THE JOINT WASTE AUTHORITY
Residents of the local authority jungles are going to have to get used to a new creature. Partly a Frankenstein monster sewn together from bits of four councils, partly a legal genetic modification, it is set to prowl the local rubbish tips in search of savings and profit and opportunity.
TALK ABOUT PREPARING FOR PRIVATISATION !
It will be more difficult to spot, won’t have to say what its going to do, won’t have to say as much as a local council about what it has done and will be made as near immortal as current technology allows. Without clear democratic accountability, and camouflaged as an entirely new legal entity it will be trying to get away with emissions and residue murder….BEWARE…..
Tuesday, 12 January 2010
Monday, 11 January 2010
4,000 or 500,000: CHERNOBYL CASUALTIES
The whole issue of nuclear safety,which has been fought over for 65 years, is rehearsed again in the Guardian article,by John Vidal,yesterday:
At the children's cancer hospital in Minsk, Belarus, and at the Vilne hospital for radiological protection in the east of Ukraine, specialist doctors are in no doubt they are seeing highly unusual rates of cancers, mutations and blood diseases linked to the Chernobyl nuclear accident 24 years ago.
But proving that infant mortality hundreds of miles from the stricken nuclear plant has increased 20-30% in 20 years, or that the many young people suffering from genetic disorders, internal organ deformities and thyroid cancers are the victims of the world's greatest release of radioactivity, is impossible.
The UN's World Health Organisation and the International Atomic Energy Agency claim that only 56 people have died as a direct result of the radiation released at Chernobyl and that about 4,000 will die from it eventually.
They also say that only a few children have died of cancers since the accident and, that most of the illnesses usually linked to Chernobyl are due to psychological distress, radiophobia or poverty and unhealthy living.
But other reputable scientists researching the most radiation-contaminated areas of Russia, Belarus and Ukraine are not convinced. The International Agency for Research on Cancer, another UN agency, predicts 16,000 deaths from Chernobyl; an assessment by the Russian academy of sciences says there have been 60,000 deaths so far in Russia and an estimated 140,000 in Ukraine and Belarus.
Meanwhile, the Belarus national academy of sciences estimates 93,000 deaths so far and 270,000 cancers, and the Ukrainian national commission for radiation protection calculates 500,000 deaths so far.
The mismatches in figures arise because there have been no comprehensive, co-ordinated studies of the health consequences of the accident. This is in contrast to Nagasaki and Hiroshima, where official research showed that the main rise in most types of cancer and non-cancer diseases only became apparent years after the atomic bombs fell.
With Chernobyl there have been difficulties in gathering reliable data from areas left in administrative chaos after the accident. Hundreds of thousands of people were moved away from the affected areas, and the break-up of the Soviet Union led to records being lost.
Controversy rages over the agendas of the IAEA, which has promoted civil nuclear power over the past 30 years, and the WHO. The UN accepts only peer-reviewed scientific studies written in certain journals in English, a rule said to exclude dozens of other studies.
Four years ago, an IAEA spokesman said he was confident the WHO figures were correct. And Michael Repacholi, director of the UN Chernobyl forum until 2006, has claimed that even 4,000 eventual deaths could be too high. The main negative health impacts of Chernobyl were not caused by the radiation but by the fear of it, he claimed.
But today Linda Walker, of the UK Chernobyl Children's Project, which funds Belarus and Ukraine orphanages and holidays for affected children, called for a determined effort to learn about the effects of the disaster. "Parents are giving birth to babies with disabilities or genetic disorders … but, as far as we know, no research is being conducted
The reason this issue remains local and relevant is that there will be increasing pressure to burn radioactive waste. Such incinerators need licences, but they are given:
Here is a link to an example in Sidcup:
http://www.srcl.com/srcl-radioactive-waste.html
The Secretary of State also has powers to keep disposal secret (Radioactive Substances Act, 1993, sectn 25), even from local councils. Developers of an incinerator in Spondon recently said that the public didn’t need to know that radioactive waste was to be burned there.
From Hiroshima onwards, nuclear physicists have spoken of the dangers of internal radiation from particles eaten, drunk or breathed in. The current government models ignore these, but the Chernobyl figures are a timely reminder of the dangers.
