That fungus among us may be the answer to uranium-polluted soils eventually being brought back into use.

Researchers at Dundee Unversity in the UK have determined that fungi can block uranium from finding its way into plants, animals or the water supply.

Scientists have found that what they call free-living and plant fungi can, “colonise depleted uranium surfaces and transform the metal into uranyl phosphate minerals”.

That action helps prevent uranium uptake by plants, animals and microbes, although there would still be some threat involved. Researchers said the minerals produced by the fungi are capable of long-term uranim retention.

The research is currently focused in war zones such as Iraq, where weapons using hazardous radioactive uranium-235 leave a dangerous radioactive residue. The depleted uranium is added to weapons to help them penetrate targets, but leaves a wide field of radiation after exploding.

The findings are preliminary, with many questions yet to be answered. But researchers believe this may be an economical and quite simple way to deal with highly radioactive soils, just add moisture and nutrients to the soil to help fungi flourish.

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Of those 177, sixty-seven are confirmed leakers, meaning their contents are leaching into the soil and headed toward the Columbia River. Most have exceeded their anticipated 50 year life span, creating fear of a catastrophic tank failure.

Thousands of tons of radioactive and hazardous waste has been buried in unlined landfills and 450 billion gallons of liquid waste has been poured into ponds, ditches and drainfields at the Hanford Nuclear Reservation in the state of Washington.

These figures come from an article in today’s Washington Post, which I don’t intend to re-write. My purpose is only to call your attention to this article and hope you will read it and sense the gravity of the situation in that state.

More than a million people living downstream from Hanford are being threatened by a huge plume of groundwater contaminated with radiation and heavy metals moving their way.

The Bush administration’s proposed cleanup budget has trimmed $800 million from cleanup funding, and increased funding for nearly all other categories in the government’s nuclear program.

And they want to mine more uranium, build more nuclear power plants and pile up more spent radioactive material with no where to go, but possibly our drinking water and riding along with that breeze we inhale.

If you’d like to review some Government Accountability Office (GAO) reports on nuclear issues, I suggest you start with these eye openers.

• GAO report on the Hanford facility as recent as Jan 22, 2008.
• GAO reports on nuclear cleanup issues as recent as Nov 15,2007.
• GAO reports on hazardous waste issues as recent as Nov 13, 2007.
• GAO reports on uranium mining cleanup as recent as Oct 26, 2007.

You may find some duplicity in the reports, but there’s plenty of information to keep the interested person quite busy.

In our previous podcasts, Yucca Mountain: The Nevada Case Podcast, Part One, Mr. Loux talked about his agency, it’s mission and why the state is so critical of the DOE and it’s practices.

In the second presentation, Yucca Mountain: The Nevada Cast Podcast, Part Two, he talks about the regulatory process and unsuitability of the mountain as a long-term repository for high-level nuclear waste.

In this portion of the interview, Mr. Loux addresses transportation of nuclear waste to the facility, and the apparent faltering support for the project, both in the government and in scientific circles. The Walker River Paiute Indian Nation opposed allowing building of a railroad across their reservation, allowing nuclear waste to be shipped to Yucca Mountain. I asked Mr. Loux if the issue has been resolved.

What will happen to Yucca Mountain is still a subject of speculation. Nevada Senator Harry Reid (D-NV) has a bill pending in the Senate that would end the project, and instead, require new and existing nuclear power facilities to store their spent fuel on site until a suitable repository site is developed.

The Department of Energy announced layoffs at the project, claiming lack of suitable funding when Congress cut over $100 million from the current operating budget. The DOE will probably have to go forward as best it can, since the project is mandated by Congress.

Meanwhile, all Democratic presidential candidates have made it clear they will close Yucca Mountain if and when seated in the White House. Senator Reid has been quoted as saying he will make sure the new president and Congress will bring an end to the project.

Here is a link to the State of Nevada Agency for Nuclear Projects.

This link will take you to a very large Government Accounting Office website, where Mr. Loux says you will find negative information on the DOE and its handling of nuclear issues.

The State of Nevada also put up a map of rail, truck and barge routes that would cover nuclear waste to Yucca Mountain. This site breaks it down into states.

The State of Nevada has opposed the Yucca Mountain project since it’s inception, and now, years overdue and billions of taxpayers dollars later, it’s still at least 10 years away from completion.

She criticized the Bush administration for it’s continuation of the project, calling it botched science.

Not only has Hillary promised to stop Yucca Mountain’s progress toward nuclear storage, but all Democratic candidates for president have done the same. Even Republican Presidential candidate Ron Paul has ruled it out.

