OPPOSE Transport of Liquid HEU Waste by truck . . .

[Oscar]

OPPOSE Transport of Liquid HEU Waste by truck . . .

NOTE: To endorse the resolution opposing these shipments of liquid high-level radioactive waste:

Please send a notice of your organization’s endorsement of this resolution to Canadian Coalition for Nuclear Responsibility (CCNR) e-mail: ccnr@web.ca

----- Original Message -----
From: Gordon Edwards
Sent: Thursday, January 09, 2014 3:06 PM
Subject: Liquid Nuclear Waste Transport: "Canada ranked high for nuclear stockpile security"

Friends and Colleagues:

There is a lot of opposition to the Transport of Liquid High-Level Radioactive Waste along public roads -- something that is being planned for 2014, but that has never been done before anywhere in North America.

The following article clearly shows that people's voices, on both sides of the border, are being heard. It is time now to turn up the volume.

(1) Write to the White House in the USA and to Parliament Hill in Canada saying that the transport of liquid high-level waste should not be carried out since there are safer alternatives for dealing with (even eliminating) the security risks posed by weapons-grade uranium at Chalk River, Ontario.

Prime Minister Steven Harper,
[ http://www.pm.gc.ca/eng/contactpm ]

President Barack Obama,
[ http://www.whitehouse.gov/contact/submi ... d-comments ]

(2) Get your organization to endorse the resolution opposing these shipments of liquid high-level radioactive waste:

Please send a notice of your organization’s endorsement of this resolution to Canadian Coalition for Nuclear Responsibility (CCNR) e-mail: ccnr@web.ca

Text of the Resolution:
[ http://ccnr.org/resolution_CRL_SRS_2013.pdf ]

List of Endorsers:
[ http://ccnr.org/Endorsing_Groups.pdf ]

Background:

Using current technology, the only materials that can be used as a nuclear explosive to build an atomic bomb or any other kind of nuclear weapons are (1) highly-enriched uranium (either U-235 or U-233), or (2) any type of plutonium.

With highly enriched uranium, a simple device called a "gun-type" atomic bomb can be constructed. This is the device that was used in the bomb that destroyed the City of Hiroshima on August 6 1945. It is such a simple device that it requires no testing. A powerful nuclear explosion is assured. In a gun-type device, two masses of HEU (highly enriched uranium) are simply brought together very suddenly, using conventional explosives.

With plutonium, a "gun-type" atomic bomb doesn't work -- a more sophisticated "implosion-type" atomic bomb is necessary, requiring the use of shaped charges, a perfectly spherical ball of plutonium, and extremely accurate electronic timers. This is the device that was used in the bomb that devastated the City of Nagasaki on August 9 1945. An "implosion-type" atomic bomb is generally thought to require testing, but this may not be needed given today's technology. In any event, it is undoubtedly more difficult to build than a "gun-type" atomic bomb.

So as long as either HEU or plutonium are available for theft or black-market purchase, such material will inevitably fall into the hands of criminals and/or terrorists. That's why HEU and plutonium should NOT be commercially traded, or used as commercial nuclear reactor fuel, or used as a routine research tool by scientists of any kind.

At Chalk River, Canada has a significant stockpile of HEU -- a material which has been used to produce "radioactive isotopes" for medical and industrial use. Even after the HEU has been irradiated in a nuclear reactor, the intensely radioactive residues (which are in a liquid acid form) still contain enough HEU to pose a significant security risk; once extracted and purified, this stuff can still be used as a powerful nuclear explosive.

For the last 10 years, these highly radioactive liquid wastes containing HEU have been solidified on site at Chalk River by a process called "cementation". Essentially, they just add the radioactive liquid to a regular batch of wet cement and then let it harden. The HEU still poses a security risk but now it is in solid form, and therefore much less of an environmental risk (considering the possibility of leaks or spillage).

