Uranium Waltz

By Sue Prent

Unless you’re a science geek who routinely trawls YouTube for entertainment, you probably haven’t seen this fascinating clip that observes a small pellet of uranium as it just sits sealed in a lighted cloud chamber infused with vaporized alcohol.

To the strains of a Strauss waltz, puffy little trails begin to erupt from the uranium in staccato straight lines, shooting through the alcohol cloud and radiating in all directions like soft white fireworks. It’s a mesmerizing sight to behold.

It is also a sobering one, because what we are enabled to observe through that cloud of alcohol is the behavior of one of the most aggressive toxins on earth: radioactive decay.

This is the stuff that gives nuclear weapons their destructive energy; the instability that, in the course of things, has been somewhat inefficiently harnessed to generate simple electricity.

It takes a whole lot of uranium, a relatively low energy source of radiation, to produce a little bit of weapons-grade plutonium. Between the mine and the battlefield, turning uranium into reactor fuel is a convenient first step on the way to enabling nuclear weapons, which is a major reason so many countries want “nuclear power”.

The dependent relationship between nuclear weapons and nuclear power stations provides one of the biggest bones of contention in the world today.

Setting that aside for others to consider, and returning to the simple lesson that is so vividly illustrated by the video, one cannot ignore the fact that even the tiniest particle of uranium is alive with radioactive potential.

Imagine the environmental hazards associated with every stage of uranium processing, from extraction to waste disposal, when every tiny particle is literally bristling with projectile energy.

While uranium in minute amounts is a common enough component of rock and soils available almost everywhere, there are relatively few places on earth where concentrations of uranium rich mineral deposits are great enough to represent opportunities for cost-efficient mining.

The danger to mine workers is not so much from the uranium ore, which has low concentrations of pure uranium relative to the mass in which it is sequestered. The real danger lies in the fine particulates and radon gas that are released from the rock in the course of mechanical extraction.

This hazard threatens the surrounding environment and population as well, since slurry and waste from the mining operation find their way into groundwater and may be redistributed through the air as well.

Even decades after uranium mines have been exhausted for all practical purposes, surrounding populations must endure the continuing threat posed by tailings, a waste byproduct of uranium mining. For example, hundreds of residents of the Navajo communities of North Church Rock and Quivera, New Mexico, where two nearby uranium mines ceased to be profitable and were abandoned at the close of the Cold War have suffered enormous health risks due to the mountainous piles of waste that the uranium mines simply left behind.

Ever since these New Mexico mines closed, corporate owners of the two lethal stacks have been feuding with the federal government over who is responsible for the cleanup.

At least one of the waste piles is scheduled to move down the road to a tailings dump, which will distance it somewhat from the local population, if not from the greater environment.

That move in itself raises another point of contamination in the uranium fuel chain: transportation. To transfer the waste to a less objectionable location, it is estimated that 38 open dump trucks will be required. Loading the trucks will stir up so much harmful particulate matter that the government will relocate residents for up to five years following the move in order to allow the dust to settle again, and to monitor the grounds for remaining contamination.

Just imagine each of those tiny particles being energized like that uranium pellet in the cloud chamber, and small enough to be inhaled… Now imagine what happens on a cellular level when all that bristling energy lodges deep in the human lung and continues to radiate indefinitely.

As those loaded dump trucks wheel through the environment to their ultimate destination, it isn’t difficult to imagine that they will be seeding the air with radioactive dust and particulates, endangering all who live and work along the way.

These same hazardous scenarios play out on a daily basis around active uranium mines, and at the processing plants where uranium ore is refined into nuclear fuel. I would guess that the concentration of harmful radiation in millings and tailings might be even greater as the uranium undergoes further refinement in the fuel production process.

Even if none of the collateral contaminants distributed by mining are considered, when nuclear energy production is viewed strictly from the perspective of fuel sourcing, it is clearly far, far from a “clean” energy source.

Cited Links:

http://www.sciencealert.com/watch-uranium-emits-radiation-inside-cloud-chamber

http://www.azcentral.com/story/news/arizona/investigations/2014/08/06/uranium-mining-%20navajo-reservation-cleanup-radioactive-waste/13680399/

Fairewinds Nuke Truth at House of Commons

When Will They Ever Learn - The Lesson from Sir John Cockcroft

By Arnie Gundersen

My week in the UK was exciting and full of surprises. I spoke to hundreds of people in London and Cumbria who are committed to a new energy future for Europe. They know that the dated model of big business centralized electricity production is ending, and they see a clean, disaster free viable alternative in locally distributed generation. Still, it seems that the established British utilities are so fixated on nuclear power that they just offered to charge their customers twice the current market price for electricity for the next 35-years, so that a French nuclear company could build a fancy and untried new nuclear design at Hinkley Point. The United Kingdom is anything but united when it comes to how it will produce electricity in the 21st century!

Britain has experienced the dangers of nuclear power first hand as the site of the world’s first major nuclear disaster at Windscale, receiving huge amounts of contamination from Chernobyl fallout in Wales, and contaminating the Irish Sea with Plutonium at its waste reprocessing plant at Sellafield. With that background, I understand why the citizens of the UK embrace a nuclear free future. When I spoke at the House of Commons, it was clear that only a minority of the MP’s (like US Representatives) could envision an energy future different than the past. Similar to the US, the financially influential electric power monopolies have convinced a majority of the MPs that there is no alternative to nuclear power. Thankfully, many people in the UK disagree and see a nuclear free future!