While Yucca Mountain is Nevada’s signature issue, the concern for shipment of nuclear materials stretches across the nation. I’ve included links to two sites showing proposed rail, truck and barge routes, with links to individual states showing which cities will be affected.

The waste, according to Las Vegas-based transportation consultant Fred Dilger, would arrive in 10,000 shipments, many going through major cities like chicago and Atlanta. Railway and truck accidents could have tragic consequences, especially since shipping routes are open to terrorist attacks.

So it looks as if we’re headed back to square one again, if Yucca Mountain is scrubbed as a high-level waste repository, where will it go? And, with more reactors apparently coming on line, how much is going to pile up before something terrible happens?

Potential Rail, Barge and Truck Routes to Yucca Mountain

Truck Shipments

State of Nevada Agency for Nuclear Projects

Ward Sproat, shown in the Las Vegas Review-Journal photo at the left, is director of the Department of Energy’s Office of Civilian Radioactive Waste Management, and announced Tuesday that Yucca Mountain in Nevada is still a long way from receiving any spent nuclear fuel. Sproat told Nevada’s Legislative Committee on High-Level Nuclear Waste, that lack of funding will result in significant worker layoffs at the facility. He is quoted as saying, “They’re going to come in waves”.

Podcast, if you’d rather listen:

The program has 2,400 full-time employees, a number that will shrink, as Sproat put it, “by the hundreds.” He is quoted as saying, “at least 500 people would be removed from the program in the next several months, the majority in Nevada, some in New Mexico from Sandia (National) Labs.”

On top of that, Sproat doubts a licensing application will be submitted this summer as previously anticipated. It was hoped the facility would be licensed and operational by 2017, but this latest news casts serious doubt on those plans.

What does this mean for the nation’s high-level waste repository? Sproat says the first deliveries of 77,000 tons of spent nuclear fuel probably won’t arrive at the facility in 2017. As a matter of fact, he isn’t certain the facility will even be licensed for some time to come.

The reason for the budget crunch apparently lies with Congress, who cut $108 million in funding from the 2008 budget. The Bush administration had asked for $494.5 million, and Congress responded with $386.5 million.

Sproat says the tunnel’s ventilation system was shut down in December to save on what he termed “substantial” electrical bills. It cost $3 million last year to keep the lights on, provide water and maintenance at the site.

Also on the chopping block, at least for the time being, is construction of a rail line across east-central Nevada to deliver the spent fuel. Sproat said there’ll be no rail delivery system in place by 2016 as planned.

Waste, according to Sproat, will not arrive at Yucca Mountain by 2017.

The state, which has been fighting the project for years, has a list of more than 25 concerns about the project. Nevada officials claim the Department of Energy’s repository design is only about 40% complete, and the agency has failed to fully address concerns about terrorism and sabotage in the transport of high-level nuclear waste products across the nation.

Earlier concerns about Yucca Mountain have clouded the issue even more, primarily discovery of an earthquake fault that runs directly beneath one of the areas designated for storage.

So, it looks like we’ll continue to pile up tons of high-level nuclear waste with no place to go but in deep-water pools and huge casks basking in the sunlight.

If you want a really good read on Yucca Mountain, I recommend the Las Vegas Review-Journal’s archive, where you’ll find this article, and a list of stories going back five years. You’ll have plenty of material to research.

Well, once again, here we are folks, piling up high-level, dangerously radioactive nuclear waste by the ton, and no place to go but in populated areas of not only our country, but around the world.

For the bleeding hearts who can’t wait to put another nuclear reactor on line, I can only wish you’d put more energy into finding a solution for waste management, and less into contributing to the problem.

Or, do you really think there is a problem with high-level nuclear waste, keeping in mind the ever-present “Oops Factor” that bedevils our every enterprise? I’d like to know. Change my mind.

Audio Here:

Years later, your father dies of lymphoma, and you realize it may have been the result of breathing that green air from the atomic testing range. And you finally understand why the state troopers warned motorists about the dirty air.

Mindful of the legacy left by the atomic tests in Nevada, the obvious dangers of radiation, you decide to become chairman and CEO of a company that brings nuclear waste into your home state from Tennessee, South Carolina, the United Kingdom and now, quite possibly Italy.

Your reason, as quoted in the Deseret News, “My dad died at the same age I am right now: 56, my mother and my family will always believe that we were affected by the ‘downwinders’, and what we’re trying to do is keep that from happening again. What we do is clean up things like that, we handle them safely, we transport them safely.”

