Sep 29, 2024: The case against restarting Three Mile Island’s Unit-1


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Hello community,
 
We hope you all are staying safe and healthy! It's a hot one here in Southeast Michigan but we're grateful for the water we can drink, lakes to cool off in, and rain to nourish the land. That said, let's get rolling with this month's news.

Per usual, our reporting comes from our badass Grandmother Jessie Collins and we're incredibly grateful for her watchdogging and vigilance. Check out the following highlights:
 
  1. We’re excited to share our small wins in this sage of the Fermi 2 discharge permit! While we did not get all the changes we requested, we got some that were worth the effort. As a brief recap, the discharge permit (NPDES) for Fermi 2 had been renewed with some unfortunate permissions included. CRAFT alongside the Michigan Environmental Justice Coalition (MEJC), Detroit Mercy University Law Clinic, and the Law Berkeley Clinic engaged the Michigan Department of Environment, Great Lakes, and Energy (EGLE), who issued the permit, to demand revisions. Our first win was getting the public comment period on the permit extended and then to receive a public hearing with representatives from EGLE to discuss the permit. A win that we secured in this newly revised permit is a thermal limit imposed on Fermi 2’s impact on Lake Erie. The power plant has one year to come into compliance with the thermal limit, meaning that they cannot add heat to the lake above a certain quantity per hour.
  2. The Cobalt Magnet 25 simulation is still on schedule for next year, taking place from March 15-21. Cobalt Magnet simulations are exercises to study the potential impacts of nuclear disasters. In 2022, CM22 was conducted in Austin, Texas to evaluate the dangers of a “dirty bomb” being detonated in a major US city. In 2025, several state, local, and federal agencies from the US as well as Canadian representation will be simulating the consequences of a meltdown at Fermi 2 here in Monroe County. Specifically, evacuation strategies will be assessed. Results from the exercise will be shared at follow-up workshops from April 14-18.
  3. Does nuclear power effectively reduce carbon emissions? Beyond Nuclear published this third list of Talking Points taking this topic to task. “Renewables are more effective in climate mitigation. Nuclear power is less,” writes Benjamin K. Sovacool and others. These talking-point lists are very helpful in equipping us with less experience in anti-nuclear discourse to have conversations with others in our lives about these issues. Check out our insert this month to learn more.

 

Read more about these issues in our newsletter!

 

   CRAFT August 2024 Newsletter & Insert   

 

 
Thanks for supporting us and a safer world powered by renewables.
We’re in this together!
 
Peace and Safety,
 
The CRAFT Team
  
  

Citizen's Resistance At Fermi Two (CRAFT) is an Indigenous-led, grassroots, organization, committed to an accessible, fair, and just energy future for all! CRAFT originally formed after the Christmas Day 1993 incident at the Fermi2 nuclear reactor that dumped 1.5 million gallons of untreated toxic, radioactive water into Lake Erie. We will continue to push for the closing of Fermi2, and for a safer world powered by renewables.

CRAFT | Post Office Box 401356 | Redford, MI 48240 US

PPD RFI Header


DOE Seeks Input on Spent Nuclear Fuel Transportation Safety Demonstration

Request for information responses due Sept. 30, 2024

The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) has issued a request for information (RFI) to gather input on a proposed package performance demonstration (PPD) to show the robustness of spent nuclear fuel transportation casks in hypothetical accident conditions.

Request for Information

By simulating severe accident scenarios, DOE intends to demonstrate to the public and stakeholders the safety and reliability of transporting spent nuclear fuel by rail, heavy-haul truck, and barge.

DOE is seeking information from a wide range of stakeholders, including government partners, the general public, industry experts, and potential suppliers.

Key Objectives

  • Build Public Trust: The PPD aims to address public concerns regarding the safety of transporting spent nuclear fuel by rail, heavy-haul truck, and barge.
  • Comprehensive Input: Stakeholder feedback is sought on the types of full-scale demonstrations to be conducted, the selection of spent nuclear fuel transportation casks, potential testing facilities, and how information from the PPD can be used.
  • Supplier Engagement: DOE is requesting detailed information from potential suppliers regarding equipment and services necessary for the PPD, including cask vendors, testing facilities, and providers of instrumentation and videography services.

Interested parties are invited to submit their responses electronically by 6 PM PST, Sept. 30, 2024.

Responses to the RFI will be used to design the PPD so it effectively addresses public concerns and demonstrates the safety of spent nuclear fuel transportation casks.

