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Romney Marsh in Kent, one of England’s most peaceful areas and most wildlife-rich wetlands, has been suggested as a site for Britain’s future nuclear waste dump. Ten thousand letters have been sent to residents of the area by the local district council, Folkestone-based Shepway, canvassing their views about siting the proposed Nuclear Research and Disposal Facility in the geological strata deep beneath the marsh. The council, which does not yet have a formal position on the idea, thinks that hosting the dump could be a way of replacing up to 1,000 jobs likely to be lost from the closure of the two local nuclear power stations, Dungeness A and B, and wants to know what local people think.
After decades of uncertainty about what to do with Britain’s 60-year legacy of dangerous radioactive waste – which is mainly spent fuel from atomic power stations, scattered across the country at numerous sites – the Government decided in 2006 that it would all be brought together and held in a “geological disposal facility” – a repository deep underground.
Finding a site acceptable to local people was always going to be the major difficulty, and in a White Paper published in 2008 the Government decided on an approach of “voluntarism” – inviting all local authorities to express an interest themselves in hosting the dump. It was understood that the Government would provide substantial economic benefits in return. So far, only three local authorities have expressed interest, all of them in the area of the Sellafield nuclear site in Cumbria – Allerdale and Copeland Borough Councils, and Cumbria County Council.
The fact that solidly-Tory Shepway – Tory majority, 44 out of 46 council seats, with two independents – is now showing stirrings of interest is something of a breakthrough, and was specifically welcomed yesterday by the Energy Minister, Charles Hendry. “This is potentially a multi-billion pound development that could guarantee high quality employment and the retention of nuclear industry skills in the area for many decades,” he said. However, not all local people are so keen. “This is an entirely ludicrous proposal,” said retired businessman Peter Morris, who lives on the edge of the marsh. “This is an area of rich agricultural land with diverse protected habitats and unique species. It is simply the wrong place to store nuclear waste. It would mean bringing the waste from right across Britain, probably through London.” He added: “Most of Romney Marsh is either at sea level or below sea level. With global warming it seems likely it would be extremely vulnerable to coastal flooding and I’m not aware of any studies which have shown otherwise.” In a statement yesterday, Shepway said that a waste store “would place nuclear waste in secure containers deep underground in vaults and tunnels. At ground level there would be buildings housing research, office, transport and other facilities.”
Shepway councillor David Godfrey, who was raised on Romney Marsh and whose first job was surveying the Dungeness A Construction, said. “The council does not have a formal view about whether the Marsh should host a Nuclear Research and Disposal Facility. Our only view is that local people should be given the opportunity to decide for themselves if it is worth discussing the idea further. If the people of the Marsh do not support an Expression of Interest, things will end there.” He added: “If the community does support an Expression of Interest, [the Department of energy and Climate Change] will commission experts to see whether the geology accessible from the Marsh is potentially suitable.
Michael McCarthy, Romney Marsh set to become nuclear dump, the Independent, May 17, 2012
Nuclear Waste and Scotland
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The U.S. is the world’s largest aerospace and defense market, and also home to the world’s largest military budget. The growth of the Aerospace and Defense industry depends largely on the spending outlook of government departments, with the U.S. defense budget being the primary driver. The industry largely depends on U.S. government contracts….
Defense spending is the major source of revenue for the top nine global aerospace and defense companies, with the US accounting for more than 40% of total global defense spending. However, with the U.S. government expected to institute greater austerity in its defense budget going forward, defense companies will need to source more orders from global clients. The geostrategic significance of the industry and the related heavy export restrictions will come in the way, to some extent, of those marketing efforts by U.S.-based operators.
The U.S. defense budget for 2012 was $645.7 billion, with the base budget at $530.6 billion and $115.1 billion approved for Overseas Contingency Operations (“OCO”) as supplementary defense spending, mainly to fund ongoing wars. In February this year (2012), the Department of Defense (DoD) requested a Pentagon base budget of $525.4 billion for 2013, which is approximately $5.1 billion or 1% less than what is approved for fiscal 2012, with $88.5 billion earmarked for OCO spending. The significant reduction in OCO funding is mainly due to the decline of U.S. military operations in Iraq in 2011. Going forward, OCO funding is expected to continue to decline as troops redeploy out of Afghanistan. Since the September 2001 attacks, the U.S. government has spent significant amounts on military campaigns overseas. The country has already decided to gradually move out of Afghanistan, and the war in Iraq has finally ended, which is expected to lower its expenditure on foreign campaigns. However, its clandestine military operations in other nations as part of anti-terrorism operations will continue to add to foreign war expenses. However, the overall trend in overseas military spending is unmistakably on the downtrend.
