Nuclear waste

by

Japan sends nuclear waste to the US for disposal

Mckirdy, Euan. “Japan Agrees to Hand over Nuclear Material to United States.” CNN. Cable News Network, 25 Mar. 2014. Web. 01 Mar. 2015. <http://www.cnn.com/2014/03/25/world/asia/us-japan-nuclear-fuel-deal/index.html>.

In this CNN article we see that the US and Japan were discussing a plan on how to transport japans nuclear waste form the Fast Critical Assembly(FCA) in Japan, to a secure facility here in the United States. The pledge that both the US and Japan signed was meant to show that these two nations were going to continue to promote improving nuclear safety and security around the world. The US started a program to prompt the disposal of HEU and Plutonium in order to keep it out of the hands of criminals and terrorists. The US has extend its support to other nations especially now that the US is in talks with the iranians about their nuclear program and the tension has risen on the korean peninsula. The US agreed on the delivery of 700 lbs. of weapons grade uranium to be transported to the US, so that it can be degraded and used in a safer way.

I feel that the US is doing a good thing in wanting for countries to dispose of their unused plutonium and maybe downgrading it, but I don’t agree with that nuclear waste being transported from other countries thousands of miles away to the US and maybe causing a huge disaster on route to these repository plants. I also don’t know where the US is going to put all of this radioactive material because it seems that the US hasn’t figured out what to do with its own nuclear waste much less with the waste of other world nations.

 

by

Nuclear waste and the people who pay for it

Ahlers, Mike M. “Hot Nuclear Waste, Cold Hard Cash, and You.” CNN. Cable News Network, 16 May 2014. Web. 01 Mar. 2015. <http://www.cnn.com/2014/05/16/us/nuclear-waste-money/index.html>.

In this CNN article we learn that for over 30 years, the US government had been collecting a fee from the power companies in order to be able to dispose of the nuclear waste that we have lying all over the country. After a battle between the department of energy and many power companies and state regulators they managed to win and end the collection of the fee. The fee was being charged a tenth of a cent for every kilowatt hour of power produced by nuclear power this all adds up to about 15 to 20 cents on the monthly electric bill. these numbers might seem miniscule but all of these fees amounted to about $750 million in fees per year. These fees were all placed into a fund which has about $31 billion dollars and is growing yearly through interest by $1.3 billion. Many of these companies have found that a lot of the nuclear debris still hasn’t been disposed of and there is now an estimated amount of about 2,000 tons of waste added yearly to the rowing number of 70,000 million tons of nuclear waste.

When we see how much money has been collected and how much the government has actually done with that money its disappointing and it shows our governments lack of interest in the safety of its people and its land. Also I feel that the government should have let the plants know about the fee instead of taking a percentage of the income and using it to invest into failed nuclear waste plants such as the nuclear repository plant in nevada on the Yucca Mountain. One other big issue is that a lot of this waste has to be left alone for a number of years before it can be disposed of, if we dont wait then there could be many consequences.

 

by

Waste Isolation Pilot Plant(WIPP) Nuclear Waste Center

Associated press. (2014, December 6). Mishaps at nuke repository lead to $54M in fines. Retrieved December 8, 2014, from http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/mishahttp://www.washingtonpost.com/national/mishaps-at-ps-at-nuke-repository-lead-to-54m-in-fines/2014/12/06/1e835448-7d68-11e4-8241-8cc0a3670239_story.html

 A few days ago the Washington post along with the associated press wrote this article on the New Mexico nuclear waste facility. The article talked about some violations that the plant had committed, so the Department of Energy along with the state are now going to sanction the waste isolation pilot plant (WIPP) for $54 million dollars. The US government is finding WIPP because they failed to comply with the handling and processing and did not advise the regulators of the changes they were implementing, this cost them about $36.6 millions dollars. The second major violation was there dumping violation in which the state is sanctioning WIPP $17 million dollars. These types of accusations and fines are some of the things that are leading to debates on whether to keep WIPP open, which is up to the state government and the Department of Energy.

These types of things have occured way too many times and its good to know that the US Department of Energy as well as the state are following up and sanctioning these places. Many disastrous events have happened because the safety committees never check up on these facilities but this time I feel that they did a good job keeping up with. Although I don’t believe they should begin to question whether to keep the plant open, they should sanction them, especially because it is a nuclear waste facility. If the government began to put rules like this on food and other source that americans use the US would be a safer place. This is relevant to nuclear power because after were done with the nuclear rods we have to send them and put them somewhere safe and efficient.