An in-depth look at nuclear waste

A special double-edition of the Nuclear Monitor, published April 24, 2019, took a look at nuclear waste in depth. It features six articles written by Prof.Andrew Blowers OBE, Emeritus Professor of Social Sciences at The Open University and presently Co-Chair of the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy / NGO Nuclear Forum. Blowers looks at:

The legacy landscapes of nuclear power, where they are and how they developed: The Hanford Nuclear Reservation, a semi-desert region with homesteads of settlers and homelands of Native Americans ‒ that was transformed into the heart of the US nuclear weapons program, and thus into a nuclear wasteland; Sellafield, Britain’s nuclear heartland. Sellafield’s abundant and varied nuclear waste stockpiles (including a plutonium stockpile) comprise wastes arising from the plant’s initial military function and subsequently wastes mainly derived from reprocessing spent fuel; France, La Hague and Bure — two places with a crucial role in the storage and disposal of France’s more highly radioactive wastes. As the nuclear industry in France declines and reprocessing is questioned, so La Hague will adapt to survive as the centre for management of radioactive waste. Bure is the outcome of a long and contentious process of site selection for a deep geological nuclear waste repository; Gorleben, where conflict over the nuclear waste facilities proved pivotal to the end of nuclear power in Germany; and a look into the future — nuclear’s wastelands are scattered around the world in places where nuclear activities, accidents or deliberate devastation have occurred. These areas are usually remote, or areas from which the population has been removed, as at Fukushima and Chernobyl. More typically they constitute nuclear oases where nuclear facilities and communities co-exist in a state of mutual dependency extending down the generations. Read the Nuclear Monitor here.

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The Atomic Soldiers

A moving new film about U.S. Atomic Veterans and their own physical suffering and mental anguish. Screened by The Atlantic

The description from The Atlantic.
Nearly everyone who’s seen it and lived to tell the tale describes it the same way: a h…

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Beyond Nuclear vows to fight on against illegal high-level radioactive waste dump targeted at New Mexico: Atomic Safety and Licensing Board winks at acknowledged violations of federal law

See the Beyond Nuclear press release, here.
See the Don’t Waste Michigan, et. al, press release here: “Public Interest Groups Denied Hearing on Holtec International’s Nuclear Waste Dump in New Mexico.”
See the Sierra Club press release here: “Federal N…

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