Part 1 in the Series “What is nuclear waste and why be concerned?”
By Valerie G. Barnes-Connell, The Northerner (Laronge SK), December 1, 2011
(This is the first in a public education series, from a scientific perspective, about nuclear waste taken from a presentation given by Dr. Gordon Edwards, one of Canadaʼs most eminent experts and critics of the nuclear industry and the co-founder of the Canadian Coalition on Nuclear Responsibility (CCNR), in Pinehouse Lake on Monday, Nov. 21.)
Dr. Gordon Edwards, one of the founders of the Canadian Coalition for Nuclear Responsibility, spoke in Pinehouse Lake on Monday, November 21.
Edwards, a scientist, mathematician and educator from Montreal, is considered one of Canadaʼs foremost nuclear experts and critics. He spoke about the history of the nuclear industry in Canada, the Canadian Coalition for Nuclear Responsibility, the Seaborn Panel, the creation of the Nuclear Waste Management Organization (NWMO), and his concerns, also making recommendations to the people of Pinehouse Lake and members of the Future Generations Committee in regard to the proposed nuclear storage deep repository.
Pinehouse Lake is one of three Northern Saskatchewan communities considering the Nuclear Waste Management Organizationʼs (NWMO) Adaptive Phased Management approach to the storage of used nuclear fuel, which includes the establishment of a deep geologic depository.
Members of the Future Generations Committee said they believe education is important in the exploration of the NWMO approach, and when they were unable to find funding to bring Edwards to Pinehouse Lake, the local chapter dipped into their own pockets.
Members of the Future Generations Committee along with people from as far away as Regina, Saskatoon and Prince Albert attended the event.
The Northerner will carry more information from Edwardsʼ presentation in the coming weeks.
1 Part 2 in the Series “What is nuclear waste and why be concerned?”
By Valerie G. Barnes-Connell, The Northerner (Laronge SK), December 8, 2011
(This is the second in a public education series, from a scientific perspective, about nuclear waste taken from a presentation given by Dr. Gordon Edwards, one of Canadaʼs most eminent experts and critics of the nuclear industry and the co-founder of the Canadian Coalition on Nuclear Responsibility (CCNR), in Pinehouse Lake on Monday, Nov. 21.)
Edwards graduated from the University of Toronto with a degree in science and math, receiving a gold medal in mathematics and physics. He holds a Ph.D. in mathematics. He taught in Montreal until his retirement and is one of the founders of the Canadian Coalition for Nuclear Responsibility, founded in 1975.
Edwards began by expressing a belief in the need for scientific public education on nuclear waste – what it is and how it came into existence.
“Scientists should be doing education on this to make it more understandable, more accessible, to give [people] tools to understand enough to grapple with it…. Iʼm here to help in this difficult process of [grappling with] what seemed to come from outer space – a project that doesnʼt have any roots in the community,” he told the people gathered in Pinehouse Lake for his presentation, “ What is Nuclear Waste and What is the Nuclear Waste Management Organization (NWMO)? ”
No actual solution exists for the nuclear waste problem, Edwards said.
“I am quite sure that no one has an actual solution to the nuclear waste problem, there is no such thing as a solution…. The NWMO is not saying they have a solution, all they are saying is they have a long term management strategy.”
Edwards talked about the atom and the uniqueness of the uranium atom, which “is the only material in nature from which [one] can draw a great deal of energy from the very heart of the atom, called the nucleus…. The energy comes from the core of the atom and is a very recent phenomenon in terms of human behaviour…. Harnessing that energy is the basis for all nuclear technology, whether military or civilian.”
Up to 1970, uranium went into the building of bombs, although in 1965 the Canadian government decided uranium would only be sold for peaceful purposes thereafter.
Edwards spoke of the early explosions allowed over the Nevada desert. “All the broken fragments of atoms from bombs exploded in the air come down as radioactive fallout all over the planet.”
People were getting those materials into their bodies, and they are “very dangerous materials”.
2 He noted Nobel prize-winner Linus Pauling predicted [the fallout] would kill 96,000 people annually. People brought pressure and the United States stopped atmospheric testing, even though there was a Cold War on and there was no agreement from the former Soviet Union. Two years later, the United States and former Soviet Union signed a treaty “which stopped putting this stuff into the atmosphere. This is nuclear waste. What goes up in a mushroom cloud is nuclear waste.”
The Canadian government is very careful and uses a lot of technology to contain nuclear waste, Edwards said.
“The question is – technology is not always perfect, so what happens when it does get out? That is really the source of dispute over nuclear waste.”