DOE is implementing a consent-based siting process to identify sites for one or more federal consolidated interim storage facilities for the nation’s spent nuclear fuel. This will involve large-scale transportation of spent nuclear fuel from over 70 nuclear power plant sites, with rail being the primary mode of transport.

DOE plans to increase its outreach and engagement activities, including webinars, listening sessions, and working groups, to raise awareness about the transportation of spent nuclear fuel.

For more information on this RFI and directions on how to submit responses, please visit the FedConnect listing.


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https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/companies/nuscale-power-plunges-after-report-says-under-sec-investigation/ar-BB1qPeqP?ocid=BingNewsVerp

NuScale Power plunges after report says under SEC investigation (update)

Update 1:45pm: Adds NuScale reponse, updates shares. 

NuScale Power (NYSE:SMR) -19.1%  to its lowest level in more than a month after a Hunterbrook Capital published a critical report on the company, saying the Securities and Exchange Commission's Division of Enforcement is conducting an "active and ongoing" investigation into the company.

The SEC cautioned that its decision "should not be construed as an indication by the Commission or its staff that any violations of law have occurred." 

"Hunterbrook is a known short-seller that has a vested interest in sensationalizing information to manipulate the stock market," NuScale said in a statement emailed to Seeking Alpha.  "We are unaware of any SEC investigation into NuScale or any reason for such an investigation."

NuScale Power (SMR), which has positioned itself as a pioneer in small modular reactor technology, has seen its market capitalization more than triple over the past six months to $2B-plus.

Approval of NuScale's (SMR) reactor by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission is crucial for the company, given that NuScale has indicated it does not anticipate commercializing an earlier, 50 MW version of its reactor that was the first small modular reactor to be certified by the NRC.

Trump’s top campaign money bundler connected to Ohio’s largest public corruption scandal ever

Geoff Verhoff’s Akin Group got $68 million from FirstEnergy. He pleaded the Fifth when called to testify

David DeWitt DAVID DEWITT
JULY 26, 2024 4:30 AM
 

VANDALIA, OHIO -Former U.S. President Donald Trump and Ohio Republican U.S. Senator JD Vance. (Photo by Drew Angerer/Getty Images.)

FirstEnergy was the company behind the largest political bailout and bribery scandal in Ohio history, which funneled $61 million in dark money bribes to Ohio lawmakers in order to pass a $1.3 billion nuclear and coal bailout at the expense of every Ohio family that pays utility bills.

This week, Sludge reported that Donald Trump’s top known campaign money bundler advised FirstEnergy on its contributions to a dark money group that pleaded guilty to racketeering charges in Ohio’s House Bill 6 bailout scandal.

FirstEnergy pleaded guilty in a deferred prosecution agreement. So did the aforementioned dark money group used to funnel the bribes, Generation Now. Former Republican Ohio House Speaker Larry Householder is serving 20 years in federal prison on racketeering charges, and former Ohio Republican Party chair and FirstEnergy lobbyist Matt Borges is serving five years for his role.

One former Ohio lobbyist charged in the scandal died by suicide, as did Ohio’s former top utility regulator while he was under state and federal indictments. FirstEnergy admitted bribing him $4.3 million. Two other former FirstEnergy lobbyists cooperated and are awaiting sentencing. Two former FirstEnergy executives have been charged by the state of Ohio on charges alleging the spearheaded the bribery scheme. They’ve pleaded not guilty.

Trump’s top money bundler is named Geoff Verhoff. As Sludge reported, Verhoff is a “senior adviser at public affairs firm Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld, has bundled more than $3.6 million this year for Trump 47 Committee, according to a new filing with the Federal Election Commission.”

Verhoff also pleaded the Fifth when called to testify at Householder’s trial last March on his role in FirstEnergy’s Ohio bribery scheme.

From Sludge: “Verhoff was one of four individuals who was present at an October 2018 meeting where a FirstEnergy lobbyist paid a bribe to former Ohio House Speaker Larry Householder. According to the testimony of the government’s cooperating witness, former FirstEnergy lobbyist Juan Cespedes, during the meeting lobbyist Robert Klaffky slid an envelope containing a $400,000 check under the hand of former Ohio House Speaker Larry Householder. In response to the check, Cespedes said, Householder, gave ‘very strong verbals and nonverbals that he would introduce’ the FirstEnergy bailout legislation. The check was written out to Generation Now, a dark money nonprofit controlled by Householder that later pleaded guilty to racketeering charges in the matter.”

