[ RadSafe ] Huntsman wants radioactive tailings moved away from river

[Sandy Perle]

Index:

Huntsman wants radioactive tailings moved away from river
Protesters delay Italian nuclear waste exports
Military dismantling Cold War radar systems in Maine, Oregon
Cotter Corp. asks for review of license renewal
TVA reports leak at Watts Bar Nuclear plant
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Huntsman wants radioactive tailings moved away from river

SALT LAKE CITY (AP) - Gov. Jon Huntsman is warning the U.S. 
Department of Energy that a flood could sweep radioactive material 
piled beside the Colorado River near Moab into the water.

"Recent flooding in the St. George and Santa Clara regions of Utah 
also demonstrated the swift and immense force of moving water in the 
desert," he wrote in the letter, which was copied to Utah media 
outlets.

"We cannot afford to assume the risks associated with having uranium 
tailings strewn along river banks and bars of the Colorado River 
below Moab."

The 94-foot-tall waste pile came from Moab's rich uranium deposits, 
which were mined in the 1950s for nuclear bombs. The Uranium 
Reduction Co. sold its mill in 1962 to Atlas Corp., which ran it 
sporadically until declaring bankruptcy in 1998. The Energy 
Department took over the site in 2001.

Huntsman called for the construction of a repository at Klondike 
Flats, near Moab, which could be reached by the existing rail line.

"This work should be commenced immediately, and federal funding 
should be sought to complete the work as promptly as possible," he 
wrote.

"Now is the time to act - to move the tailings pile."

Diane Nielson, executive director of the Utah Department of 
Environmental Quality, said her department hopes the DOE "will 
understand the importance of moving the tailings off the bank of the 
Colorado River."

The DOE has been accepting comments on a draft identified impact 
statement concerning the tailings pile. Alternatives it has 
considered include doing nothing, disposing of the tailings where 
they are or moving them to one of three offsite disposal areas.

Disposal facilities could be at Klondike Flats; Crescent Junction, 
near the town by that name in Grand County, about 20 miles east of 
Green River; and the White Mesa Mill near Blanding.

DOE officials have not yet chosen a preferred option.
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Protesters delay Italian nuclear waste exports

ROME, Feb 14 (Reuters) - Anti-nuclear campaigners chained themselves 
to railway tracks in the early hours of Monday to try to prevent two 
trainloads of radioactive waste leaving Italy for Britain's 
Sellafield reprocessing plant, police said.

Environmental campaign group Greenpeace organised the protest near 
Turin to publicise that the waste -- the last of 13 convoys -- would 
eventually return to Italy. They say the government has no policy on 
what to do with it.

"The attempt to export spent nuclear fuel abroad is a way of playing 
for time, a subterfuge to leave for the next generation the burden of 
taking decisions which are morally and politically beyond the wit of 
the current governing class," a Greenpeace statement said.

Officers removed protesters from the tracks after cutting them free 
with bolt cutters. The protest delayed a train -- carrying 53 tonnes 
of spent nuclear fuel -- from departing northern Italy for several 
hours.

Environmentalists want countries to stop sending spent fuel to 
reprocessing plants in Britain and France.

Eventually, the waste must return to the country of origin, which has 
the legal duty to store it safely. But environmentalists say no 
European country has yet decided how to deal with it effectively.

Italy closed its nuclear power stations in the 1980s after Italians 
voted to go nuclear-free, but the country is still dealing with waste 
from old plants.

Italian environmentalists fear they could face another battle if the 
country's politicians are successful at restarting Italy's mothballed 
nuclear programme.

Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi has said Italy should rethink its no-
nuclear policy because it has no significant reserves of conventional 
energy and is a net importer of nuclear-generated electricity from 
neighbouring countries.
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Military dismantling Cold War radar systems in Maine, Oregon

MOSCOW, Maine (AP) - It's a dinosaur of the Cold War: a 3-mile-long 
radar system designed to detect Soviet bombers screaming across the 
Atlantic.

The Over-The-Horizon Backscatter Radar, often described as the 
world's largest radar, was developed over 25 years for $1.5 billion 
and occupies an area nearly twice the size of New York's Central 
Park. When operational, it could monitor a massive swath of ocean and 
warn of threats nearly 2,000 miles away.

Built in both Maine and Oregon, the radars picked up readings as far 
as 1,700 miles off both coasts. But like outdated warhead silos and 
other relics of the arms race, the military is scrapping the wire-and-
steel monoliths.

"The world changed," said Steve Hinds, manager of the OTH-B radar 
program at Air Combat Command, which oversees U.S. fighter and bomber 
wings. "This will not be used for what it was intended. Ever."

The backscatter radars bounced a beam off the ionosphere, which sends 
a scattered signal back to the Earth's surface. They were so 
sensitive, they could detect changes in ocean currents, a useful tool 
for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which 
debated acquiring the radars for research.

The radar in Maine, nestled in the woods in a place that bears little 
resemblance to the Russian capital for which the nearby town was 
named, was operational for a mere year in the early 1990s before 
being mothballed.