A lot of Utah residents are really quite unhappy with this native son, Steve Creamer. He works at a nuclear waste facility in Clive, Utah, about 70 miles due west of Salt Lake City, as a matter of fact, he’s chairman and CEO of the firm, EnergySolutions. The company, formerly Envirocare, and handles more than 95 percent of all commercial low-level radioactive waste in the country, and is looking to expand.

If the latest deal goes through, waste from Italy, about 20,000 tons, will arrive by ship and then will be transported across country by train.

But it isn’t all about burying waste somewhere in a pit. Creamer says the company takes depleted uranium waste from various countries to it’s MSC Oak Ridge, TN site. The uranium is melted down, formed into small casks and re-sold to Tyco Energy for use in transporting radioactive isotopes for chemotherapy and for radiation treatment to hospitals.

The Healthy Environment Alliance of Utah, or HEAL, questions Creamer’s commitment to the welfare of Utah. It’s director, Vanessa Pierce, is quoted as saying; “what started out as an illegally licensed nuclear-waste dump, Creamer is building into the world’s largest nuclear trash company and is opening Utah’s doors to the world’s waste.”

Here’s the paradox, in Creamers own words, “What we’re doing today is something that will affect the lives of future generations,” he says. “I was born here, raised here, never lived a day outside the state of Utah. I want people to know I am concerned about the community, I’m concerned about the environment, and they have my commitment that what we do, we’ll do safely, and we’ll do it to protect our environment, not to hurt our environment.” And yet, his own family was a victim of radiation, as were many of his neighbors, maybe even himself, yet he wants to bring thousands of tons of radioactive waste into his beloved, and beautiful state.

Well, it’s the same old story, every thing’s gotta be somewhere, and it looks like Utah is going to be a world-class low-level nuclear waste dump.

Interesting that a private company can seem to do what the feds can’t, develop a repository for nuclear waste. I suppose that’s just another example of your tax dollars at work.

Oped News

Photo of Steve Creamer: August Miller, Deseret News

I’ve created a podcast from this material. If you’d rather listen, the link is here:

Looking at the current mess we have with nuclear waste, landscapes scarred with huge open-pit mines and tons of unprotected waste from those operations, greenhouse gasses and pollution of our waters, to name a few, I think the old saying is correct.

We seem hell-bent on creating a radioactive society, betting that human frailty and the failure of “modern technology” will never become an issue with respect to radioactive contamination of our environment. All for a flawed concept that touts nuclear energy as “clean”. It isn’t.
Now, our friends across the “pond” in the UK, are up in arms about a proposal made by Prime Minister Gordon Brown. He wants to replace England’s aging nuclear power facilities with 10 new ones, and that’s brought out the critics.

Chief among them is Greenpeace UK, with “The Case Against Nuclear Power” a pdf file available on the site. This is a thorough look at how the British Government has, “understated the real risks to the taxpayer and the lack of clarity on economics”. I suggest a look at the Greenpeace front page too, for their solutions to tackling climate change and energy security in the UK.

Meanwhile, let me refer you to Pem Charnley’s article, “Unbelievable UK Nuclear Decision“, an incisive look at the furor growing in the UK with some excellent links to UK media sources.

I commented on one researcher’s view that “Nuclear Energy is Clean; Renewables Damage the Ecology“, claiming that implementation of renewable fuel options is a “rape of the land”. Go to Google and put in a request for images of open pit mines, or more specifically, open pit uranium mines. Look at the picture that accompanies this article, it was taken by Kennecott at it’s Wyoming Sweetwater Pit in 1980. To give you some perspective on how large this hole is, the brown specks at the bottom of the image are not fly specks, but the huge trucks that haul ore from the pit to the mill. To me, that’s a “rape” of the land.

One of the major issues about nuclear power is, of course, waste management, my favorite subject.

Here’s a quote from the World Nuclear Association, and their take on waste management:

• Nuclear power is the only energy-producing technology which takes full responsibility for all its wastes and fully costs this into the product.
• The amount of radioactive wastes is very small relative to wastes produced by fossil fuel electricity generation.
• Used nuclear fuel may be treated as a resource or simply as a waste.
• The radioactivity of all nuclear wastes diminishes with time.
• Safe methods for the final disposal of high-level waste are technically proven; the international consensus is that this should be deep geological disposal.

Doesn’t that just make you want to stand up and cheer? You might want to look at another of their pages, World Uranium Mining. While obviously biased, there is a great deal of good information on this site.