The article is full of details and is worth getting a subscription to read in full. Sludge reports on money in politics — that dark toxin poisoning our body politic alongside gerrymandering, as we’ve discussed previously.

Verhoff is just one of two FirstEnergy-connected lobbyist bundlers working to gather money for Trump to be reelected, according to the article. Verhoff also served as vice-chair of the RNC finance committee from 2017-2021. The Akin group Verhoff is part of got $68 million for their FirstEnergy work, Sludge reported, and Verhoff got $675 an hour from FirstEnergy.

With the FirstEnergy former executives’ trials still to come, and with Ohioans still paying hundreds of millions of dollars to prop up two failing coal plants, and with questions still outstanding about FirstEnergy dark money connected to Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine and Lt. Gov. Jon Husted and Ohio Senate President Matt Huffman, this scandal is not over for us.

Ohioans deserve answers and accountability, and public servants who serve the public instead of themselves. But I fear that the pattern of elected officials serving themselves at the expense of the public appears to be standard operating procedure among some politicians.

Some politicians try to soothe their conscience that giving aways billions of dollars worth of public money and resources in exchange for millions of dollars worth of campaign contributions is just business as usual and everybody does it and it’s just fine. They’re lying to themselves.

They’re selling themselves out and shamelessly ripping off working families in the process. They’re failing their most basic responsibility to protect the public welfare. This is not normal and it is not acceptable.

But prominent politicians are getting increasingly brazen.

Just this May, Trump promised 20 oil executives at a Mar-a-Lago dinner to roll back alternative energy programs, while asking them for $1 billion to fund his campaign. And Ohio U.S. Sen. J.D. Vance is connected to a network of influential right wing tech billionaires.

No matter any specific special favors, the Trump/Vance ticket is promising to lavish these billionaires and their companies with massive tax giveaways. Meanwhile, his 2017 tax cuts are already adding trillions to U.S. debt.

And this comes after Trump has already presided over a staggeringly corrupt administration.

Trump had a cabinet full of lobbyists and more than 200 companies, special-interest groups, and foreign governments funneled millions of dollars into Trump’s properties to curry favor with his administration during his tenure. The non-partisan watchdog Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics documented more than 3,400 conflicts of interest in Trump’s four-year term.

There were cases of self-dealing, ethics violations, cronyism, and public corruption in Trump’s Department of Homeland Security, his State Department, his Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, his Department of the Interior, his Treasury Department, his Commerce Department, his Environmental Protection Agency, his Department of Labor, his Department of Education, his Department of Energy, his Department of Agriculture, his Department of Health and Human Services, his Department of Housing and Urban Development, his Department of Transportation, and his Department of Justice.

There was so much public corruption during the Trump administration that it would take thousands of words just to even try to briefly summarize it.

In Ohio, we’ve seen what happens when special interests capture state government and use it as their personal piggy bank.

Trump’s promises to oil tycoons would risk $1 trillion in clean energy investment, according to a May analysis.

Millions in donations for billions worth of public resources is quite bad enough.

Trump asked for a billion-dollar donation. And him repaying it would cost the public a trillion.

Nuclear Regulatory Commission - News Release
No: I-24-015 July 24, 2024
CONTACT: Diane Screnci, 610-337-5330 Neil Sheehan, 610-337-5331
 
NRC Withdraws Enforcement Action After Puerto Rico Firm Properly Disposes of Nuclear Gauge
 
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission has withdrawn a civil penalty issued to a Toa Alta, Puerto Rico, firm after it complied with an agency order by properly disposing of a portable nuclear gauge and completing the decommissioning of its site.
 
The NRC notified Almonte Geo Services Group in November that the agency was proposing a $17,500 fine for the company’s failure to dispose of or transfer a nuclear gauge in its possession within a specified time period. Such gauges contain small amounts of radioactive material and are used for purposes that include measuring the density of soil at construction sites.
 
In May, Almonte Geo Services informed the NRC that the gauge had been transferred to a contractor for disposal. The NRC verified that the gauge was received by the authorized facility. Almonte Geo Services also requested that its NRC license be terminated.
 
“The goal of the NRC enforcement action was to ensure the company met its obligation to properly transfer or dispose of the gauge and thereby prevent the material from falling into the wrong hands. Almonte Geo Services also needed to complete the decommissioning of its site,” Region I Administrator Ray Lorson said. “We have now confirmed that has occurred and therefore are withdrawing the order imposing the civil penalty in recognition of those actions.”
 
