OTTAWA — Dozens of secret shipments of intensely radioactive liquid waste from Chalk River should pose no significant danger to the one million Americans along the 1,700-kilometre truck route to a South Carolina reprocessing plant, say U.S. officials.
The greatest risk, according to an analysis by the U.S. Department of Energy, will be the inherent potential for an ordinary fatal traffic accident involving the weekly armed convoys of flatbed transport trucks hauling the weapons-grade uranium solution in fortified steel casks. But even that is considered unlikely, it says.
The solution is from the Chalk River nuclear laboratories’ Fissile Solution Storage Tank, or FISST, which holds about 23,000 litres of highly radioactive nitric acid solution from the production of molybdenum-99, which decays in technetium-99m, a vital medical isotope. Suspended in the solution are an estimated 166 kilograms of irradiated, highly enriched uranium (HEU), enough for almost seven small nuclear bombs.
Atomic Energy of Canada Ltd. (AECL) is paying the $60 million U.S. to accept the FISST solution at the federal Savannah River Site (SRS) nuclear complex for downblending into low-enriched uranium fuel feedstock for U.S. commercial power reactors.
The U.S. analysis offers new details on the scope of the contentious mission.
It describes one- or two-truck convoys, with each vehicle carrying a single cask with just 64 litres of FISST solution, travelling on weekly basis from Chalk River to New York State and on to the SRS in Aiken, S.C.
Based on those numbers, it would take at least 179 weekly shipments to move the entire contents of the FISST. Normally, that would require 3.4 years. But other U.S. government documents say no shipments will be made in winter.
The U.S. effort will involve the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Department of Transportation, National Nuclear Security Administration, Department of Homeland Security, Federal Emergency Management Agency, various state and local police departments and a possible call-up of a federal Nuclear Incident Response Team.
The worst-case transportation scenario — a severe accident involving extreme fire — would not breach the casks or cause a single “latent cancer fatality,” says the analysis.
It concludes: “The potential impacts ... including from terrorism and other harmful acts, would not be significantly different” than from the common transport of highly-enriched uranium (HEU) in its conventional, solid form.
As a result, the U.S. government ruled on Friday that no comprehensive environmental impact statement, or related public comment, was required on the issue.
Likewise, no environmental impact assessment will be done on this side of the border, say Canadian federal officials.
Three Canadian regulatory licence approvals are required (as well as at least two in the U.S.), but those are to be carried out in secret because the exact transportation route, shipment schedules and some other details are proscribed under federal law.
If the proposed plan wins final approvals as expected, it will be the first time North American nuclear officials have attempted to transport liquid bearing highly-enriched uranium and other radioactive contaminants along continental highways.
The decisions to forego environmental assessments and public debate alarm a growing coalition of environmental and health advocates on both sides of the border campaigning to halt the plan.
They question why the FISST solution, which dates from 1986-2003, can’t solidified in concrete and disposed of on-site, as AECL has been doing with similar liquid from isotope production for the past decade.
They’re suspicious about the Crown corporation’s apparent haste to dump the solution in the U.S., after telling the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission in October 2011 that AECL could take until 2020 to resolve what to do with the FISST contents.
Finally, they’re skeptical of the federal claim the move is motivated by non-proliferation objectives. The U.S. continues to ship fresh HEU to Chalk River for irradiation in the NRU research reactor, while federal officials repeatedly stress how technically difficult it would be for nuclear terrorists to separate the HEU from the FISST solution.
“High-level radioactive waste is the most dangerous material on earth. It has never been transported in liquid form over Canadian or American roads and bridges. Why should it be done for the first time now, without any public consultation or detailed consideration of alternatives?” Gordon Edwards, president of the Canadian Coalition for Nuclear Responsibility, asked in a statement Tuesday.
Anna Tilman of the International Institute of Concern for Public Health said vitrification, or solidifying, the FISST solution needs to be openly discussed.
“We haven’t received a satisfactory analysis for other options, other than sending it 2,000 kilometres away in a liquid form,” she said.
Tom Clements, an organizer with the South Carolina chapter of Friends of the Earth, says the SRS and its 60-year-old “H-Canyon” facility where the FISST downblending is to be done are coping with major federal spending cuts and dwindling work.
The AECL FISST contract, “means more money spread around, which is the primary goal of the project. The longer the shipments go on, the easier it will be for SRS to justify the project and operation of the H-Canyon,” he said in email.H-Canyon, “is in survival mode and the Canadian deal helps them hang on a bit longer.”