3 Part 3 in the Series “What is nuclear waste and why be concerned?”
By Valerie G. Barnes-Connell, The Northerner (Laronge SK), December 15, 2011
(This is the third in a public education series, from a scientific perspective, about nuclear waste taken from a presentation given by Dr. Gordon Edwards, one of Canadaʼs most eminent experts and critics of the nuclear industry and the co-founder of the Canadian Coalition on Nuclear Responsibility (CCNR), in Pinehouse Lake on Monday, Nov. 21.)
Atoms usually remain very stable. A glass of water may contain atoms that were in dinosaurs hundreds of millions of years ago. They never change. But fission products, which come from the splitting of a uranium atom, are very unstable and “will explode suddenly at any given moment. They will ʻdisintegrateʼ, causing a problem for nearby living cells,” said Dr. Gordon Edwards, co-founder of the Canadian Coalition for Nuclear Responsibility, speaking in Pinehouse Lake on Monday, Nov. 21.
Fission products are one of the ingredients in nuclear waste. There are dozens of fission products, 211 of which are listed, Edwards said – although itʼs not a complete list – on the Canadian Coalition for Nuclear Responsibilityʼs website at www.ccnr.org . The moment of explosion (or disintegration) is when radioactive fission products are dangerous. “It can cause a wide variety of illnesses . . . but the damage generally shows up 20, 30, 40 years later.”
The energy in uranium-bearing rock was discovered by a French scientist, Henri Becquerel. He found a piece of uranium ore, which he set aside in a drawer because he was curious about it. The drawer also contained some unexposed photographic paper wrapped protectively. After two weeks, when he happened to open the drawer, the photographic paper had been exposed. Becquerel had discovered a property of uranium ore. “He had discovered radioactivity. He did not know where this energy came from. In fact, to this day, it is still quite unexplained where this energy comes from.”
Another scientist, a chemist living in France, Marie Curie, won two Nobel medals for her work with radioactivity; she discovered the elements ʻradiumʼ and ʻpoloniumʼ [contained in the uranium-bearing rock]. Radium she named for the rays it gave off, and polonium, for her native Poland.
4 Part 4 in the Series “What is nuclear waste and why be concerned?”
By Valerie G. Barnes-Connell, The Northerner (Laronge SK), January 19, 2012
(This is the fourth in a public education series, from a scientific perspective, about nuclear waste taken from a presentation given by Dr. Gordon Edwards, one of Canadaʼs most eminent experts and critics of the nuclear industry and the co-founder of the Canadian Coalition on Nuclear Responsibility (CCNR), in Pinehouse Lake on Monday, Nov. 21.)
The fourth and fifth columns take the form of a glossary of nuclear terms courtesy of Dr. Gordon Edwards.
THE ATOM AND ITS NUCLEUS
Atom : the smallest possible portion of a pure chemical element; it has a tiny but massive core called the nucleus, surrounded by orbiting electrons. In popular literature, it is often pictured as being like a miniature solar system.
Nucleus : the central core of an atom, containing subatomic particles called protons and neutrons held very tightly together. The number of protons determines the chemical properties (and the chemical name) of the atom.
Nuclei: the plural of nucleus – one nucleus, two nuclei.
Proton : a tiny subatomic particle with a positive electrical charge. Itʼs about 2000 times heavier than an electron, which carries a negative electric charge. Positive and negative charges attract each other.
Neutron : a tiny subatomic particle with no electrical charge, having exactly the same mass as a proton.
Nucleon : Protons and neutrons are sometimes called “nucleons”.
Uranium atom : any atom whose nucleus contains exactly 92 protons. Lighter elements have smaller numbers of protons: hydrogen has one proton, helium has two, lithium has 3, and so on, until we reach uranium with 92 protons. Uranium is the heaviest of the 92 elements found in nature
Isotopes : If two atoms have the same number of protons but different numbers of neutrons, they are called different isotopes of the same element.
Uranium isotopes : There are two isotopes of uranium found in nature, called uranium- 235 and uranium-238. The numbers indicate the total number of nucleons in the nucleus (e.g. uranium-238 has 92 protons + 146 neutrons).
5 RADIOACTIVITY
Radioactivity : a property of unstable atoms, causing them to suddenly and violently emit a bullet-like projectile – alpha, beta, or gamma – that can damage living cells, either killing them or making them develop abnormally.
Radioactive disintegration : the process by which a radioactive atom gives off an alpha, beta or gamma emission – also called “radioactive decay”.
