With escalating oil and gas costs and growing French electricity imports, Italy is changing is stance on nuclear power. The re-elected Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi promised on his campaign to recommit the country to nuclear power and an heated debate is now popping up from north to south.

The general impression is there is still strong local opposition for three main reasons: high construction costs, projected build times of one to two decades and no identifiable Italian community willing to see a nuclear reactor built in their neighborhood. Italy has also failed to resolve the issue of what to do with nuclear waste. A proposed dump in Basilicata region was shelved in 2003 after thousands of demonstrators staged road blocks, marches and hunger strikes.

Italy has not operated or built a nuclear power plant since it shut them all down after the Chernobyl accident of 1986. And recent problems at nuclear power stations in Slovenia and Japan have confirmed for many Italians that living close to a plant is a health hazard. The managing director of Enel, the government-backed firm most likely to build and operate the proposed reactors, warned that in order to proceed Silvio Berlusconi would need “new regulation and strong agreement on the plan within the country”.

Economic Development Minister Claudio Scajola recently announced a national energy strategy that includes the construction of new generation reactors within five years. Enel officials, though, noted that it would take seven to 10 years before they could actually bring a reactor on line. Politics believe nuclear power is the country’s only viable option and that the amount of extra energy produced through wind, solar and geothermal is limited.

“Only with nuclear power we will be able to produce energy on large scale, in a safe way, at competitive prices and with respect for the environment”, Scajola said. But Italy’s nuclear critics are skeptical. The fourth-generation reactor that the Italian government has pledged to build has not yet even been fully designed so Italian nuclear reactors won’t be the answer to any energy problem the country will be facing for one decade or more.

Environmental groups throughout the country are criticizing the idea to bring back nuclear power. Director of Greenpeace Italy, Giuseppe Onofrio, has pledged that he’ll fight ‘tooth and nail’ to keep Italy nuclear-free, while Vice President of the Italian Senate, Emma Bonino, said building nuclear plants would not meet current demand because they wouldn’t be ready for at least 20 years.

In the meantime Enel is planning to build a coal-fired power station in Albania and is looking into nuclear opportunities there and in Italy, Italian Foreign Minister Franco Frattini said recently. “We are working with the Albanian government for the construction of a coal plant and we want to push for nuclear” told Fulvio Conti, Enel chief executive, pointing out that Italy imports some 20% of its electricity from France which is largely produced by nuclear energy.

The debate is widely open and the impression is we’ll go on talking about a possible nuclear for a long time. Talking is the Italian national sport after soccer and I imagine people in a bar arguing endlessly about this controversial issue…

Sources:

Repubblica

Il Corriere

Image courtesy of mandj98 at Flickr under Creative Commons

Nothing like solving one problem while creating another. I can understand that he may hate the sun for what it does to his pasty white skin. And that he may hate the wind for messing up his well placed comb-over–but if he could just look past all that and see that both the sun and the wind could provide our country free, clean energy he’d have many more fans in the REAL world.

Could it be the one time cost for a wind turbine and/or solar panels that’s keeping the energy industry, John, and many of his right-wing good-old-boys from falling in love with the right alternative? Without the option for a wide base of customers to gouge repeatedly (ie. fuel costs) they all may be thinking–what’s the point?

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For the record, if the choices were coal or nuclear–I’d choose nuclear. But those aren’t the choices–wind and solar are viable clean alternatives. Especially when we, as a society, learn to conserve and re-use more and spend a lot less.

For all the minorities in this country who have raised pluperfect hell about their past or current situations, the American Indian has been the quietist, and I wonder why.

Before you write me nasty emails, I’m not minimizing the concerns of minorities in this country: they have their issues and the right to use their voices, and that’s good.

But think for a moment about the original settlers of this land, the American Indian.

They did just fine for centuries, sustaining their cultures with the fruits of the land, picking fights and having wars, just like we all do.

Then, came the white man (no emails please, because that’s what happened), who invaded the natives’ birthright, confiscated their tribal lands, transferred them to reservations and literally forgot about them. Many of those Native Americans to this very day are without electricity and running water, in some cases, living in dirt poor conditions, and they languish without raising their voices.

How incredibly sad.

To add insult to this incomprehensible indignity, mining companies in search of uranium invaded their tribal homes, gouged out huge amounts of topsoil, taking what uranium they could profitably retrieve and leaving open sores bleeding toxic radiation into the soil, air and water.

