ECA Update: June 11, 2013
Published: Tue, 06/11/13
House panel passes $638B defense bill
Jeremy Herb, The Hill June 6, 2013 The House Armed Services Committee passed its sweeping Defense authorization early Thursday morning, authorizing $638 billion in defense spending.
The Pentagon policy bill includes stripping commanders' ability to overturn guilty verdicts to deal with a rise in military sexual assaults, a prohibition on transferring Guantánamo detainees to the United States and a rejection of new base closures.
The committee passed its authorization bill on a 59-2 vote after a 16-hour mark-up, which began Wednesday morning and lasted until 2:14 a.m. Thursday. The bill will be debated on the House floor next week.
Reps. Jackie Speier (D-Calif.) and John Garamendi (D-Calif.) were the only committee members to vote against the final legislation.
The bill provides an increase of $5.1 billion for the war in Afghanistan from the Pentagon request, and it sets base Pentagon spending at $526.6 billion, the same amount that was requested in President Obama's budget.
That funding level is $52.2 billion over the budget caps set by sequestration, however, a topic that was debated only sparingly on Wednesday.
Because the panel's bill was over the budget caps -- as are the Senate and Obama administration budgets -- the Pentagon could be facing another across-the-board cut in 2014 if sequester is not averted.
"I think in this committee there's a growing awareness that sequestration is a fact of life, so whatever we do here today will wind up being reduced by a significant amount," said Rep. Adam Smith (D-Wash.), the top Democrat on the committee.
After 1 a.m. Thursday, the committee debated a measure from Rep. Jim Cooper (D-Tenn.) to give the Pentagon $20 billion in flexibility to transfer funds between accounts, up from $3.5 billion granted in the authorization bill.
Pentagon officials have warned that the military is facing shortfalls in its operations and maintenance accounts and they've said flexibility could help alleviate the problem to some degree.
"This is insanity, and so far this committee has not done anything about it," Cooper said. "I'm not saying this is a perfect solution, but it is a start... I am sorry it is one in the morning before we face the elephant in the room."
The amendment failed, however, on a 16-45 vote, and was opposed by both Armed Services Chairman Buck McKeon (R-Calif.) and Smith.
"What you're asking is to give full discretion for $20 billion. That really doesn't solve the problem," McKeon said. "What we really need to do is get rid of the sequestration."
As the Pentagon faces tightened budgets, Smith criticized the committee for rejecting several cost-cutting measures that the Pentagon had requested, including a new round of base closures and new healthcare fees.
"I don't think this committee has the luxury to be so parochial," Smith said.
He was clearly in the minority, however, as the committee rejected his amendment 44 to 18 to reverse a restriction on Pentagon planning for future base closures.
Smith also fought a losing battle to lift a restriction on transferring detainees from Guantánamo onto U.S. soil, which has been included in the past several Defense authorization bills. The prohibition is a key roadblock to President Obama's new push to close the detention facility.
Just as the full House passed a restriction on building U.S. facilities in the military construction appropriations bill, the committee rejected Smith's amendment on a 23-38 vote.
The panel did not get into a major debate on military sexual assault Wednesday, but the bill included significant changes to the military's judicial code in order to deal with sexual assault.
The panel included legislation from Reps. Mike Turner (R-Ohio) and Niki Tonsgas (D-Mass.) that stripped military commanders' authority to overturn guilty verdicts in a post-trial review.
The adopted measure also established a mandatory sentence of dismissal or dishonorable discharge for service members who were convicted of sexual assault.
There has been a major push in Congress to tackle sexual assault in the military on the heels of a Pentagon report estimating 26,000 assaults last year, up from 19,000 in 2010.
The committee's markup did not address proposals to make larger changes to the military's judicial code, including one from Rep. Speier to take sexual assault cases outside the chain of command.
Speier told The Hill on Wednesday that she was working with Republicans to get a vote on her amendment when the authorization bill goes to the floor next week.
Top military leaders expressed uniform opposition to taking cases outside the chain of command during a Senate hearing on Tuesday.
The most partisan debate in the committee Wednesday focused on missile defense issues, in particular Republican plans to build a new East Coast missile site by 2018.
