Problematic planning, in Lynas rare earths project, and its radioactive wastes, in Malaysia
Lynas was attracted to Malaysia because it was offered tax free status for 10 years.
there was little mention of the waste — or “residue”, as Lynas prefers to call it.
Lynas and its supporters assert its operations are completely safe, but as NM reported on Monday, others — including scientists — are less confident.
The IAEA also recommended that Lynas proceed no further until it had filed comprehensive plans for the permanent disposal of waste, decommissioning of the plant and remediation of the site at the end of its life.
Lynas’ waste plans a toxic pipe dream Aliran, 19 December 2012 Scientists and community leaders are concerned about radioactive waste from Lynas’ Malaysian plant but the company representative who took Wendy Bacon’s questions brushed off the criticism. This is the second of two articles about Lynas by Wendy Bacon. Read the first here.http://aliran.com/11005.html Australian rare earth company Lynas has always known it had a waste problem.
It plans to process rare earth concentrate, imported from its mine at Mount Weld in Western Australia, at its Lynas Advanced Materials Plant (Lamp) in Malaysia. It will not only produce rare earths for export but also a huge amount of waste, including more than a million cubic metres of low level radioactive material. Read more »
Political turmoil in Middle East spells doom for nuclear industry there
Arab Spring proves winter to nuclear ambitions Times Live, Sapa-dpa | 08 July, 2012 Along with lifetime presidencies, emergency laws, and personalised security forces, the Arab Spring uprisings of the past year have claimed another illustrious victim: nuclear energy.
“All the plans, all the agreements, all the studies; everything has stopped,” said Abdelmajid Mahjoub, director of the Arab Atomic Energy Agency (AAEA), a regional atomic energy body affiliated with the Arab League. Read more »
Indian government treating anti nuclear activists as psychiatric cases
NIMHANS psychiatrists, to their shame, are striving to help people ”understand the importance of the nuclear power plant.” They treat opposition to nuclear power as a disorder like schizophrenia, paranoia, or craving for victimhood.
Demonising anti-nuclear protests, The Daily Star, Praful Bidwai, 15 June 12, So monumen-tally arrogant is India’s nuclear establishment that it brazenly brands its critics insane and in need of psychiatric treatment. It has asked the state-run National Institute of Mental Health and Neuro-Sciences (NIMHANS) to “counsel” the tens of thousands protesting against the Koodankulam nuclear power station in Tamil Nadu that it’s perfectly safe.
This marks a new offensive to impose nuclear power upon people who have resisted Koodankulam’s Russian-made reactors since 1988. After Fukushima, the presumption that fears about nuclear hazards are irrational betrays delusional insensitivity. Read more »
Japan’s tortuous plans for returning residents to some Fukushima cities
Even if residents are allowed to eventually return they will continue to live under the shadow of the devastated Daiichi plant, where its a huge and costly cleanup is expected to take several decades.
Japan to lift entry ban on some Fukushima cities TOKYO, (Reporting by Shinichi Saoshiro; Editing by Daniel Magnowski), Mar 30, 2012 (Reuters) - Japan said on Friday it would lift entry bans on some cities in Fukushima prefecture that had been designated no-go zones due to their proximity to a nuclear power plant crippled by a powerful earthquake and tsunami last March…. Read more »
Ahmadinejad wrongly represented as talking of “wiping Israel off the map”
from Wikileaks: Translation controversy Many news sources repeated the Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting statement by Ahmadinejad that “Israel must be wiped off the map”,[5][6] an English idiom which means to “cause a place to stop existing”,[7] or to “obliterate totally”,[8] or “destroy completely”.[9]
Ahmadinejad’s phrase was “بايد از صفحه روزگار محو شود” according to the text published on the President’s Office’s website.[10]
The translation presented by the official Islamic Republic News Agency has been challenged by Arash Norouzi, who says the statement “wiped off the map” was never made and that Ahmadinejad did not refer to the nation or land mass of Israel, but to the “regime occupying Jerusalem”. Norouzi translated the original Persian to English, with the result, “the Imam said this regime occupying Jerusalem must vanish from the page of time.”[11] Juan Cole, a University of Michigan Professor of Modern Middle East and South Asian History, agrees that Ahmadinejad’s statement should be translated as, “the Imam said that this regime occupying Jerusalem (een rezhim-e eshghalgar-e qods) must [vanish from] the page of time (bayad az safheh-ye ruzgar mahv shavad).[12] According to Cole, “Ahmadinejad did not say he was going to ‘wipe Israel off the map’ because no such idiom exists in Persian.” Instead, “he did say he hoped its regime, i.e., a Jewish-Zionist state occupying Jerusalem, would collapse.”[13] The Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI) translated the phrase similarly, as “this regime” must be “eliminated from the pages of history.”[14]
Iranian government sources denied that Ahmadinejad issued any sort of threat. On 20 February 2006, Iran’s foreign minister Manouchehr Mottaki told a news conference: “How is it possible to remove a country from the map? He is talking about the regime. We do not recognize legally this regime.”[15][16][17]
UK ‘s nuclear liabilities, waste management becoming unaffordable
Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC) is unique among government departments because it has to spend almost half of its budget on dealing with existing nuclear waste.