Their legacy? Still-born babies, children with birth defects, cancer for hundreds, maybe even thousands, livestock mutations and God only knows what else. Maybe to the nuclear industry and our federal government, these people are considered “collateral damage.”

The government that put these noble people onto these lands, quickly approved the mining claims and encouraged uranium miners to take what they can, and in many cases paid only lip service to the clean-up process.

Now, with the price of uranium soaring, those uranium people are at it again, boring test holes on federal lands, in our “protected” forests, and on Indian nation lands.

For the first time in the history of this country, the Navajo communities of Crownpoint and Church Rock, New Mexico are saying NO to the feds and uranium miners.

In an unprecedented move, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) will be challenged in Federal appeals court for its approval of a source materials license for an in situ leach uranium mine on Navajo tribal lands.

The New Mexico Environmental Law Center (NMELC), will present oral arguments on May 12 to a panel of Federal judges in Denver, asking that the NRC decision to allow mining be set aside.

Eric Jantz, an attorney for the NMELC, said in a news release:

“The importance of our hearing on May 12 cannot be overstated. “We are talking about the land, water, air and health of two whole communities. There are people on this land grazing their cattle and hauling their daily drinking water.”

The company in question, Hydro Resources, is proposing mining operations in four areas in the Church Rock-Crownpoint region. The NRC approved the license in 2006, but the New Mexico Environmental Law Center filed a lawsuit in 2007, asking that the license application be overturned.

In it’s release, the NMELC states the NRC has violated the National Environmental Policy Act, the Atomic Energy Act, and it’s own regulations.

The NMELC’s clients are appealing the following points:

Hydro Resources failed to prove that it will protect groundwater from contamination by uranium and other toxic heavy metals. The company failed to ensure that the health of residents near the mines would be protected from damaging radioactive air emissions.

Hydro Resources’ proposed financial bond for the site is inadequate to ensure that the site(s) would be cleaned up in the event that the company is unable to undertake reclamation of the land and/or water impacted by the mining.

Three cheers for the Navajo Nation, for standing up to our big-brother government.

My stand on nuclear energy is well-stated, en toto: it’s a dirty, dangerous, toxic, life-threatening industry and until miners are held responsible for the mess they make, there should be no new mining of nuclear materials in America.

Photo: LA Times

Britain may not have much choice in this matter as its government seems determined to take the nuclear route in an effort to bring Co2 emissions in line with its reduction pledges and mitigate its dwindling North Sea oil and gas supplies.

Announcing plans to enter into a technology partnership with France, the UK government proposes replacing its 24 aging reactors - which currently provide 20% of the nation’s electricity - with a new set of nuclear power plants which will double Britain’s nuclear power generating capacity. In doing so, Britain hopes to become a “world leader in nuclear technology”, according to Energy Secretary John Hutton.

Whilst nuclear energy has at least one advantage in providing plentiful carbon free power, there are numerous objections, not least due to concerns over safety, long term handling and storage of radioactive waste and the potential distraction from long term renewable energy projects. Indeed, there are many complex arguments behind the nuclear question, a topic which cannot be succinctly summarised in a single blog post, and on which I must admit I lack a clear opinion.

Therefore I decided to call in some people who actually know what they are talking about.

Rod of Atomic Insights and Matt from TalkClimateChange have agreed to lend their expertise to this discussion in a currently ongoing debate on our discussion boards, which I am sure will provide the necessary depth of argument and cover the full range of pro’s and con’s.

We’ll be back with a follow-up post containing the highlights (and maybe a final opinion) from this debate next week. In the meantime, feel free to watch the debate or chime in with your views.

The afternoon and evening hearings are set for Tuesday, March 4, in Middletown, Pennsylvania.

Three Mile Island’s operators are asking for a 20-year extension for reactor 1, whose existing 40-year license is set to expire on April 19, 2014. Such extensions have so far been fairly easy to come by, with the NRC having OKd 48 extensions so far for the U.S.’s 104 operating nuclear plants.

NRC officials say reactor 1 has operated safely throughout its history. Unlike the no-longer-functioning reactor 2, which became the source of the most serious nuclear accident in U.S. history on March 28, 1979.

The accident occurred when the reactor’s water-cooling system failed, leading to a partial meltdown of the reactor core. The incident caused some release of radioactive material into the atmosphere, but subsequent studies have not found any evidence of health problems in the area surrounding the facility near Harrisburg.

