According to DallasNews.com (The Dallas Morning News), NRG Energy Inc., which is the largest stockholder of STNP, announced today that they have plans to build nearly a dozen new power generation plants across the country in the next decade, including two nuclear plants in Texas.
On Monday, NRG filed a letter of intent with the NRC to build 2,700 megawatts of nuclear power at the existing South Texas Nuclear Project nuclear facility.
The company said it will cut its emissions of pullutants and carbon dioxide in this process. Once the nuclear facilities are finished, NRG expects to have cut its total emissions in Texas by 20-30%.
Nirex, a company based out of the UK, is “working to develop safe and environmentally responsible solutions for the management of radioactive waste” - just like ARDT. In April, 2006, they became independant of the nuclear industry in order to “boost transparency and accountability” in the long-term management of low to intermediate level radioactive waste.
In May 2006, the Committee on Radioactive Waste Management (CoRWM), submitted an invitation to Nirex to comment on their draft recommendations. Here’s what Nirex had to say:
In summary-
Nirex supports the CoRWM process and considers the integrated package of recommendations to provide a robust basis for Government to use in developmental policy.
They (Nirex) believes that the main strengths of the recommendations are as follows:
- CoRWM has developed a coherent, well-thought out integrated package of recomendations that are supported by all members of the committee.
- Recognition that local communities must play an important role in the decision-making process and that provision of adaquate resources must be put in place to enable them to engage in the desicion-making process.
- Recognition of the complimentary role of storage as an interim arrangement prior to the implementation of a geological repository.
- Geological disposal is clearly recommended for the long-term management of higher activity radioactive wastes and materials.
- CoRWM has used a range of analysis methods to develop the draft recommendations…All of these support the method of geological disposal.
- There is an overwhelming support from the scientific community for geological disposal. Most other countries are planning to place long-lived radioactive wastes in geological repositories.
They believe that the recommendations could be strengthened further by:
- Recognizing the fundamental importance of retrievability, in terms of public and stakeholder acceptance, as highlighted by CoRWM’s own work with the general public.
- Providing more reference to support from the scientific and engineering community and international precedent.
- Recognizing that inclusion of Reactor Decommissioning Waste (RDW) in a near surface disposal facility or geological repository will require Conditions for Acceptance to be met. The decommissioning of reactors will provide more information on the characteristics of the waste.
It seems like Nirex is a pretty credible and reliable source of radioactive waste information!
Check out the entire article by clicking here and then clicking on “response to an invitation to comment on CoRWM’s draft recommendatins, May 2006. (Its in PDF format)
To go to Nirex’s HOMEPAGE, Click here!
Villagers Blame Radioactive Pollution for 2-Headed Calf Birth, is the name of the article which explains that in a village in Siberia a calf with two heads was born a couple of weeks ago. The village where the calf was born, Naumovka, is near a nuclear site, and many people are blaming the site for this freaky incident. However, after local residents appealed to the courts, numerous checks failed to detect any genetic mutations. Plus, a two-headed cow is easy to superimpose.
It’s time for more important radioisotope uses! But first…
- Commercial, medical and research activities that use radioactive isotopes account for more than 2,000,000 jobs in Texas, according to a study done by Management Information services, Inc. That study also found that the use of radioactive materials generated more than $2.7 billion in tax revenues in the state in just one year.
- Many of the radioisoptes used by scientists, doctors and researchers in thier work, as well as in consumer products, are also found in the by-products of nuclear power production. Her are some examples:
- Technetium-99M - the most widely used radioactive pharmaceutical. Doctors use it to diagnose problems with the brain, bones, liver, spleen, and kidneys.
- Americium-141 - used in smoke detectors to protect homes and businesses.
- Carbon-14 - needed to trest drugs so that doctors can be sure of no harmful side effects.
- Cesium-137 - used to treat cancer tumors, measure drug dosages, control the flow of oil in pipelines, and check the proper fill level for packaged foods.
- Cobalt-60 - used in sterilizing medical equipment and improving the reliability of industrial oil burners.
- Nickel-63 - used as a voltage regulator, and to detect explosives.
- Plutonium-238 - used to power more than 20 NASA spacecraft since 1972.
No matter the source, once these radioisotopes have performed their purpose, they all become low-level waste. The only safe way to handle the waste is by disposing of it at a permanent low-level radioactive waste facility. We only have 2 years left at Barnwell, so support the building of a permanent facility in Andrews County, Texas.
The nation only has three low-level waste facilities currently in operation.