Non-radioactive : Most elements encountered in nature are non-radioactive, meaning the atoms are stable and do not disintegrate. Not ever.
Becquerel : the basic unit of measurement for radioactivity. One becquerel indicates that one disintegration is taking place every second. (The unit is named after Henri Becquerel, who discovered radioactivity in Paris in 1896.)
Half-Life : (of a given radioactive material) is the time it takes for half of the atoms of that given material to disintegrate. The time it takes for a radioactive material to diminish by a factor of 1000, is the half-life times 10.
Decay product : When a radioactive atom disintegrates it does not disappear. Instead, it changes into a different element because the nucleus is altered. This new element is the “decay product” created by the radioactive decay.
Decay chain : If a radioactive element has a decay product, which is itself radioactive, then it will disintegrate to form its own decay product; and if that one is also radioactive, it too will have a decay product. This gives rise to a “decay chain” – a series of decay products, one after the other.
Radium : a radioactive heavy metal with a half-life of 1600 years. It is chemically similar to calcium and so it is stored in the bones, teeth, and motherʼs milk. It is known to cause bone cancer and fatal blood diseases. It belongs to the decay chain of uranium, so it is always present in uranium ore.
Radon : a radioactive gas created when an atom of radium disintegrates – it is the decay product of radium. It is a leading cause of lung cancer in North America. Seven times heavier than air, radon has a half-life of 3.8 days.
Polonium : a radioactive solid created when an atom of radon disintegrates – it is a decay product of radon. It is the most toxic element on earth, about 250 billion times more toxic than the chemical poison, cyanide.
Uranium tailings : the radioactive sand-like material left over from uranium milling. These tailings contain 85 percent of all the radioactivity in the uranium ore, because the mining company only removes the uranium – discarding all the radium, radon, polonium, and other members of the uranium decay chain. Uranium tailings have a half-life of 76,000 years.
6 Part 5 in the Series “What is nuclear waste and why be concerned?”
By Valerie G. Barnes-Connell, The Northerner (Laronge SK), January 26, 2012
(This is the fifth in a public education series, from a scientific perspective, about nuclear waste taken from a presentation given by Dr. Gordon Edwards, one of Canadaʼs most eminent experts and critics of the nuclear industry and the co-founder of the Canadian Coalition on Nuclear Responsibility (CCNR), in Pinehouse Lake on Monday, Nov. 21.)
This is the second of a two-part glossary of nuclear terms courtesy of Dr. Gordon Edwards.
NUCLEAR FISSION AND FISSION PRODUCTS
Fission : a process in which atoms are “split” or “fissioned”, releasing energy. An uncontrolled fission reaction takes place in a nuclear bomb, yielding an enormously powerful explosion; a controlled fission process takes place in a nuclear reactor, yielding intense heat that may be used to boil water to produce steam to spin a turbine and generate electricity.
Fission products : the broken pieces of atoms, which have been fissioned. These fragments are highly unstable atoms, which are intensely radioactive. Collectively, the fission products in used uranium fuel are millions of times more radioactive than the uranium itself.
Spent fuel or Used fuel : the leftover fuel from nuclear reactors, containing some of the original uranium and over 200 man-made radioactive materials, including all of the fission products from the splitting of uranium atoms.
Cesium-137 : one of the fission products created inside a nuclear reactor. In nature, cesium is a non-radioactive nutrient. Radioactive cesium-137 is one of the most dangerous man-made fission products because it concentrates in the meat of animals and fish and reconcentrates as it goes up the food chain.
Strontium 90 : another fission product created inside a nuclear reactor. Nature provides us with non-radioactive strontium, but nuclear power mass-produces radioactive strontium which concentrates in the bones and can cause blood diseases and bone cancer.
Plutonium : a man-made element whose atoms have 94 protons. It cannot be found in nature. Plutonium is not a fission product but another type of man-made radioactive substance called a “transuranic element” (because it is heavier than uranium). It is extremely radiotoxic, and it is also a nuclear explosive that can be used to make nuclear weapons of all kinds.
7 ATOMIC RADIATION
Atomic radiation : refers to the alpha, beta, or gamma projectiles given off by a radioactive material. While other forms of radiation (x-rays, heat lamps, microwaves ovens) can be shut off by turning a switch, atomic radiation cannot be stopped or slowed down by any method known to science.
Radioactive wastes : radioactive materials that have no use or value pose a threat to human health and to environmental integrity. Since radioactivity cannot be shut off, radioactive wastes must be isolated from the environment of living things until they are no longer dangerous.
