ridiculously irresponsible attitude to nuclear waste

Green Group Sounds Alarm Over Meta’s Nuclear Power Plans

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This article was originally posted 6/12/24 but was deleted probably by mistake.

Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Meta, testifies before a U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on January 31, 2024, in Washington, D.C.
(Photo: Celal Gunes/Anadolu via Getty Images)

“In the blind sprint to win on AI, Meta and the other tech giants have lost their way,” said a leader at Environment America.

Environmental advocates this week responded with concern to Meta looking for nuclear power developers to help the tech giant add 1-4 gigawatts of generation capacity in the United States starting in the early 2030s.

Meta—the parent company of Instagram, Facebook, WhatsApp, and more—released a request for proposals to identify developers, citing its artificial intelligence (AI) innovation and sustainability objectives. It is “seeking developers with strong community engagement, development, …permitting, and execution expertise that have development opportunities for new nuclear energy resources—either small modular reactors (SMR) or larger nuclear reactors.”

The company isn’t alone. As TechCrunch reported: “Microsoft is hoping to restart a reactor at Three Mile Island by 2028. Google is betting that SMR technology can help it deliver on its AI and sustainability goals, signing a deal with startup Kairos Power for 500 megawatts of electricity. Amazon has thrown its weight behind SMR startup X-Energy, investing in the company and inking two development agreements for around 300 megawatts of generating capacity.”

In response to Meta’s announcement, Johanna Neumann, Environment America Research & Policy Center’s senior director of the Campaign for 100% Renewable Energy, said: “The long history of overhyped nuclear promises reveals that nuclear energy is expensive and slow to build all while still being inherently dangerous. America already has 90,000 metric tons of nuclear waste that we don’t have a storage solution for.”

“Do we really want to create more radioactive waste to power the often dubious and questionable uses of AI?” Neumann asked. “In the blind sprint to win on AI, Meta and the other tech giants have lost their way. Big Tech should recommit to solutions that not only work but pose less risk to our environment and health.”

“Data centers should be as energy and water efficient as possible and powered solely with new renewable energy,” she added. “Without those guardrails, the tech industry’s insatiable thirst for energy risks derailing America’s efforts to get off polluting forms of power, including nuclear.”

In a May study, the Electric Power Research Institute found that “data centers could consume up to 9% of U.S. electricity generation by 2030—more than double the amount currently used.” The group noted that “AI queries require approximately 10 times the electricity of traditional internet searches and the generation of original music, photos, and videos requires much more.”

Meta is aiming to get the process started quickly: The intake form is due by January 3 and initial proposals are due February 7. It comes after a rare bee species thwarted Meta’s plans to build a data center powered by an existing nuclear plant.

Following the nuclear announcement, Meta and renewable energy firm Invenergy on Thursday announced a deal for 760 megawatts of solar power capacity. Operations for that four-state project are expected to begin no later than 2027.

Original article by Jessica Corbett republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0).

Continue ReadingGreen Group Sounds Alarm Over Meta’s Nuclear Power Plans

Sellafield cleanup cost rises to £136bn amid tensions with Treasury

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https://www.theguardian.com/business/2024/oct/23/sellafield-cleanup-cost-136bn-national-audit-office

Sellafield has ‘retrieved much less waste than it had planned’ since 2020, the NAO said. Photograph: David Levene/The Guardian

National Audit Office questions value for money as predicted bill for decommissioning increases by £21bn

The cost of cleaning up Sellafield is expected to spiral to £136bn and Europe’s biggest nuclear waste dump cannot show how it offers taxpayers value for money, the public spending watchdog has said.

Projects to fix buildings containing hazardous and radioactive material at the state-owned site on the Cumbrian coast are running years late and over budget. Sellafield’s spending is so vast – with costs of more than £2.7bn a year – that it is causing tension with the Treasury, the report from the National Audit Office (NAO) suggests.

Officials from finance ministry told the NAO it was “not always clear” how Sellafield made decisions, the report reveals. Criticisms of its costs and processes come as the chancellor, Rachel Reeves, prepares to plug a hole of about £40bn in her maiden budget.

Europe’s most hazardous industrial site has previously been described by a former UK secretary of state as a “bottomless pit of hell, money and despair”. The Guardian’s Nuclear Leaks investigation in late 2023 revealed a string of cybersecurity problems at the site, as well as issues with its safety and workplace culture.

The NAO found that Sellafield was making slower-than-hoped progress on making the site safe and that three of its most hazardous storage sites pose an “intolerable risk”.

The site is a sprawling collection of buildings, many never designed to hold nuclear waste long-term, now in various states of disrepair. It stores and treats decades of nuclear waste from atomic power generation and weapons programmes, has taken waste from countries including Italy and Sweden, and is the world’s largest store of plutonium.