Nuclear Regulatory Commission - News Release
No: I-24-016 July 25, 2024
CONTACT: Diane Screnci, 610-337-5330 Neil Sheehan, 610-337-5331
 
NRC Proposes $9,000 Fine for Connecticut Hospital for Improper Handling and Transfer of Nuclear Materials
 
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission has proposed a $9,000 civil penalty for Yale-New Haven Hospital for violations involving the improper handling and transfer of NRC-licensed nuclear materials. The hospital, in a written response to the NRC, did not contest the violations.
 
In December 2023, the hospital, located in New Haven, Connecticut, notified the NRC that an unused vial of lutetium-177 had been recovered at a lead-disposal facility after setting off radiation alarms. The vial holding the isotope, which is used for targeted nuclear medicine therapy for certain types of tumors and prostate cancer, was inside a lead transfer container when it was discovered. It did not have any external contamination and was not damaged. In addition to the vial, several empty lead containers with external lutetium-177 contamination were also found.
 
Connecticut Department of Energy and Environmental Protection staff responded to the disposal facility, conducted radiological surveys and determined the vial came from Yale-New Haven Hospital. The hospital’s radiation safety officer retrieved the materials the same day. No radiation overexposures are believed to have occurred.
 
Subsequent NRC inspections found that a nuclear medicine technologist earlier in December had gathered materials from storage in a nuclear medicine hot lab at the hospital. The technologist failed to properly perform radiation checks on the exterior of the items or to check the containers for internal contents. The containers were then transported to the disposal facility, where they set off an alarm at the weigh station, leading to the response actions.
 
Based on the NRC’s reviews, the agency identified two violations: a failure to appropriately dispose of NRC-licensed materials; and a failure to appropriately monitor the materials prior to disposal.
 
“In this case, there was a breakdown when it came to thoroughly checking the transfer containers for radiation prior to their removal from the hospital,” NRC Region I Administrator Raymond Lorson said. “Ensuring NRC-licensed materials are properly handled is essential when it comes to protecting workers, the public and the environment.”
 
The hospital has instituted corrective actions that include using a standard operating procedure for radioactive waste decay during the storage and disposal of such materials and another for the disposal of lead materials. Nuclear medicine staff at the facility would be required to undergo training on these new procedures and attest to compliance.
 
Nuclear Regulatory Commission - News Release
No: III-24-021 July 25, 2024
Contact: Viktoria Mitlyng, 630-829-9662 Prema Chandrathil, 630-829-9663
 
NRC Will Hold Public Meeting August 1 To Discuss Potential Restart of Palisades Nuclear Plant
 
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission will hold a hybrid public meeting that will include the agency’s update on the plant’s readiness to potentially resume operation and a presentation from Holtec International on restart-related activities.
 
The meeting will be held at the Grand Upton Hall, Lake Michigan College, 2755 E. Napier Ave., in Benton Harbor. Information for attending virtually or by phone can be found in the meeting notice.
 
Palisades permanently ceased operations in May 2022. In early 2023, Holtec International, the Palisades license holder, expressed interest in returning the plant to an operational status. The NRC created the Palisades Restart Panel to guide staff efforts to review, inspect, and determine if Palisades could be safely returned to operation.
 
The presentations will be followed by a question and comment session for attendees to engage with panel members on the NRC’s presentation. In-person attendees will be given priority to speak. Additional information on a potential Palisades restart can be found on the NRC’s website.
 

It’s not just toxic chemicals. Radioactive waste was also dumped off Los Angeles coast

A research expedition led by UC Santa Barbara came across old discarded barrels sitting 3,000 feet underwater near Santa Catalina Island. (David Valentine / ROV Jason)
BY ROSANNA XIASTAFF WRITER
FEB. 21, 2024 5 AM PT


For decades, a graveyard of corroding barrels has littered the seafloor just off the coast of Los Angeles. It was out of sight, out of mind — a not-so-secret secret that haunted the marine environment until a team of researchers came across them with an advanced underwater camera.

Speculation abounded as to what these mysterious barrels might contain. Startling amounts of DDT near the barrels pointed to a little-known history of toxic pollution from what was once the largest DDT manufacturer in the nation, but federal regulators recently determined that the manufacturer had not bothered with barrels. (Its acid waste was poured straight into the ocean instead.)

Now, as part of an unprecedented reckoning with the legacy of ocean dumping in Southern California, scientists have concluded the barrels may actually contain low-level radioactive waste. Records show that from the 1940s through the 1960s, it was not uncommon for local hospitals, labs and other industrial operations to dispose barrels of tritium, carbon-14 and other similar waste at sea.