High-level radioactive wastes : irradiated nuclear fuel [usually called spent fuel, or used fuel] from a nuclear reactor. A single used fuel bundle, about the size of a fireplace log, when it is just removed from a reactor, would kill any unprotected human within days following a 20-second exposure to the used fuel at a distance of one metre.
Alpha rays : or more correctly stated, alpha particles, are tiny but massive electrically charged objects thrown off by a disintegrating atom with great force. An alpha particle is made up of two protons and two neutrons bound very tightly together, and traveling very fast. Alpha rays are 20 times more damaging to living tissue, per unit of energy, than beta rays or gamma rays.
Beta rays : or more correctly stated, beta particles, are very high-speed electrons thrown off from the nucleus of a disintegrating atom. They can cause cancer and other diseases when living tissue is exposed to beta rays.
Gamma rays : extremely energetic photons – a photon is a “bundle of energy” that travels at the speed of light. Gamma rays are more powerful than x-rays, and can cause many different kinds of disease including cancer.
Penetrating radiation : generally refers to gamma rays – they have great penetrating power and can cause harm from external exposure. Gamma rays are the easiest type of atomic radiation to measure.
Non-penetrating radiation : generally refers to alpha rays or beta rays – unlike gamma rays, alpha and beta rays can be completely “shielded” by placing obstacles in the way. An alpha particle cannot penetrate through a sheet of paper, and a beta particle canʼt get through a reasonably thick metal plate. But in contact with living cells, alpha and beta rays can be as harmful or even more harmful than gamma rays.
8 Part 6 in the Series “What is nuclear waste and why be concerned?”
By Valerie G. Barnes-Connell, The Northerner (Laronge SK), February 9, 2012
(This is the sixth in a public education series, from a scientific perspective, about nuclear waste taken from a presentation given by Dr. Gordon Edwards, one of Canadaʼs most eminent experts and critics of the nuclear industry and the co-founder of the Canadian Coalition on Nuclear Responsibility (CCNR), in Pinehouse Lake on Monday, Nov. 21.)
In the first part of his presentation, Edwards offered an overview of radioactivity, including the work of Henri Becquerel and Marie Curie.
A radioactive material is one whose atoms are unstable. An unstable atom will suddenly disintegrate, giving off a burst of energy and particles called “atomic radiation”, which can damage nearby living cells. Radioactivity is measured in “disintegrations per second” [or “becquerels”].
Antoine Henri Becquerel is credited with the discovery of radioactivity; he shared in the 1903 Nobel Prize with Pierre and Marie Curie, who were also honoured for their work with radioactive materials. Marie Curie discovered radium and polonium, two radioactive materials left over from the disintegration of uranium atoms. When a radioactive atom disintegrates, it “decays” into a new kind of atom altogether – thus uranium atoms change into radium and polonium atoms.
“When they mine uranium in Saskatchewan today it is almost the same as what Madame Curie did: grind up the rock, dissolve it in acid and separate the uranium, leaving the residue behind. The residue contains all the radium, polonium and a couple of dozen more radioactive materials that are left behind in the uranium tailings. Thatʼs why [the tailings are] more radioactive than the uranium itself. Of all radioactive elements in the chain of decay, uranium is the least dangerous.”
Through the process of radioactivity, the chain of decay creates new atoms all the time – what Edwards referred to as decay products. The process goes on as the radioactive decay products have their own decay products; the process continues in what he referred to as a decay chain.
Radium sold for $100,000 a gram in the 1920s and was used for a variety of purposes. One project Edwards spoke of was painting the dials of watches with radium to make them glow in the dark. Young girls were hired to work in the dial-painting factories and after a few years, they began to get sick because of the radium.
“Radium is similar to calcium, it goes to the bones and teeth – and the milk of nursing mothers. The first instance of problems was in the jaws and teeth of the young women. Later some of them developed a fatal form of blood disease. Bone cancer was also found later in the same group of young women.” 9 When radium disintegrates it produces radon gas, which, he said, is believed to be a cause of lung cancer among uranium miners around the world. The rates of lung cancer among the Navajo people, who worked in uranium mines, was four to five times higher than normal. The United States government now gives the families of these miners automatic compensation for damages.
“They no longer require the families to prove that radioactivity caused the damage to their husband or father who died from cancer. If he worked in the mines for a length of time and got lung cancer, compensation is automatic. Canada is nowhere close to that. In Canada (if) a worker develops cancer, the family has to prove he got over exposed to radiation, so weʼre behind the U.S. in that regard.”