The committee passed an amendment from Turner to direct $140 million for construction on the site by a 33-27 vote.
"It is imperative that we move quickly to ensure that our missile-defense system is expanded and it is completed," Turner said.
Democrats argued that the technology is not yet ready and it would be premature to begin building a new site.
"This is too much money, too early to be helpful to the security of the American people," said Cooper, the ranking member of the Strategic Forces subcommittee.
The Republicans on the panel also tangled with Democrats over the Pentagon's biofuels program, a frequent target of GOP lawmakers for cuts.
The committee pushed back on a number of weapons programs that the Pentagon wanted to retire, including the Global Hawk Block 30 drone and seven cruisers and two amphibious warships.
Democrats also expressed concerns about the potential for discrimination against gay service members after the committee expanded a "conscience clause" for military chaplains in last year's bill. The amendment from Rep. John Fleming (R-La.) stated that the military had to accommodate service members' actions and speech, in addition to beliefs, which was the current language.
The Senate Armed Services Committee will be marking up its version of the Defense authorization bill in closed session next week.
Yucca Mountain still haunts nuclear waste issue Darius Dixon, Politico June 7, 2013 The Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee received more than 2,000 comments on the draft nuclear waste legislation it released in April, and many conveyed a common message: How can we trust the government to handle this issue after the failure of Yucca Mountain?
The comments -- from state governments, environmental organizations, industry groups, attorneys and private citizens -- repeatedly pointed to the Nevada site that Congress selected in 1987 as the nation's sole nuclear repository, only to watch the project run aground amid opposition from the Obama administration and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid.
Some commenters weren't yet willing to give up on Yucca, while others asked the obvious question: How do we know your new legislation won't be undercut the same way?
The panel released the comments on Wednesday. Although they totaled more than 3,200 pages, more than 2,600 of them appear to be a page-long chain letter that ends with, "Please scrap your 'discussion draft' and start over."
Many of the comments blended a respectful tone with pointed statements about Congress's decades of policymaking on nuclear waste.
Example: "We applaud your efforts to re-invigorate the dialogue to address this nation's high-level waste and spent nuclear fuel disposal policy," wrote Michael Corradini, president of the American Nuclear Society, a professional organization of scientists and engineers.
"But we must also express our concern that lack of action by the Congress and the Administration in addressing the Nuclear Waste Policy Act (NWPA) of 1982 et seq. sets a poor precedent for any future legislation on this matter," he added, referring to the law that Congress amended five years later to designate Yucca Mountain. "The [Nuclear Waste Administration Act] could be a step forward in fulfilling the federal government's responsibilities but it must be done within the context of the NWPA, rather than replace it."
Former House Speaker Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.) also filed comments, chiding the administration for halting work on Yucca but commending lawmakers for acting on the waste issue.
The Nuclear Waste Strategy Coalition, which includes public service commissioners and utilities, hit the same note. The draft "does not adequately reaffirm the need to carry out the important statutory requirements pertaining to the nation's first permanent repository at Yucca Mountain," wrote coalition Chairman David Wright, who also served as chairman of the South Carolina Public Service Commission at the time the letter was submitted. "The NWPA is the law of the land and should be enforced."
The draft legislation was written by Senate Energy and Natural Resources Chairman Ron Wyden (D-Ore.); Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, the panel's top Republican; and Sens. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) and Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.).
The comments reflect mixed feelings about the new legislative effort among nuclear industry observers and advocates.
While the lawmakers hope to carve out new ground on nuclear waste policy without saying the Y-word -- and thereby sinking the bill entirely -- Yucca Mountain still has many supporters in both parties who are waiting to see if the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals will force the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to continue its review of the project. But for now, the Senate bill is the only legislative vehicle for addressing the nuclear waste piling up at reactor sites around the country.
The nuclear industry hit a more conciliatory tone in its comments, focusing more on the positive aspects of the draft and submitting detailed answers to questions lawmakers posited when they released the bill.
"The industry fully supports the resumption of the Yucca Mountain licensing process, but this alone is not sufficient to create a sustainable, integrated program," Nuclear Energy Institute chief Marv Fertel wrote. He added that the industry believes in "concurrently pursuing a consolidated storage program and possibly a search for a second repository location."