Barnwell, South Carolina, a prosperous town of about 6,000 people, near the Georgian boarder, has been home to a disposal site since 1971. When the South Carolina legislature acted to close the facility in 1991, the community rallied to keep it open! Barnwell is an example of the kind of healthy prosperity that can result from allowing a safe, well-run facility into a community. No adverse effects have resulted from low-level radioactive waste disposal in Barnwell.
Currently, Barnwell accepts accepts waste from all U.S. generators except those in Rocky Mountain and Northwest compacts. But beginning in 2008, Barnwell will only except waste from the Atlantic compact states (Connecticut, New Jersey, and South Carolina).
The new proposed site in Texas is in Andrews county, and the citizens of Andrews are hugely in favor of it. In fact, they have testified for three legislative sessions that they want a low-level waste site to generate jobs.
Check out this great website called Fiscal Notes- a window on state government. (written by Bruce Wright)
Not so long ago, border inhabitants lacked the financial resources and political instruments with which to confront the border’s serious environmental and health problems. The 2012 Border Plan is the latest installment in a series of plans that seeks to rectify this condition. It follows on the heels of the Border XXI Plan – a groundbreaking, multi-year cooperative effort developed between Mexico and the United States in 1983. Both plans are the offspring of the La Paz Agreement, which was intended to create an institutional platform to deal with the border’s multifarious problems.
The 2012 Plan is being crafted by The Environmental Protection Agency, Department of Health and Human Services, Mexico’s Secretariat of Environment and Natural Resources, Mexico’s Secretaría of Health, the U.S. border tribes and the environmental agencies from the U.S.-Mexico border-states. And like its ambitious predecessor – the Border XXI Plan – the 2012 Plan seeks to improve environmental health and natural resource conditions, while promoting sustainable development. It will build upon the template for political cooperation forged between federal, state and local governments, Indian tribes, international institutions, educational centers, non-governmental organizations, industry organizations and grass-roots community organizations under the auspices of the Border XXI Program.
In order to deal with the environmental and health problems that afflict the region, the 2012 Program seeks to improve upon the infrastructure development created by its predecessor. Similarly, the 2012 Program also seeks to make use of innovative and wide-reaching mechanisms for addressing border cleanup accords forged between border-states and tribes. In addition, the plan seeks to build upon the increased cooperation between the private sector and government attained thus far.
Yet despite the significant inroads achieved by the Border XXI Program, serious environmental problems still beset a region projected to double its population by 2020. Moreover, this demographic explosion is concentrated in large urban areas: ninety percent of the population resides in the fourteen paired, interdependent sister cities. The border region’s explosive population growth has severely strained the area’s infrastructure and hampered its institutional capacity. This region is characterized by a patchwork of local, state and federal governments and sovereign Indian tribes, all of which share overlapping jurisdiction over the border area. Therefore, it is no surprise to learn that governance of a 100-mile long expanse is complicated by cultural and linguistic differences that often make cooperation between political entities cumbersome.
Nonetheless, The La Paz Agreement’s Border XXI Program trumpets outstanding accomplishments. These include the exchange of technical information between entities to foster cooperation, and increased technical assistance and outreach to federal, state and municipal authorities. The Border 2012 Plan continues in this vein, yet it emphasizes more of a bottom-up approach. This reflects the view that local decision-making and setting tenable priorities and project implementation are the keys to addressing environmental issues in the border region. The program will be structured around concrete measurable results, public participation, transparency, and timely access to environmental information.
The new plan, like its predecessor, seeks to tackle inadequate sewage treatment and hazardous and solid waste infrastructure, insufficient drinking water supplies and impacted habitats that threaten biodiversity. The XXI Border Initiative was anchored by the idea that investing resources to reduce or prevent pollution is much more cost effective than spending resources on mitigating problems once they have materialized through regulation, treatment, storage, and disposal. This extended into wholesale encouragement of sustainable development in border communities and widespread pollution prevention.
The sprawling U.S. Mexico border divides two distinct nations, starkly demarcating both countries’ social, economic and cultural characteristics. In essence, because the border separates two sovereign entities, this artificial dividing line represents a twofold increase in the government institutions and agencies responsible for managing and safeguarding this region. Thus, in a very real way, this political dualism reinforces significant structural and cultural contrasts.
The border divides two ways of life and political systems.Yet as those agencies behind the 2012 Border Plan know all too well, it cannot effectively prevent the environmental transformation and damage occasioned on one side of the fence from creeping onto the other. It cannot, no matter how high fences are erected, fractionate the ecological homogeneity shared by neighboring parts of Northern Mexico and the Southwestern United States. This explains why although the task of confronting the border’s environmental issues seems simple – a matter of dealing with uniform conditions on both sides of the border through a single set of policies – the reality is a lot more complex.