Shock: Fracking Used to Inject Nuclear Waste Underground for Decades

TruthStream Media | Mar 4, 2015 | Aaron Dykes and Melissa Melton

Unearthed articles from the 1960s detail how nuclear waste was buried beneath the Earth’s surface by Halliburton & Co. for decades as a means of disposing the by-products of post-World War II atomic energy production.

Fracking is already a controversial practice on its face; allowing U.S. industries to inject slurries of toxic, potentially carcinogenic compounds deep beneath the planet’s surface — as a means of “see no evil” waste disposal — already sounds ridiculous, dangerous, and stupid anyway without even going into further detail.

Alleged fracking links to the contamination of the public water supply and critical aquifers, as well as ties to earthquake upticks near drilling locations that are otherwise not prone to seismic activity have created uproar in the years since the 2005 “Cheney loophole,” which allowed the industry to circumvent the Safe Drinking Water Act by exempting fracking fluids, thus fast tracking shale fracking as a source of cheap natural gas.

Now, it is apparent that the fracking industry is also privvy to many secrets of the nuclear energy industry, and specifically, where the bodies are buried, err… dangerous nuclear waste is buried, rather — waste that atomic researchers have otherwise found so difficult to eliminate.

Truthstream uncovered several published newspaper accounts from the Spring of 1964 concerning a then-newly disclosed plan to dump nuclear waste produced by the atomic energy industry into hydraulic fracturing (fracking) wells using a cement slurry technique developed by Halliburton & Co. The top two fracking companies in the nation at the time were Halliburton and Dowell, a subsidiary of Dow Chemical.

And here we thought fracking was a relatively new industrial phenomenon growing in popularity over just the last couple of decades. Boy were we wrong. Revealed within these articles is Halliburton’s long-standing relationship with the secret government and deep ties between the oil and nuclear industries.

Teaming up with the U.S. Government and Union Carbide Corp., who operate nuclear materials divisions at the Oak Ridge National Laboratories in Tennessee, Halliburton was then credited with “solving” the radioactive waste problem faced by America’s secretive nuclear industry. Dumping waste via fracking had apparently been going on since 1960, according to the reports, but was only made public here in 1964.

Out of Sight, Out of Mind

Each of the articles Truthstream found carry the same account under different headlines, with four of them using identical copy, and the fifth, published in the San Antonio Express, slightly rewritten based upon the same source information. The photo captions of each story also add some useful tidbits:

These ran in the:

April 19, 1964 edition of the Great Bend Tribune,
the April 22, 1964 edition of the Warren Times-Mirror,
the April 26, 1964 edition of the Lubbock Avalanche Journal,
the May 3, 1964 edition of the San Antonio Express News (original)
and the June 15, 1964 edition of the Denton Record Chronicle.

The story read, in part:

“Two techniques originated by the petroleum industry for its own uses are expected to solve a major problem in the development of nuclear energy for peaceful purposes. The problem is the disposal of dangerous, sometimes deadly, radioactive waste by-products.”

“Researchers at Halliburton Co’s. Technical Center here working with Oak Ridge National Laboratory scientists, have combined the oil well cementing technique with the hydraulic fracturing production stimulation technique to entomb radioactive wastes in an impermeable shale formation a thousand feet underground.”

“The method used at Oak Ridge begins by mixing the waste with a cement slurry, pumping the mixture down a hole drilled into the Conasuaga shale and then fracturing the shale to create a horizontal crack. The crack fills with the mixture to form a thin, horizontal sheet several hundred feet across. The mix sets to permanently hold the radioactive waste in the formation.”

“Union Carbide Corp., which operates facilities at Oak Ridge for the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission, and Halliburton, which provides specialized oil field services such as cementing fracturing worldwide, have collaborated on the project since 1960.”

The mix remained liquid for 48 hours before it was supposed to permanently set and remain there, entombed, forever.

The articles make clear that the Atomic Energy Commission was preparing to use fracking as a means of disposing of nuclear wastes at additional facilities, with Oak Ridge being simply one of the largest, and the first to publicly disclose these out-of-sight disposal procedures:

“Oak Ridge has a radioactive waste disposal problem typical of the nation’s nuclear sites. Each year about four million gallons of waste, including such fission products as strontium 90, cesium 137 and ruthenium 103, are generated at Oak Ridge.”

“Among the disposal methods already tried have been dumping concrete-encased barrels of waste in the ocean or burying the waste in lead-lined containers. These are considered either too dangerous or too expensive or both.”

Unfortunately, the ocean has been used as a giant trashcan not only by the nuclear industry, but municipal garbage and landfill companies and many other entities as well, without any real concern about its significant effects on the food supply and larger ecosystem of the planet.

“If this process is successful for disposal of Oak Ridge National Laboratory intermediate-level wastes, it has potential application at other atomic energy sites where suitable geological conditions exist,” the Atomic Energy Commission says.”

The slightly different version in the San Antonio Express News added these details:

“A couple of techniques used by oilmen when they have hopes of production may soon be used by the Atomic Energy Commission for – of all things – radioactive garbage disposal.”

“Final tests are now under way at Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee, in trying a combination of oil well cementing plus hydraulic fracturing to entomb radioactive wastes in an impermeable shale formation a thousand feet underground.”

Meanwhile, the Great Bend Tribune added information about the Halliburton executives involved in the plan in their caption for a photo which shows businessmen looking at a diagram explaining how nuclear waste like strontium 90 is mixed with cement and injected into shale formations:

“Halliburton engineer Mack Stogner, left, reviews the project with Harry P. Conroy, senior vice president and general manager of the oil field service firm, and W.D. Owsley, senior vice president.”

The process includes remote controlled operation of the hydraulic fracturing drill in order to shield workers from the “medium level” radioactive substances being dumped into the earth’s crust, as the Warren Times Mirror in Pennsylvania notes in the caption:

“Disposing of Waste – Working behind shielding and wearing film badges, Halliburton Company personnel use demounted oil field service units to dispose of radioactive waste generated at the Oak Ridge, Tenn. nuclear site.”

How often this procedure has been used at other facilities since then is not entirely clear, though we know from reports discussed below that the practice continued and there is no indication that it ever stopped.

Five years later, the October 22, 1969 edition of the San Bernardino County Sun carried a report titled, “3 Ways to Manage Radioactive Waste.”

It discussed the ongoing and growing problems with nuclear waste, naming three principle strategies for managing the toxic stuff, summed up as “(1) delay and decay, (2) concentrate and confine and (3) dilute and disperse,” discussing how materials with lower half lives can supposedly be safely sequestered and later dumped, while other materials can be simply diluted and poured into existing groundwater supplies and systems.