Fertel explained industry's opposition to the legislation's proposal to head a new government nuclear waste agency with a single administrator, proposing instead a board of directors with a CEO. He also detailed the industry's position on other issues, including how the link between temporary storage sites and a permanent repository should -- and shouldn't -- be defined.
The National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners, on the other hand, came out more aggressively, with Executive Director Charles Gray writing that "the federal government must improve its dismal record on waste disposal."
When commenting about how the siting process for a storage site should differ from that of a repository, NARUC noted, "We in effect already have multiple interim storage facilities in operation currently due to the federal government's failure to follow current law and accept waste for permanent disposal."
"We believe your legislation is, overall, a step in the right direction," Gray wrote, though he still took issue with details about the new nuclear waste organization.
"NARUC's member commissioners are best positioned to protect ratepayer interests in waste disposal issues and must be part of the board of directors and any oversight bodies for the new entities," he said. The association was also skeptical about proposals for officials from other government agencies to oversee the new organization, writing that as drafted the oversight board is "very likely to exacerbate the problems which plagued the management of nuclear waste under the current structure."
NARUC is a party to the lawsuit seeking to force the NRC to continue its Yucca Mountain review.
Other commenters included the Natural Resources Defense Council, Beyond Nuclear and the Nuclear Energy Information Service, as well as the states of Massachusetts and Utah. Lake Barrett, the former acting director of the Energy Department's now-defunct Office of Civilian Radioactive Waste Management, and former Senate Energy Chairman Pete Domenici (R-N.M.) -- a Blue Ribbon Commission member -- also filed comments.
Nuclear waste: Trying to move the mountain
The Boston Globe, Editorial June 10, 2013 One manifestation of political gridlock that President Obama and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid can't blame on Republicans is the failure to build a federal repository for nuclear waste. Nevada's Yucca Mountain was selected as the site in 2002, setting off hysterical opposition from many Nevadans and some environmental groups. Obama repudiated the Yucca Mountain plan in order to placate Nevada voters. It was hardly an act of courage, and Obama has done little to find a new site.
Wisely, state Attorney General Martha Coakley and Senate President Therese Murray sent a letter to Washington last month in support of a bipartisan Senate proposal to end the three-decade impasse on storing radioactive fuel. Democrats Dianne Feinstein and Ron Wyden have joined with Republicans Lisa Murkowski and Lamar Alexander in calling for a new agency to restart the process of siting a nuclear-waste repository. The new agency would solicit proposals from communities that would welcome the repository as a source of jobs and investment.
Nationally, the amount of nuclear waste sitting in temporary storage has grown to 70,000 tons, prompting Coakley to join with colleagues from Connecticut, New York, and Vermont to ask the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to come up with fresh ideas for handling the temporary storage problem. Currently, spent rods sit in cooling pools at plants such as Pilgrim in Plymouth, where Murray lives.
"This is not an abstract problem for many people in Massachusetts," Coakley declared. Nor is it an abstract problem for others around the nation. It no longer should be for Congress or the White House, either.
Wilson wants study of savings in MOX project Rob Pavey, The Augusta Chronicle June 7, 2013 A South Carolina congressman wants the Obama administration to take a closer look at its budget-cutting plan to scale back work on the mixed oxide fuel plant being built at Savannah River Site, suggesting that cost- saving efficiencies could be found in the program.
In an amendment to the House Armed Services Subcommittee's version of the fiscal 2014 defense budget, U.S. Rep. Joe Wilson said the administration's request - which would cut $132.7 million, or 29.3 percent, from the project's 2014 construction budget - might not reduce taxpayer costs and could delay the plutonium disposition project.
The facility, which is about 60 percent complete, is being built to dispose of surplus plutonium by blending it into commercial nuclear fuel. However, the plant has become increasingly expensive and behind schedule. Earlier this year, the U.S. Department of Energy proposed slowing the project and studying alternatives because completing the MOX plant "may be unaffordable."
Wilson's goal is to keep the MOX program alive, spokeswoman Caroline Delleney said.