A study from the Keystone Center concluded the average radiation exposure to people in the vicinity of Three Mile Island was small, about one-sixth the amount provided by a full set of chest x-rays.

Looking to members of the website generous.org.uk I asked them what they felt. Commenting on my earlier blog concerning biofuels, Andrew Fleming gives a full and well-informed account of his personal views. Over to Andrew then:

“Biofuels are not a simple answer - until all the starving are fed, I would prefer that we feed the poor, rather than fuel the rich. It is not a simple question. If we do not alleviate climate change which is happening, then we will lose more land from active crop production due to global warming.

“I strongly suspect that the amount of land which would be needed to produce enough biofuel to prevent further global warming would mean that there would not be enough land to produce food - unless more rain forest was cleared - which would mean an even greater proportion of the crops would be needed for biofuel, since there would be less land given over to forests which reclaim the CO2 from the atmosphere.”

Gordon Brown has recently gone ahead with nuclear again. Andrew, your thoughts?

“I do not think that nuclear fission is the answer either - at least until we have found a fissionable isotope which results in something with at least a very short half-life - or better still which is atomically stable. Nuclear fusion on the other hand - if it could be tamed - would (or at least at the moment seems likely to) be a good solution.”

But the broader picture. The UK’s general views to the environment. Do we even care? I stated that the national press, certainly The Guardian and The Independent, had environmental sections, which in turn suggested a strong reader demand. Rosalyn from Birmingham perhaps put me right here:

“I wonder if the national press has embraced the environment [though] - have The Sun or Mirror recently had any articles [regarding the environment]?

“I think it has got to the point where recycling is seen as normal and not excessively green. Amongst the chattering classes it has got to the point where people will pretend to be more green than they actually are.

“Supermarkets now have their own green ranges. Yet this has happened before and they stopped when demand decreased again. I’ve noticed a lot of 4×4 drivers use Ecover washing up liquid.”

Certainly, this suggests hypocrisy amongst some so-called environmentally aware UK folk.

And Huw? What are your thoughts?

“I must say I feel a lot less positive than most.

“We have just been away for a week with two other families - both very educated, informed, responsible, middle-class and evangelical Christian.

“As ever, I pointed out that the foil lids on our yoghurts and the foil dishes our takeaways came in were (unless I am mistaken) pure aluminium and should be recycled. They looked at me in surprise. Really?

“Recycling aluminium must be one of the easier and most obvious ways to avoid absurd energy waste, and I would guess that it is 30 years or more since the green movement started urging people to do it. If the message hasn’t got through yet, it doesn’t inspire much hope.”

Huw, I mentioned that an environmental section in The Guardian must at least offer what is now fast becoming a dwindling hope? Positive feedback please …

“My other big bugbear is plastic. Since I read recently that there is something like 100 million tons of plastic floating in the Pacific, and that this vast soup is expected to double in size in the next decade, I have had a horror of unnecessary plastic packaging, bags and (especially) bottles.

“But I can’t bring myself to say anything to my family, let alone my educated, informed friends, because I think they’ll just think I’m bonkers. My impression really is that green consciousness has made few inroads into even the leftie broadsheet-reading population of this country.

“I rent an office in the house of a Guardian-reading social anthropologist, who leaves his TV on standby 24 hours a day and has not a single low-energy lightbulb in the house (except the one I’ve put in my room!).

“Again, I don’t feel able to say anything because I don’t want to be labelled an eco-fanatic. These things are so far from being second nature even to the small minority in this country who read the greener newspapers.”

My sincere thanks go to Andrew, Rosalyn and Huw for their feedback. The UK then: a nation with a long way to go?

Picture source:

Courtesy of flickr

The latest estimates are, that if Yucca Mountain isn’t finished until 2017, “we” will owe the utilities an estimated $7 billion in penalties, provided by law, because the repository isn’t finished. Bump completion time up another 3 years, and the bill goes up to about $11 billion.

When this repository thing started some 30 years ago, the feds agreed to dispose of spent fuel created by nuclear power stations. I’m sure there were some very good reasons for that decision, not the least of which retaining control over the stuff, which could fall into the wrong hands and become something very dangerous.