The UPI story originating out of Oak Ridge states, in part,

“Since the start of the atomic era in the 1940s, nuclear reactors around the nation have produced 75 million gallons of hazardous high level radioactive waste materials.”

“And scientists here and elsewhere around the nation still are wrestling with the problems of what to do with this material, which promises to become even more plentiful as more and more commercial nuclear reactors go into power production.”

Oak Ridge proclaims that it found a solution to dealing with high level nuclear wastes, which has thus far been to keep it,

“…buried a few feet underground in storage tanks – tanks which must be periodically replaced because of the natural deterioration of the steel and other materials of which they are fabricated.”

“It is in this area of confining the high level wastes, whose radioactive half life ranges up to 30 to 50 years, that the Atomic Energy Commission is pushing dramatic new concepts.”

“One disposal system, involving materials in the medium range of radioactivity, is the hydraulic fracturing procedures. This system is now being used at Oak Ridge and involves mixing the liquid radioactive waste with concrete to form a grout which is pumped into shale formations 500 to 800 feet underground.”

Note, this article cites a shallower depth, at levels as shallow as 500 feet, after the 1964 articles claimed a further removed depth of 1,000 feet to 5,000. The even “higher level wastes” were disposed of in abandoned salt mines, according to Oak Ridge.

Nuclear Waste ‘Safely Flushed Away’ into the Water Supply

The 1969 article states that “low level waste” is “material which can safely be flushed away into rivers and lakes or released into the atmosphere because the level of radioactivity is so low that is presents no hazard when diluted and flushed into man’s natural environment. The more difficult problem is involved in the high level, liquid and solid wastes which are produced in the reprocessing of used fuel elements from nuclear reactor cores.”

The idea that the waste dumped into water supplies was so “low level” as to be completely harmless is likely dubious and hopeful at best. Fluoride, a by-product of the nuclear power industry, was one of those constituents, and was transformed from being known as a rat poison to being known as a dental benefit by the original spin doctor and propagandist, Edward Bernays.

In his book “The Fluoride Deception,” author Christopher Bryson revealed how the nuclear industry also used fluoridation of the public water supply as a means of secretly dumping industrial waste after fluoride was a major by-product in the uranium enrichment process for building the atomic bomb. Bryson told Democracy Now:

The Manhattan Project needed fluoride to enrich uranium. That’s how they did it. The biggest industrial building in the world, for a time, was the fluoride gaseous diffusion plant in Tennessee the Manhattan Project and Dr. Hodge as the senior toxicologist for the Manhattan Project, were scared stiff less that workers would realize that the fluoride they were going to be breathing inside these plants was going to injury them and that the Manhattan Project, the key — the key of U.S. Strategic power in the Cold War Era, would be jeopardized because the Manhattan Project and the industrial contractors making the atomic bomb would be facing all these lawsuits from workers, all these lawsuits from farmers living around these industrial plants and so Harold Hodge assures us that fluoride is safe and good for children.

More recently, an Associated Press investigation found in 2011 that 48 of 65 nuclear sites in the United States were leaking tritium, a radioactive form of hydrogen, into groundwater supplies via corroded pipes and tunnels. AP found at least 37 locations were in direct violation of federal drinking water standards for tritium, in some cases hundreds of times over.

Fracking Nuclear Waste ‘Safe for Millions of Years’… Unless It Leaks

Some 30 trillion gallons of toxic waste has been kept out of sight, out of mind by U.S. industries that have injected it hundreds and thousands of feet underground into wells since the 1960s.

Scientists who work for these corporations have used computer modeling to assure the Environmental Protection Agency that this waste poses no threat to our aquifers and that layers of rock deep within the Earth would safely store this stuff like Tupperware for millenia.

Already, several incidents have proven that scientific computer models are no match for reality.

It is clear from a December 21, 1973 article that disposal of nuclear waste via fracking continued, along with promises that it would be safe for millions of years to come.

The Dixon Evening Telegraph wrote in “Geologists look at energy crunch”:

“The U.S. Government is disposing of approximately 250,000 gallons of intermediate-level wastes each year using a technique called hydraulic fracturing. Liquids are pumped into impervious shales 1,000 to 5,000 feet below the surface. High pressure is applied causing the rocks to fracture and the liquid moves out laterally. Because the rock and radioactive wastes it contains will not be exposed to the biosphere for millions of years, this method should be safe unless leakage into an overlying aquifer occurs.”

That is, as the article points out, unless there are leaks.

As we found in research, leakage is exactly what has happened time and again throughout the years, including at disposal sites for Oak Ridge National Laboratories, according to reports in the following cases.

Via ProPublica:

In April, 1967 pesticide waste injected by a chemical plant at Denver’s Rocky Mountain Arsenal destabilized a seismic fault, causing a magnitude 5.0 earthquake — strong enough to shatter windows and close schools — and jolting scientists with newfound risks of injection, according to the U.S. Geological Survey.

A year later, a corroded hazardous waste well for pulping liquor at the Hammermill Paper Co., in Erie, Pa., ruptured. Five miles away, according to an EPA report, “a noxious black liquid seeped from an abandoned gas well” in Presque Isle State Park.

In 1975 in Beaumont, Texas, dioxin and a highly acidic herbicide injected underground by the Velsicol Chemical Corp. burned a hole through its well casing, sending as much as five million gallons of the waste into a nearby drinking water aquifer.

And these are hardly the only examples… in fact, it is just scratching the surface of an issue that is almost as incomprehensible as it is unfathomable.

Then in August 1984 in Oak Ridge, Tenn., radioactive waste was turned up by water monitoring near a deep injection well at a government nuclear facility.

Bingo…

There it is. The infallible, permanent, and “impermeable” deep injection wells that Halliburton and the Atomic Energy Commission considered as a solution to nuclear waste for eons to come were found turning up radioactive nuclear waste at the very Oak Ridge site where these 1960s disposal projects were taking place.

Subterranean Waste Disposal a ‘Cornerstone of the Nation’s Economy’

Those cemented wells, filled with injected disposal substances may be safely secured for a few years or even decades, but that is no guarantee for the years down the road and its certainly not the millenia as promised by Halliburton and others in the industry. In fact, many of the wells have been forgotten, abandoned, and are lost to the record books.
As ProPublica reports:

There are upwards of 2 million abandoned and plugged oil and gas wells in the U.S., more than 100,000 of which may not appear in regulators’ records. Sometimes they are just broken off tubes of steel, buried or sticking out of the ground. Many are supposed to be sealed shut with cement, but studies show that cement breaks down over time, allowing seepage up the well structure.

