is the
starting point for the discussion about new warhead production
facilities.
The current nuclear weapons complex is comprised of
eight facilities spread across the southern United States, from
Lawrence Livermore in California to Savannah River in South Carolina.
At three of these sites, the Department of Energy’s nuclear weapons
wing, the National Nuclear Security Administration, has major new
facilities on the drawing board, and in the budget. These facilities,
if they are built, will expand the United States’ capacity to design
and build new nuclear weapons.
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| | | published Thursday, December 03, 2009 | 770 Views :: 0 Comments |
By Thomas Burr, Salt Lake Tribune
Originally appeared here
December 2, 2009
One hurdle down, opponents of Salt Lake City-based EnergySolutions' plan to bring foreign radioactive waste to Utah are now bracing for a tough fight in the Senate over a proposed ban on the stuff.
The U.S. House overwhelmingly passed legislation Wednesday that would bar low-level radioactive waste from being brought from foreign countries into the United States for disposal. The measure is aimed squarely at EnergySolutions' efforts to bring 20,000 tons of Italian waste to Tennessee for processing, then ship some 1,600 tons of radioactive leftovers to the company's Tooele County site for burial.
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| | | published Wednesday, December 02, 2009 | 288 Views :: 0 Comments |
December 2, 2009
Originally
appeared at
http://www.nytimes.com/cwire/2009/12/02/02climatewire-yucca-mountain-nuclear-disposal-site-is-dead-59660.html?pagewanted=print
By PETER BEHR of ClimateWire
Former
Sen. Pete Domenici, a longtime advocate of nuclear power, said
yesterday that it is time to give up attempts to create a permanent
disposal site for the nation's nuclear waste fuel at Yucca Mountain in
Nevada. He urged the Obama administration to move ahead with a planned
blue-ribbon commission to find an alternative.
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| | | published Tuesday, October 13, 2009 | 742 Views :: 1 Comments |
October 09, 2009
The Snake River Alliance, Idaho's anti-nuclear watchdog, turns 30
BY ROCKY BARKER - rbarker@idahostatesman.com
Copyright: © 2009 Idaho Statesman
The anti-nuclear Snake River Alliance got its start on a bench at Boise's Julia Davis Park
None of its founders can remember the actual date of the Snake River Alliance's first meeting in 1979.
It was in the spring, soon after the Three Mile Island Reactor in Pennsylvania partially melted down, raising fears nationwide about nuclear power. A report by U.S. Geological Survey scientist Jack Barraclough had just been made public showing iodine 129 in concentrations more than 25 times the allowable standards for drinking water near a well at the Idaho National Laboratory in eastern Idaho. Dorian Duffin, a Rupert farm boy and a student at Boise State University, was meeting on campus with other students to form a group to do something about the waste. Across the Boise River, other people, including pregnant mother Diane Jones, were meeting at the same time on a Julia Davis Park bench after answering a classified ad about forming an anti-nuclear group.
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| | | published Monday, September 14, 2009 | 1116 Views :: 0 Comments |
Monday, Sep. 14, 2009
By Annette Cary, Tri-City Herald staff writer
Making Hanford the nation's storage site for tons of excess mercury
could interfere with environmental cleanup of the site, according to
government agencies.
The states of Washington and Oregon, the Hanford Communities and the
Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation each have
submitted written comments to the Department of Energy outlining their
concerns.
"It is unacceptable for the nation's leadership to consider sending
12,000 tons of elemental mercury to Hanford when it will be another 50
years before existing waste is cleaned up," the tribes said in a letter
to DOE.
DOE is looking across the nation for mercury storage sites after the
Mercury Export Ban Act of 2008 prohibited the export of mercury
beginning in 2013 and required the agency to have facilities ready to
manage and store mercury generated in the United States.
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| | | published Monday, August 17, 2009 | 1690 Views :: 1 Comments |
August 17, 2009
Don’t ‘dump’ on INL: Mercury hearing draws crowd in Idaho Falls
by Mark Mendiola
Throwing the weight of his office against the U.S. Department of Energy’s consideration of the Idaho National Laboratory as a storage site for large
volumes of toxic liquid mercury, Gov. C.L. “Butch” Otter personally testified here against the proposal at the seventh of eight nationwide DOE scoping hearings. He characterized the site as a “dump.”
Beatrice Brailsford, program director for the Snake River Alliance, an anti-nuclear watchdog group, questioned why DOE was the federal agency put in charge of mercury disposal, a controversial environmental issue.
“Why has mercury become the government’s responsibility?” she asked, noting the U.S. Department of Defense has nearly 5,000 tons of mercury stored at
sites in Indiana, New Jersey and Ohio that could be shipped to the Hawthorne
Army Depot in Nevada.
Originally published at: http://www.idahobusiness.net/archive.htm/2009/08/17/Dont-dump-on-INL-Mercury-hearing-draws-crowd-in-Idaho-Falls
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