Stockpile of Nuclear Weapons Waste in SC Left in Limbo

NUCLEAR DISASTER WATCH
RADIATION LEAK
NUCLEAR WASTE DISPOSAL
NIGHTMARE SCENARIO 043
.

South Carolina nuclear weapons waste has no place to go!

The plans to ship weapons grade nuclear waste stored at the Savannah River Site (SRS) are in limbo, after  a radioactive leak that has indefinitely shut down the  the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP), a nuclear waste dump in New Mexico.

The Department of Energy (DOE) has thus far been unwilling to reveal whether they have any contingency plan to dump the toxic waste elsewhere, should they be forced to shut down WIPP permanently.

SRS has been under a federal mandate to ship its transuranic waste to the New Mexico facility and has been doing so since 2001, according to DOE; however, about 700 cubic meters of the waste still remains in SC.

The Savannah River Site

SRS [aka, The Bomb Plant] is a  nuclear reservation located in the state of South Carolina adjacent to the Savannah River, about 40 km from Augusta, Georgia. The site, owned by DOE, was built in the 1950s to refine nuclear materials for nuclear weapons. It covers more than 800km² and employs about 10,800 people.

SRS is also home to the “world’s surplus plutonium” where it is “being stored in a minimally-secured building located on top of the most dangerous earthquake fault in the South,” said a report.

The Bomb plant Promo

Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP)

WIPP is one of DOE’s nuclear waste dumps where the U.S. Gov buries transuranic (man-made radioactive elements that are heavier than Uranium) radioactive waste such as plutonium used in making nuclear weapons.

A shipment of contact-handled transuranic waste arrives at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant. Source: WIPP, US Department of Energy

Located about 26 miles east of Carlsbad in SE New Mexico, WIPP has “disposal rooms” excavated in an ancient salt formation, about 700m (2,150 feet) underground. WIPP employs more than 800 workers. Waste disposal began at WIPP in 1999.

The Horizontal Emplacement and Retreival Equipment (HERE) is used to push remote-handled transuranic waste into horizontal boreholes in the disposal room walls. Source: WIPP, US Department of Energy

The 250-million-year-old salt formation below the Chihuahuan Desert is used to dump thousands of cubic meters of TRU radioactive waste each year. About 4% of the TRU waste received at WIPP is far too toxic and the containers must be remote-handled by robots and automated  machinery.

If Anything Can Explode, Leak, Contaminate… It Will!

On January 12, 2014 FIRE-EARTH forecast:

Estimated 100,000 HAZMAT storage sites across the U.S. can potentially explode, leak, contaminate the environment

United States is dotted with an estimated 100,000 HAZMAT storage sites containing one or more of deadly substances including radioactive, biohazardous, toxic, explosive, flammable, asphyxiating, corrosive, oxidizing, pathogenic, or allergenic materials, as well as herbicides, fungicides and fertilizers that don’t fall into those categories.

Some of the substances (hazchems), which include more than 200 types of dioxins, are so lethal that even a small leak into the water supply could kill or permanently harm millions of people, before they are detected.

Related Links

• Radiation Leak in N.M. WIPP Leaves Nuclear Waste in Limbo March 1, 2014
• Likely Radiation Leak at NM Military Nuclear Waste Dump February 17, 2014
• If Anything Can Explode, Leak, Contaminate…  January 12, 2014

Radiation Leak in N.M. WIPP Leaves Nuclear Waste in Limbo

NUCLEAR DISASTER WATCH
RADIATION LEAK
NUCLEAR WASTE DISPOSAL
NIGHTMARE SCENARIO 043
.

Los Alamos nuclear waste in limbo after radiation leak at WIPP in New Mexico

The radiation leaks at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP), which has exposed  at least 13 workers at a nuclear dump near Carlsbad, New Mexico two weeks ago, has  put operations at the plant on hold including shipments of toxic waste from Los Alamos National Laboratory.

Shipments of nuclear waste from labs in Idaho, Illinois and South Carolina are also without a home while operations are halted, AP reported.

As of late January 2014, WIPP had accepted about 85,000 cubic meters of nuclear waste.

Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP)

WIPP is one of DOE’s nuclear waste dumps where the U.S. Gov buries transuranic (man-made radioactive elements that are heavier than Uranium) radioactive waste such as plutonium used in making nuclear weapons.

A shipment of contact-handled transuranic waste arrives at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant. Source: WIPP, US Department of Energy

Located about 26 miles east of Carlsbad in SE New Mexico, WIPP has “disposal rooms” excavated in an ancient salt formation, about 700m (2,150 feet) underground. WIPP employs more than 800 workers. Waste disposal began at WIPP in 1999.

The Horizontal Emplacement and Retreival Equipment (HERE) is used to push remote-handled transuranic waste into horizontal boreholes in the disposal room walls. Source: WIPP, US Department of Energy

The 250-million-year-old salt formation below the Chihuahuan Desert is used to dump thousands of cubic meters of TRU radioactive waste each year. About 4% of the TRU waste received at WIPP is far too toxic and the containers must be remote-handled by robots and automated  machinery.