Let me take their points to task, in order…

• Ask the Native American nations in the Four Corners area, or in the Dakotas how well the nuclear industry has taken care of it’s mine waste. You might want to access the Southwest Research and Information Center’s pages, and see how they’ve been dealing with uranium mining and resultant waste left on tribal lands. It’s just one of many indications that the nuclear industry is not living up to it’s promises.
• According to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), nuclear power generation facilities alone produce about 261,590 cubic yards of Low and Intermediate Level Waste (LILW) and 13,079 cubic yards of High Level Waste (HLW) each year worldwide. We’ve been creating this waste for about 50 years now. Do the math.
  
• What an understatement! Some nuclear waste is being recycled, but it’s not a 100% deal, there’s still plenty of waste after the process. I love this statement, “treated as a resource or simply as a waste”. Oh, if it were only that “simple”.
• Half life of LILW waste degrades in a period of about 30 years or more, while HLW will take millennia to degrade, tens of thousands of years and maybe more depending on the material. So why should we worry, our lives are short by comparison, so why not “go with the flow”, take the money and run? Let future generations worry about this stuff buried in their back yards, or sitting in rusting cannisters. That is, if there will be humans that far into the future. On the other hand, by then, they may have come up a solution to safe waste disposal. Let’s hope so.
• Yes, deep geological disposal is the answer, but there is no such repository, and the way it’s going at Yucca Mountain in Nevada, maybe not for a very long time, if at all. So we’re stuck with HLW sitting in sometimes rusting cannisters in an uncovered lot, or submerged in several feet of water at nuclear power plants around the world.

While on the subject of storage, a brief note on security. Those cannisters sitting in open lots are prime targets for someone with high explosives and a way to gain access to the property. They could send up a radioactive cloud over populated areas with one blast. No, it won’t trigger a nuclear explosion, but highly radioactive dust will be released into the air. And I’ll call your attention to an earlier article, “Video of Sleeping Nuclear Station Guards“. Call me Chicken Little, that’s ok, it’s just that throughout my life I’ve been witness to things that “should never have happened”. We can’t be too careful, especially in this age of terrorism.

The cost of building nuclear power plants is staggering, a 1,250-megawatt unit would cost about $5.5 billion. Building new plants to replace old ones begs the question, what to do with the old ones? Decommission, of course, but that’s every bit as costly, and where do you put the old infrastructure that’s been contaminated by years of exposure to radiation? Probably in a deep pit somewhere, if there is one. If you think I’ve given you a lot to read, that’s the whole idea, I can’t possibly begin to cover all the areas of this very complex industry, and besides, I like the idea of going beyond one person’s opinion and looking at facts presented by other sources.

I do have in the works, a series on the nuclear industry, beginning with mining through waste and possible storage. It will be ready soon, there’s so much research to be done and every time I seem to answer a question, five more spring up.

If you’ve wondered why I’m so adamant about nuclear power and radiation, this goes back 60 years to the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The damage left by those two atom bombs was hard to believe, but what made a lasting impression on me was the damage done to the human body. Pictures of Japanese citizens burned by radiation convinced me that dealing with high level radiation is a danger not only to our species, but all species on earth.

And let’s not forget Chernobyl, and the thousands of people who had to move from their homes, maybe forever, and those who died and are still dying from radiation sickness.

I’d also like to recommend two recent articles on this subject by Shirley Siluk Gregory:
Is Nuclear Power the Answer to Climate Change?

Critics Call U.K. Nuclear Power Plans ‘Misleading’

Can we stop the proliferation of more uranium mines and nuclear power stations, not only here in America but around the world? What are the answers, what can we, as citizens of the world do, and are we even willing to get that upset?

Before going on, I’ve made a podcast of this article, and if you’d rather listen, the link is here.

It’s difficult to say which one of the two options above concerns me most, but the Bush/Cheney administration, in its own way, is about as scary as nuclear proliferation. Their environmental record may well go down in history as one of the worst ever, and there’s still plenty of time to make it even worse.

Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., nephew of President John F. Kennedy and son of Robert Kennedy who was murdered while campaigning for the presidency in 1968, has been an environmental attorney for the non-profit Natural Resources Defense council for over 20 years. In 2004 he wrote a book titled, “Crimes Against Nature”, a stinging indictment of the Bush administration’s environmental policies during its first term in office. The subtitle, if you haven’t seen it, reads, “How George W. Bush and His Corporate Pals Are Plundering the Country and Hijacking Our Democracy.”