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https://www.theguardian.com/business/2024/oct/23/sellafield-cleanup-cost-136bn-national-audit-office

The shocking state of the Sellafield nuclear shitehole

Continue ReadingSellafield cleanup cost rises to £136bn amid tensions with Treasury

Decades after the US buried nuclear waste abroad, climate change could unearth it

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https://grist.org/indigenous/decades-after-the-us-buried-nuclear-waste-abroad-climate-change-could-unearth-it/


US military officers watch nuclear waste being dumped on Runit Island in the Marshall Islands.COURTESY OF DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE

A new report says melting ice sheets and rising seas could disturb waste from U.S. nuclear projects in Greenland and the Marshall Islands.

Ariana Tibon was in college at the University of Hawaiʻi in 2017 when she saw the photo online: a black-and-white picture of a man holding a baby. The caption said: “Nelson Anjain getting his baby monitored on March 2, 1954, by an AEC RadSafe team member on Rongelap two days after ʻBravo.’” 

Tibon had never seen the man before. But she recognized the name as her great-grandfather’s. At the time, he was living on Rongelap in the Marshall Islands when the U.S. conducted Castle Bravo, the largest of 67 nuclear weapon tests there during the Cold War. The tests displaced and sickened Indigenous people, poisoned fish, upended traditional food practices, and caused cancers and other negative health repercussions that continue to reverberate today. 

A federal report by the Government Accountability Office published last month examines what’s left of that nuclear contamination, not only in the Pacific but also in Greenland and Spain. The authors conclude that climate change could disturb nuclear waste left in Greenland and the Marshall Islands. “Rising sea levels could spread contamination in RMI, and conflicting risk assessments cause residents to distrust radiological information from the U.S. Department of Energy,” the report says. 

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https://grist.org/indigenous/decades-after-the-us-buried-nuclear-waste-abroad-climate-change-could-unearth-it/

Continue ReadingDecades after the US buried nuclear waste abroad, climate change could unearth it

Spending watchdog launches investigation into Sellafield

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https://www.theguardian.com/business/2024/feb/15/spending-watchdog-launches-investigation-into-sellafield

Sellafield is Europe’s most toxic nuclear site. Photograph: David Levene/The Guardian

Britain’s public spending watchdog has launched an investigation into risks and costs at Sellafield, the UK’s biggest nuclear waste dump.

The National Audit Office (NAO), which scrutinises the use of public funds, has announced it will examine whether the Cumbria site is managing and prioritising the risks and hazards of the site effectively as well as deploying resources appropriately and continuing to improve its project management.

The findings of its investigation are expected to be published this autumn.

Sellafield is Europe’s most toxic nuclear site and also one of the UK’s most expensive infrastructure projects, with the NAO estimating it could cost £84bn to maintain the site into the next century.

Last year, Nuclear Leaks, a Guardian investigation into activities at Sellafield revealed problems with cybersecurity, a radioactive leak and a “toxic” workplace culture at the waste dump.

Predictions of the ultimate bill for the site, which holds about 85% of the UK’s nuclear waste, vary. It cost £2.5bn to run the site last year, and the government estimates it could ultimately take £263bn to manage the country’s ageing nuclear sites, of which Sellafield accounts for the largest portion.

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https://www.theguardian.com/business/2024/feb/15/spending-watchdog-launches-investigation-into-sellafield

https://onaquietday.org/category/sellafield/

Continue ReadingSpending watchdog launches investigation into Sellafield

I watched that Panorama program about Sellafield last night :: This is draft

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I got the impression that the people supposedly in charge were far too relaxed and too fast to excuse anything and everything, that the people in charge of Sellafield were not taking it all seriously.

Isn’t that the impression you got? Oh radioactive half life of Plutonium Pu-239 of 24,100 years. We’ll just put it in this pond here, forget and ignore it and let seagulls

I got the impression that they had no idea about anything – that they were totally inept. they were treating it like it was nothing. Oh yes, no need to worry that we have got this serious radioactive waste which we have ignored for the past 60 years. There’s no need to worry about that we put it in water in these concrete ponds that are falling to bits.

ed: Sellafield is a nuclear waste shithole

ed:

Sellafield needs urgent inspections. Please get in there urgently. International, EU inspectors?

ed: I intend to do an article on the Radioactive Pollution of Irish Sea which is largely due to Sellafield.

16/9/16: it has been announced that Theresa May’s Conservative government are going for Sellafield C in partnership with EDF and China.

I intend to further investigate and publish on Sellafield’s irrsponsible and fantastically negligent actions of pollution of the Irish Sea and their ridiculous shite pools.

Continue ReadingI watched that Panorama program about Sellafield last night :: This is draft