“This is a classic situation of bad versus worse. It’s bad we have potential low-level radioactive waste just sitting there on the seafloor. It’s worse that we have DDT compounds spread across a wide area of the seafloor at concerning concentrations,” said David Valentine, whose research team at UC Santa Barbara had first discovered the barrels and sparked concerns of what could be inside. “The question we grapple with now is how bad and how much worse.”

This latest revelation from Valentine’s team was published Wednesday in Environmental Science & Technology as part of a broader, highly anticipated study that lays the groundwork for understanding just how much DDT is spread across the seafloor — and how the contamination might still be moving 3,000 feet underwater.

A man wearing an orange hard hat and life vest holds a device made of clear tubes while standing on the deck of a ship.
David Valentine, whose team at UC Santa Barbara has been researching the legacy of DDT dumping in the deep ocean, prepares to collect more sediment samples from the seafloor. (Austin Straub / For The Times)
Public concerns have intensified since The Times reported in 2020 that dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane, banned in 1972 following Rachel Carson’s “Silent Spring,” is still haunting the marine environment in insidious ways. Scientists continue to trace significant amounts of this decades-old “forever chemical” all the way up the marine food chain, and a recent study linked the presence of this once-popular pesticide to an aggressive cancer in California sea lions.

Dozens of ecotoxicologists and marine scientists are now trying to fill key data gaps, and the findings so far have been one plot twist after another. A research team led by UC San Diego’s Scripps Institution of Oceanography just recently set sail to help map and identify as many barrels as possible on the seafloor — only to discover a multitude of discarded military explosives from the World War II era.

And in the process of digging up old records, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency discovered that from the 1930s to the early 1970s, 13 other areas off the Southern California coast had also been approved for dumping of military explosives, radioactive waste and various refinery byproducts — including 3 million metric tons of petroleum waste.

Massive dumping ground of WWII-era munitions discovered off Los Angeles coast


In the study published this week, Valentine found high concentrations of DDT spread across a wide swath of seafloor larger than the city of San Francisco. His team has been collecting hundreds of sediment samples as part of a methodical, large-scale effort to map the footprint of the dumping and analyze how the chemical might be moving through the water and whether it has broken down. After many trips out to sea, they still have yet to find the boundary of the dump site, but concluded that much of the DDT in the deep ocean remains in its most potent form.

Further analysis, using carbon-dating methods, determined that the DDT dumping peaked in the 1950s, when Montrose Chemical Corp. of California was still operating near Torrance during the pesticide’s postwar heyday — and prior to the onset of formal ocean dumping regulations.

Clues pointing to the radioactive waste emerged in the process of sorting through this DDT history.

Jacob Schmidt, lead author of the study and a PhD candidate in Valentine’s lab, combed through hundreds of pages of old records and tracked down seven lines of evidence indicating that California Salvage, the same company tasked with pouring the DDT waste off the coast of Los Angeles, had also dumped low-level radioactive waste while out at sea.

The company, now defunct, had received a permit in 1959 to dump containerized radioactive waste about 150 miles offshore, according to the U.S. Federal Register. Although archived notes by the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission say the permit was never activated, other records show California Salvage advertised its radioactive waste disposal services and received waste in the 1960s from a radioisotope facility in Burbank, as well as barrels of tritium and carbon-14 from a regional Veterans Administration hospital facility.


Old discarded barrels sitting 3,000 feet underwater near Santa Catalina Island.
A research expedition led by UC Santa Barbara came across old discarded barrels sitting 3,000 feet underwater near Santa Catalina Island. (David Valentine / ROV Jason)
Given recent revelations that the people in charge of getting rid of the DDT waste sometimes took shortcuts and just dumped it closer to port, researchers say they would not be surprised if the radioactive waste had also been dumped closer than 150 miles offshore.

“There’s quite a bit of a paper trail,” Valentine said. “It’s all circumstantial, but the circumstances seem to point toward this company that would take whatever waste people gave them and barge it offshore … with the other liquid wastes that we know they were dumping at the time.”

Ken Buesseler, a marine radiochemist who was not affiliated with the study, said that generally speaking, some of the more abundant radioactive isotopes that were dumped into the ocean at the time — such as tritium — would have largely decayed in the past 80 years. But many questions remain on what other potentially more hazardous isotopes could’ve been dumped.