"The study he requests would look at bringing in additional surplus plutonium, which would be a vital step to ensuring our national security while simultaneously increasing missions for the dedicated workforce at SRS," she said.
The amendment specifies an April 1 completion date for the study.
A House vote on the bill is scheduled next week, after which the Senate will mark up its own version of the National Defense Authorization Act.
West Texas site opens for low-level nuke waste, takes material from federal lab in New Mexico Associated Press June 6, 2013 ANDREWS, Texas -- Republican mega-donor Harold Simmons' remote hazardous waste dump in West Texas began accepting low-level radioactive material Thursday from a federal lab in New Mexico -- the latest step in Simmons' vision of a site that accepts all types of waste.
The first two containers carrying radioactive waste from Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico were placed into an 8-inch-thick, reinforced concrete canister at the bottom of a new burial site.
"We wanted to be a one-stop shop with everything in," Waste Control Specialists President Rod Baltzer told U.S., Texas and New Mexico officials at a ribbon-cutting ceremony. "We're proud to have a large and very robust complex."
The 90-acre site for federal waste is part of the company's 1,380-acre operation near Andrews and close to the New Mexico border. Waste Control Specialist began accepting low-level radioactive waste last year from Texas and Vermont members of a compact, and about three dozen other states. That waste is buried at a 30-acre site at the operation.
Also buried at Simmons' massive dump are PCBs from the Hudson River in New York and Cold War-era radioactive waste from a shuttered weapons plant in Ohio, where purified uranium metal was processed for use in reactors to produce plutonium for nuclear weapons from the 1950s until 1989.
As many as two shipments a week will come from the New Mexico laboratory, officials said.
Company spokesman Chuck McDonald said the Los Alamos waste is derived from nuclear materials stored at the laboratory for decades. After a large wildfire lapped at the edges of lab property in summer 2011, New Mexico Gov. Susana Martinez identified removal of the waste as a top priority. The goal is to remove 3,706 cubic meters of Los Alamos waste by June 30, 2014.
Environmental groups have long worried about the site's geology and contamination of nearby underground water sources. However, the company says the site about 375 miles west of Dallas is safe.
Waste Control has spent nearly $500 million to open the dump. In 2009, the state issued two licenses to the company to bury low-level radioactive waste, making it the nation's only dump for all classes -- A, B and C -- of nuclear debris and the first low-level site to open in 30 years.
One license pertains to the Texas and Vermont compact that allows for disposal of radioactive materials such as uranium, plutonium and thorium from commercial power plants, academic institutions and medical schools. In 2001, though, Texas lawmakers approved allowing low-level radioactive waste from 36 other states to be buried in West Texas.
The Texas Low-Level Radioactive Disposal Compact Commission looks at petitions to bury waste from the compact states and the three dozen other states on a case-by-case basis.
The other license deals with similar materials from sites run by the DOE, including Los Alamos and Hanford Site in Washington state and other federal facilities.
Simmons, who did not attend the ceremony and is one of the world's wealthiest men, has given Republican Rick Perry's campaigns $1.1 million during his time as Texas' governor. The governor is responsible for appointing environmental commissioners.
The West Texas site was picked in part because of a layer of red clay that proponents say is almost impermeable, and because of the arid climate. Rain had been scarce in the area until Wednesday night, when storms dumped rain and baseball-sized hail. Baltzer poked fun at the unusual weather.
"The area is known for its lack of rainfall, give or take last night," he said.
NRC issues post-Fukushima safety rule Julian Hattem, The Hill June 6, 2013 A new safety rule developed in the aftermath of the disaster at Japan's Fukushima power station is being handed down to nuclear plants.
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) on Thursday directed 31 reactors to improve the way they let off pressure from the containment buildings that house reactor cores.
The new requirements are meant to ensure that the vents can withstand the pressure, temperatures, radiation and amounts of hydrogen from a damaged reactor. In an emergency, they would stop pressure from building up inside the reactor.
In a statement, NRC Chairwoman Allison Macfarlane said the rule "will help these plants continue to protect the public and the environment even if emergency systems can't immediately stop an accident." She added, "By safely releasing built-up pressure and hydrogen, the plants will preserve the buildings that contain radioactive material."