Monday, 23 November 2009
Bang Goes The Theory
It is really extraordinary that within months of preliminary opening "non-conforming waste" blew up the furnace at Lakeside.This is no banana republic,but if the system can let in propane gas cylinders (a very well known incinerator hazard) what else will it not let in.This is an appalling indictment of control standards in our newest incinerator licensed to burn radioactivity.
This from UKWIN:
On this occasion the problem occurred during the commissioning trials which started in June 2009. In August 2009 some non-conforming waste containing gas cylinders was delivered in defiance of the plant’s tight specification for its waste acceptance criteria. Only municipal solid waste from collection rounds and some office and retail commercial wastes is contracted to be delivered into the Lakeside plant.
Unfortunately, the gas cylinders not only got into the Lakeside waste bunker but were picked up by the grab and fed through to one of the two boiler feeds to the furnace and exploded, causing damage which has had to be repaired. In addition, the whole bunker of waste had to be sorted to ensure that any other non-conforming wastes were eliminated. The plant will therefore not be fully operational until 2010, two years late.
The 400,000 tonne-a-year capacity Lakeside Energy from Waste Ltd plant is a 50:50 joint venture between the largest privately-owned waste management companies, Grundon, which is based in the Colnbrook area and Viridor, a subsidiary of the major water company Pennon, which is based in the south west of England.
The original £160 million budget for the plant’s development will be exceeded by a considerable amount…
Despite the fact that the site is only a few metres outside the Greater London boundary, only a limited amount of waste is going from London into the Lakeside plant. Waste is contracted to come from Wiltshire 120km to the west, Dorset 80km to the south of the plant and more locally from Slough and Berkshire. Clearly there is a need to rationalise waste movements within England in order to minimise the adverse impacts of the excessive and potentially unnecessary transport of waste…
This from UKWIN:
On this occasion the problem occurred during the commissioning trials which started in June 2009. In August 2009 some non-conforming waste containing gas cylinders was delivered in defiance of the plant’s tight specification for its waste acceptance criteria. Only municipal solid waste from collection rounds and some office and retail commercial wastes is contracted to be delivered into the Lakeside plant.
Unfortunately, the gas cylinders not only got into the Lakeside waste bunker but were picked up by the grab and fed through to one of the two boiler feeds to the furnace and exploded, causing damage which has had to be repaired. In addition, the whole bunker of waste had to be sorted to ensure that any other non-conforming wastes were eliminated. The plant will therefore not be fully operational until 2010, two years late.
The 400,000 tonne-a-year capacity Lakeside Energy from Waste Ltd plant is a 50:50 joint venture between the largest privately-owned waste management companies, Grundon, which is based in the Colnbrook area and Viridor, a subsidiary of the major water company Pennon, which is based in the south west of England.
The original £160 million budget for the plant’s development will be exceeded by a considerable amount…
Despite the fact that the site is only a few metres outside the Greater London boundary, only a limited amount of waste is going from London into the Lakeside plant. Waste is contracted to come from Wiltshire 120km to the west, Dorset 80km to the south of the plant and more locally from Slough and Berkshire. Clearly there is a need to rationalise waste movements within England in order to minimise the adverse impacts of the excessive and potentially unnecessary transport of waste…
Thursday, 19 November 2009
Nuclear waste,the IPC,No Copper-bottom Guarantee
Nuclear waste moved off the agenda!
The government’s new draft National Policy Statement on nuclear power, indicating which issues the new Infrastructure Planning Commission (IPC) should take on board, and which it can ignore, contains this remarkable statement:
“The Government is satisfied that effective arrangements will exist to manage and dispose of the waste that will be produced from new nuclear power stations. As a result the IPC need not consider this question.” The draft statement goes on to say that: “Geological disposal will be preceded by safe and secure interim storage.”
So it seems, the waste issue is all in hand and we needn’t bother too much about it, or any problems with the much more active spent fuel that the new reactors’ high-fuel “burn-up” approach will create. Despite the fact that the highly active spent fuel is to be kept on site at the plant for perhaps several decades, that is evidently not something IPC will have to consider in its assessment of whether the proposed plants can go ahead. Instead the IPC will just focus on any conventional local planning and environmental impact issues that may emerge in relation to the 10 new nuclear plants that the government has now backed.
