Secretive plans for nuclear reprocessing at Savannah Rivers Site

Clements will be first on a panel at 10:55 a.m. on Friday, January 7 and will speak to problems with the secretive push by special interest to pursue reprocessing at SRS, which is unsuited to receive more of the nation’s nuclear waste burden.

National Nuclear Waste Commission to Hear from Public, Environmental Groups on Friday in Augusta | WJBF–TV, 5 Jan 2011, Augusta, GA --A national panel established by President Obama to decide the way forward with high-level nuclear waste will meet in Augusta, Georgia on Friday, January 7. The Blue Ribbon Commission (BRC), which is deciding the fate of commercial spent fuel and Department of Energy high-level waste, will meet at the Augusta Marriott (Two Tenth Street in downtown) all day Friday and hear public comment at the end of the day.

Given the problems with proceeding with the Yucca Mountain waste dump, the Savannah River Site (SRS) in South Carolina is at risk of becoming an “interim” home for radioactive spent fuel or reprocessing of that dangerous material. “We will watch out for the public interest and strongly oppose efforts to dump high-level nuclear waste in South Carolina,” said Tom Clements, Southeastern Nuclear Campaign Coordinator with the environmental organization Friends of the Earth. “Environmental groups will confront efforts by special interests to reprocess nuclear spent fuel as it leaves behind a huge volume of nuclear waste and would make SRS the nation’s de facto nuclear dump, which is totally unacceptable.”

Reprocessing is a dirty and dangerous chemical process that extracts plutonium and magnifies problems with spent fuel storage. Reprocessing of military materials for plutonium production for nuclear weapons is what has resulted in the 36 million gallons of high-level waste at SRS and with which DOE is struggling to manage.

“While some are pushing on the one hand for a way out of South Carolina of high-level nuclear waste, these same people are lobbying for reprocessing at SRS, which means bringing the nation’s spent fuel to SRS.

This effort to bring radioactive spent fuel to SRS for reprocessing will be confronted for what it is – a dangerous deception that could result in a huge nuclear waste problem in South Carolina. Some label reprocessing as ‘recycling’ but most of the resultant waste streams have no practical use, are dangerous to handle and are costly to manage.”

Read more:
http://nuclear-news.net/2011/01/06/secretive-plans-for-nuclear-reprocessing-at-savannah-rivers-site/

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And then there is THIS:  

National Nuclear Waste Commission to Hear from Public, Environmental Groups on Friday in Augusta

Friends of the Earth to Challenge those who Aim to Dump Spent Fuel at SRS

 Augusta, GA --

A national panel established by President Obama to decide the way forward with high-level nuclear waste will meet in Augusta, Georgia on Friday, January 7. The Blue Ribbon Commission (BRC), which is deciding the fate of commercial spent fuel and Department of Energy high-level waste, will meet at the Augusta Marriott (Two Tenth Street in downtown) all day Friday and hear public comment at the end of the day.Given the problems with proceeding with the Yucca Mountain waste dump, the Savannah River Site (SRS) in South Carolina is at risk of becoming an “interim” home for radioactive spent fuel or reprocessing of that dangerous material. “We will watch out for the public interest and strongly oppose efforts to dump high-level nuclear waste in South Carolina,” said Tom Clements, Southeastern Nuclear Campaign Coordinator with the environmental organization Friends of the Earth.

“Environmental groups will confront efforts by special interests to reprocess nuclear spent fuel as it leaves behind a huge volume of nuclear waste and would make SRS the nation’s de facto nuclear dump, which is totally unacceptable.”

Included on the formal agenda amongst a long list of politicians with little technical or policy expertise in management of nuclear waste or record of closely tracking issues at the Savannah River Site, several SC and GA environmental groups will present testimony to the BRC. Clements will be first on a panel at 10:55 a.m. on Friday, January 7 and will speak to problems with the secretive push by special interest to pursue reprocessing at SRS, which is unsuited to receive more of the nation’s nuclear waste burden. Reprocessing is a dirty and dangerous chemical process that extracts plutonium and magnifies problems with spent fuel storage. Reprocessing of military materials for plutonium production for nuclear weapons is what has resulted in the 36 million gallons of high-level waste at SRS and with which DOE is struggling to manage.

“While some are pushing on the one hand for a way out of South Carolina of high-level nuclear waste, these same people are lobbying for reprocessing at SRS, which means bringing the nation’s spent fuel to SRS. This effort to bring radioactive spent fuel to SRS for reprocessing will be confronted for what it is – a dangerous deception that could result in a huge nuclear waste problem in South Carolina. Some label reprocessing as ‘recycling’ but most of the resultant waste streams have no practical use, are dangerous to handle and are costly to manage.”

DOE itself has raised the possibility of spent fuel storage and reprocessing at SRS, but it is primarily contractors that profit off SRS and nuclear waste management that have been pushing the idea. “As clean-up of SRS continues, we must look for new employment at SRS but those jobs must not be associated with bringing more radioactive waste to SRS,” said Clements. We believe that the public in South Carolina and Georgia will support clean jobs at SRS but not projects that bring yet more deadly nuclear waste to the site.” The charter of the BRC does not directly include consideration of jobs or future use of SRS or any other DOE site.