And many of these are injection wells, where all kinds of unwanted, toxic substances are dumped in order to be forgotten… though not necessarily gone.

Not only are these practices taking place, they are widespread… and widely defended, even with the known failures and safety issues.

Many scientists and regulators say the alternatives to the injection process — burning waste, treating wastewater, recycling, or disposing of waste on the surface — are far more expensive or bring additional environmental risks.

Subterranean waste disposal, they point out, is a cornerstone of the nation’s economy, relied on by the pharmaceutical, agricultural and chemical industries. It’s also critical to a future less dependent on foreign oil: Hydraulic fracturing, “clean coal” technologies, nuclear fuel production and carbon storage (the keystone of the strategy to address climate change) all count on pushing waste into rock formations below the earth’s surface. (source)

Sure, maybe it’s better than dumping it directly into the waterways, but still. This isn’t just playing with fire, this is playing with the lives of everyone in the nation for generations to come.

Please read ProPublica’s full series of reports on this, starting here. Things have to change.

These people should not have started messing with something they did not know how to fully and safely manage.

How long can this madness continue until it winds up tainting every drinking glass in America?

Engineer Mario Salazar, who worked as a technical expert for 25 years with the EPA’s underground injection program in Washington, told ProPublica’s Abrahm Lustgarten something that should give us all pause about how radioactive nuclear waste and industrial pollutants in general are being handled, and where they may ultimately end up:

“In 10 to 100 years we are going to find out that most of our groundwater is polluted. A lot of people are going to get sick, and a lot of people may die.”

Busted! Fukushima Operator Concealed Radioactive Leak for Nearly a Year

© AP Photo/ Toshiaki Shimizu

Sputnik | Feb 26, 2015

Tokyo Electric Power Co., TEPCO, has been slammed by fishermen, for knowingly allowing radioactive substances to flow freely into the sea for ten months.

Operators of the tsunami-stricken Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant admitted that a drainage ditch allowed highly-contaminated water to flow into the sea, and that the leak was first detected back in May 2014.
Fishermen were shocked to hear such confession, voicing disappointment in the company that has been criticized for the cleanup of the Fukushima disaster that happened four years ago.

"I don't understand why you (TEPCO) kept silent about the leakage even though you knew about it. Fishery operators are absolutely shocked," Masakazu Yabuki, chief of the Iwaki fisheries cooperative said.

© AP Photo/ Tokyo Electric Power Co.

Underground water is being released into the ocean through a piping at Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear plant in Okuma, Fukushima prefecture, northern Japan Wednesday, May 21, 2014. Japan’s crippled nuclear power plant has begun releasing groundwater from the least contaminated areas of the facility into the ocean so it does not run into contaminated areas and create more toxic water amid storage space limitations.

A TEPCO officials justified the cover-up saying the company found out during an investigation.

"This was part of an ongoing investigation in which we discovered a water puddle with high levels of radiation on top of the Reactor No. 2 building, and because this also happens to be one of the sources for this drainage system, we decided to report everything all at once."

A company spokesperson added that it did not disclosed the leak because samples from ocean water surrounding the area showed no substantial spikes of hazardous material.

TEPCO had to get permission from the fishermen to dispose of groundwater in the surrounding ocean.

In Sept. 2013, when Tokyo was announced to be the host country for 2020 Summer Olympics, Japan’s Prime Minister Shinzo Abe promised the International Olympic Committee that all radiation leaks at the tsunami-ravaged plant were “under control.”

The Japanese government also announced that TEPCO would be the main sponsor of the 2020 Olympics.

Meanwhile, TEPCO maintains that the contaminated water that has been freely leaking into the Pacific Ocean does not violate regulations and the Nuclear Regulation Authority (NRA) has not detected a spike in the level of toxins.

In March 2011, the Fukushima I Nuclear Power Plant in Japan was hit by a massive earthquake-triggered tsunami that led to meltdown of three of the plant’s six nuclear reactions. Four people were killed, 37 had physical injuries and two were taken to the hospital for radiation burns. The entire death toll from the earthquake and tsunami is estimated to be around 20,000.

Japan orders Fukushima waste to be released into ocean after worker falls into tank of radioactive water and dies

© Natural News

Natural News | Feb 15, 2015 | Ethan A. Huff

With nowhere else to put it and workers constantly being exposed to it, radiation from the stricken Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power facility in Japan has been ordered to be dumped into the ocean by Japanese regulators, according to new reports. This was just two days after a plant employee accidentally fell into one of the onsite storage tanks filled with radioactive water, resulting in his death.

According to the Star Tribune, the 55-year-old man died of multiple injuries after falling through an opening at the top of the 10-meter (33-foot) high tank. He was one of three men who was inspecting the tank at the time of the fall.

Following the incident, Japan's Nuclear Regulatory Authority met to discuss options for disposing of the radioactive waste, which continues to pose health threats at the facility. The Wall Street Journal reports that the regulatory body's chairman isn't pleased with the way the Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO) has handled the disaster, which continues to wreak havoc.

"Tokyo Electric Power must consider whether it (storing the water) is really necessary," stated Shunichi Tanaka during a recent board meeting. "It is surely harmful if it leads to the death of workers."

Japanese regulators suggest that TEPCO start disposing of radioactive water in 2017 

A draft recommendation was made at the meeting that proposes a 2017 start date for discharging the water. That proposal is expected to receive approval within the next week. More than one year ago, the International Atomic Energy Agency made the recommendation to TEPCO that it begin releasing small amounts of low-level tritium-contaminated water in a controlled manner so that it could focus on other problems at the plant.

But the power operator has yet to take action, which has resulted in massive contamination of local groundwater. Reports indicate that up to 400 tons of highly contaminated water is added to the site every day, an insurmountable level that will only make it that much worse to clean up in the future.

TEPCO's water purification process can't remove tritium; operator running out of room for storage tanks 

TEPCO is currently trying to remove radioactive material from the tainted water before dumping it into the ocean. But the system it currently has in place to do this is unable to remove radioactive tritium, which is why the power operator has begun moving the water into large storage tanks onsite.

There are currently about 1,000-and-counting storage tanks at the facility, but TEPCO is quickly running out of space to add more. Besides this, TEPCO is having to continue working towards removing spent fuel rods and replacing cooling equipment to prevent further problems at the plant, which show no signs of relent.

Worker injuries increasing at Fukushima, suggesting sloppier safety measures 

The plant's decommissioning process, which is expected to take several decades, currently involves some 7,000 workers laboring day and night to get things under control. Between April and November of 2014, however, there were 40 injuries at the plant compared to 12 the year prior, suggesting that safety measures are degrading.