Surprisingly, it was in Cumbria that I saw the most poignant reminder of how dangerous nuclear power is. There in the fog and rain stood “Cockcroft’s Folly”, a ventilation stack on the old Windscale reactor. Filters on that stack, thankfully, captured most of the radiation released during the 1957 Windscale catastrophe.

When Windscale was under construction, Sir John Cockcroft, a great engineer and Nobel Prize winner, insisted that filters be added to the ventilation stack. The British nuclear establishment laughed at him, but he was unyielding and persisted in his cause until the filters were added to Windscale. Naysayers nicknamed the filters “Cockcroft’s Folly”, and no one believed they were necessary. Then came the Windscale nuclear core fire and those “unnecessary” filters saved thousands of lives. Too contaminated even now to be removed, “Cockcroft’s Folly” stands in the middle of the Sellafield nuclear reprocessing plant, part of a more than $60 Billion cleanup planned for the neighboring stretch of coastline along the contaminated the Irish Sea.

Three new AP1000 reactors are proposed to be built in Cumbria within sight of “Cockcroft’s Folly”. Since 2010, I have repeatedly said that the AP1000 design suffers the same design flaw as the old Windscale reactor. Like Sir John, I believe that filters must be added to the top of the AP1000 shield building to prevent huge amounts of radiation from being released during a meltdown. I call this problem “the chimney effect” and wrote a paper about it entitled “Nuclear Containment Failures- Ramifications for the AP1000 Containment Design”. The Independent, a major newspaper in the UK, courageously wrote about my concerns with the headline: Nuclear expert Arnie Gundersen warns of 'Chernobyl on steroids' risk in UK from proposed Cumbria plant .

Fairewinds received hundreds of tweets praising that story, and as can be expected, some of the 20th century paradigm pro-nukes pushed back, attacking my credibility. Sir John Cockcroft must be spinning in his grave, wondering “When will they ever learn?”

Related Video and Links:

http://www.fairewinds.org/nuclear-containment-failures/#sthash.PGOp261X.dpbs

http://www.niauk.org/news/2135-descendants-of-nobel-winning-physicist-witness-the-dismantling-of-cockcroft-s-folly-descendants-of-nobel-winning-physicist-witness-the-dismantling-of-cockcroft-s-folly

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/nuclear-expert-arnie-gundersen-warns-of-chernobyl-on-steroids-risk-in-uk-from-proposed-cumbria-plant-10109930.html)

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Arnie’s Photo Journal – U.K. and Back!

Arrival at Heathrow Airport

Burlington, VT -> London, England

American ads – feels like home

The streets of London = Double Decker Buses and Telephone Booths

How-To Fight Jet Lag:

Sticky Toffee Pudding and a Pint

Some light reading before bed…

Hopped on the ‘Tube’ to make my way to the House of Commons for my presentation.

Inside the House of Commons

Excited for my presentation- the Ongoing Meltdowns at Fukushima Daiichi, 4-Years Later

Train to Cumbria

Not as high-speed as Japan, but sure has the United States beat

Castle Ruins at Penrith Train Station

Cumbria Host Marianne Birkby of Radiation Free Lakeland drove me around on the right side of the road – the left! Beautiful countryside with hopeful traces of renewable energy.

Keswick School refused to allow our public meeting which, “in the governor’s view, would disturb the ‘principles of community cohesion “

After a change of location to the Skiddaw Hotel, we got our meeting and the community turn out proved cohesive on our side.

Remembering the victims of Fukushima Daiichi’s triple meltdown at an ancient church, complete with Pagan ruins… and being questioned by local police.

Let’s call this police encounter #1

It’s ok, we made it inside.

No, that tree is not being lazy or toppling over. The winds from the Irish Sea blow so hard that the landscape adopts this laid-back posture.

It seems to me that Cumbria is ideal for alternative energy – wind turbines.

This picture was taken from the church, in the distance you can see Sellafield the nuclear waste reprocessing site. The land in between is the land proposed for the AP1000 nuclear reactors.

“X” Marks the Spot

The Road to Sellafield

Welcome to Sellafield…

…or maybe not.

There is a bike path that edges the Sellafield property, we were taking a misty stroll when approached by these armed “bobbies”.

Let’s call this police encounter #2

I didn’t let the police stop my walk, and I certainly wasn’t going to let the mud stop it either.

Police + Nuclear Waste + Mud = a Pint

Make that 2 Pints!

The Pigeon House

This house was owned by 2 ladies who loved feeding the local pigeons. The neighboring B&B did not love this bird feeding frenzy and the subsequent pigeon poop that accompanied it, so they complained to local authorities. When not hanging out on the lawn between the ladies’ pink house and the B&B, these pigeons would frequent the local nuclear waste reprocessing site at Sellafield. Scientists conducted tests on these notorious’ birds fecal traces and found their poop to be highly radioactive!

Martin and his Barn

My trip was blessed with the best hospitality

Real-Deal Shepherd’s Pie and Broccoli *my favorite!

Martin and his wife Janine provide a cozy, post-pie place for repose.

Back to London

Back to Big Ben

Back to the books

Then home again.

London, England -> Burlington, VT