The sobering reality, he noted, is that it wasn’t until the 1970s that people started to take radioactive waste to landfills rather than dump it in the ocean.

He pulled out an old map published by the International Atomic Energy Agency that noted from 1946 to 1970, more than 56,000 barrels of radioactive waste had been dumped into the Pacific Ocean on the U.S. side. And across the world even today, low-level radioactive waste is still being released into the ocean by nuclear power plants and decommissioned plants such as the one in Fukushima, Japan.

Screenshot of a black and white map from a 1999 International Atomic Energy Agency report.
In a 1999 report by the International Atomic Energy Agency titled “Inventory of radioactive waste disposals at sea,” a grainy map shows that at least 56,261 containers of radioactive waste were dumped into the Pacific Ocean from 1946 to 1970. (International Atomic Energy Agency)
“The problem with the oceans as a dumping solution is once it’s there, you can’t go back and get it,” said Buesseler, a senior scientist at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution and director of the Center for Marine and Environmental Radioactivity. “These 56,000 barrels, for example, we’re never going to get them back.”


Mark Gold, an environmental scientist at the Natural Resources Defense Council who has worked on the toxic legacy of DDT for more than 30 years, said it is unsettling to think just how big the consequences of ocean dumping might be across the country and the world. Scientists have discovered DDT, military explosives and now radioactive waste off the Los Angeles coast because they knew to look. But what about all the other dump sites where no one’s looking?

“The more we look, the more we find, and every new bit of information seems to be scarier than the last,” said Gold, who called on federal officials to act more boldly on this information. “This has shown just how egregious and harmful the dumping has been off our nation’s coasts, and that we have no idea how big of an issue and how big of a problem this is nationally.”

U.S. Sen. Alex Padilla (D-Calif.) and Rep. Salud Carbajal (D-Santa Barbara), in a letter signed this week by 22 fellow members of Congress, urged the Biden administration to commit dedicated long-term funding to both studying and remediating the issue. (Congress has so far allocated more than $11 million in one-time funding that led to many of these initial scientific findings, and an additional $5.2 million in state funding recently kicked off 18 more months of research.)

“While DDT was banned more than 50 years ago, we still have only a murky picture of its potential impacts to human health, national security and ocean ecosystems,” the lawmakers said. “We encourage the administration to think about the next 50 years, creating a long-term national plan within EPA and [the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration] to address this toxic legacy off the coast of our communities.”

As for the EPA, regulators urged the growing research effort to stay focused on the agency’s most burning questions: Is this legacy contamination still moving through the ocean in a way that threatens the marine environment or human health? And if so, is there a potential path for remediation?

EPA scientists have also been refining their own sampling plan, in collaboration with a number of government agencies, to get a grasp of the many other chemicals that had been dumped into the ocean. The hope, they said, is that all these research efforts combined will ultimately inform how future investigations of other offshore dump sites — whether along the Southern California coast or elsewhere in the country — could be conducted.

“It’s extremely overwhelming. … There’s still so much we don’t know,” said John Chesnutt, a Superfund section manager who has been leading the EPA’s technical team on the ocean dumping investigation. “Whether it’s radioactivity or explosives or what have you, there’s potentially a wide range of contaminants out there that aren’t good for the environment and the food web, if they’re really moving through it.”
Newsletter

‘Near miss’ incident reported at [WIPP] nuclear waste site near Carlsbad - Carlsbad Current-Argus JULY 19, 2024

 
...“Significant operational incidents persisted at WIPP following the safety stand-down in April,” the report read. “The (Department of Energy) Carlsbad Field Office (CBFO) is considering formal mechanisms to transmit to SIMCO its concerns about the trend of unsafe work practices at WIPP. The Board’s staff will continue monitoring progress with improving the safety culture at WIPP.”
 
Meanwhile, the DNFSB sent a letter to the U.S. Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm, raising concerns that the final design of a rebuild of WIPP’s ventilation system known as the Safety Significant Confinement Ventilation System (SSCVS) did not demonstrate its ability to properly function in the underground, in environments with combustion products from fire and salt amid mining activities.
 
Construction on the SSCVS was completed in May, and it was being commissioned via various tests as the $486 million project was prepared for operations, increasing available airflow in the WIPP underground from 170,000 cubic feet per minute (cfm) to 540,000 cfm. The DNFSB said the “tentative date” for SIMCO to take over the system’s operations from its subcontractor was Aug. 26, 2024. The DOE was preparing a response to the DNFSB’s letter on the SSCVS...
 

Donna

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