"He was wearing a harness, but the hook was found tucked inside the harness," explained a TEPCO spokesman to reporters about the tank fall incident. "This means the harness was not being used. We are investigating whether safety measures were appropriately observed."

Earlier in 2014, another Fukushima worker died after being buried in earth and rubble while trying to dig a hole at the site.

Sources:

http://blogs.wsj.com

http://www.startribune.com

http://www.channelnewsasia.com

New Mexico Nuclear Waste Dump Shows Extended Stuctural Failure

Daboo777 | Jan 23, 2015

Dept. of Energy, Jan 21, 2015 (emphasis added): Roof Separation Highlights Bolting Priority — January 15 [we] discovered that a portion of the ceiling in the Panel 3 access drift had fallen… The roof fall… was estimated to be approximately 8’ long by 8’wide and 24” thick… no WIPP personnel were present at the time of the fall. The area where the fall occurred is also known to contain low levels of radioactive contamination… WIPP geotechnical inspections conducted in November 2014 identified seven areas… where access was restricted due to significant bolt loss… The area where the roof fall occurred was one of the seven locations…

http://enenews.com/ap-ceiling-collaps...

http://wipp.energy.gov/wipprecovery/r...

Obama "dramatically" increases allowable levels of radiation in drinking water

© Natural News

Natural News | Jan 17, 2015 | Jonathan Benson

As radioactive pollution continues to accumulate throughout the environment as a result of nuclear incidents like Fukushima, the U.S. government's response is not to try to mitigate this threat to public health but rather to increase the official maximum exposure levels and basically redefine how much radiation is considered safe.

The Obama Administration recently did this with regard to radiation in drinking water, dramatically increasing allowable levels in response to "radiological incidents" that make it impossible to keep radiation levels below the previously established thresholds. So, the new approach is to continually raise these thresholds so that water can be considered safe.

It isn't, of course, but that's the illusion that the American plutocracy would have us all accept as reality -- or what the nuclear industry describes as the "new normal," according to Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER). The goal is to maintain the ruse for as long as possible, or until so many people are ill and dying of cancer that nothing can be done to stop this runaway train.

According to a press release from PEER, the White House's decision to allow the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to alter its official radiation guides, known as Protective Action Guides (PAGs), make radiation cleanup mandates more lax than they have ever been in the history of the agency's existence.

"In soil, the PAGs allow long-term public exposure to radiation in amounts as high as 2,000 millirems," explains the press release. "This would, in effect, increase a longstanding 1 in 10,000 person cancer rate to a rate of 1 in 23 persons exposed over a 30-year period."

Allowable levels of radiation in drinking water are basically undefined at this point 

For drinking water, the requirements are even more obscured. According to the same report, the EPA's new standard is undefined in this regard as the agency "continues to seek input." But the gist of it allows for indeterminable "flexibility" in discarding the previously established limits for drinking water and basically allowing whatever radiation is present in water to be considered "safe."

There's obviously nothing scientific about this "new normal" policy, but most of the "sheeple" probably won't even take a second look at it. PEER Executive Director Jeff Ruch said it right when he told some in the media that the Obama Sdministration's new guidelines are something that "only Dr. Strangelove could embrace."

"If this typifies the environmental leadership we can expect from Ms. McCarthy," he stated, referring to EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy, "then [the] EPA is in for a long, dirty slog. No compelling justification is offered for increasing the cancer deaths of Americans innocently exposed to corporate miscalculations several hundred-fold."

Interestingly, the guidelines in the new PAGs for how to handle "radiological emergencies," which include evacuations, shelter-in-place orders, food restrictions and other actions, seem to fit the bill for what the world currently faces with Fukushima. Radiation releases from the shuttered plant are still so high that a Japanese government official recently reported that there is no other option but to continue dumping contaminated releases into the ocean.

This tainted ocean water will obviously continue circulating around the world, polluting ocean life, soils, and other ecosystems encountered by humans. And this will result in even higher levels of radiation for which the EPA will have to cover up the truth and pretend as though everything is just fine.

"We have to dispose of the water," stated Shunichi Tanaka, chairman of the Nuclear Regulation Authority in Japan, in a public comment after expressing that he was "overwhelmed" by the number of tanks holding radioactive water.

Sources:

http://www.globalresearch.ca

http://www.peer.org

http://enenews.com

http://science.naturalnews.com

Humans Have Brought World's Oceans to Brink of 'Major Extinction Event'

"Although defaunation has been less severe in the oceans
than on land, our effects on marine animals are
increasing in pace and impact," the researchers write.
(Photo: Phil's 1stPix/flickr/cc)

Common Dreams | Jan 16, 2015 | Deirdre Fulton

But 'proactive intervention' could still avert marine disaster, researchers find

Marine wildlife at all levels of the food chain has been badly damaged by human activity, says a new report that urges immediate and "meaningful rehabilitation" if we are to avert mass extinction in the world's oceans.

"We may be sitting on a precipice of a major extinction event," Douglas J. McCauley, an ecologist at the University of California, Santa Barbara and an author of the study, told the New York Times.

The report, published Thursday in the journal Science, finds that habitat loss, mismanagement of oceanic resources, climate change, and the overall "footprint of human ocean use" have resulted in a phenomenon known as "defaunation"—a decline in animal species diversity and abundance.

"Although defaunation has been less severe in the oceans than on land, our effects on marine animals are increasing in pace and impact," reads the study abstract. "Humans have caused few complete extinctions in the sea, but we are responsible for many ecological, commercial, and local extinctions. Despite our late start, humans have already powerfully changed virtually all major marine ecosystems."

"Humans have profoundly decreased the abundance of both large (e.g., whales) and small (e.g., anchovies) marine fauna," it continues. "Such declines can generate waves of ecological change that travel both up and down ma­rine food webs and can alter ocean ecosystem functioning."

Just as the Industrial Revolution during the 1800s decimated the huge tracts of forests, driving many terrestrial species to extinction, industrial use of the oceans threatens to destroy marine habitats and in turn damage the health of marine wildlife populations.

Report co-author Steve Palumbi of Stanford University listed several emerging threats to the oceans: "There are factory farms in the sea and cattle-ranch-style feed lots for tuna. Shrimp farms are eating up mangroves with an appetite akin to that of terrestrial farming, which consumed native prairies and forest. Stakes for seafloor mining claims are being pursued with gold-rush-like fervor, and 300-ton ocean mining machines and 750-foot fishing boats are now rolling off the assembly line to do this work."