So the government and the nuclear industry agreed that if the repository wasn’t finished by a certain date, the government would pay the power stations for having to store their own waste until it was completed. Sweet deal, they create high-level, radioactive waste and taxpayers stand the expense of putting it away for millennia.

What that means Mr. and Mrs. taxpayer, and utility rate payer, is the federal government promised to have the Yucca Mountain repository finished ten years ago. Each day that goes by, the ante goes up for the utilities, and if the project is scrubbed, then what, will the settlement option still be on the table until a repository is completed? Another 20 years maybe?

Well shucks, why shouldn’t we help make the nuclear energy folks wealthy, after all, they’re providing a service we can’t do without. As a matter of fact, they want to build more facilities and create more waste. You know what that means, “we” get stuck with providing a “nuclear dump” and they get paid if it isn’t ready.

This is a ludicrous situation at best. Nevada doesn’t want the thing and I doubt any state would want it, but every thing’s gotta be somewhere, and since they’ve dug a five mile long hole in the mountain, they might as well fill it up with nuclear waste as planned. So every time Nevada Senator Harry Reid (D-NV) pressures Congress to dump Yucca, I wonder whose side he’s really on.

Ward Sproat, director of the Office of Civilian Radioactive Waste Management for the DOE, told me in a podcast interview (Why Has It Taken So Long?) that nuclear utility rate payers are charged a fraction of a penny per kilowatt hour of electricity they use, to help fund construction of the Yucca Mountain repository.

That fund now stands at an estimated $21 billion, and Sproat told the National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners that the project’s budget is $400 million a year. He is quoted as saying, “we are never, ever going to build this repository with that kind of cash flow funding; it just ain’t going to happen.” He believes that over time, construction costs will rise to about $1 billion a year until, and if the project is completed. Mr. Sproat also told me that he was required by law to send a report to Congress later this year, outlining the need for a second nuclear waste repository. That’s “second”, not a replacement for Yucca Mountain. He said the report will go to congress with a recommendation that another site be chosen and developed.

My cynical nature makes me wonder if that $21 billion is even there anymore, considering the way our representatives have been throwing money at the war in Iraq and God only knows what other excuses have been used to raid the fund. Could that be one of the reasons the budget is so low?

Face it, “we” (taxpayers and ratepayers) are subsidizing nuclear facilities, as well as paying the going rate for service, and will continue to do so until either a repository is completed, or there’s a major change in the law.

Of course proponents of nuclear power generation won’t have a problem with paying the extra dollars, after all, it’s a part of doing business.

I think it’s an abomination and it’s time to get off the pot, tell Congress to set the wheels in motion to finish the Yucca Mountain project as soon as possible and get that stuff out of backyards in 39 states.

Yes, this is a reversal of my earlier comments on Yucca Mountain. It took that interview with Mr. Sproat to wake me up to the reality of what’s happening to the “little guys and gals”, you and me.

What do you think?

Source: Las Vegas Review-Journal

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission reports that a nuclear plant worker in Vermont was suspended after testing positive for drugs; the worker blamed the test results on brownies served at a party that he didn’t know were laced with marijuana.

Photo courtesy of Wikimedia Commons

Though I’m still not 100-percent convinced, Lovelock’s arguments are factual, rational and highly persuasive. So I thought I’d take a similar crack at making the case for nuclear energy as a way to help curb our greenhouse gas emissions … maybe in part to clarify my own mixed feelings about the matter.

Here goes:

1. First, there’s a truly powerful pro-nuclear argument I’ve never seen given much attention before: according to the Keystone Center’s “Nuclear Power Joint Fact Finding” released last year, failing to replace existing nuclear power plants over the next half-century would actually increase carbon emissions by 12.5 gigatons. Unless we’re planning on replacing all the nuclear facilities set to go off-line with something other than coal or natural gas plants, we’ll be making climate change worse.

2. As scary as the “what-if” scenarios for a nuclear reactor failure are, the reality has — so far — proved much less so. The World Health Organization (WHO) carried out several studies after the 1986 Chernobyl disaster; one, conducted 19 years later, concluded that 75 deaths could be directly attributed to the accident. Other WHO findings: 28 deaths among first-responders in the year after the accident could be directly linked to acute radiation sickness; there was a large increase in highly treatable tyroid cancerns among young people and no clearly demonstrated increases in leukemia or other non-thyroid solid cancers; and the lifetime risk of cancer deaths among those exposed to Chernobyl radiation was about 3 to 4 percent higher than average. (You can find the complete digest report here.)

