ECA Update: January 12, 2012
Published: Thu, 01/12/12
Gov. Nikki Haley said Romney vowed to help South Carolina get its money back if the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste storage facility in Nevada doesn't open Robert Behre and Schuyler Kropf, The Post and CourierJanuary 12, 2012 COLUMBIA -- The six Republican presidential candidates' messages, locations, theatrics and crowd sizes varied, but a common theme emerged: All of them talked about reviving the economy and replacing President Barack Obama in November.
They spent much of Wednesday holding rallies across South Carolina in hopes that their campaigns will not just survive but thrive after this state's Jan. 21 primary.
While former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney remains the favorite, particularly after finishing first in Iowa and New Hampshire, there's no guarantee that South Carolina Republicans will follow that pattern.
Mitt Romney
Romney began his South Carolina swing by sounding similar themes to those he gave in his New Hampshire victory speech Tuesday night.
"The president said he wants to transform America. I don't want to transform America. I want to restore America," he said, one of several lines that drew applause from the several hundred supporters packed in a downtown Columbia warehouse.
Gov. Nikki Haley introduced Romney and talked almost as long as he did about the need to make a change in the White House. She said Romney vowed to help South Carolina get its money back if the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste storage facility in Nevada doesn't open.
With Romney, she said, "I will have a partner in the White House. I won't have someone fighting me every step of the way."
NM officials, Los Alamos lab reach agreement to expedite cleanup of radioactive waste Associated Press January 5, 2012 POJOAQUE, N.M. -- State environmental officials have reached an agreement with Los Alamos National Laboratory to expedite the cleanup of thousands of barrels of radioactive waste.
Environment Secretary David Martin told a special meeting of the lab's Citizens Advisory Board that it has agreed to have all the barrels currently stored above ground removed by June 30, 2014. Any newly generated waste will have to be removed by the end of 2014.
Our view: Nuclear waste here? Actually, why not?
Duluth News Tribune January 5, 2012 The news landed like a lump of coal for many of us on Christmas morning: The Lake Superior region of Minnesota, Wisconsin and Michigan's Upper Peninsula has "the most stable region of granite outcrops in the U.S." Also, there hasn't been a volcano or significant earthquake here in millions of years. And that makes our area perfect -- absolutely perfect, according to a front-page story about a 114-page study from the Sandia National Laboratory -- for entombing nuclear waste.
Scientists and the U.S. government have been on the hunt for such a place since Yucca Mountain in Nevada was ruled out in 2009.
"We're sitting on one of the most stable areas of North America," said Steve Hauck, a geologist for the University of Minnesota Duluth's Natural Resources Research Institute. He said it as though it was good news.
And maybe it can be.
That'd be despite the natural-for-many-of-us, gut response of going out into our garages to start making protest placards against any notion of nuclear waste being deposited here. The notion sounds scary. But is it?
There's a reality that this stuff has to go somewhere. There are 104 operating commercial reactors in the U.S. with plans to add at least another 26, as the News Tribune's John Myers reported. Minnesota already is home to radioactive waste; it's stored in temporary casks near the Mississippi River outside the Prairie Island nuclear plant in Red Wing. The storage site is one of 120 in 39 states. Nearly 77,000 tons of nuclear waste -- and growing -- is in need of a permanent home.
There are a lot of ifs, but with answers found to satisfy concerns, maybe that home can be here in the Northland. Maybe it should be here.
If the Northland and the Great Lakes region really does have ideally solid granite, if our geologic stability is equally as ideal, and if the waste can be stored safely, then, well -- well, let's not say no just yet.
With open minds unpolluted by propaganda, by bad information or by catchy, curbside rallying cries, let's consider what the scientists have to say. Then let's talk about charging astronomical rents to store the stuff. Let's weigh the potential economic boon vs. any risks.
"Deep geological disposal is the most promising and accepted method currently available for safely isolating spent fuel and high-level radioactive waste from the environment for very long periods of time," an Obama administration Blue Ribbon Commission on America's Nuclear Future said in calling for the development of "one or more geologic disposal facilities."
"You'd probably want something you could walk across and characterize (map) without having to dig through hundreds of feet (of dirt). And there's a lot of that rock at the surface across most all of Northeastern Minnesota," Harvey Thorleifson, director of the Minnesota Geological Survey of the University of Minnesota, said in the Christmas Day story.
He said it as though it was a good thing. And maybe it can be.
Hanford contractor Mission Support Alliance OKs 12 voluntary layoffs
Annette Cary, Tri-City Herald January 12, 2012 Mission Support Alliance has approved 12 voluntary layoffs, leaving 38 involuntary layoffs required to reach its previously announced target of 50 jobs cut.
The Hanford contractor had hoped that most of the layoffs would be voluntary, but this is its third round of cuts in the past 12 months.
Mission Support Alliance, which provides support services across Hanford, announced in December that it would lay off up to 50 employees, including employees of its key subcontractors, by Feb. 2.
Cleanup of 77 [Hanford] Waste Sites Meets Two TPA Milestones Tri-Party Agreement Press Release January 11, 2011 RICHLAND, WASH. - Department of Energy (DOE) contractor, Washington Closure Hanford, recently cleaned up 77 waste sites at Hanford to meet two Tri-Party Agreement (TPA) milestones before the end of 2011.
The waste sites were located in the D and H Reactor Areas at Hanford along the Columbia River. Workers began cleanup in those areas as far back as 2005 and the work to clean up the last waste sites under the two milestones was finished on December 5, 2011.
RICHLAND, Wash. -- A judge has dismissed a lawsuit brought by a Hanford nuclear reservation worker who claimed a contractor there wanted him off the job for raising safety concerns about a nuclear waste treatment plant.
Bechtel National argued that the case should not go to trial because Walter Tamosaitis could not show the company improperly interfered with his job at subcontractor URS.
Fukushima nuclear cleanup could create its own environmental disaster Winifred Bird, The Guardian January 9, 2012 Following the nuclear disaster at Chernobyl 25 years ago, the Soviet government chose long-term evacuation over extensive decontamination; as a result, the plants and animals near Chernobyl inhabit an environment that is both largely devoid of humans and severely contaminated by radioactive fallout.
The meltdown last March of three nuclear reactors at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant in Japan also contaminated large areas of farmland and forests, albeit not as severely or extensively as at Chernobyl. But lacking land for resettlement and facing public outrage over the accident, the Japanese government has chosen a very different path, embarking on a decontamination effort of unprecedented scale.
Beginning this month, at least 1,000 sq km of land -- much of it forest and farms -- will be cleaned up as workers power-spray buildings, scrape soil off fields, and remove fallen leaves and undergrowth from woods near houses. The goal is to make all of Fukushima livable again. But as scientists, engineers, and ordinary residents begin this massive task, they face the possibility that their efforts will create new environmental problems in direct proportion to their success in remediating the radioactive contamination.
The long-time chief of staff to embattled Nuclear Regulatory Commission Chairman Gregory Jaczko is calling it quits, according to POLITICO Pro's Darius Dixon:
"The chief of staff for NRC Chairman Gregory Jaczko during the debate over Yucca Mountain funding, the Fukushima crisis and infighting with other NRC commissioners has left. Joshua Batkin resigned at the end of 2011 after seven years of working for Jaczko...In an email to Jaczko late last month, Batkin wrote, "It is now time for me to seek out new challenges that will allow me to re-balance my work and family responsibilities."
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