Timeline (log scale) of marine and terrestrial defaunation. If left unmanaged, the authors predict that marine habitat alteration, along with climate change (colored bar: IPCC warming), will exacerbate marine defaunation. (Credit: Science)

"Human activities are negatively impacting the ocean at an ever increasing and unsustainable rate, and we must freeze the footprints of industrial activities and commercial fishing," Oceana marine scientist Amanda Keledjian told Common Dreams. "Oceana applauds these researchers for their work, because assessing the oceans from a holistic perspective is the only way to understand the scope at which we must act to reverse collapsing fisheries and continued habitat degradation."

According to the Times:

Scientific assessments of the oceans’ health are dogged by uncertainty: It’s much harder for researchers to judge the well-being of a species living underwater, over thousands of miles, than to track the health of a species on land. And changes that scientists observe in particular ocean ecosystems may not reflect trends across the planet.

Dr. [Malin L.] Pinsky, Dr. McCauley and their colleagues sought a clearer picture of the oceans’ health by pulling together data from an enormous range of sources, from discoveries in the fossil record to statistics on modern container shipping, fish catches and seabed mining. While many of the findings already existed, they had never been juxtaposed in such a way.

A number of experts said the result was a remarkable synthesis, along with a nuanced and encouraging prognosis.

"I see this as a call for action to close the gap between conservation on land and in the sea," said Loren McClenachan of Colby College, who was not involved in the study.

The report authors say the effects of human activity in the ocean are still reversible: "Proactive intervention can avert a marine defaunation disaster of the magnitude observed on land."

Oceana's Keledjian echoed that appeal. "This study reminds us that it is critical to do everything we can to protect vulnerable species and the ocean ecosystems on which they depend," she said. "While much remains unknown about the state of the oceans, we cannot wait to act until we know with 100 percent certainty that extinctions and devastation are upon us, because that will already be far too late.

Comment: The emphasis on humans leaves out the fact that humans are controlled by corporations and military interests, and these powers are the primary problem, not individuals.

Over 1,200 seabirds mysteriously die on Pacific Coast

© Natural News

Natural News | Jan 15, 2015 | J.D. Heyes

Officials on the Pacific Coast are puzzled by the deaths of hundreds of small, white-bellied seabirds since October.

The birds, called Cassin's auklets, are mostly gray in color and have blue feet. Media reports say they have been steadily washing ashore all along the Pacific Coast, from Northern California to the coast of the state of Washington, and that, naturally, is concerning wildlife and other experts because thus far they have yet to determine an exact cause for the massive deaths.

"To be this lengthy and geographically widespread, I think is kind of unprecedented," Phillip Johnson, the executive director of the Oregon Shores Conservation Coalition, told the Pierce Pioneer, in its online edition. "It's an interesting and somewhat mysterious event."

At the time of publication, the Pierce Pioneer (PP) noted that the University of Washington's Coastal Observation and Seabird Survey Team (COSST) had gathered as many as 1,200 birds that have washed ashore over the past few months.

COSST volunteer Diane Bilderback commented that she had not found any dead auklets until the beginning of this past fall, pointing to a very recent phenomenon.

Wasting away - but why?

Other residents along the Pacific Coast have also said they have encountered scores of dead auklets in recent months, including Ken and Cathy Denton.

"We've seen a lot of common murres, but those are common," Ken Denton told the PP. "This is the most we've seen of something else."

Julie Parrish, the COSST executive director, said the large number of deaths, which appear to be continuing to rise, is definitely a cause for concern. She told the PP that the bulk of the birds appear to have starved to death, which she said could be caused by an unusually prolific mating season.

"Almost every breeding pair laid an egg, and as the young birds fly south for the winter they may not all be finding the small fish and shrimp they normally feed on," she said.

That claim was backed up by Julia Burco, a veterinarian for the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife; she, along with other experts, believes that the birds are starving and that no toxin is responsible for their deaths.

Bird deaths follow a pattern of other mass deaths of sea life

The deaths of so many auklets comes on the heels of other mass deaths of sea-faring animals, as Natural News has documented:

-- In September, we reported that millions of sea stars were dying -- again, along the Pacific Coast -- stretching from Alaska to Mexico. The creatures, which belong to the class of animals known as Asteroidea, have been on Earth for some 450 million years, and more than 20 species of them have been affected. Experts say dead sea stars are exhibiting signs of "wasting syndrome," a condition which causes their limbs to disintegrate.

-- The BBC reported in December that 500 dead sea lions had been discovered along the northern coastline of Peru, for no inherently obvious reason. As we reported:

The latest of several mass die-offs in recent years, the rotting corpses were found on Anconcillo Beach, located in Peru's Ancash region. Both young and old sea lions were found at the site, which the local governor blamed on fishermen who may have poisoned them while they searched for food at the shoreline. Others like the environmental group Orca, however, say oil exploration is probably the cause.

However, a more likely cause for these deaths and others is rising levels of radiation from the disabled nuclear plant in Fukushima, Japan. As The Christian Science Monitor reported, the levels of radiation in seawater from the damaged plant should peak along the U.S. Pacific Coast some time this year. That report is here.

Sources:

http://www.piercepioneer.com

http://www.spokesman.com

http://www.naturalnews.com

http://www.csmonitor.com

http://www.naturalnews.com

http://science.naturalnews.com

Fracking caused earthquake boom in Ohio town – study

Anti-fracking demonstrators protest on 51st
Street and 7th Avenue.(AFP Photo / Bryan Thomas)

RT | Jan 6, 2015

In March 2014, hydraulic fracturing – or fracking – caused 77 earthquakes in a small Ohio town that had no previous experience with seismic activity, according to a new study. One quake was large enough to be felt in neighboring areas.

Fracking in Poland Township, Ohio was halted two days after the area was hit with a magnitude-3 earthquake along a hidden fault in rock which was deep beneath a natural gas well in the Utica Shale, according to research published in the Bulletin of the Seismological Society of America.

The study's authors said the magnitude-3 quake was "one the largest earthquakes ever induced by hydraulic fracturing in the United States."

All 77 quakes occurred between March 4-12, the study found.

Besides the magnitude-3 quake, the study reported that most of the seismic activity was not felt by Poland Township's population, which numbered 14,960 in the 2010 census.

No previous seismic activity had occurred in Poland Township, which sits near the Pennsylvania border, and the quakes stopped once fracking operations were put on hold, according to lead study author Robert Skoumal, a graduate student in seismology at Miami University in Ohio.

To unleash oil or natural gas, fracking requires blasting large volumes of highly pressurized water, sand, and other chemicals into layers of rock. The contents of fracking fluid include chemicals that the energy industry and many government officials will not name, yet they insist the chemicals do not endanger human health, contradicting findings by scientists and environmentalists. Once used, toxic fracking wastewater is then either stored in deep underground wells, disposed of in open pits for evaporation, sprayed into waste fields or used over again.