The commission believes that the new requirements will allow plant staff to operate the vents safely if the reactor core is damaged.
The nuclear industry commended the rule.
In a statement to The Hill, Nuclear Energy Institute spokesman Steve Kerekes said it was "in line with the industry's ideas on the most effective means to address the venting issue, and we consider the timing of the phased approach to be achievable."
Plants will have different deadlines to comply with the requirements depending on their refueling schedules, but the first plants will need to have completed some improvements by June 2014.
The new regulation is part of a series of orders developed after the 2011 disaster at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant. A Platts survey of companies released on Thursday estimated that power plant operators could spend up to $3.6 billion over the next three to five years in response to the tragedy.
In March, the NRC delayed issuing new standards for systems to filter out radioactive material from any gases vented during an accident.
Those systems could cost as much as $45 million each, according to industry groups, though proponents say they are necessary to prevent the kind of catastrophe that occurred at Fukushima.
Hanford Advisory Board wants DOE to slow down on transferring areas to long-term program Annette Cary, Tri-City Herald June 8, 2013 The Hanford Advisory Board is asking the Department of Energy to slow down on transferring parts of Hanford from its environmental cleanup program to its long-term stewardship program.
Late last summer, DOE announced that it had finished cleaning up a reactor area at Hanford for the first time.
An industrial complex with more than 100 buildings that once surrounded F Reactor had been torn down. Contaminated soil and waste sites -- where debris was disposed of in unlined pits and trenches -- had been dug up. What remained of Hanford's former experimental animal farm, including buried carcasses and radioactive manure, had been hauled off.
DOE is preparing to transfer control of the area around the reactor from Washington Closure Hanford, the cleanup contractor that is finishing up environmental cleanup at Hanford along the Columbia River.
Control would be passed to Mission Support Alliance, the contractor that provides services to DOE across the Hanford nuclear reservation, as part of Hanford's long-term stewardship program.
"The key implied concept is that the LTS (long-term stewardship) program assumes responsibility for a remediated site after all cleanup has been demonstrated to be complete," the board said in a document it approved Friday to be sent to DOE.
But at the F Reactor Area, a final decision on required cleanup has not been issued and is not expected to be issued for at least a year, the board said. Turning the area over to long-term stewardship before that seems illogical, creating confusion of responsibility and authority, the board said.
"It is sending the message that we are done before we are done," said board member Liz Mattson.
More waste sites needing cleanup could be identified, but the current long-term stewardship contract does not include any provisions to address that, the board said.
In addition, only surface cleanup has been completed in the area around F Reactor, board members said.
Much of the reactor still stands. It has been cocooned, or put in temporary storage by tearing it down to little more than its radioactive core, sealing it up and reroofing it. It is planned to stand that way for 75 years to let radiation decay to more manageable levels.
The area also has contaminated groundwater, and there is a suspicion that there may be contamination beneath the reactor from its former pool that held irradiated fuel under water.
DOE wants to start moving areas of Hanford to long-term stewardship as most work along the Columbia River, other than groundwater cleanup, is completed and the River Corridor Contract ends. The support services contract, now held by Mission Support Alliance, is in place for a longer term at Hanford.
DOE's goal is for better monitoring and follow-up of sites under long-term stewardship than may be done under cleanup programs, where the focus is on completing a project and moving on, said Jeff Frey, of DOE.DOE may need to use a different term than long-term stewardship or better describe it to make sure it is understood that DOE may have to return to areas to address environmental cleanup or other issues, he said.
SRS citizens advisory board applicants sought The Augusta Chronicle June 10, 2013 Savannah River Site is seeking new members interested in volunteering for a two-year term on its Citizens Advisory Board.
The Savannah River Site Citizens Advisory Board is a community board that provides advice and recommendations, from a community perspective, to the U.S. Department of Energy on environmental cleanup activities that are taking place at SRS.
No special training or knowledge of SRS is required. Applicants with an interest in their community, and who can commit up to 20 hours per month attending meetings and studying issues, are encouraged to apply. Members must also be willing to work to develop a group consensus of ideas.
Several CAB vacancies exist for 2014.
The CAB is made up of citizens from Georgia and South Carolina. Those living outside of the SRS area are reimbursed at the government rates for travel and lodging when required.