Quite apart from the issue of on-site spent fuel storage, there are plenty of other issues to discuss. For example, the risk of flooding in the years ahead, as climate change begins to bite. Dungeness was dropped off the original 11 strong list, due to local eco-issues, including, we hear, concerns about flood risks. That leaves the following, all of them also coastal sites, although allegedly less at risk: Bradwell, Hartlepool, Heysham, Hinkley Point, Oldbury, Sellafield, Sizewell and Wylfa, all existing sites, plus newcomers Braystones, and Kirksanton, both in Cumbria.
Friends of the Earth (FoE) nevertheless remains concerned: “The IPC is an unelected, undemocratic body – the new Commissioners aren’t directly accountable to the people their decisions will affect. It’s going to be very difficult for local people to get their voices heard, especially with key documents being so technical and opportunities to attend inquiries so few. If people are unhappy with the process they’ll have to take the matter to court, which is extremely difficult and costly.”
Here is another urgent and contemporary reason that nuclear waste has to be considerd by the Infrastructure Planning Commission (IPC)as part of its evaluation of the merits or otherwise of applications to build new nuclear power plants.
• When marine archaeologists in 1956 discovered the hull of the Vasa warship, submerged in the mud of Stockholm harbour since it sunk minutes into its maiden voyage in 1628, little could they have thought that this remarkable raising of the King Gustavus Adolphus’s flagship five years later in 1961 could scupper attempts to bury nuclear waste over four decades later
• As the British nuclear industry gears up to build a new fleet of nuclear reactors, the pressure to demonstrate a solution to the long term management of nuclear waste, its plans to adopt the Swedish system of nuclear waste disposal looks as if it might have hit the rocks.
• And what is making waves is the discovery that copper, the metal key to sealing-in the highly radioactive waste placed into the planned repository from the biosphere, corrodes. A new paper by several scientists at the respected Swedish Academy of Sciences (supported by Russian and Canadian colleagues) reports findings on their examination of the integrity of copper artefacts raised from the harbour mud after 333 years of being submerged. To their surprise they found that, from observation and analysis, contrary to accepted received wisdom copper corrodes, even when not exposed to oxygen.
• The Swedish Nuclear Fuel and Waste Management Company (Svensk Kärnbränslehantering AB, SKB) is charged with the responsiblity for the safety of the final repository for spent nuclear fuel. And may now have to return to the drawing board if copper proves an inadequate shieled to sheath the radioactively hot nuclear waste.• SKB’s chosen method of final disposal dubbbed ‘KBS-3’, and they have carried out technical research at its research facilities in Oskarshamn, in south east Sweden: the Canister Laboratory has developed encapsulation techniques and the nearby Äspö Laboratory uses its subterranean caverns to test rock suitablity and back-fill media.
• The high level radioactive waste will have to be emplaced for 100,00 years, the period over which the radiotoxicity of the irradiated fuel decays to become comparable to the radiotoxicity of the natural uranium used to produce the fresh nuclear fuel.
• Doubts also cast over suitability of underground emplacement in ancient bedrock due to volcanic activity over the period its would have to remain stably stored.
• It may well mean the current interim store, CLAB, adjoining the Oskarshamn reactor site, may have to extend its storage ponds, build forty meters underground, looking just like a set from a Bond film, as the storage ponds glow with an eerily manacing deep blue.
• The painstaking preparation work done by several scientific teams- even counting the numbers of ants, rodents, bats, deer and giant elk living in the candiate disposal area, may all go to waste. For the Swedish nuclear industry, this is an acute crisis, as it, like the UK, wants to add new reactors to a fleet that already prides nearly half Sweden’s power. The full multi-volume environmental impact assessment is due to be published in December.