The big defense operators armed with a strong balance sheets are expanding their operations inorganically through acquisitions. The U.S. Defense department also endorses mergers among U.S. defense companies, provided they don’t involve the top five or six suppliers acquiring each other.
Lockheed Martin Corporation bolstered its product portfolio by acquiring Procerus Technologies, a company specializing in autopilot and other avionics for micro unmanned aerial systems. In November 2011, it had acquired Sim-Industries B.V., a commercial aviation simulation company located in the Netherlands. This acquisition would expand both companies’ closely related markets and expand the customer base.
Another defense major, L-3 Communications Holdings Inc., acquired the Kollmorgen Electro-Optical (“KEO”) unit of of Danaher Corporation This unit will improve L-3′s product suite with products like submarine photonics systems and periscopes, ship fire control systems, visual landing aids, ground electro-optical and sensor-cueing systems.
In December 2011, General Dynamics Corporation completed the acquisition of Force Protection, Inc. The latter provides blast- and ballistic-protected platforms that support the armed forces of the U.S. and its allies.
In December 2011, Raytheon Company announced that it has acquired Pikewerks Corporation, a privately held company, to further extend Raytheon’s capabilities to defend against sophisticated cyber-security threats facing customers in the intelligence community, the DoD and commercial organizations.=
Excerpts, Zacks Industry Outlook Highlights: Lockheed Martin, L-3 Communications, Danaher, General Dynamics and Raytheon, PRNewswire, May 15, 2012
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The (Savannah River Site) SRS Citizens Advisory Board will discuss a recommendation to send some or all of the site’s 3,100 “ready for shipment” canisters of stabilized waste to the Department of Energy’s Waste Isolation Pilot Plant near Carlsbad, N.M., where lower-level “transuranic” nuclear waste is buried in 250 million-year-old salt deposits a half-mile beneath the Chihuahuan Desert. The most dangerous waste at SRS is being vitrified – placed into glass poured into steel canisters that, until the Obama administration canceled the Yucca Mountain project in 2010, were to be removed from South Carolina for burial in Nevada.
“SRS is now storing these canisters with no known final disposition path,” the board wrote in a draft recommendation to be discussed at its May 21-22 meeting in Savannah, Ga. Ultimately, the number of canisters will swell to 7,500, equiring – in addition to two existing storage buildings – the construction of a third storage site. The indefinite storage of high-level waste that DOE pledged to remove from South Carolina “has not been accepted well by the surrounding communities” and undermines DOE’s credibility, the draft said.
The WIPP site was designed for the disposition of the same type of canisters stored at SRS but is licensed only for less-concentrated radioactive wastes, such as lightly contaminated clothing, tools and other materials. Because of that difference, revising the facility’s acceptance criteria would likely require approval from Congress. “From our limited understanding the WIPP site would be technically feasible and it seems to have an astounding amount of capacity to accept radioactive waste,” the draft said. “Further, any attempt to have canisters removed from SRS would have an immediate positive impact on the surrounding communities.”
The board is a stakeholder group that provides the assistant secretary for environmental management and designees with advice, information and recommendations on issues affecting the environmental and cleanup programs.
By Rob Pavey,SRS nuclear waste could go to New Mexico facility, The Augusta Chronicle, May 10, 2012
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For much of the past decade, NATO commanders have dictated most aspects of the allied war strategy, with Afghan military officers playing a far more marginal role. But with the signing of an agreement last month, Afghans have now inherited responsibility for so-called night raids — a crucial feature of the war effort. To Afghan leaders, the decisions made by their commanders reflect growing Afghan autonomy from Western forces as NATO draws down, and prove that Afghan forces are willing to exercise more caution than foreign troops when civilian lives are at stake. “In the last two months, 14 to 16 [night] operations have been rejected by the Afghans,” said Gen. Sher Mohammad Karimi, the top Afghan army officer. “The U.S. has said, ‘This operation better be conducted. It’s a high-value target.’ Then my people said, ‘It’s a high-value target. I agree with you. But there are so many civilian children and women [in the area].’ ”Many of the rejected night operations are later conducted once civilians are no longer in the vicinity of the targets, Karimi said.