Fracking has been linked to groundwater contamination, an uptick in earthquakes in other states, exacerbation of drought conditions and a host of health concerns for humans and the local environment.

Ohio and many other US states, including Oklahoma and Texas, have been subject to intense amounts of fracking in recent years, as the effects of the process have caused controversy from coast to coast.

For instance, a separate study released in October found that fracking had a direct connection to some 400 micro-earthquakes in the eastern Ohio town of Canton.

Last month, New York became the first US state to ban fracking.

“I cannot support high volume hydraulic fracturing in the great state of New York,” said Howard Zucker, acting New York State Health Commissioner. He equated fracking to second-hand smoke, the health risks of which were not fully understood until many years of scientific studies were conducted.

A fracking ban was recently instituted in Denton, Texas, a town of 123,000 located on top of the natural gas goldmine that is the Barnett Shale formation, the birthplace of the much-maligned oil and gas extraction method.

Meanwhile, dozens of other US cities, towns, villages, and counties have passed measures against the practice, according to Food and Water Watch.

In November, cities in Ohio voted on fracking ban measures, with mixed results. The cities of Gates Mills, Kent, and Youngstown – all located in northeast Ohio, near Poland Township – voted down bans, while the town of Athens approved one.

Yet city bans are not always sure to remain in place, as local ordinances against fracking can run afoul of state laws that allow the process, as is the case in Ohio.

In Colorado, for instance, state officials have worked to supersede local, voter-approved bans through the legal system.

Fukushima and the institutional invisibility of nuclear disaster

Black smoke at Fukushima
Daichi, 24th March 2011.
Photo: deedavee easyflow via Flickr.

The Ecologist | Dec 20, 2014 | John Downer

Speaking at press conference soon after the accident began, the UK government's former chief science advisor, Sir David King, reassured journalists that the natural disaster that precipitated the failure had been "an extremely unlikely event".

In doing so, he exemplified the many early accounts of Fukushima that emphasised the improbable nature of the earthquake and tsunami that precipitated it.

A range of professional bodies made analogous claims around this time, with journalists following their lead. This lamentation, by a consultant writing in the New American, is illustrative of the general tone:

" ... the Fukushima 'disaster' will become the rallying cry against nuclear power. Few will remember that the plant stayed generally intact despite being hit by an earthquake with more than six times the energy the plant was designed to withstand, plus a tsunami estimated at 49 feet that swept away backup generators 33 feet above sea level."

The explicit or implicit argument in all such accounts is that the Fukushima's proximate causes are so rare as to be almost irrelevant to nuclear plants in the future. Nuclear power is safe, they suggest, except against the specific kind of natural disaster that struck Japan, which is both a specifically Japanese problem, and one that is unlikely to re-occur, anywhere, in any realistic timeframe.

An appealing but tenuous logic

The logic of this is tenuous on various levels. The 'improbability' of the natural disaster is disputable, for one, as there were good reasons to believe that neither the earthquake nor the tsunami should have been surprising. The area was well known to be seismically active after all, and the quake, when it came, was only the fourth largest of the last century.

Read more..

The Fukushima Endgame: The Radioactive Contamination of the Pacific Ocean

Global Research | Dec 17, 2014 | Prof Michel Chossudovsky

Nuclear radiation resulting from the March 2011 Fukushima disaster –which threatens life on planet earth– is not front page news in comparison to the most insignificant issues of public concern, including the local level crime scene or the tabloid gossip reports on Hollywood celebrities.

The shaky political consensus both in Japan, the U.S. and Western Europe is that the crisis at Fukushima has been contained. 

The truth is otherwise. Known and documented, the ongoing dumping of highly radioactive water into the Pacific Ocean constitutes a potential trigger to a process of global radioactive contamination. 

This water contains plutonium 239 and its release into the Ocean has both local as well as global repercussions.  A microgram of plutonium if inhaled, according to Dr. Helen Caldicott, can cause death:

Certain isotopes of radioactive plutonium are known as some of the deadliest poisons on the face of the earth. A mere microgram (a speck of darkness on a pinhead) of Plutonium-239, if inhaled, can cause death, and if ingested, radioactive Plutonium can be harmful, causing leukemia and other bone cancers.

“In the days following the 2011 earthquake and nuclear plant explosions, seawater meant to cool the nuclear power plants instead carried radioactive elements back to the Pacific ocean. Radioactive Plutonium was one of the elements streamed back to sea.” (decodescience.com).

It would appear that the radioactive water has already penetrated parts of the Japanese coastline:

Environmental testing of shoreline around the nuclear plant (as well fish, especially Tuna) showed negligible amounts of Plutonium in the seawater. The Plutonium, from what little is reported, sank into the sediments off the Japanese coast.”  (Ibid)

Read more..

New Mexico fines federal government after nuclear waste radiation leaks

Aerial view of Los Alamos National Laboratory
(Image from wikipedia.org/lanl.gov)

RT | Dec 7, 2014

The state of New Mexico has fined the federal government a record of more than $54 million for violations at a nuclear waste facility where two incidents in February caused radiation release and human exposure.
The fine – the biggest ever by the state on US Department of Energy – was issued for 37 violations of hazardous waste permits at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) near Carlsbad and the Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL).

New Mexico Environment Department said that a thorough nine months investigation found 13 violations at WIPP, resulting in civil penalties of $17,746,250; and 24 violations at LANL, resulting in civil penalties of $36,604,649.

The probe confirms “the existence of major procedural problems that contributed to these events, and also found a less than adequate response,” a press release read.

Facilities used to store low-level radioactive
waste at the Los Alamos National Laboratory.
(AFP Photo/Paul Buck)

New Mexico said the Feds’ actions led to an improperly maintained salt truck catching fire at the Carlsbad plant in early February and a rupture of an improperly packaged LANL barrel of waste a week later stored at WIPP, leading to non-life-threatening low level radiation exposure of 22 workers.

The latter incident led to the closure of the facility, the only underground nuclear waste storage in the US, which is crucial for the country’s effort to eradicate Cold War era waste.

The state says it’s continuing to investigate and more fines are possible.

“The health and safety of New Mexicans will always be our priority and we have to hold federal agencies accountable for safe operations in the state,” New Mexico Governor Susana Martinez said in a statement.

Federal officials are expected to release their own assessment reports into the accidents before the end of the year. The price tag for the clean-up effort has been estimated a half-billion dollars and will take years, AP reports.