Up until 2003, however, the Chalk River scientists just kept adding the liquid high-level radioactive waste to a great big double-walled steel tank called FISST = Fissile Solutions Storage Tank, which now contains 23,000 litres of the liquid HEU-bearing high-level radioactive waste. And now plans are underway to ship this material in dozens of convoys over public roads from Chalk River Ontario to Savannah River Site (SRS) in South Carolina -- a large complex where much of the work needed to produce plutonium for nuclear weapons was carried out over a span of many decades.

At SRS, the high-level radioactive liquid waste from Chalk River would be processed in a facility called the "H Canyon" to (1) extract the remaining HEU and (2) "down-blend" it by reducing the level of enrichment to the point where the resulting uranium is no longer weapons-usable material, but can still be used as fuel for nuclear reactors. The bulk of the high-level liquid radioactive waste (minus the uranium) would then be solidified.

Many organizations and municipalities in Canada and the USA are opposed to the transportation of this highly dangerous material in liquid form, given the contamination potential for roadways, bridges, rivers, and municipalities along the route in case of an unforeseen accident that breaches the containment -- not to mention the consequences of a terrorist attack. The environment would be much less at risk if the material were solidified before being shipped, and in fact this type of solidification has been going on for over 10 years at Chalk River.

Moreover, the "down-blending" of the liquid HEU to make it non-weapons-usable can also be carried out at Chalk River, making the transportation to SRS altogether unnecessary -- this "denaturing" or "down-blending" can be done prior to solidification.

Gordon Edwards, President
Canadian Coalition for Nuclear Responsibility
http://ccnr.org

====================

Canada ranked high for nuclear stockpile security

[ http://www.ottawacitizen.com/news/Canad ... story.html ]

BY IAN MACLEOD, OTTAWA CITIZEN JANUARY 8, 2014

http://tinyurl.com/qh4r5s9

OTTAWA — Canada ranks near the very top in the world at safeguarding its weapons-grade nuclear material stockpile but is surrounded by a “disturbing lack” of unified global action to frustrate nuclear terrorism, warns a respected U.S. group tracking data on weapons of mass destruction.

Canada places second, behind only Australia, in the latest nuclear materials security index of 25 countries possessing at least one kilogram of weapons-usable nuclear materials, according to the Washington-based Nuclear Threat Initiative (NTI).

That’s up from a 10th-place tie with the United Kingdom and Germany in NTI’s inaugural 2012 index. The jump earns Canada special NTI recognition this year for the most improved national performance, along with Belgium and Japan.

Nuclear-armed Pakistan and India, rising nuclear player North Korea and suspected nuclear contender Iran all finished in the index’s basement. (151 other nations possessing less than one kilogram of weapons-grade material were ranked separately.)

“Global nuclear security is only as strong as the weakest link in the chain — and that makes it imperative that sovereign states exercise their own responsibility in the context of global co-operation,” said NTI, co-chaired by former U.S. senator Sam Nunn and media mogul and philanthropist Ted Turner.

The news comes at a touchy time in Canada.

Government-owned Atomic Energy of Canada Ltd. (AECL) is in an escalating faceoff with a coalition of nuclear safety activists from Canada and the United States. The groups demand the Crown corporation scrap its controversial non-proliferation plan to truck 23,000 litres of intensely radioactive liquid laden with an estimated 161 kg of highly-enriched uranium (HEU) U-235 from its Chalk River nuclear laboratories northwest of Ottawa to a southern U.S. facility. The intent is to downblend the material into fuel for civilian nuclear power reactors.

The dozens of planned shipments still require several federal regulatory approvals on both sides of the border. A key U.S. regulatory verdict is expected this spring or summer.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper committed Canada at the 2012 global nuclear security summit in Seoul to the return of additional HEU inventories to the U.S. by 2018 to lessen the risk of nuclear terrorism. (Other unspecified quantities of U.S.-origin HEU remain at Chalk River for the production of medical isotopes. AECL won’t discuss the inventory because of national security concerns.)