U.S. officials point to progress they have made in their own efforts to reduce civilian casualties, and say that while the Afghans occasionally choose not to act on American intelligence, night operations are nonetheless frequently conducted. Americans continue to provide logistical support and backup, U.S. officials say, using their aircraft to deposit Afghan soldiers at the targets. “The Afghans are the ones who give final say on whether or not the mission gets conducted. That’s how the process works now,” said a U.S. official who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive issue. “The operational tempo hasn’t been affected by this. I don’t think there’s been a night when they haven’t conducted a good number of operations.”…
The Afghan president grew even more disenchanted over the last week, when separate NATO airstrikes killed 18 civilians in Logar, Kapisa, Badghis and Helmand provinces, according to Afghan officials. The president and his advisers said the attacks raise questions about the newly minted partnership agreement….
Excerpts from, Kevin Sieff, Afghan commanders show new defiance in dealings with Americans, Washingtong Post, May 11, 2012
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The nuclear disaster in Japan and the abandonment of a spent fuel repository at Yucca Mountain, Nev., have prompted TVA (Tennessee Valley Authority) to consider a $298 million contract for giant concrete and steel casks to store nuclear waste outside its operating plants. TVA’s board in April authorized the federal utility to contract with Holtec International, a company that makes the giant casks. The casks hold highly radioactive spent fuel after it has cooled for five years underwater inside the nuclear plants.
TVA and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission have said the casks can store spent fuel safely for 100 years or longer. TVA already has more than 681 metric tons of radioactive fuel stored in casks outside the Sequoyah and Browns Ferry nuclear plants. The utility last year was storing another 10,813 metric tons in spent-fuel pools inside the plants. A new contract will mean some of the pool-stored wastes will be moved into as many as 157 casks, a storage method most experts agree is safer But until two years ago the contractor, Holtec, was barred from doing business with TVA…..The 10-year contract [between TVA and Holtec] is expected to provide a new dry cask storage pad and up to 48 casks at Watts Bar in Spring City, Tenn., as well as up to 65 new canisters for Browns Ferry near Athens, Ala., and as many as 44 new casks for Sequoyah in Soddy-Daisy…..But TVA declined this week to release any information about the requests for proposal or any bids received. Nor would the agency confirm whether Holtec was the lowest bidder.
Excerpts, By Pam Sohn, TVA nuclear waste storage pact has hot history,Chattanooga News, May 12, 2012
See also TVA and Plutonium
Seee aslo TVA and Nuclear Weapons
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The killing of Chhut Vuthy has shaken Cambodia. A well-known environmentalist and founder of the Natural Resource Protection Group, he had travelled to Koh Kong province in the west of the country to try to film illegal loggers. He was in a heavily forested area near the construction of a 338-megawatt hydropower dam being built by China Huadian, one of China’s five biggest power generators. The project is one of four dams which have drawn widespread criticism because of adjacent logging, and the impact the dams could have on wildlife and the livelihoods of local villagers.
How Mr Chhut Vuthy was killed is not clear, but the official explanation has raised eyebrows. The Cambodian army claims that he was taking photographs without permission. He was confronted by a military police officer who demanded he hand over his camera. An argument followed, says the army. Guns went off, and when the officer realised he had killed the environmentalist, it says, he turned his AK-47 on himself, managing to pull the trigger twice to shoot himself in the stomach and chest. Mr Chhut Vuthy’s family insists a third person was involved, and after his funeral on April 28th hundreds of family, friends and human-rights activists demanded a full inquiry along with assurances from the government that their safety would be guaranteed. Two journalists were with Mr Chhut Vuthy when he was killed. A Canadian reporter and her Cambodian colleague say they did not see who pulled the trigger after their car was confronted by a group of soldiers. They ran into the bush and sought shelter with locals, but say they heard one of the soldiers say loudly in Khmer, “Just kill them both.”
Mr Chhut Vuthy’s death is the highest-profile killing in Cambodia since a trade union leader, Chea Vichea, was shot dead in 2004. Three women were also shot in February as they campaigned for better working conditions at a factory supplying Puma, a German sportswear company.All three survived, but the alleged gunman, Chhouk Bandith, a district governor, was arrested only after local media reported that he was being hidden by politically connected friends. He was charged with causing “unintentional injuries”.
Cambodia: Blood trail, Economist, May 5, 2012, at 43
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What looked like an admittedly temporary reprieve for the swift currents and extraordinary biodiversity of the Mekong river is now over. In December the Mekong River Commission (MRC), an intergovernmental body made up of Cambodia, Laos, Thailand and Vietnam, called again for approval of a potentially devastating dam at Xayaburi in northern Laos to be withheld until more is known about its effect on the lower Mekong. Apart from high up in the gorges of south-western China, the Mekong remains undammed. But now CH. Karnchang, a Thai construction giant contracted to build a $3.8 billion dam at Xayaburi has told the Bangkok Stock Exchange that dam construction officially began on March 15th, and that 5,000 workers have just been hired.