• On Monday 16 November a colloquium will be held in Stockholm, bringing together some of the world’s best corrosion experts to evaluate the Swedish discoveries. The future of not just the Swedish nuclear industry, but Britain’s too could hang on what this scientific meeting
(courtesy of Environmental Research Web and Dr.David Lowry)
The government’s new draft National Policy Statement on nuclear power, indicating which issues the new Infrastructure Planning Commission (IPC) should take on board, and which it can ignore, contains this remarkable statement:
“The Government is satisfied that effective arrangements will exist to manage and dispose of the waste that will be produced from new nuclear power stations. As a result the IPC need not consider this question.” The draft statement goes on to say that: “Geological disposal will be preceded by safe and secure interim storage.”
So it seems, the waste issue is all in hand and we needn’t bother too much about it, or any problems with the much more active spent fuel that the new reactors’ high-fuel “burn-up” approach will create. Despite the fact that the highly active spent fuel is to be kept on site at the plant for perhaps several decades, that is evidently not something IPC will have to consider in its assessment of whether the proposed plants can go ahead. Instead the IPC will just focus on any conventional local planning and environmental impact issues that may emerge in relation to the 10 new nuclear plants that the government has now backed.
Quite apart from the issue of on-site spent fuel storage, there are plenty of other issues to discuss. For example, the risk of flooding in the years ahead, as climate change begins to bite. Dungeness was dropped off the original 11 strong list, due to local eco-issues, including, we hear, concerns about flood risks. That leaves the following, all of them also coastal sites, although allegedly less at risk: Bradwell, Hartlepool, Heysham, Hinkley Point, Oldbury, Sellafield, Sizewell and Wylfa, all existing sites, plus newcomers Braystones, and Kirksanton, both in Cumbria.
Friends of the Earth (FoE) nevertheless remains concerned: “The IPC is an unelected, undemocratic body – the new Commissioners aren’t directly accountable to the people their decisions will affect. It’s going to be very difficult for local people to get their voices heard, especially with key documents being so technical and opportunities to attend inquiries so few. If people are unhappy with the process they’ll have to take the matter to court, which is extremely difficult and costly.”
Here is another urgent and contemporary reason that nuclear waste has to be considerd by the Infrastructure Planning Commission (IPC)as part of its evaluation of the merits or otherwise of applications to build new nuclear power plants.
• When marine archaeologists in 1956 discovered the hull of the Vasa warship, submerged in the mud of Stockholm harbour since it sunk minutes into its maiden voyage in 1628, little could they have thought that this remarkable raising of the King Gustavus Adolphus’s flagship five years later in 1961 could scupper attempts to bury nuclear waste over four decades later
• As the British nuclear industry gears up to build a new fleet of nuclear reactors, the pressure to demonstrate a solution to the long term management of nuclear waste, its plans to adopt the Swedish system of nuclear waste disposal looks as if it might have hit the rocks.
• And what is making waves is the discovery that copper, the metal key to sealing-in the highly radioactive waste placed into the planned repository from the biosphere, corrodes. A new paper by several scientists at the respected Swedish Academy of Sciences (supported by Russian and Canadian colleagues) reports findings on their examination of the integrity of copper artefacts raised from the harbour mud after 333 years of being submerged. To their surprise they found that, from observation and analysis, contrary to accepted received wisdom copper corrodes, even when not exposed to oxygen.
• The Swedish Nuclear Fuel and Waste Management Company (Svensk Kärnbränslehantering AB, SKB) is charged with the responsiblity for the safety of the final repository for spent nuclear fuel. And may now have to return to the drawing board if copper proves an inadequate shieled to sheath the radioactively hot nuclear waste.• SKB’s chosen method of final disposal dubbbed ‘KBS-3’, and they have carried out technical research at its research facilities in Oskarshamn, in south east Sweden: the Canister Laboratory has developed encapsulation techniques and the nearby Äspö Laboratory uses its subterranean caverns to test rock suitablity and back-fill media.
• The high level radioactive waste will have to be emplaced for 100,00 years, the period over which the radiotoxicity of the irradiated fuel decays to become comparable to the radiotoxicity of the natural uranium used to produce the fresh nuclear fuel.
• Doubts also cast over suitability of underground emplacement in ancient bedrock due to volcanic activity over the period its would have to remain stably stored.