MORE:

[ http://www.ottawacitizen.com/news/Canad ... story.html ]

[Oscar]

High-Level Radioactive Liquid Waste: Chalk River nuclear shipments opposed in Washington

From: Gordon Edwards
Sent: Saturday, July 26, 2014 3:14 PM
Subject: High-Level Radioactive Liquid Waste: Chalk River nuclear shipments opposed in Washington

Background: July 26 2014

Post-reprocessing liquid waste is extremely dangerous material, containing a heat-generating mixture of fiercely radioactive fission products and radiotoxic transuranic elements in an acidic solution that also contains dissolved uranium. Such material has not previously been transported over public roads in North America.

Now Atomic Energy of Canada Limited (AECL) is planning to truck 23,000 litres of this material almost 2000 km from Chalk River Laboratories in Ontario to the Savannah River Site in South Carolina. The highly specialized containers that would be used to carry the liquid waste have not yet been approved by the regulatory authorities, although the design has been under review since 2012.

The liquid waste from Chalk River is currently stored in a double-walled tank at Chalk River, carefully monitored and continually stirred, under remote surveillance by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).

To make matters worse, the dissolved uranium in the Chalk River tank is weapons-grade material -- the same stuff that was used as a nuclear explosive in the atomic bomb that was dropped on the Japanese City of Hiroshima on August 6 1945, killing over 100,000 people almost immediately. In fact, that's why the IAEA is involved, to ensure that no one diverts the weapons-grade material from the tank and makes it available to some would-be bomb-maker.

There is no danger that this weapons-grade uranium would explode in the tank, or during transport, but it could suffer a "criticality accident" -- an accidental resumption of the nuclear chain reaction -- that could potentially release enough energy to breach the tank or spew some of its liquid contents into the environment.

No new liquid has been added to the tank for the last 10 years, when it became full. Since then, the exact same kind of post-reprocessing liquid waste has been routinely solidified at Chalk River by a process called "cementation".

If there is a solidification process already available, and already being used, then why is there a need to ship this dangerous material in liquid form? It turns out that there is another agenda at work here: the Savannah River Site has a facility called the "H Canyon" that processes liquids of this kind, and the SRS managers desperately want to keep that facility operating. Other than that, there is no compelling rationale for shipping the liquid waste.

But why move the waste material at all? The rationale is to make the world safer by returning to the USA all weapons-grade uranium of American origin so that it won't fall into the hands of criminals or terrorists, who could use the material to make a crude but devastating nuclear explosive device.

So how is SRS going to safeguard the weapons-grade uranium? Well, the plan is for SRS to "denature" the weapons-grade uranium by blending it with other, non-weapons-usable uranium, thereby eliminating the weapons threat by making the resulting blended uranium non-explosive (not weapons-usable).

"As it happens, Russia has for many years been down-blending weapons-grade uranium to make it non-explosive before sending it to the US and Canada. Why can't AECL do something comparable at Chalk River? If the weapons uranium is down-blended on site, so that it is not longer weapons usable, there will be no need to transport it across public roads."

Questions, questions. Good questions. Relevant questions. But there is no public forum in which to discuss these alternatives, because neither the American nor the Canadian authorities want to have any kind of public hearings on the subject.

It's time for citizens on both sides of the border to insist on due process and transparency.

Almost 100 organizations have endorsed a resolution [linked below] opposing the transport of the high-level liquid waste from Chalk River to Savannah River. If your organization wants to join, send an official endorsement to ccnr@web.ca with the name of the organization, location, and the name and e-mail address of a contact person.

Gordon Edwards.

Text of resolution:
http://ccnr.org/resolution_CRL_SRS_2013.pdf

List of endorsers:
http://ccnr.org/Endorsing_Groups.pdf

Fact Sheet:
http://ccnr.org/backgrounder_CRL_SRS_2013.pdf

======================

In a nuclear reactor, the "splitting" (fission) of uranium atoms creates a large number of fiercely radioactive byproducts called "fission products". The fission products are broken pieces of atoms that have been split; they constitute the bulk of what is called "high level radioactive waste" from nuclear reactors. They give off such intense gamma radiation that the irradiated uranium is unapproachable without heavy shielding and must be handled robotically.

