Thursday evening, I attended a presentation by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) on a proposed ESP - Early Site Permit - for a new commercial reactor at Southern Company’s Plant Vogtle in Burke Co, GA. Here are a few of the interesting tidbits I learned:
A majority of the existing waste remains on the reactor site where it was produced in temporary containment facilities with a 30-year shelf life. (To give you a time frame on the age of some of this waste – there hasn’t been a nuclear reactor built in the US in nearly 30 years) In many instances, the time for permanent transfer and containment of this waste has passed, and these sites are no longer compliant with the original license with which they were allowed to open and operate. In lieu, the government has granted extensions because the federal repository started over 20 years ago is no where near completion. The sites housing this nuclear waste are ticking time bombs with more than 100,000 tons of waste from the first generation of reactors.
I’m no expert on this issue except for the fact that I live smack in the middle of the Savannah River Site (SRS, formerly SRP) and Plant Vogtle. It just seems insane to create more waste when we do not know what to do with what we already have…and I haven’t even touched on the potential security element (approx. 46% failure rate on terrorism drills), costs (not one facility has ever opened on-schedule and within its original budge), limited liability insurance, cost/benefit, almost all going to be built in 'red' states in the southeast (Neocon election pork payback), and the list goes on… But most importantly, WHAT ARE WE GOING TO DO WITH ALL THIS HIGH LEVEL, RADIOACTIVE NUCLEAR WASTE that at a minimum has a shelf life of 12,000 years??
For more information on this issue and others regarding the 'new' nuclear age, contact:
I had an opportunity to speak with both these individuals at the presentation. They are well informed and fair.
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Amanda is a managing editor at OpEdNews and has worked with Rob Kall on the site since 2004. A retired research ethnographer specializing in organization and technological innovation and strategic business development, she now resides in Georgia where she builds and restores wooden and fiberglass boats with her husband, Tom, a retired electrical engineer. Amanda grew up in the Commonwealth of Kentucky on the 9AA that runs along the Ohio in an area that gave the world Larry Flynt, the Clooneys, Roy Rogers, Tommy T. Hall, Jesse Stuart, Henry Clay, and some of best bootleggers the Feds never caught. [Amanda is on a medical leave of absence until further notice.]
Amanda Lang, PhD - Virginia Tech '93; US Army Veteran, E-5, 52D20
There are contracts to be awarded and profits to be made.
And the devil take the consequences.
Heck, Dow still hasn't cleaned up Bhopal, which wasn't even nuclear, just cyanide, and the government of India can't afford to do it, so that little industrial accident is still killing people, just as Chernobyl is still killing people while the Russians lack the funds to rebuild the crumbling sarcophagus that was supposed to contain it and keep it from happening again.
One of the best ways of recognizing fascism, the merger of business and government, is that fascist regimes don't care how horribly, or how many, innocent people may suffer and die as a consequence, if there are contracts to be awarded and profits to be made.
by
Mark E. Smith (21 articles, 30 quicklinks, 100 diaries, 1325 comments)
on Sunday, May 14, 2006 at 1:30:53 AM
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