The deadline to apply is Aug. 16 and details and applications can be found online at
Additional information and applications can be found online at cab.srs.gov.
A look at LANL's economic impact in era of fed budget cuts Dan Mayfield, Albuquerque Business First June 5, 2013 Los Alamos National Laboratory spent $634 million on goods and services last year, and $356 million of that went to New Mexico businesses, including $233 million to small businesses, according to an economic development report the lab released this week.
That's about $100 million more spent with New Mexico companies than LANL's Albuquerque counterpart, Sandia National Laboratories, in their respective fiscal years in 2012.
Compared to 2011, however, LANL saw a big drop in spending. In 2011, the lab spent $528 million with New Mexico companies, when it had more than 11,000 employees.
"As we look ahead to the next 70 years, it is clear that a healthy laboratory contributes to a healthy New Mexico -- and vice versa," said Charles McMillan, laboratory director, in the report.
The lab paid about $85 million in state taxes in 2012, and had a total economic impact of $2.9 billion. Los Alamos has about 9,500 employees, with an annual payroll of $749 million. A major budget cut had a big impact on LANL in 2012.
Sandia National Laboratories spent about $900 million on goods and services in its 2012 fiscal year, and New Mexico businesses saw more than $400 million of that.
In its annual report, released in February, Sandia said that for the fiscal year, which began Oct. 1, 2011, the labs spent $2,472,131,000. Of that, $256 million was spent with small businesses in New Mexico, and $66 million to the state of New Mexico for corporate taxes for the fiscal year.
Since 2007, LANL has bought a total of $4.7 billion in goods and services, $2.5 billion of which was in New Mexico.
The lab also works to develop technical and business skills in northern New Mexico by investing $1 million annually in economic development, as well as supporting a variety of education initiatives.
A test that changed history
Devin Powell, Special to the Washington Post June 4, 2013 The sun was rising as a teenage boy swung a metal wand back and forth, back and forth. The Geiger counter hanging at his waist clicked, testifying to the radiation streaming from the ground and through his body.
The White Sands Missile Range in the New Mexico desert is home to Trinity, the place where the nuclear age began on July 16, 1945. Twice a year, in April and October, the site has opened to the public. Each time, thousands of people arrive by Winnebago, motorcycle and tour bus, making a pilgrimage to check out the slight crater left by history's first atom bomb test. Measuring just 340 feet across, the depression is underwhelming, a slight dent in the ground. A stone obelisk marks ground zero, where the bomb was detonated atop a 100-foot steel tower.
The Trinity weapon, a version of which destroyed Nagasaki on Aug. 9, 1945, used plutonium. That fuel was more far more efficient than the uranium in the bomb dropped over Hiroshima on Aug. 6, but it was thought to be less certain to work.
When TNT in the Trinity device exploded, it compressed plutonium atoms inside. This set off a non-plutonium source of neutrons that split some of the plutonium atoms, triggering a chain reaction that led to the massive explosion and now famous flash of light and mushroom cloud.
J. Robert Oppenheimer and the other physicists who assembled the bomb's core in a ranch house on-site, using tape and plastic sheets to keep the dust out, took bets on whether this process would work. No one knew how big the explosion would be if it did happen. In the end, the blast was equivalent to about 19 kilotons of TNT going off at once, and people nearly 200 miles away felt the force or saw the flash. (An official statement released in response to many concerns stated that "a remotely located ammunitions magazine containing a considerable amount of high explosives and pyrotechnics exploded" but that "there was no loss of life or limb to anyone.")
After rupturing, the plutonium atoms transformed into a host of radioactive elements. Some, such as a form of iodine, dissipated quickly. Those still present in the sandy soil of Trinity in significant quantities today tend to be entities that will stick around for a long time, such as cesium-137, europium-152 and europium-155. One particularly long-lived isotope has a half-life of 24,100 years.
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When the teenage boy swept his Geiger counter back and forth near ground zero, the instrument showed he was getting about half a millirem of radiation per hour from these materials. That measurement squared with official readings from safety officials who regularly sweep test the site and haven't seen much change from year to year. At that rate, a two-hour visit delivered a dose of alpha particles and gamma rays equal to about a tenth of the radiation that a person soaks up during a chest X-ray.