In addition, "transuranic elements" are created -- man-made elements that are heavier than uranium, extremely long-lived and highly radiotoxic, such as neptunium, plutonium, americium, and curium. Like the fission products, the transuranic elements are also contained within the irradiated uranium.

For many decades, Chalk River has been importing weapons-grade uranium -- the same material that was used as a nuclear explosive in the atomic bomb that was dropped on the Japanese City of Hiroshima on August 6, 1945, killing over 100,000 people -- using it as a "target material" to produce medical isotopes utilised in hospitals around the world for diagnostic purposes.

Uranium-235 (U-235) is the only explosive variety of naturally occurring uranium. But when uranium ore is mined from the Earth, the concentration of U-235 is less than one percent. Most of the remainder is uranium-238 (U-238), which is not directly usable as a nuclear explosive. [Inside a nuclear reactor some of the U-238 is transformed into plutonium-239, an excellent nuclear explosive material -- but that's a different story.]

So the fact of the matter is that uranium cannot be used as a primary explosive in an atomic bomb unless it is "highly enriched". Highly Enriched Uranium (HEU) is, by definition, any uranium that has at least 20 percent uranium-235; such material can in principle be used as a nuclear explosive. But weapons-grade uranium is over 90 percent U-235 – that's the premium grade of HEU, the stuff that weapons-makers prefer to use, and that's the stuff that Chalk River has been using all along to produce medical isotopes.

Here's how it works. The weapons-grade uranium is fabricated into "targets" that are lowered into the bowels of the NRU research reactor at Chalk River, and left there for a few weeks.

- - - -

Chalk River nuclear shipments opposed in Washington

[ http://ottawacitizen.com/news/national/ ... washington ]

by Ian MacLeod, Ottawa Citizen, July 25, 2014

http://tinyurl.com/l6s8jl3

A New York congressman says the proposed trucking of intensely radioactive liquid waste from Chalk River to the United States could cause a “mobile Chernobyl” in the event of a spill while crossing the border at Buffalo.

Representative Brian Higgins brought the issue to the floor of the House Thursday, calling on the Department of Energy to prepare an environmental impact statement (EIS) before the contentious shipments are allowed to proceed.

“An EIS provides a roadmap to make informed decisions on proposals and is especially warranted given the volatile substance and significant impact area involved in this case,” Higgins said in a statement.

“Without a comprehensive review and plan, they are setting us up for a mobile Chernobyl,” a reference to the 1986 nuclear accident in Ukraine.

The exact route of the proposed shipments is secret, but one of the most direct would cross the Peace Bridge linking Fort Erie, Ontario and Buffalo.

Higgins, a Democrat representing western New York State, also has written to Secretary of Energy Ernest Moniz warning that a major contamination on or near the bridge would have dire health and economic consequences.

The Buffalo-Niagara region, “sits along two Great Lakes which represent the largest fresh water supply in the world and serves as the centre point of a 500-mile (800-kilometre) radius that includes approximately 55 per cent of the U.S. population and 62 per cent of the Canadian population.

“It is the responsibility of the Department of Energy and all relevant agencies involved in the process to thoroughly assess the safety of this action.”

The planned armed convoys of trucks are to haul specially-designed steel casks containing 23,000 litres of highly-radioactive liquid to the Savannah River Site nuclear complex in Aiken, South Carolina for down-blending into low-enriched uranium fuel feedstock for U.S. commercial power reactors.

Based on U.S. government documents, it would take at least 179 shipments to move the entire contents over the course of at least a few years. U.S. federal budgetary estimates suggest the shipments would begin next year. None would take place in winter.

MORE:

[ http://ottawacitizen.com/news/national/ ... washington ]