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| | | published Monday, April 02, 2012 | 528 Views :: 0 Comments |
The following article quotes Tom Clements, ANA's Nonproliferation Policy Director, discussing cleaning up nuclear waste in South Carolina.
March 29, 2012
By Sammy Fretwell From The State
Two Savannah River Site storage tanks that contained deadly high-level waste have been cleaned out after decades of work, the U.S. Department of Energy announced Thursday.
The cleanup marks the first of underground storage tanks at SRS in 15 years and the first nationally since 2007, said Thomas D’Agostino, a deputy undersecretary with the DOE.
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| | | published Tuesday, March 27, 2012 | 228 Views :: 0 Comments |
The following piece quotes ANA's Nonproliferation Policy Director Tom Clements commenting on expanding the nation's fleet of nuclear power reactors.
March 26, 2012
By Meg Kinnard From the Associated Press
COLUMBIA, S.C. — Federal regulators are expected this week to approve a proposal to build two nuclear reactors at a site near Columbia, a decision that would make it just the second nuclear project to receive federal approval in a generation.
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission is set to vote Friday on the request by South Carolina Electric & Gas to build two 1,100-megawatt reactors at the V.C. Summer Nuclear Station near Jenkinsville, about 25 miles northwest of Columbia.
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| | | published Wednesday, March 21, 2012 | 13 Views :: 0 Comments |
Costs for the Department of Energy’s MOX program are increasing at an alarming rate. The estimated cost of MOX plant construction at the Savannah River Site has increased from $1.6 billion in FY2004 to the current $4.9 billion. The DOE’s FY2013 overall request for MOX and associated plutonium disposition programs is $887 million and the budget indicates a funding request of $3.6 billion from FY2014 to FY2017.
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| | | published Tuesday, March 20, 2012 | 34 Views :: 0 Comments |
March 20, 2012
WASHINGTON — A nuclearwatchdog group released a report in Washington on Monday that celebrates thesuspension of a multibillion-dollar plutonium project at Los Alamos NationalLaboratory and suggests even deeper cuts to federal weapons budgets.
The Alliance forNuclear Accountability’s report — titled “Nuclear Budget Busters” — outlinesmore than $55 billion in nuclear weapons projects that it contends are overbudget and behind schedule. The report focuses on seven nuclear programs itdeems especially irresponsible in today’s severely strained federal budgetclimate.
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| | | published Thursday, March 15, 2012 | 40 Views :: 0 Comments |
March 15th, 2012
By Bob Schaeffer
Scores of activists from across the nation, along with several Russian environmental counterparts, will present their concerns about U.S. nuclear weapons, cleanup and reactor spending policies in dozens of meetings with leaders of Congress and the Obama Administration from March 19 - 21 as part of ANA’s 24th Annual DC Days.
Also, on Tuesday March 20 at 5:30pm, ANA will host an Awards Reception honoring leaders in the movement for more responsible nuclear policies. Awardees include: U.S. Representatives Loretta Sanchez and Ed Markey, “downwinders” advocate Mary Dickson; and Russian environmental organizer Oleg Bodrov. The event will take place in Rayburn House Office Building Room B339.
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| | | published Monday, March 12, 2012 | 382 Views :: 0 Comments |
The following article quotes ANA Nonproliferation Director Tom Clements reacting to the need for upgrades at American reactors in the wake of the Fukushima catastrophe.
NRC says there's no immediate danger; Duke says Oconee is safe
March 11, 2012
By Anna Simon From the Greenville News
A new look at the 385-foot-tall Jocassee Dam just upstream from the Oconee Nuclear Station has prompted federal regulators to rethink and possibly retool U.S. nuclear power plants against flooding in a world now armed with the knowledge of the nuclear nightmare in Japan.
A new U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission analysis of the potential for upstream dam flooding examined the history at two nuclear power plants — Oconee and the Fort Calhoun station in Nebraska.
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| | | published Tuesday, February 28, 2012 | 639 Views :: 0 Comments |
Big rigs with bombs are secretly cruising America's interstates. But how safe are they from terrorists or accidents?
Feb. 15, 2012
By Adam Weinstein From Mother Jones
"Is that it?" My wife leans forward in the passenger seat of our sensible hatchback and points ahead to an 18-wheeler that's hauling ass toward us on a low-country stretch of South Carolina's Highway 125. We've been heading west from I-95 toward the Savannah River Site nuclear facility on the Georgia-South Carolina border, in search of nuke truckers. At first the mysterious big rig resembles a commercial gas tanker, but the cab is pristine-looking and there's a simple blue-on-white license plate: US GOVERNMENT. It blows by too quickly to determine whether it's part of the little-known US fleet tasked with transporting some of the most sensitive cargo in existence
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| | | published Friday, February 17, 2012 | 1056 Views :: 2 Comments |
February 17, 2012
By Michael Coleman and John Fleck From the Albuquerque Journal
WASHINGTON — U.S. Energy Secretary Steven Chu offered scant hope for a stalled plutonium project at Los Alamos National Laboratory on Thursday, but he did offer some encouragement for those who want to store additional nuclear waste near Carlsbad.
Chu told the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee that the Department of Energy decided to abandon — at least for now — a planned LANL plutonium lab because of budget constraints. However, he said design work at the Chemistry and Metallurgy Research Replacement Nuclear Facility will continue until it is 90 percent complete.
“That’s very prudent because for a number of reasons, before you start construction it is best to have most of it designed,” Chu said at the hearing to examine President Barack Obama’s 2013 DOE budget.
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| | | published Wednesday, February 15, 2012 | 1417 Views :: 3 Comments |
In the following op-ed, ANA member Marylia Kelley argues that the Department of Energy's nuclear weapons programs are eating up more than their fair share of the federal budget in austere times.
February 15, 2012
By Marylia Kelley
From the San Francisco Chronicle
While most federal agencies are being placed on an austerity diet, the Obama administration's 2013 budget for nuclear weapons activities is more than last year's appropriation and 20 percent higher than President Reagan's largest nuclear weapons budget at the height of the Cold War, adjusted for inflation. If fully funded, Obama's budget will be the biggest nuclear weapons budget in our nation's history.
President Obama firmly declared "America's commitment to seek the peace and security of a world without nuclear weapons" in his 2009 Prague address. The world, including me, cheered. But, Mr. President, this is not a budget that implements our solemn commitment.
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| | | published Tuesday, February 14, 2012 | 923 Views :: 1 Comments |
The following analysis of how President Obama's FY 13 budget request will impact Kentucky includes quotes from ANA member Don Hancock regarding Cold War nuclear waste cleanup in Paducah and around the country.
Feb. 13, 2012
By James R. Carroll From the Louisville Courier-Journal
At the Paducah Gaseous Diffusion Plant, continued operations to clean up decades of chemical and radiological contamination from nuclear weapons work would be funded at $132.2 million, about the same amount as in the current year.
Most environmental cleanup projects overseen by the Department of Energy at nuclear facilities are being funded at roughly the same levels as the current budget, said Don Hancock, nuclear waste program director with the Southwest Research and Information Center in Albuquerque, N.M., one of the organizations that belongs to the Alliance for Nuclear Accountability.
The Paducah plant’s facility to convert depleted uranium into a more stable state was behind schedule in 2011, but is now operating.
Hancock said the Energy Department is not asking enough for cleanup at Paducah and other sites.
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