• It may well mean the current interim store, CLAB, adjoining the Oskarshamn reactor site, may have to extend its storage ponds, build forty meters underground, looking just like a set from a Bond film, as the storage ponds glow with an eerily manacing deep blue.
• The painstaking preparation work done by several scientific teams- even counting the numbers of ants, rodents, bats, deer and giant elk living in the candiate disposal area, may all go to waste. For the Swedish nuclear industry, this is an acute crisis, as it, like the UK, wants to add new reactors to a fleet that already prides nearly half Sweden’s power. The full multi-volume environmental impact assessment is due to be published in December.
• On Monday 16 November a colloquium will be held in Stockholm, bringing together some of the world’s best corrosion experts to evaluate the Swedish discoveries. The future of not just the Swedish nuclear industry, but Britain’s too could hang on what this scientific meeting
Saturday, 14 November 2009
Fallujah's birth defects..a crime against humanity?
There is a serious issue about Falluja...it will be played out in the press...and possibly in the UN,if the Americans don't censor it as usual.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/nov/13/falluja-cancer-children-birth-defects
Of course its the depleted and undepleted Uranium...but it is ironic that,when wanting to squirm away from shells, a spokesman said it could be either radiation,chemicals or particulates!
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/nov/13/falluja-cancer-children-birth-defects
Of course its the depleted and undepleted Uranium...but it is ironic that,when wanting to squirm away from shells, a spokesman said it could be either radiation,chemicals or particulates!
The graph shows what happened to birth defects in Devon when an incinerator started up!
List of Incinerators of Radioactive Waste
Here is a list of incinerators that burn radioactive material. Note that this is data from 2002. Steelworks also reprocess radioactive material and produce radioactive emissions.
ADDENBROOKS HOSPITAL, CAMBRIDGE
BNFL CAPENHURST, CHESHIRE
BNFL BERKELEY, GLOUCESTERSHIRE
BRITISH ENERGY, HEYSHAM, LANCS
BRITISH ENERGY, HARTLEPOOL, CLEVELAND
BRISTOL UNIVERSITY, BRISTOL
CLINICAL WASTE INCINERATION, SHEFFIELD
CLINICAL WASTE, DENMARK HILL, LONDON
EUROCARE, WREXHAM
GLAXO, STEVENAGE
MAGNOX ELECTRIC WYLFA
MAGNOX ELECTRIC, DUNGENESS
MAGNOX ELECTRIC, OLDBURY
MAGNOX ELECTRIC, SIZEWELL
MEDICAL ENERGY, WORCESTER
MEDIPOWER SERICES, BRISTOL
NORTH WEST ENERGY, SALFORD
NOTTINGHAM NHS TRUST, NOTTINGHAM
S GRUNDON, SLOUGH
SHANKS CHEMICAL SERVICES, HYTHE
SHANKS CHEMICAL SERVICES, PONTYPOOL
SMITH KLINE BEECHAM, WELWYN
SOUTH MANCHESTER NHS TRUST, MANCHESTER
ST MARKS HOSPITAL, NORTHWICK PARK
VIRIDOR, PLYMOUTH
WHITE ROSE, ASHFORD
WHITE ROSE, BOLTON
WHITE ROSE, IPSWICH
WHITE ROSE, LEEDS
WHITE ROSE, NOTTINGHAM
WHITE ROSE, OLDHAM
WHITE ROSE, PONTEFRACT
WHITE ROSE, SIDCUP
List of Incinerators of Radioactive Waste
Here is a list of incinerators that burn radioactive material. Note that this is data from 2002. Steelworks also reprocess radioactive material and produce radioactive emissions.