Drone's Eye View Offers Eerie Glimpse of Nuclear Desolation in Chernobyl's Shadow

'A camera mounted on a drone has revealed the eerie
post-apocalyptic landscape of a town abandoned after
the nuclear power station at Chernobyl exploded nearly
three decades ago,' writes the Guardian's Chris Johnston.
(Image: Screenshot / Danny Cooke footage)

Common Dreams | Nov 29, 2014 | Jon Queally

Filmmaker Danny Cooke filmed city of Pripyat, once home to 50,000 people before nuclear disaster in 1986

A short documentary offering an aerial view of a city that once thrived in the shadow of the former Soviet Union's most notorious nuclear power plant offers a devastating critique of atomic power without uttering a single word.

Employing a remote-controlled drone over and amid the abandoned Ukrainian city of Pripyat, filmmaker Danny Cooke explores the contours of rusted-out amusement park rides and empty buildings left to crumble in the wake of the meltdown at the Chernobyl plant on April 26, 1986. Cooke shot the footage recently while on assignment for CBS News.

Watch:


Postcards from Pripyat, Chernobyl from Danny Cooke on Vimeo.
As the Guardian reports on Cooke's project:

The Devon-based film-maker also sent the drone into a crumbling indoor swimming pool and over factories and apartment buildings where the only sign of life is the weeds growing on the roof.

“Chernobyl is one of the most interesting and dangerous places I’ve been,” Cooke said. “There was something serene, yet highly disturbing about this place. Time has stood still and there are memories of past happenings floating around us.”

It is not until the drone is sent rising above the treetops that viewers can see the vast dome being built to place over the damaged reactor.

Fukushima fallout on vegetation in South Florida exceeded gov’t notification limit by over 1,000% — Nearly triple the highest level reported anywhere on West Coast

ENE News | Nov 27, 2014

Florida Power & Light Company, St. Lucie Nuclear Power Plant Units 1 & 2 (St. Lucie, FL) — 2011 Annual Radiological Environmental Operating Report, submitted to U. S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission:

BROADLEAF VEGETATION: Brazilian Pepper from location H59 — 10-20 miles S/SSE of reactors on south end of Hutchinson Island, [30 miles north of Palm Beach]

• Iodine-131 on 22-Mar: 1,220 pCi/kg (wet weight)
  
• Iodine-131 on 29-Mar: 605 pCi/kg
• Iodine-131 on 06-Apr: 242 pCi/kg
• Iodine-131 on 13-Apr: 136 pCi/kg
• Iodine-131 on 20-Apr: 79 pCi/kg
• Iodine-131 on 26-Apr: 45 pCi/kg
• Iodine-131 on 03-May: 21 pCi/kg
• Iodine-131 is “attributed to the Fukushima Nuclear Power Plants event. Elevated levels of radioiodine were measured through-out the U.S.”

NRC Reporting Level for Vegetation = 100 pCi/kg (wet weight)

NRC Reporting Level: “The concentration value in an environmental sample, if exceeded, which must be reported to the NRC.”

The highest I-131 level reported in vegetation from the West Coast is 462 pCi/kg in Central California.  The March 22 South Florida sample is nearly triple that amount.
 
See also: Emergency radiation testing used at Democrat and Republican conventions after Fukushima; Also for Obama Inauguration -- Seafood, meat, vegetables, milk, water checked for nuclear waste, while top officials agree to publicly downplay crisis -- 80% of milk samples by Orlando, FL had 'significant' Cs-137

Bowling for Meltdowns: Throwing Gas on a Radioactive Fire

© Courtesy ZenGardner.com

CounterPunch | Nov 2, 2014 | John LaForge

Weakening radiation standards; a cap on accident liability; reactor propaganda vs improvements; old units running past expiration dates; revving the engines beyond design specs …. You’d think we were itching for a meltdown.

The Environmental Protection Agency has recommended increased radiation exposure limits following major releases. It would save the industry a bundle to permit large human exposures then, rather than shut down rickety reactors now.

The EPA proposal is a knock-off prompted by Fukushima, because after the triple meltdown started three years ago, Japan increased — by 20 times — the allowable radiation exposures deemed tolerable for humans. Prior to the meltdowns of March 2011, Japan allowed only 1 milliSievert of radiation per year in an individual’s personal space. Now, the limit is 20 milliSieverts per year. This is not safe, it’s just allowable, or, rather, affordable, since the cost of decontaminating 1,000 square miles of Japan to the stricter standard could bust the bank.

The Price Anderson Act provides US reactor owners with a liability cap and a tax-payer bailout in the event of serious accidents or attacks. The law relieves utilities of hundreds of billions in financial risk posed by our ongoing meltdown roulette game. The owners won’t be bankrupted by the next loss-of-coolant disaster, but the US might.

Fukushima has spewed more long-lived radioactive chemicals to the air, the soil and the ocean than any catastrophe in history. But the chant heard round the world is: “The dose is low, there’s no immediate danger.” Promoters of nuclear power repeat this mantra at every opportunity, hoping to dodge Germany’s answer to Fukushima — a permanent reactor phase-out — and it has nearly drowned out all warnings of radiation’s health and environmental effects.

Have you heard of PSR’s March 2011 “Health risks of the releases of radioactivity from the Fukushima reactors: Are they a concern for residents of the US?”; or IPPNW’s June 2014 “Critical Analysis of the UNSCEAR Report”; or the Nov. 2012 “Report of the UN Special Rapporteur on the right to health within the context of the nuclear accident at Fukushima”; or Greenpeace’s two major reports, “Lessons from Fukushima,” and “Fukushima Fallout”? No, the feds would rather you read the UN Scientific Committee’s exec. summary which claims Fukushima’s effects are “unlikely to be observable.” This conclusion was made before any research was done.

The chances of radiation disasters will increase further if the Nuclear Regulatory Commission allows US reactors to run for 80 years. This is what Duke Power, Dominion Power and Exelon suggest for seven of their 40-year-old rattle traps now operating in Pennsylvania, Virginia and South Carolina.

These seven reactors were designed and licensed to be shut down in the current decade. However, since 1991 the nuclear industry has been granted 70 “license extensions” that have generally added 20 years. Now the owners want to push their units an extra 40 years.

Former NRC Commissioner George Apostolakis wasn’t apoplectic when the commission considered the idea, but, according to the New York Times, he said, “I don’t know how we would explain to the public that these designs, 90-year-old designs, 100-year-old designs, are still safe to operate.” The NRC has yet to rule on the 80-year option, but it’s never denied a single license extension request.