The news has triggered an angry response from riparian neighbours. The December agreement, calling for further scientific study of the environmental impacts, included Laos. Opponents of the dam argue that the Xayaburi dam will cause immense harm to ecosystems and imperil 65m South-East Asians who rely on the Mekong, the world’s biggest inland fishery, for their sustenance. Cambodia’s water-resources minister, Lim Kean Hor, sent a strong protest letter to Laos. He called for an immediate halt to construction until an independent assessment has been completed. Japan has just agreed to fund a study on Mekong dams, under the auspices of the MRC. Vietnam strongly backs Cambodia, and has repeatedly called for no more dams to be built on the Mekong for at least ten years. The Lao government’s failure formally to notify its Mekong partners about the construction, allowing the dam to proceed under the radar, clearly undermines the credibility of the MRC’s consultation processes. (pdf) In truth, though the Mekong Agreement signed in 1995, which gave birth to the commission, requires the four nations to consult and respect neighbours’ concerns, final decisions are left to each sovereign state.
A “Save the Mekong” campaign, chiefly among Thai non-government organisations (NGOs) has been gathering force. The NGOs complain of silence from the commission’s head office, based in the Lao capital of Vientiane. The MRC appears incapable even of sending a monitoring team to the dam site. Perhaps Cambodia will file a complaint against Laos in an international court. More likely, as Niwat Roykaew, chairman of the Chiang Khong Mekong Conservation Group, suggests, local residents might have no choice but to use sit-ins and other obstructions in order to shut down the Mekong “friendship bridges” between Thailand and Laos, should the MRC fail to compel Laos to suspend the dam construction.
A dam on the Mekong: Opening the floodgates, Economist, May 5, 2012, at 43
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U.S. military observers can have trouble identifying satellites whizzing overheard in Earth’s crowded space lanes. A new Pentagon effort aims to find the unique visual signatures of individual satellites for quick identification, regardless of whether such satellites belong to friend or foe. The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency hopes such signatures — remotely seen from ground or space sensors — could even help identify different satellites made by the same manufacturer. But it’s not easy. Satellites’ orbits may often change between overhead passes, and it’s getting more difficult to spot individual satellites in a space becoming more crowded with vehicles, satellites and pieces of leftover space junk.
The DARPA solicitation for an innovative solution from small business, issued April 27, noted, “Some objects are frequently lost, and sometimes serendipitously reacquired without recognition of its previous catalog existence, unless manpower-intensive analysis intervenes.”Any effort to reliably track “active payloads and tumbling objects” and the like would focus on finding each satellite’s physical or “operational” signatures (perhaps signals or movements unique to a certain satellite). Timeliness and speed would be crucial for helping military observers quickly identify satellites that had gone missing and possibly reappeared.
The technology needed here likely would involve some sort of software algorithms that can do automated identification based on satellite signatures. Once such software is created, DARPA envisions passing the testing along to the Joint Space Operations Center, the U.S. military’s center for coordinating space forces and directing space power to support global operations. DARPA’s focus on satellites also includes the recently launched “SeeMe” effort to deploy dozens of cheap satellites that can provide overhead battlefield surveillance for the U.S. military. The Pentagon afency also has the ongoing “Phoenix” project to try to cannibalize dead satellites and use the parts for new “Frankenstein” satellites.
Military wants to know: Whose satellites are those?, MSNBC.com, May, 3, 2012
See also http://www.dodsbir.net/sitis/display_topic.asp?Bookmark=42609
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Federal appeals judges indicated they were troubled over the licensing shutdown of Yucca Mountain, but they struggled with whether the nuclear waste project might be too dead to order it revived. Both sides faced sharp questioning in the case pitting the Nuclear Regulatory Commission against plaintiffs that include South Carolina and Washington state, which hold millions of gallons of nuclear waste with no promise of a place to send it since the Nevada repository plan was terminated. The case before a three-judge panel in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia is the only remaining legal challenge to the Obama administration’s decision to start closing out the program in 2009 and to develop a new nuclear waste strategy.
In a courtroom crowded with lawyers, industry representatives and former Yucca Mountain managers, Washington state Assistant Attorney General Andrew Fitz argued that the Nuclear Regulatory Commission acted improperly to close out repository licensing last year and should be ordered to resume it. A federal law still in effect requires the agency to complete the license review and issue a safety decision, Fitz said. He said the Nuclear Regulatory Commission “chose to abdicate its duties. The NRC’s duty is to comply with the law.”