My own Geiger counter, a yellow metal box stuffed with Cold War-era circuits, proved to be a better conversation starter than scientific instrument. As I wiggled the knobs, the needle refused to budge. That turned out to be a good thing.
"If that needle were moving right now, we'd all be dead soon," radiation hobbyist Jim Hill told me as I struggled to get a reading. This particular model had been designed to detect only extreme radiation, he said, such as the high levels present in the immediate aftermath of a nuclear explosion or meltdown.
Hill has a long personal history with the bomb.
When the mushroom cloud billowed up, he was 18 months old and living in Albuquerque, about 100 miles away. Army officials knocked on his family's door and said they wanted to check on his health. Every six months afterward, all through his childhood, they showed up to check on him. He has never seen the report that he suspects the military officials were compiling on the effects of radiation on people. He said that so far he has hasn't noticed any health problems due to the bomb.
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Brandishing his own radiation reader, Hill led the way to a particularly hot spot: an ant mound. As he passed his baton over the pile, the instrument clicked faster; the reading jumped by about 25 percent.
Ants play a special role in research being conducted at Trinity by retired physicist Robb Hermes of Los Alamos National Laboratory, a four-to-five-hour drive away.
When Hermes first visited the site as a tourist in 2003, he noticed fragments of what looked like green glass littering the ground. It was a mineral called trinitite, formed by the blast and thus named for the site.
Taking some home would have been a federal crime -- as a sign at the entrance to Trinity warns -- so Hermes called up White Sands officials and requested some ant hill sand. The industrious insects travel large distances to gather mineral grains for the walls of their homes. Chances were good that some of those grains would be trinitite.
"The ants don't care about the radiation," said Hermes. "They just care about gathering the beads."
Hermes doesn't care much about the radiation, either. He grabbed a handful of nickel- and quarter-size trinitite chunks for visitors to see as he explained his work. What interests him is the spherical shape of trinitite beads he has found in the ant sand, a shape that has revealed how the beads formed during the split second after the bomb detonated.
If the waves of heat issuing forth from split atoms had seared the sand like a creme brulee, as Hermes and many others have assumed, the mineral should have formed in sheets. Spheres and bubbles of trinitite, though, suggest that the blast lifted sand into the air, melted it and then showered droplets over a wide area.
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Poking around outside the fence a day before the masses arrived for the open house, Hermes found trinitite hurled more than mile from the blast, visible on the ground. He suspects that many of the trinitite pieces he has found contain remnants of equipment used in the test.
Dark green hues in some of the pieces may be remnants of the vaporized tower that cradled the bomb, he surmises. Other pieces stained red contain residue of the copper wires that connected the bomb to instruments in bunkers.
His ant sand, described in the Trinity brochures handed out to tourists, has also proved useful to scientists who study meteorites. Microscopic balls that have turned up at possible meteorite impact sites around the world are not trinitite beads, but they have a similar shape. They might be the remnants of a hail of space stones that pelted the planet about 13,000 years ago, bursting in midair and melting the ground like miniature nuclear warheads.
Debris hurled into the sky by those explosions might have dimmed the sun and triggered conditions similar to a nuclear winter. The timing coincides with the start of the Younger Dryas, a cold snap that lasted more than 1,000 years.
Hermes and his team of international collaborators, among them a nuclear scientist and several geologists, believe that the cold conditions were triggered when a meteorite slammed into Earth, leading to the extinction of large mammals across North America and to lean times during which hunter-gatherers turned to organized agriculture.
This theory is quite controversial; most scientists credit the sudden drop in temperature to ash belched out by volcanoes.
"The subject has become very contentious," says Mark Boslough, a physicist at Sandia National Laboratories who studies airbursts and isn't convinced by the evidence gathered so far. Radiocarbon dating of some of the samples suggests they are far too young to fit the theory, forming a mere hundreds of years ago.
But if Hermes and his team are right, the Trinity site may hold a significance beyond its role in the beginning of the nuclear era. It may also provide a window into understanding an important chapter in the history of humanity and the planet itself.