Military officials had planned to install additional over-the-horizon 
radars to oversee other hemispheres, but only installations in Maine 
and Oregon were built before the program was scrapped in favor of 
more advanced Navy technology.

The Air Force maintained the ability to restart the radars to protect 
against a new threat before beginning to dismantle the facilities 
late last year. Other agencies also wondered if they could use the 
radar to detect ocean-bound drug shipments.

David Winkler, a historian with the Naval Service Museum, studied the 
radars for a report to the Defense Department on the legacy of the 
Cold War in the late 1990s. They were designed to deter countries 
with nuclear capabilities, he said.

"They are out there to deter anybody who has a bad day and decides to 
launch against us," Winkler said. "But who are we deterring now? al-
Qaida?"

While many Cold War military installations have closed in the last 
decade - some military experts expect the factor to weigh heavily in 
this year's base closings - decommissioning the radar marks to some a 
change in homeland defense.

Winkler said the decision to tear down the radars is the last move in 
a shift from a Cold War posture to one more suited to keeping even 
the possibility of conflict off shore.

But not everyone shares the assessment that the radar is useless.

John Pike, a military expert with globalsecurity.org, said he is 
puzzled by the decision to dismantle the Backscatter radar during an 
age when nuclear proliferation remains a concern and countries like 
Iran and North Korea are developing long-range nuclear warheads.

"North Korea's missiles may or may not be able to get to the United 
States if they were launched from North Korea. But they could if they 
were launched by tramp steamers 1,000 miles off the coast," he said. 
"Korean cargo ships, each with one missile and one atomic bomb, would 
blend into the traffic."

Military officials counter that it's not defense they are leaving 
behind, it is a matter of how they are going to defend. New radar 
technology, including a relocatable version of the backscatter radar, 
have replaced the massive structure.

The Air Force in the months ahead plans to begin shopping the nearly 
1,200 acres to industrial clients who could lease the land and 
benefit from such expansive, unencumbered landscape.

"It was a gracious piece of machinery. We saw it come and we saw it 
go, but it may have some other uses after all," said Dean Smith, Air 
Combat Control chief of quality assurance. "We haven't got that far 
yet, but there could be another tale here after all."
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Cotter Corp. asks for review of license renewal

DENVER (AP) - Cotter Corp. has asked for a hearing to contest 
conditions of its license renewal, including a decision that would 
keep it from accepting radioactive waste from a Superfund site in New 
Jersey at its Canon City site.

No hearing date has been set, but state health department officials 
said the hearing before an administrative law judge likely would not 
be held until the summer.

In a four-page letter requesting the hearing, Cotter Corp. manager of 
environmental affairs Steven Landau outlined a number of concerns.

"The license and documents issued to us are extremely, extremely 
thick. There's lots of requirements," said Jerry Powers, Cotter 
manager of administration. "Some of it's really complicated, and we 
just need clarifications rather than changes."

The health department in December renewed Cotter's license to process 
uranium and vanadium ore for an additional five years, but denied a 
request for it to accept a maximum of 400,000 cubic yards of 
radioactively contaminated soil from a New Jersey site, where the 
Maywood Chemical Co. processed thorium ore between 1916 and 1955.

A separate request for Cotter to accept 40,000 cubic yards from the 
Maywood site is being decided by an administrative law judge and is 
not affected by the license decision.
------------------

TVA reports leak at Watts Bar Nuclear plant

KNOXVILLE, Tenn. (AP) - The radioactive material tritium leaked into 
a monitoring well at the Watts Bar Nuclear Plant during repair work 
at the plant this month, TVA reported to state and federal officials.

The tritium was from the plant's reactor and from the operation at 
the plant near Spring City, where TVA is making tritium for the 
Department of Energy to be used in nuclear bombs.

Tritium, a radioactive isotope of hydrogen, is the substance that 
gives nuclear weapons their deadly blast.

"There was no off-site release, no threat to employees and no public 
health hazard," Dave McIntyre, spokesman for the U.S. Nuclear 
Regulatory Commission, said of the Feb. 10 leak. "No tritium was 
detected off-site or in the Tennessee River."

McIntyre said TVA was doing some repair work on pipes for the waste 
discharge system and a temporary piping leaked.

"One of the monitoring wells found higher-than-expected samples of 
tritium. Since then, repairs have been completed, and tritium levels 
have decreased in that well," he said.

TVA has six wells on the site.

Stephen Smith, executive director of the Southern Alliance for Clean 
Energy, a TVA watchdog, said anytime there is a leak of this nature, 
it should be a public concern.

"Any release is a very serious thing," Smith said. "Is this a 
catastrophic release? No. Hopefully (TVA) has got it under control, 
and it sounds like they do. There have been releases of tritium 
before."

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Sandy Perle 
Senior Vice President, Technical Operations 
Global Dosimetry Solutions, Inc. 
2652 McGaw Avenue
Irvine, CA 92614

Tel: (949) 296-2306 / (888) 437-1714 Extension 2306 
Fax:(949) 296-1144

Global Dosimetry Website: http://www.dosimetry.com/ 
Personal Website: http://sandy-travels.com/