In an NPR interview in 2004, Kennedy spoke with Tony Cox about his book and why he wrote it. The interview is short, and you can listen to it from a link at the bottom of this article. Kennedy claimed Bush placed heads of some of the nations major polluters in charge of agencies that are designed to protect the American public from pollution. That, and other charges made by Kennedy have been discounted by the White House.

I hope I live long enough to get a glimpse of how history is going to treat the Bush/Cheney administration, not only on environmental issues, but in the fight against terrorism and the abomination in Iraq.

There’s no need to go into the staggering loss of military and civilian life there, or the unbelieveable amount of American taxpayers dollars being poured into an ill-advised, poorly-conceived and morally wrong endeavor. A small fraction of that money could have done wonders for environmental issues and infrastructure upgrades here at home.

One of the things that’s been on my mind since the September 11, 2001 tragedy, is why so much money and attention has gone into a war against a regime that was no threat to us, rather than against the very individuals who attacked our country in a clear act of war?

We managed to engineer the hanging of Saddam Hussein, who ran that regime, while the man who was, and continues to be a threat to America and the world, walks free. What’s wrong with this scenario?

If we had spent one-tenth of the money allocated for the Iraq war, we could’ve found Osama bin Laden and had his head on a pole outside the ruins of the Twin Towers. What’s wrong, why haven’t we found him?

You may be too young to remember Pearl Harbor, I do, and that’s when the nation stood up and took care of business, big time. In a way, I see 911 in the same context, even though al-Qaida and bin Laden do not represent a country, we were attacked as a nation, on our turf, and we should have responded with that kind of resolve.

Hindsight is always said to be 20-20, but there’s more on the horizon. The president is still beating the drums on Iran, and there’s plenty of time left for another knee-jerk catastrophe to come from the White House.

Now about nuclear, and the push underway to license and put more nuclear power stations on line in the United States. There’s also been an increase in requests for permits to explore for more uranium deposits and begin mining operations. The nuclear giant is awakening around the world and we should be very concerned.

I’ve been doing research for an upcoming series on domestic nuclear proliferation, and am apalled by the stories coming from those areas already mined, the lives endangered in the mining process and potential damage to water supplies, air pollution and the surrounding environment. This isn’t like mining for coal, or gold or copper, this is radioactive uranium. I find it interesting that in all the news reports about this issue and the constant flow of pro-nuclear propaganda, the words “radioactive” and “radiation” are rarely, if ever, used. Maybe, while considering nuclear issues, we should keep those words uppermost in our minds.

There’s one issue that still hasn’t been resolved, and doesn’t appear to be anywhere close. That’s a permanent repository for spent radioactive materials which need to be sequestered for thousands of years, yet they sit in deep pools of water at nuclear power stations, or in rusting cylinders exposed to the weather close to large population centers. Yucca Mountain in Nevada still isn’t ready after 20 years, and there have been calls to double it’s size, even though it sits on an earthquake fault. I’ll cover that in a later story.

It’s going to be fun watching the continuing research and development of alternative fuels during the new year. Maybe we’ll begin to see affordable commercial uses of the many alternatives begin to take shape.

A replacement for diesel fuel alone is an amazing subject. People are making their own biodiesel from used cooking oils, while a huge industry is using food crops, such as soybeans and palm oil to produce the product. Another potential feed stock is algae, and we’ll discuss that in a later offering.

Corn flakes or ethanol? The controversy over using food crops to make ethanol continues, and the actual value of ethanol as a fuel is in question. Car makers have been slow in ramping up production of vehicles capable of using what’s called E85, an 85% blend of ethanol with gasoline, and I’ve read that many people who own cars capable of buring the fuel, aren’t even aware of it. Many of those who are aware, refuse on grounds of less mileage for the price they pay, or are hampered by a lack of fueling stations in their community.

Getting biodiesel and ethanol to the marketplace is still a rather slow, and expensive process. Trains and trucks are the delivery sources of choice, much slower than nationwide pipelines that carry oil and gasoline from coast to coast. So, until a more efficient and less costly delivery infrastructure is in place, the move to these alternative fuels will be slow.

Hydrogen still looks to be the fuel of choice, but taming it is still the quest of thousands of researchers and individual inventors around the world.

And lets not forget the electric car, or hybrid, or whatever shakes out of that genre.

2008 is going to be an interesting year, hopefully one of positive progress toward stemming the tide of global warming, cleaning up the environment and further development and use of alternative energy sources.

Natural Resources Defense Council

Mr. Kennedy’s NPR Interview

Robert F Kennedy’s Website