Friends of the Earth and the South Carolina Chapter of the Sierra Club are running ads in local weekly papers and on radio stations in the Aiken/Augusta area, urging members of the public to attend the BRC meeting and speak out against the nuclear waste threat faced by South Carolina.

On Thursday, January 6, members of the public will tour SRS, on a parallel track with members of the BRC, who will have a tour of their own. Staff of the BRC may well be on the bus with the public and available for interaction about the work of the Commission.


 (See BRC website for more information: http://www.brc.gov/)

methane hydrates: Published Apr 3 2005 ( !!!) by The Guardian (UK)

US in race to unlock new energy source

by David Adam

More than a mile below the choppy Gulf of Mexico waters lies a vast, untapped source of energy. Locked in mysterious crystals, the sediment beneath the seabed holds enough natural gas to fuel America's energy-guzzling society for decades, or to bring about sufficient climate change to melt the planet's glaciers and cause catastrophic flooding, depending on whom you talk to.

No prizes for guessing the US government's preferred line. This week it will dispatch a drilling vessel to the region, on a mission to bring this virtually inexhaustible new supply of fossil fuel to power stations within a decade.

The ship will hunt for methane hydrates, a weird combination of gas and water produced in the crushing pressures deep within the earth - literally, ice that burns.

The stakes could not be higher: scientists reckon there could be more valuable carbon fuel stored in the vast methane hydrate deposits scattered under the world's seabed and Arctic permafrost than in all of the known reserves of coal, oil and gas put together.

"The amount of energy there is just too big to ignore," said Bahman Tohidi, head of the centre for gas hydrate research at Heriot Watt University in Edinburgh. "It's not easy, but it's not something we can say we can't do so let's forget about it."

Britain may miss out on any future methane hydrate boom - the North Sea is too shallow and no deposits have been found in the deeper waters further north - but other countries have recognised their potential. Japan, India and Korea, as well as the United States, are investing millions of pounds in hydrate research.

Ray Boswell, who heads the hydrate programme at the US department of energy's national energy technology laboratory, said the US was determined to be the first to mine the resource.

"Commercially viable production is definitely realistic within a decade. The world is investing in hydrates, and one reason for us to do this is to maintain our leadership position in this emerging technology."

Its new project will see the drilling vessel Uncle John spend about a month in the Gulf of Mexico, where it will bore down to two of the largest expected methane hydrate deposits in the region. Scientists on the ship will collect samples for experiments to see how the methane might be freed and transported to the surface.

This is harder than it sounds. In some deposits the crystals occur in thick layers, in others they are found as smaller nuggets. Puncture one hydrate reservoir and the giant release of gas can disrupt drilling, pierce another and getting the methane out is like sucking porridge through a straw.

This unpredictable nature means energy companies traditionally view hydrates as a nuisance. This gives them a joint interest with the US government as both sides want to know where the crystals are - one to avoid them and the other to exploit them.

Mr Boswell said:

"We have a marriage of near-term industry interests and longer-term government interests. If they develop the ability to detect hydrates for the purpose of avoiding them, that's useful for people who want to do the exact same thing for the purpose of finding them."

Devinder Mahajan, a chemist at the US department of energy's laboratory in Brookhaven, is looking for ways to encourage subsea hydrate deposits to release their methane. He has developed a pressurised tank that allows scientists to study hydrate formation. "You fill the vessel with water and sediment, put in methane gas and cool it down under high pressure. After a few hours, the hydrates form, you can actually see it. They look like ice, but they're not," he said. "This is a very important issue, tied to our future national energy security."

Hydrates on land are easier to get at, and in 2003 a team of oil companies and scientists from Canada, Japan, India, Germany and the US showed it was possible to produce methane from the icy deposits below Canada's Northwest Territories. BP and the US government are carrying out similar experiments in Alaska.

Environmental groups oppose attempts to extract methane from hydrate reserves.

Roger Higman, a climate change campaigner with Friends of the Earth, said: 

"The Americans are desperately looking around trying to boost their fossil fuels because they think the oil is going to run out or there's going to be a scarcity. The actual scarcity is in the space the atmosphere has for taking the carbon dioxide that burning methane produces."

He added: 

"We already have enough fossil fuel in the world that, if burnt, will ruin the world's climate. Rather than look for more, we need to keep the oil, gas and coal we already know about underground and develop alternative sources of energy, principally renewables."

Paul Johnston, a scientist in the Greenpeace laboratory at Exeter University, warned that disturbing hydrate deposits under the seabed was a risky strategy.

"There are legitimate concerns that attempts to tap into these reserves could cause very widespread destabilisation of the seabed and damage to ecosystems," 

 he said.

Methane is a far more potent greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide, he said, and any released during production would make global warming worse.

Mr Boswell said methane was more environmentally friendly than oil and coal, because it produced less carbon dioxide when burnt.

"The prudent approach is to address all the avenues for supplying future energy," he said. "People who say it has to be one or the other, I think, are putting too many eggs in one basket."