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| | | published Wednesday, August 15, 2012 | 1541 Views :: 0 Comments |
August, 15, 2012
In conjunction with the New Mexico Community Involvement Fund and the Social and Environmental Research Institute, we are excited to announce the completion of our Community Guide to Improving the Links Between Future Land-Use and Clean-Up Decisions.
The purpose of this Community Guide is to give residents living near DOE facilities a deeper understanding of how clean-up decisions and future use planning become interconnected and indeed entangled when pressures for site reuse and restricted clean-ups bring to the planning process a diverse set of interests.
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| | | published Tuesday, August 16, 2011 | 1146 Views :: 0 Comments |
Aug. 16, 2011
By Annette Cary
From the Tri-City Herald
The man who is expected to be the new Department of Energy head of environmental cleanup for the nation wore a tie Monday for his first official visit to Hanford.
But David Huizenga owns a Richland Bombers T-shirt.
He already is a fan of the doughnuts at the Spudnut Shop and the Thai food at the Emerald of Siam, both at the Richland Uptown shopping center. He also knows his way around Badger Mountain from regular hikes to its top.
The Hanford visit was a homecoming of sorts for Huizenga, who is DOE's new acting assistant secretary for environmental management as he waits for Senate confirmation to head DOE's environmental cleanup program.
But in 1985, he was starting his career as a research engineer at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory in Richland.
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| | | published Monday, August 15, 2011 | 1969 Views :: 0 Comments |
Aug 14, 2011
By Rob Pavey
From the Augusta Chronicle
They came, they toiled -- and now most of them are gone.
As the American Recovery & Reinvestment Act enters its final weeks, Savannah River Site's stimulus-funded cleanup projects are winding down.
"They're wrapping up this month, and next month," said Jim Giusti, a Department of Energy spokesman at the site.
The $1.6 billion windfall created or saved about 3,000 jobs and accelerated dozens of projects that might have languished for years before money became available to complete them.
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| | | published Sunday, August 14, 2011 | 2019 Views :: 1 Comments |
August 13, 2011
By Annette Cary
From the Tri-City Herald
The Department of Energy has taken a look at all the environmental cleanup yet to be completed at the Hanford nuclear reservation and come up with a big price tag: $115 billion.
That's what it projects will be required to finish environmental cleanup in about 2060 and then prevent any intrusion into areas, such as landfills holding radioactive waste, until 2090.
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| | | published Tuesday, June 07, 2011 | 981 Views :: 0 Comments |
Jun. 07, 2011
By Annette Cary From the Tri-City Herald
Deep geological disposal is the best alternative for the nation's waste classified as greater than class C low-level radioactive waste and similar nondefense waste, according to the Hanford Advisory Board.
The HAB board has joined several other agencies or groups in recommending Hanford be taken off a list of locations the Department of Energy is considering for disposal of the waste. The states of Washington and Oregon already have asked that Hanford be taken off DOE's list.
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| | | published Friday, May 20, 2011 | 1712 Views :: 0 Comments |
May 18, 2011
By the Oregonian Editorial Board
Plutonium was made in a reactor near the Columbia River, and it powered the nuclear bomb that destroyed Nagasaki in 1945. In weapons work that lasted through the 1980s and would involve several reactors, radioactive materials were spilled onto the ground and into trenches and, over time, into tanks rotting underground. The 586-square-mile southeast Washington site is already tens of billions of taxpayer dollars into a near-impossible cleanup -- the largest in the world -- and has little chance of being completed anytime before 2050. Now the Northwest has a new Hanford challenge.
The U.S. Department of Energy, which oversees the cleanup, names Hanford as a candidate site for becoming the nation's radioactive dumping ground -- a permanent storage site not for spent nuclear fuel but for radioactive parts of decommissioned nuclear plants, mainly from Midwestern and Eastern states, as well as radioactive castoffs from medical and research processes nationwide.
This is a bad idea. It runs counter to everything that Oregon and Washington, Northwest tribes and health advocates have sought to achieve in taming a Hanford nuclear beast that menaces underground water, the Columbia River, and human and wildlife populations nearby. And the mission of our cleanup remains singular: Find the money and invent the technologies it will take to process and contain substances so radioactive they take thousands of years to lose potency.