3. By comparison, the health impacts of the 1979 Three Mile Island accident in the U.S. were minuscule, with no attributable illnesses or deaths. The Keystone Center’s “Nuclear Power Joint Fact Finding” last year said the average dose of radiation to the region’s 2 million people was about 1 millirem, with the maximum exposure to individuals right outside the site at less than 100 millirem. By comparison, a full set of chest x-rays delivers 6 millirem of radiation, and a year’s exposure to natural background radiation gets you 100 to 125 millirem.

4. Participants in the Keystone Center “Nuclear Power Joint Fact Finding” all conceded that “on balance, commercial nuclear power plants in the U.S. are safer today than they were before the 1979 accident at Three Mile Island.” In fact, an industry study in 2003 found that even a direct-side impact by a large commercial airliner wouldn’t cause a loss of coolant at a nuclear power plant.

5. A National Academy of Sciences study found a low risk of widespread harm from either a terrorist attack or a serious accident involving spent nuclear fuel. And the Keystone Center’s “Nuclear Power Joint Fact Finding” found that “the risk of a major accident at a nuclear facility is not seen as a significant risk by investors today.”

6. A 2001 study by the Paul Scherrer Institute in Switzerland (quoted in “The Revenge of Gaia”) found that, beteween 1970 and 1992, nuclear power had the best safety record of all major energy sources, both in terms of total deaths and deaths per terawatt of energy produced each year. The results for the top four sources were coal: 6,400 total deaths, 342 deaths per terawatt per year; hydro power: 4,000 total deaths, 884 deaths per terawatt per year; natural gas: 1,200 total deaths, 85 deaths per terawatt per year; nuclear power: 31 total deaths, 8 deaths per terawatt per year.

7. A life-cycle assessment by Meier Engineering Research (thanks redcraig!) found that nuclear fission energy actually had a lower life-cycle greenhouse gas emission rate than solar (using an eight-kilowatt, building-integrated photovoltaic system for the assessment): 15 tons of carbon dioxide-equivalent per gigawatt-electric of electricity, compared to 39 tons for photovoltaic. Of course, those rates were considerably higher for fossil-fuel sources like natural gas (469 tons) or coal (974 tons).

8. Nuclear power makes economic sense. According to the Energy Information Administration (thanks again, redcraig!), operation, maintenance and fuel costs per kilowatt-hour for nuclear plants are more than twice those for hydroelectric, but nearly a third less than those for fossil steam energy and two-thirds less than either gas turbine energy or small-scale photovoltaic or wind energy.

9. During the nuclear testing heyday of the Cold War era, the superpowers set off numerous nuclear weapons; in 1962 alone, test bombs equaled the output of 20,000 Hiroshima warheads. Such tests, Lovelock argues, released radioactive materials into the air equal to two Chernobyls a week for a whole year … yet no proven health damage to humans was observed in subsequent years. (For more details, see “The Revenge of Gaia,” pages 94 - 95).

10. Finally, Lovelock argues — and it’s hard to disagree with his view — that “a continuous supply of electricity is an essential requisite for civilization.” Nuclear power, unlike wind or solar energy, fits that bill.

All that said, I still have doubts about the viability of nuclear power as our way out of dangerous climate change, and I don’t believe my concerns are the result of a conspiracy by environmentalists, as some pro-nuclear types suggest. I’ll take on the “con” side of the issue in another post soon.

Sir David King has been quoted as saying: “There is a suspicion, and I have that suspicion myself, that a large number of people who label themselves ‘green’ are actually keen to take us back to the 18th or even the 17th century.

“[Their argument is] ‘Let’s get away from all the technological gizmos and developments of the 20th century’, and I think that is utter hopelessness.”

King also maintains that nuclear power must be seen as part of the solution as we seek to combat carbon emissions.

My initial reaction to these comments was one of frustration and disappointment.

Why is it that if I rely on public transport, I’m the Luddite, yet if a car owner scoffs at modern sustainable technology, they aren’t a Luddite.

What’s so advanced about a combustion engine?

And with reference to King’s comment, what’s so advanced about nuclear fission or nuclear fusion? As Greenpeace maintains, why renew our faith, dating back to the 1950s, in nuclear power? It didn’t work then. Why should it work now? His views on the green movement are extremely generalised and outdated.