"The Trinity site gives us a way to study air bursts," Hermes said. "Many impacts [thousands of years ago] could have created a situation similar to nuclear winter." San Onofre nuclear power plant to shut down Steven Mufson, Washington Post June 7, 2013 In a new setback for the U.S. nuclear power industry, Edison International said Friday that it would permanently close two reactors at its San Onofre plant in California, ending a contentious battle over whether the units could be repaired and operated safely after a Jan. 31, 2012, steam leak revealed cracks in the steam generator system.
The two reactors, built at a cost of about $2.1 billion, once provided 17 percent of the power delivered by the utility, and the loss of the units has forced Edison International and its Southern California Edison subsidiary to rely more heavily on renewable energy sources and new supplies of natural gas.
The company said that it could maintain power supplies for southern California, barring an unusually hot summer or fires that damage transmission lines. Edison chief executive Theodore F. Craver Jr. said he spoke to California Gov. Jerry Brown (D) on Friday morning about plans to ensure stability of the electrical grid.
"This is very much part of the uncertainty we are talking about, and we are anxious to resolve going forward," Craver said in a conference call with reporters.
The closure of the plant comes three days after MidAmerican Energy, owned byBerkshire Hathaway, scrapped plans to build a small modular reactor in Iowa, while sticking with its plan to build up to 656 wind turbines in the state.
Although the San Onofre reactors were licensed to operate until 2022, critics said that the utility and its main contractor, Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, had hidden risks of a new steam generator system they installed in reactor unit 2 in 2009 and unit 3 in 2010 and that Edison needed a license amendment, a potentially lengthy process.
The new system, designed to last 20 years, failed in less than 2 after vibrations caused many of the 9,727 heavy alloy tubes in each steam generator to rub against one another. Unit 2 was already closed for maintenance, but unit 3 was shut down after an 82-gallon-a-day leak was discovered.
The decision to permanently shut down the reactors follows a May 13 ruling by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission's Atomic Safety and Licensing Board. Weighing a challenge from Friends of the Earth, the board unanimously rejected the company's arguments for restarting unit 2 at 70 percent of capacity, saying that a lengthier license amendment process was required.
Craver said that seeking a license amendment, and fending off legal challenges, would delay a restart enough that it would no longer be worthwhile. (San Onofre unit 1 operated from 1968 to 1992.)
Nuclear power foes rejoiced at the news. "After years of fighting toe-to-toe with the billion dollar nuclear industry, WE WON!" said an e-mail sent by Friends of the Earth, which had argued to nuclear regulators that the steam generators were the heart of the reactors and needed more scrutiny.
"We have long said that these reactors are too dangerous to operate, and now Edison has agreed," said Erich Pica, president of Friends of the Earth.
Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.), chairman of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, said she was "greatly relieved."
"This nuclear plant had a defective redesign and could no longer operate as intended," she said in a statement. "Modifications to the San Onofre nuclear plant were unsafe and posed a danger to the eight million people living within 50 miles of the plant." She added that she had become "increasingly alarmed that Southern California Edison had misled regulators by minimizing the scope of the changes made at the nuclear plant to avoid a full safety review and public hearings."
The Nuclear Energy Institute defended Southern California Edison and the nuclear industry.
"This is a situation that is unique to Southern California Edison and the replacement of steam generators at the San Onofre reactors," said Steve Kerekes, a spokesman for the institute, who added that the closures were "a blow to California's energy diversity."
He said that "this situation underscores the need for an efficient and effective regulatory process that results in timely decisions on the operation of these critical energy resources." He said that independent firms had endorsed plans to restart San Onofre's unit 2 and that
"it's simply intolerable to delay decisions that impact millions of customers and the company's obligation to provide electricity to those customers." Though the plants will stay closed, the controversy remains open. Craver said Edison International would seek compensation from Mistubishi for the faulty steam-generator design. And consumer groups are seeking the refund of extra costs, including for replacement fuel. Craver said costs subject to potential refund amounted to about $1.3 billion.
Edison International said it would take a charge of $450 million to $650 million and cut its earnings outlook by 20 cents a share. The company's shares closed at $47.61 a share, up $1.25.
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