But to see that this has risen to almost almost 86% of overall DECC spending seemed incredible.
DECC must tell us the truth about nuclear waste, Energy and Environmental Management David Thorpe, 1st November 2011 It’s shocking but true: we are not, as I had always understood, investing in a fund to manage our current nuclear waste in the future.
We are paying lip service to it and dodging the question at the expense of future taxpayers.
Moreover, there is total confusion about what provisions are being put in place to manage any future waste from any new nuclear power stations.
Will the real DECC budget please stand up?
Last week, the Guardian published on its website figures which appeared to show that spending by the Department of Energy and Climate Change on nuclear waste management has risen by an astonishing 81%, as part of an overall budget increase from last year of over 146%.
In trying to find out whether this is true I have found out a truth worse than this, as well as an admission that any new nuclear operators are allegedly being asked to contribute to a fund not only to pay for management and disposal of the new nuclear waste which their plants will create, but also for that of existing nuclear waste!
According to the Guardian, in 2009/10 DECC’s entire spend totaled £3.18bn, but in 2010/11 it is spending £8.06bn, an increase of 146.02% that is largely due to nuclear liabilities. Read more »
Determined opposition in Malaysia to Lynas rare earths processing project
Opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim said his alliance would seek an emergency motion in Parliament to urge the government to cancel the project. He also pledged the opposition would scrap the plant if it wins national polls expected by June.
Malaysia’s last rare earth refinery by Japan’s Mitsubishi group, in northern Perak state, was closed in 1992 following protests and claims that it caused birth defects and leukemia among residents. It is one of Asia’s largest radioactive waste cleanup sites.
3,000 Malaysians rally against Australian-built rare earth plant amid radiation fears Washington Post, By Associated Press, February 25 KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia — Some 3,000 Malaysians staged a protest Sunday against a rare earth refinery being built by Australian miner Lynas over fears of radioactive contamination.
It marked the largest rally against the $230 million plant in eastern Malaysia, and could pose a headache to the government ahead of national elections widely expected this year. Authorities recently granted Lynas a license to operate the first rare earths plant outside China in years. The plant in Pahang state has been the subject of heated protests over health and environmental risks posed by potential leaks of radioactive waste…..
Opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim said his alliance would seek an emergency motion in Parliament to urge the government to cancel the project. He also pledged the opposition would scrap the plant if it wins national polls expected by June. Read more »
USA’s “Nuclear Waste Confidence Rule” – what a mess!
Public comments needed against NRC’s Nuclear Waste Confidence Game , Beyond Nuclear 25 Feb 12, The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) has requested public comments on its latest revision to its “Nuclear Waste Confidence Decision.” Please email your comments before March 19th to WCOutreach@nrc.gov in order to head off this latest round of a very dangerous “game being played” by NRC, which is doing the bidding of the nuclear power industry…..