If Anything Can Explode, Leak, Contaminate… It Will!

On January 12, 2014 FIRE-EARTH forecast:

Estimated 100,000 HAZMAT storage sites across the U.S. can potentially explode, leak, contaminate the environment

United States is dotted with an estimated 100,000 HAZMAT storage sites containing one or more of deadly substances including radioactive, biohazardous, toxic, explosive, flammable, asphyxiating, corrosive, oxidizing, pathogenic, or allergenic materials, as well as herbicides, fungicides and fertilizers that don’t fall into those categories.

Some of the substances (hazchems), which include more than 200 types of dioxins, are so lethal that even a small leak into the water supply could kill or permanently harm millions of people, before they are detected.

Related Links

• If Anything Can Explode, Leak, Contaminate…  January 12, 2014
• Likely Radiation Leak at NM Military Nuclear Waste Dump February 17, 2014

Mafia Solves Nuclear Waste Problem

Nuclear Waste Disposal Doesn’t Have to Be So Expensive: Mafia

The enterprising corporate arm of Mafia has found an answer (!) to the age old problem of energy growth: Go Nuclear!

And don’t worry about the astronomical cost of “disposing” of the permanent waste. They will dump it in the ocean for you at premium prices.

Italian authorities have located the wreck of a vessel with 180 barrels of toxic waste on board, which they say was sunk by the mafia, off the south coast of Italy. The sunken ship  is reported to be one of more than 30 scuttled by Cosa Nostra.

Photo: ANSA.it. Image may be subject to copyright.

Italian officials say the 110-meter long sunken vessel, which lay in 500 meters of water in the Tyrrhenian sea,  may contain radioactive waste, a report said.

The ship’s location was revealed by Francesco Fonti, an ex-member of Calabria’s feared ‘Ndrangheta crime group, who confessed to using explosives to sink this vessel and two others.

The ship lay less than 28  km off the coast of Calabria in southwestern Italy, and was filmed by a remote-controlled submarine. A short video is available at:  toxic dump.

Video images show an empty barrel lay on the seabed, which appears to have fallen out of a gaping hole in the sunken vessel’s damaged hull.

“There could be problems of toxins and heavy metals … this is an issue for the whole international community,” Silvestro Greco, head of Calabria’s environment agency, was reported as saying..

Greco said investigators believed there were 32 ships carrying toxic waste sunk by the mafia since the introduction of tighter environmental legislation in the 1980s made illegal waste disposal a lucrative business for crime groups.

“The Mediterranean is 0.7 percent of the world’s seas. If in this tiny portion there are more than 30 (toxic waste) shipwrecks, imagine what there could be elsewhere,” he said.

Related News Links:

• Toxic shipwreck calls for action
• Mafia ‘sank nuclear waste ship’
• Italy finds wreck of toxic waste ship sunk by mafia

Related FEWW Links:

• STOP Killing Our Oceans!
• Back from the “Great Pacific Garbage Patch”
• The Garbage Patch [You Tube Video]
• Algalita Photo Gallery
• Pt. 1 “Plastic in the Ocean” Interview with Capt. Charles Moore [You Tube Video]
• Pt. 2 “Plastic in the Ocean” Interview with Dr. Marcus Eriksen

• WILD FACTS SERIES: Our Oceans Are Dying!

• Southern Ocean already losing ability to absorb CO₂
• Oceans, Where Life Started, Are Dying – Part IV :  Researchers found evidence of corrosive water about 20 miles off the west coast of North America from Canada to Mexico.
• Human carbon emissions make oceans corrosive : ‘Carbon dioxide spewed by human activities has made ocean water so acidic that it is eating away at the shells and skeletons of starfish, coral, clams and other sea creatures …’
• The Eight Steps that Help Kill More of Our Fish : How Your Car’s Exhaust Emissions Helps Create Dead Zones and Kill Our Fish.
• Global warming could starve oceans of oxygen: study : Areas of the eastern Atlantic and Pacific Oceans with low amounts of dissolved oxygen have expanded in the past 50 years, apparently in line with rising temperatures.
• The Floating Toxic Garbage Island : A patch of garbage twice as large as the continental United States and dubbed the Great Pacific Garbage Patch floats in the middle of the Pacific Ocean in North Pacific Gyre.
• Oceans, Where Life Started, Are Dying – Part III : Tourism: The Most Destructive Human Activity After Warfare
• Oceans, Where Life Started, Are Dying – Part II : Major Problems: Fertilizer Runoff; Tourism; Coastal Developments [and Ocean Warming due to climate change]
• Oceans, Where Life Started, Are Dying – Part I : Our Oceans Are Now Dying!

• “Climate Engineering” Best Option: Economists
• New Stars Are Born
• Seeking Toxic Asylum
• Naples Garbage Opera – Act II
• Naples Garbage: First Commercial Dividends
• Naples: The Triangle of Death

• Italy: Submerged in Floodwaters, Sinking in Garbage
• Collapsing Cities
• Nessun dorma (None Shall Sleep)
• The $500-a-barrel professors!
• Out of the Italian Mafia Frying Pan, Into the Swiss Mafia Fire