ADDENBROOKS HOSPITAL, CAMBRIDGE
BNFL CAPENHURST, CHESHIRE
BNFL BERKELEY, GLOUCESTERSHIRE
BRITISH ENERGY, HEYSHAM, LANCS
BRITISH ENERGY, HARTLEPOOL, CLEVELAND
BRISTOL UNIVERSITY, BRISTOL
CLINICAL WASTE INCINERATION, SHEFFIELD
CLINICAL WASTE, DENMARK HILL, LONDON
EUROCARE, WREXHAM
GLAXO, STEVENAGE
MAGNOX ELECTRIC WYLFA
MAGNOX ELECTRIC, DUNGENESS
MAGNOX ELECTRIC, OLDBURY
MAGNOX ELECTRIC, SIZEWELL
MEDICAL ENERGY, WORCESTER
MEDIPOWER SERICES, BRISTOL
NORTH WEST ENERGY, SALFORD
NOTTINGHAM NHS TRUST, NOTTINGHAM
S GRUNDON, SLOUGH
SHANKS CHEMICAL SERVICES, HYTHE
SHANKS CHEMICAL SERVICES, PONTYPOOL
SMITH KLINE BEECHAM, WELWYN
SOUTH MANCHESTER NHS TRUST, MANCHESTER
ST MARKS HOSPITAL, NORTHWICK PARK
VIRIDOR, PLYMOUTH
WHITE ROSE, ASHFORD
WHITE ROSE, BOLTON
WHITE ROSE, IPSWICH
WHITE ROSE, LEEDS
WHITE ROSE, NOTTINGHAM
WHITE ROSE, OLDHAM
WHITE ROSE, PONTEFRACT
WHITE ROSE, SIDCUP
Friday, 30 October 2009
Muck,Planning and Brass Neck
How to fly a pyrolysis incinerator under the planning radar……
And then let the aliens breed a new colony!
From Where there’s Muck there’s Brass……GLA Oct 2009
"whereas smaller sites can be located amongst housing or
industrial units and use the heat generated locally. EPI have sited their
pyrolysis plant in a current waste treatment area, which underpinned
their business model and helped during the planning process.
EPI has a series of small modular pyrolysis units up and running
outside London. The Committee visited a test site on an industrial
estate in Mitcham. It has a single processor unit, which can process
8,000 tonnes of waste a year. Up to four other units could be added
on to the site to process 40,000 tonnes per year which is the average
waste requirement for a borough. This would produce enough
electricity to power an estimated 7,000-10,000 homes. This size of
plant would require around 3,000 sq ft of covered space and a smaller
version could be developed for use near to large buildings such as
sports centres and hospitals, which can use both the heat and power
produced. The long-term plan at Mitcham is to sell heat to other
units (such as a 24 hour bakery) on the estate.
The benefits of this process are that as the waste is not burnt, more
energy is captured than through the incineration process, there are no
harmful emissions, the process is odourless and virtually noiseless. In
addition, the size of the operation meant that recent planning
applications for 40,000 tonne plants had been approved in 12 weeks.
The plants are not subject to Environment Agency regulation as they
are considered low impact and therefore local authority environmental
health departments are responsible for granting the facilities a permit.
No Harmful Emissions!? That will be a first…I would definitely like to see the peer reviewed research on which such a statement is based.
The Residues?....pyrolysis (which is an unalterable chemical process,like gravity is for physics )produces some of the most carcinogenic residues known to man.
Sunday, 25 October 2009
JAPANESE CANCERS,FALLOUT,NUCLEAR POWERSTATIONS AND INCINERATION
Where did the Mushroom Clouds go?....What happened next?
The latest decision by government to allow low and very low level waste to go into landfill blows a chill wind over the whole incinerator issue.
The latest decision by government to allow low and very low level waste to go into landfill blows a chill wind over the whole incinerator issue.
There isn’t much (probably 50 yards) between that and burning the stuff. There are at least three London incinerators already licensed to do that, with appropriately high infant mortalities downwind…Beddington could join the club!
The microscope picture above (from Treatment and Conditioning of Radioactive Incinerator Ashes) shows how the radioactive metals go up the chimney and condense in the cold air outside. Because of the tonnages involved even filtering will fail to prevent significant amounts of radioactive metallic “snow”.
Although the American occupying authorities removed all the morbidity and mortality data for the five years after the bombs, and prevented Japanese research, the graph shows the catastrophic growth in cancers as a cause of mortality in subsequent years.
The cancer rate was 75/100,000 in 1947 and was 250 in 2004.
An onsite nuclear physicist said he thought that the refusal to count the immediate deaths from fall out dusts dramatically reduced the numbers, but hid the truth.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