The NRC’s “confidence” that on-site storage for 120 years (60 during reactors operations, 60 after reactor shutdown) is safe and secure would be laughable, if it weren’t so seriously wrong. 120 years is half as long as the United States has been an independent country (1776 to 2012, 236 years). A lot can go wrong in 120 years. NRC’s consideration of 200 to 300 years of on-site storage is even more preposterous. This is not “interim” or “temporary” on-site storage. This is de facto permanent on-site storage, in any common understanding of the term…..
BACKGROUND
First promulgated in 1984, NRC’s “Nuclear Waste Confidence Decision” claimed that by 2007, the U.S. would open one or more repositories for the permanent disposal of irradiated nuclear fuel. In the meantime, NRC expressed its “confidence” that irradiated fuel stored in pools or dry casks on-site would be done so safely and securely. This served as legal cover, carte blanche, for nuclear utilities to generate an unlimited amount of high-level radioactive waste, while blocking concerned citizens and environmental groups intervening in NRC proceedings from challenging new reactor license applications or old reactor license extensions on such grounds as the fact that there is no safe solution to the problem of radioactive waste management.
By 1990, NRC already had to “postpone” its “confidence.” It revised its “Confidence Decision” to now say that by 2025, at least one repository would be opened.
In December 2010, NRC revised its “Nuclear Waste Confidence Decision” yet again, to reflect the reality of the Obama administration’s wise decision to cancel the Yucca Mountain dump. NRC now declared no date certain for the opening of the first repository, but rather stated that on-site storage in pools and/or dry casks was safe for 120 years — 60 years during reactor operations, and 60 years after reactor shutdown. In addition, the five NRC Commissioners ordered their staff to study the potential for on-site storage lasting 200 to 300 years into the future. That explains NRC current request for public comments….
Please submit comments to WCOutreach@nrc.gov. You may also send comments through the U.S mail to: Christine Pineda, Project Manager; Mailstop EBB-2B2; Office of Nuclear Material Safety and Safeguards; U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission; Washington, DC 20555-0001 http://www.beyondnuclear.org/radioactive-waste-whatsnew/2012/2/23/public-comments-needed-against-nrcs-nuclear-waste-confidence.html
Poor environmental safety for BHP’s new Olympic Dam uranium mine
A headache of Olympic proportions The Drum, Scott Ludlam, 13 Oct 11 The concept of ‘environmental protection’ has taken on new meaning with the announcement of Commonwealth environmental approvals for BHP Billiton’s Olympic Dam copper/gold/uranium mine in South Australia.
“We have the toughest environmental conditions that you’ll ever find imposed on a uranium mine,” Commonwealth Environment Minister Tony Burke stated proudly.
This is known in the technical literature as a ‘bald-faced lie’. We know that, because the toughest environmental conditions found at a uranium mine are 2,000 kilometres northward, at the Ranger Uranium mine on a lease chopped out of Kakadu National Park in the NT. There, the company is required to backfill the mine voids with their radioactive wastes, removing somewhat more than a hundred million tonnes of the stuff from the surface and dumping it back in the pit to be capped and revegetated as best as possible. In Kakadu, the company is required to isolate these wastes from the wider environment for a period not less than 10,000 years. This is clearly an impossible task, but a worthy ambition at least. Read more »
BHP’s Indenture Agreement for OLympic Dam Uranum Mine – a poor deal fro South Australia
Mike Rann has claimed that the new open-pit mine will be his “economic legacy to the state.” However, a considerationof the financial return to BHP through diesel rebates alone indicates that this legacy may be somewhat overstated…
BHP stands to gain $128 million per year in diesel rebates in the initial development period of the mine, $144 million per year in the intermediate stage, and $178 million per year at full production.
Public resources for private profit: free water for the largest open-pit mine in the world Coober Pedy Regional Times, by: Nectaria Calan, 13 Oct 11, ”………With approval of the new mine announced on Monday, the next stage of the approval process is the negotiation of a new Indenture Act which will apply to the new mine. It is expected that the revised Act will be introduced into the South Australian parliament next week, given Mike Rann’s commitment to finalising the indenture agreement before his retirement on October 20.
It is within the power of the South Australian government to negotiate a substantially different indenture agreement, or to repeal the Indenture Act completely. Read more »
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