Original Article
Source: canada.com
Author: Ian MacLeod
The greatest risk, according to an analysis by the U.S. Department of Energy, will be the inherent potential for an ordinary fatal traffic accident involving the weekly armed convoys of flatbed transport trucks hauling the weapons-grade uranium solution in fortified steel casks. But even that is considered unlikely, it says.
The solution is from the Chalk River nuclear laboratories’ Fissile Solution Storage Tank, or FISST, which holds about 23,000 litres of highly radioactive nitric acid solution from the production of molybdenum-99, which decays in technetium-99m, a vital medical isotope. Suspended in the solution are an estimated 166 kilograms of irradiated, highly enriched uranium (HEU), enough for almost seven small nuclear bombs.
Atomic Energy of Canada Ltd. (AECL) is paying the $60 million U.S. to accept the FISST solution at the federal Savannah River Site (SRS) nuclear complex for downblending into low-enriched uranium fuel feedstock for U.S. commercial power reactors.
The U.S. analysis offers new details on the scope of the contentious mission.
It describes one- or two-truck convoys, with each vehicle carrying a single cask with just 64 litres of FISST solution, travelling on weekly basis from Chalk River to New York State and on to the SRS in Aiken, S.C.
Based on those numbers, it would take at least 179 weekly shipments to move the entire contents of the FISST. Normally, that would require 3.4 years. But other U.S. government documents say no shipments will be made in winter.
The U.S. effort will involve the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Department of Transportation, National Nuclear Security Administration, Department of Homeland Security, Federal Emergency Management Agency, various state and local police departments and a possible call-up of a federal Nuclear Incident Response Team.
The worst-case transportation scenario — a severe accident involving extreme fire — would not breach the casks or cause a single “latent cancer fatality,” says the analysis.
It concludes: “The potential impacts ... including from terrorism and other harmful acts, would not be significantly different” than from the common transport of highly-enriched uranium (HEU) in its conventional, solid form.
As a result, the U.S. government ruled on Friday that no comprehensive environmental impact statement, or related public comment, was required on the issue.
Likewise, no environmental impact assessment will be done on this side of the border, say Canadian federal officials.
Three Canadian regulatory licence approvals are required (as well as at least two in the U.S.), but those are to be carried out in secret because the exact transportation route, shipment schedules and some other details are proscribed under federal law.
If the proposed plan wins final approvals as expected, it will be the first time North American nuclear officials have attempted to transport liquid bearing highly-enriched uranium and other radioactive contaminants along continental highways.
The decisions to forego environmental assessments and public debate alarm a growing coalition of environmental and health advocates on both sides of the border campaigning to halt the plan.
They question why the FISST solution, which dates from 1986-2003, can’t solidified in concrete and disposed of on-site, as AECL has been doing with similar liquid from isotope production for the past decade.
They’re suspicious about the Crown corporation’s apparent haste to dump the solution in the U.S., after telling the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission in October 2011 that AECL could take until 2020 to resolve what to do with the FISST contents.
Finally, they’re skeptical of the federal claim the move is motivated by non-proliferation objectives. The U.S. continues to ship fresh HEU to Chalk River for irradiation in the NRU research reactor, while federal officials repeatedly stress how technically difficult it would be for nuclear terrorists to separate the HEU from the FISST solution.
“High-level radioactive waste is the most dangerous material on earth. It has never been transported in liquid form over Canadian or American roads and bridges. Why should it be done for the first time now, without any public consultation or detailed consideration of alternatives?” Gordon Edwards, president of the Canadian Coalition for Nuclear Responsibility, asked in a statement Tuesday.
Anna Tilman of the International Institute of Concern for Public Health said vitrification, or solidifying, the FISST solution needs to be openly discussed.
“We haven’t received a satisfactory analysis for other options, other than sending it 2,000 kilometres away in a liquid form,” she said.
Tom Clements, an organizer with the South Carolina chapter of Friends of the Earth, says the SRS and its 60-year-old “H-Canyon” facility where the FISST downblending is to be done are coping with major federal spending cuts and dwindling work.
The AECL FISST contract, “means more money spread around, which is the primary goal of the project. The longer the shipments go on, the easier it will be for SRS to justify the project and operation of the H-Canyon,” he said in email.H-Canyon, “is in survival mode and the Canadian deal helps them hang on a bit longer.”
Original Article
Source: canada.com
Author: Ian MacLeod
No comments:
Post a Comment