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| | | published Thursday, May 19, 2011 | 1405 Views :: 1 Comments |
May 18, 2011
By Annette Cary
From the Tri-City Herald
PASCO — The states of Washington and Oregon teamed up Tuesday night to
tell the Department of Energy that bringing more radioactive waste to
Hanford would be a bad idea.
"It is inconceivable to us that U.S. DOE would spend billions of dollars
to try to clean up the environmental damage at Hanford, yet ignore that
work by proposing to dispose of additional highly radioactive wastes on
the site," said Ron Skinnarland of the Washington State Department of
Ecology, reading from a joint Washington and Oregon state letter to DOE.
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| | | published Wednesday, March 24, 2010 | 1714 Views :: 1 Comments |
Submitted to Blue Ribbon Commission on America’s Nuclear Future March 24, 2010 Download the pdf with sources here.
On January 29, 2010, Department of Energy (DOE) Secretary Steven Chu named a 15-member Blue Ribbon Commission on America's Nuclear Future, as part of the Obama administration’s commitment “to promoting nuclear power in the United States and developing a safe, long-term solution for the management of used nuclear fuel and nuclear waste.” The Commission is needed because Yucca Mountain, which has been deemed the “long-term waste solution” since 1987, is being terminated by the administration.
The Commission is an opportunity for a significant national discussion about major nuclear waste issues for the first time in 23 years. Or it could be yet another commission that issues a report that sits on shelves and makes little real impact. Or it could be a one-sided, nuclear industry dominated effort that repackages the failed policies of the past.
During the next two years of the Commission’s work, nuclear industry groups will be actively involved. But the last forty years have shown that there is very substantial public interest and concern about nuclear waste, which must be taken into account in policy discussions, as well as site-specific plans. Very significant amounts of nuclear waste are present in dozens of places around the nation at Department of Energy (DOE) nuclear weapons sites and at commercial reactors. Transporting large amounts of waste also would impact millions of people along shipping routes. How well affected communities can effectively participate and how their input is incorporated into the Commission’s recommendations will significantly effect public perspectives about the credibility of the Commission and what should happen in the next phase of U.S. nuclear waste policy. All would be well-served by learning from the past, not repeating practices and procedures that have proven inadequate to the task of implementing publicly acceptable, scientifically sound nuclear waste policies.
From the perspective of the past 40 years, there are some important lessons that should be learned. This brief paper describes some of the major ones, primarily focusing on high-level waste and irradiated fuel because that is the Commission’s role. The lessons merit additional dialogue, which the Commission should invite and encourage.
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| | | published Thursday, June 25, 2009 | 3299 Views :: 1 Comments |
Oppose Additional F-22s Paid for with Environmental Cleanup Funds
June 23, 2009
Dear Representative:
Please support any amendment to the FY10 defense authorization bill, H.R. 2647, to eliminate funds for advance procurement of 12 F-22 Raptor fighter jets and restore the money for environmental cleanup.
Defense Secretary Gates requested four additional F-22 fighters in the FY09 Supplemental Appropriations Act, completing the fleet at 187 planes and ending production. Money to purchase those final four aircraft has already been appropriated. We oppose the additional twelve aircraft sought by the Committee in the FY10 defense authorization at a cost of $369 million for FY10.
The funds for F-22s were taken from money intended for cleanup of nuclear weapons sites, and we believe this is unwise. More than six decades of U.S. nuclear weapons research, testing, and production activities have left dozens of Department of Energy sites contaminated by radioactive and hazardous waste. The contamination threatens workers, communities, and the environment,
including major water supplies. Cleaning up that contamination should remain a priority for Congress and the administration. Inadequate funding in 2010 can lead to missing legally obligated cleanup milestones, allows contamination to spread, and can result in additional spending to pay fines and penalties. Funding shortfalls in one year also require additional spending in future years.
If you would like your organization to sign onto the letter, email nroth@ananuclear.org with your name, title, organization's name, and state.
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| | | published Thursday, September 20, 2007 | 1535 Views :: 0 Comments | |
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