With $10 million left over in a repository budget, the commission could resume the license case for some period of time and release reports containing its staff’s views on whether the Yucca site might be safe, Fitz said. The hope, according to Yucca proponents, is that Congress might resume funding that has been zeroed out for the past two years….Fitz noted Energy Secretary Stephen Chu has told Congress his department would revive the Yucca program if ordered, but Garland said “in the end it depends on whether they have the money.”
NRC senior attorney Charles Mullins also came under sharp questioning. “How can the agency justify ignoring a mandate?” Kavanaugh asked him. Mullins said repository licensing was brought to a halt out of prudence after President Barack Obama requested no funding for 2012 and the agency anticipated that Congress would agree. “In this case, the agency did not have enough money to continue in a meaningful matter,” Mullins said. “The commission did not feel it appropriate to throw good money after bad.” Kavanaugh was not satisfied. “That is not a good enough reason to ignore a statutory mandate,” he said. “Your whole theory is based on predicting that Congress will do zero (funding). What kind of theory is that?” Mullins said it would cost the Nuclear Regulatory Commission $6 million just to reinstate its electronic database of Yucca documents.
Martin Malsch, an attorney representing Nevada, said the state sided with the commission. He told judges resuming Yucca Mountain licensing for a short period would be burdensome for the 14 parties participating if the process is brought to a halt again.
By Steve Tetreault, Judges troubled by Yucca shutdown, uncertain on recourse, Las Vegas Review-Journal, May 2, 2012
Petioners Brief
See also http://www.state.nv.us/nucwaste/licensing.htm
Yucca Mountain Politics
Nuclear Waste in America
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Israel’s navy has taken delivery of its fourth Dolphin class submarine built by Germany’s Howaldtswerke-Deutsche Werft, giving the Jewish state the most powerful submarine fleet in the Middle East and boosting its strategic capabilities. The new diesel-electric boat, named the Tannin — Alligator – was handed over during a ceremony at HDW’s Kiel shipyard…The Tannin is the first of three “super-Dolphins” the Israelis will acquire from Germany. These 1,925-ton boats will be equipped with advanced systems that greatly enhance operational capabilities, which Western sources say include a new propulsion system that makes them almost impossible to detect and a special diesel and hydrogen conversion system that allows them to produce their own fuel, thus extending range and endurance. The Tannin is expected to be operational by mid-2013 after Israeli sea trials.
The sources say the advanced Dolphins are equipped to carry Israel-built cruise missiles with a range of some 940 miles, and nuclear warheads. This enhances Israel’s second-strike capability, to respond to a nuclear attack with its own nuclear arsenal, on the oft-stated pledge by Israel that it won’t be the first in the Middle East to use nuclear weapons.
The only target for such weapons, for now at least, would be Iran, which Israel and the United States alleges is driving to produce nuclear weapons that challenge Israel’s nuclear monopoly in the region. Israel has the capability, unmatched in the region, to deliver nuclear weapons by air — on aircraft and Jericho ballistic missiles — and sea. By deploying Dolphins in the Arabian Sea, off southern Iran, Israel greatly extends its strategic reach and gives it the option of pre-emptive first-strike attack, using nuclear weapons if necessary. Even if Israel is obliterated in a nuclear attack, the Dolphins could retaliate by launching missiles from the Arabian Sea. Israel has three early model Dolphins in service, all modeled on Germany’s Type 209 submarine by HDW, a subsidiary of ThyssenKrupp Marine Systems. These were delivered in 1998-2000. With the Tannin, and two more “super Dolphins” on order, Israel will be able to maintain at least one submarine in the Arabian Sea at all times. The fifth Dolphin is scheduled for delivery in 2014 and the sixth in 2016. Most of the Dolphins’ integrated systems are produced by major Israeli defense companies like Tadiran, Elbit, Israel Aerospace Industries and Rada.
The naval expansion has been made possible to a large degree by Germany’s sometimes reluctant agreement to pay the lion’s share of the cost for the game-changing Dolphins. Germany has for decades sought to accommodate Israel in atonement for the Holocaust during the Nazi era, although this has been wearing thin because of the global economic downturn. Germany agreed recently to Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s request that Berlin pay one-third of the $500 million-$700 million cost of the sixth Dolphin…
Excerpts from Israel’s submarine fleet gets 4th Dolphin, UPI.com, May 4, 2012
See also Iran, Israel and a Nuclear Free Midde East
Nuclear Ambiguity
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