It seems to me we’re dealing with double standards.

Just because nuclear energy avoids the burning of fossil fuels, this does not equate that it is forward thinking. In my opinion, nuclear power is far from safe and the waste created hardly means that it is a clean energy. Max Lindberg argues a very strong case against nuclear power here.

Yet a closer inspection of King’s opinions negated my initial dismay. The short Press Association piece went for an incendiary angle, clearly designed to rile.

An in-depth interview that ran in the UK’s Guardian newspaper reveals a different man. It describes a level-headed scientist who takes global warming very seriously indeed.

I certainly don’t concur with his views on nuclear power. I’m not even obliged to after all, yet some of his views are indeed extremely sound.

I ask that you read the interview here. You’ll smile, you’ll shout, you’ll nod your head, you’ll shake it in annoyance, yet at least the UK has a scientist who is stressing the importance of global warming and volunteering his solutions. He’s co-authored a book entitled The Hot Topic where he discusses the subject in depth.

I’ll leave you with one of King’s retorts to a young woman who asked what she could do to help combat global warming.

“Stop admiring young men in Ferraris,” he replied.

Source:

Image courtesy of Akuppa at Flickr

Britain has decided to return to nuclear power in a big way. No matter that one of our former environment ministers was interviewed earlier and stated categorically what an absolutely ill-advised decsision this is. Gordon Brown’s government have today made the nuclear decision official.

One of the arguments for this decision is that the government states that it will help them tackle CO2 emissions.

Yet, according to experts, the reduction in emissions will be a hideously pathetic … 4%. That’s no argument for nuclear.

We trail the rest of Europe when it comes to investment in sustainable energy. We currently glean just 4% of our energy from sustainable sources, yet live on a windswept isle surrounded by strong tides courtesy of the gulf stream. Compare this with, for excample, Sweden, where between 35 and 50% of their energy sourced is sustainable.

Caroline Lucas of the UK’s Green Party sums it up succinctly:

“[The government are] very successfully pulling the wool over people’s eyes over whether or not we need nuclear. The bottom line is there are much greater, safer, quicker, cheaper ways of achieving greater emission cuts than going down the nuclear route. Plus the signal that it gives out internationally is an incredibly negative one”

For more details on this story, please click on the following links:

Channel 4

BBC - includes the opinions of experts - including Ms Lucas’ as quoted above.

In-depth Green Party reaction

Government officials say new nuclear facilities are needed to replace others going offline over the next two decades and are an important part of its effort to reduce carbon dioxide emissions and combat global warming.

However, the Nuclear Consultation Working Group faults the government for seeking public input on the nuclear plans without addressing key issues such as nuclear fuel supplies, security concerns, nuclear waste handling and the potential for construction delays and cost overruns. The group also says British officials didn’t take into full consideration concerns such as how rising sea levels might affect some proposed nuclear sites.

“We are profoundly concerned that these framing assumptions were designed to provide particular and limited answers — and those answers risk locking in U.K. energy futures to an inflexible and vulnerable pathway that will prove unsustainable,” the report states.

Last February, Greenpeace U.K. took British officials to court over the government’s 2006 Energy Review process. A judge ruled in Greenpeace’s favor, finding the government’s procedures to be “misleading,” “seriously flawed” and “manifestly inadequate and unfair.” The government’s second attempt at an energy review, however, has proved just as problematic, according to Greenpeace U.K.

“(O)nce again it’s been shaped and guided by a predetermined outcome: the UK will have new nuclear power stations,” Greenpeace U.K. stated.

The Nuclear Consultation Working Group includes experts and academics who specialize in nuclear issues, environmental sciences and energy policy.

(Photo of British nuclear power plant taken by Eurico Zimbres, posted on Wikimedia Commons)

I decided to dedicate my first official Planetsave podcast to the nuclear industry and the threats to our safety that come with it. Several links are mentioned in the podcast, and they are listed below.

Before we start, let me call your attention to some photos taken by the Department of Energy. They show open air storage vessels containing high-level radioactive material.

The image above is one of the three cylinder storage yards in America. You will find more pictures of rusted, leaking and patched cylinders in the Department of Energy link.

So, let’s continue…

The links I mentioned are below.

Department of Energy
The Tennessean
Sierra Club
Sierra Club Marilyn Berlin Snell