Gunning old Fukushima-type engines

Captured by the industry it’s supposed to govern, the NRC has approved 149 reactor “power uprate” applications and has denied exactly one. Power uprates boost the output of old reactors beyond what their original licenses permit. It’s done by packing reactor cores with extra fuel rods and, feeling lucky, running them harder.

Chillingly, 23 operating US reactors are duplicates of the Fukushima-type General Electric Mark 1. Fifteen of these clunkers have been granted power uprates, and seven of these 15 have been granted a second power uprate. (See chart) Susquehanna’s two 31-year-old Fukushima clones in Pennsylvania were granted a hair-raising three power uprates.

With the radiation industry and the NRC working to deny or delay post-Fukushima safety improvements, how do you feel about reactor operators stomping the accelerator while they run their geriatric uranium jalopies toward the cliff?

John LaForge works for Nukewatch and lives on the Plowshares Land Trust near Luck, Wisc.

Britain's nuclear WMD programme: Leaked Sellafield photos reveal 'massive radioactive release' threat

The B30 pond showing a full loading
with fuel rods. Photo: unknown.

The Ecologist | Oct 27, 2014 | Oliver Tickell

"...if the ponds drain, the Magnox fuel will ignite and that would lead to a massive release of radioactive material."

The Ecologist has received a shocking set of leaked images showing decrepit and grossly inadequate storage facilities for high level nuclear waste at the Sellafield nuclear plant.

The images (right), from an anonymous source, show the state of spent nuclear fuel storage ponds that were commissioned in 1952, and used until the mid-1970's as short term storage for spent fuel until it could be re-processed, producing plutonium for military use. However they were completely abandoned in the mid-1970s and have been left derelict for almost 40 years.

The photographs show cracked concrete tanks holding water contaminated with high levels of radiation, seagulls bathing on the water, broken equipment, a dangerous mess of discarded items on elevated walkways, and weeds growing around the tanks.

Read more..

Yucca Mountain Radioactive Waste Dump Not Dead Yet

image

CounterPunch | Oct 22, 2014 | John LaForge

Zombie Alert

Just in time for Halloween, a real zombie.

Although the Obama Administration cancelled the Yucca Mountain project for disposing high-level radioactive waste (uranium fuel rods) in 2009, the scheme stays amazingly undead.

Last Thursday, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission issued the third in a series of reports in which it declared that the deep, engineered cavern inside the mountain — 90 miles from Las Vegas, Nevada — meet the commission’s ever-changing (Eric Pianin, “Rules changed for Nevada nuclear waste site plan,” Wash. Post, Dec. 12, 2001) requirements.

Still pending are two more reports and a final NRC ruling on the site’s suitability. Actual operation of the dump also requires approval from the Environmental Protection Agency and the departments of Transportation and Energy (DOE). Of course, lawsuits by the State of Nevada and dozens of environmental groups would follow a decision to start burying waste.

In spite of 70 years of head scratching, science and industry have not found a cheap way to “dispose” of high-level radioactive waste. In 2008, the plan was estimated to cost at least $90 billion.

The DOE’s 1999 draft environmental impact statement for Yucca, says that leaving the wastes at 72 US reactor sites in 39 states is just as safe as moving it thousands of miles toward Yucca Mt. — as long as it is repackaged every 100 years. There is no need to rush the opening a dumpsite, except that reactor operators want to free-up storage space for freshly produced waste so they can keep running old reactors.

Yucca Mt. Project Cancelled for Hundreds of Reasons

While Republicans from nuclear-heavy states are pushing to revive the Yucca project and hoping for a November take-over of the Senate, Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., broadcasts the science-based disqualifiers that prove Yucca unsuitable. Among them are fast flowing water inside the mountain, earthquake faults, lava flows, and the risk of exploding waste canisters — like the one that burst and wrecked the Energy Department’s Waste Isolation Pilot Project in New Mexico last February. Joonhong Ahn, an engineering professor at the U. of Calif., Berkeley, said in an e-mail to ScienceInsider.com, “… there are still numerous hurdles ahead.”

Indeed, the Government Accounting Office concluded in 2001 that 293 unresolved scientific and engineering problems hinder the plan. (“GAO Challenges Plans for Storage of Nuclear Waste,” Wash. Post, Nov. 30, 2001) Responding to the new report, Nevada state officials made the same point. “The NRC licensing board has admitted more than 200 Nevada contentions challenging the safety and environmental impacts of the proposed repository, and Nevada is prepared to aggressively prosecute these challenges. It is not apparent that the [NRC report] specifically addressed these and other safety contentions,” said Bob Halstead, Executive Director of Nevada’s Agency for Nuclear Projects, in a prepared statement.

“For the NRC staff to publically release just this one volume of the 5-volume Safety Evaluation Report outside the proper context of an ongoing licensing proceeding, and in the absence of a complete SER, is unprecedented,” Halsted said. “It creates a false impression that the safety review has been completed. It is difficult to see what reason there could be for such a release except to provide political support and encouragement for Yucca Mountain supporters in Congress and elsewhere.”

This false impression was spectacularly exaggerated by Rep. John Shimkus, R-Mich., who told the New York Times Oct. 17, “[N]uclear waste stored under that mountain … will be safe and secure for at least a million years.”

Nuclear Waste Production is Kept Alive by Yucca Supporters

Yucca Mt. wouldn’t begin to address the country’s vast nuclear waste problem. There already are about 70,000 tons of it stored at reactor sites. This stockpile would fill Yucca to capacity and force the start of a search for Dump No. 2. Waste that must be containerized for a million years is the “animated corpse” that will forever haunt our clean, cheap too-safe-to-meter nuclear power complex.

The Yucca Mt. “mobile Chernobyl” idea — and alternate plans for regional “interim” dumps — also explodes the risks of radiation accidents contaminating waste handlers and the people along transport routes. The DOE’s planning maps show the waste passing through 40 states, 40 Indian Reservations and 100 major cities. In January 2008, former state transportation analyst Fred Dilger caused alarm when he told a Hillary Clinton campaign rally that if waste trains go through Las Vegas, “All of the casinos on the west side of Las Vegas Boulevard would be bathed in gamma radiation.”

The shipments, using as-yet-untested waste casks, would expose between 138 and 161 million Americans to the risks of dangerous levels of radiation and to the consequences of inevitable truck, train and barge accidents. Even the project’s Final Environmental Impact Statement predicts between 150 and 250 rail or truck crashes over the plan’s 25-year span — about 10 crashes every year for 25 years.

That’s an undying prospect scary enough for a million Halloweens.

John LaForge writes for PeaceVoice, is co-director of Nukewatch—a nuclear watchdog and environmental justice group—and lives at the Plowshares Land Trust out of Luck, Wisconsin.