Much of the information was given to assist participants in understanding how damaging and how complicated atomic radiation can be.
10 Part 7 in the Series “What is nuclear waste and why be concerned?”
By Valerie G. Barnes-Connell, The Northerner (Laronge SK), February 16, 2012
(This is the seventh in a public education series, from a scientific perspective, about nuclear waste taken from a presentation given by Dr. Gordon Edwards, one of Canadaʼs most eminent experts and critics of the nuclear industry and the co-founder of the Canadian Coalition on Nuclear Responsibility (CCNR), in Pinehouse Lake on Monday, Nov. 21.)
To explain how science learned that radioactivity is dangerous, Edwards spoke about radon gas and one of its decay products, polonium.
Edwards spoke about this radioactive gas in relation to lung cancer in uranium miners, particularly the Navajo, whose families received compensation. He explained some of the complexities with radon gas. A person may breathe in the radon but they also breathe it out. By moving away from the source of contamination the exposure to radon can be stopped. But radon gas disintegrates into several solid decay products and some of them stick to the lungs – they do not get exhaled – so even when a person goes home and goes to sleep the radioactivity is still at work, damaging the lungs.
Numbers are used to identify different strains of decay products because there are so many. One of the decay products produced by radon gas is polonium, and there are three varieties: polonium 218, 214, and 210. Edwards referred to polonium as “the most poisonous substance on earth”.
He referred to the widely-reported murder of a former KGB agent in London, England, Alexander Litvinenko. “Doctors took a long time to figure out why he was dying; they couldnʼt understand why his organs were shutting down one after the other … they finally discovered it was polonium. I was interviewed on national television and had to learn an amazing amount about polonium. One of the things I learned was, polonium is 250 billion times more toxic than cyanide … Itʼs astonishing. One tiny grain could kill 1,000 people. No doubt this is the most toxic element that occurs in nature.”
But what about the radioactive substances in irradiated nuclear fuel? Most of these do not exist in nature at all.
Large amounts of energy are released when uranium atoms are split. Edwards reiterated that uranium is the only element in nature, which can yield a lot of energy in this way. “They use this energy to boil water basically. Itʼs one of the most strange ways to boil water.”
Boiling the water causes steam and the steam “then is used to turn a turbine just exactly the way it would be turned in a coal-fired, oil-fired or wood-fired plant. Itʼs just another
11 way to boil water to get the steam. But the difficulty is the irradiated fuel, called spent fuel by the industry, contains all the fission products – the broken pieces of uranium atoms, which are intensely radioactive. In fact the used fuel is millions of times more radioactive than the uranium itself.”
He also said, unlike the uranium itself, “this stuff could kill you just by standing a metre away from it. If you stood a metre away from a spent fuel bundle the size of a fireplace log, just after it came out of a reactor, for just 20 seconds, you would be dead within a few days. Thatʼs because you would get a lethal blast of penetrating radiation.”
Edwards also said that the Canadian government had no desire to allow nuclear waste to escape into the atmosphere, as happened at Chernobyl and at Fukushima in Japan. “They want to keep it contained and, for the most part, they do that. Theyʼre very careful and use lots of technology to make sure it doesnʼt get out,” Edwards said. “They spend billions of dollars on containment because the alternative to containment would be unacceptable.”
12 Part 8 in the Series “What is nuclear waste and why be concerned?”
By Valerie G. Barnes-Connell, The Northerner (Laronge SK), February 23, 2012
(This is the eighth in a public education series, from a scientific perspective, about nuclear waste taken from a presentation given by Dr. Gordon Edwards, one of Canadaʼs most eminent experts and critics of the nuclear industry and the co-founder of the Canadian Coalition on Nuclear Responsibility (CCNR), in Pinehouse Lake on Monday, Nov. 21.)
Is spent fuel – the fuel after it has been used in a nuclear process – really spent? What actually happens with the used fuel? This was one of the main topics Edwards spoke about in his presentation. The idea of a ʻcore meltdownʼ was another aspect he talked about.
Edwards said the language of the industry can be confusing. “The industry calls this ʻspent fuelʼ and that gives the impression itʼs kind of exhausted, and therefore probably harmless. In fact itʼs far more radioactive than it ever was before it went into the reactor. Thatʼs because it now contains all the broken pieces of uranium atoms – atoms that were split to produce energy. The leftover materials, called ʻfission productsʼ, are extremely radioactive.”
Using a PowerPoint presentation, Edwards showed diagrams of how it works. The uranium fuel is placed in the core of the reactor. That is where the ʻfission processʼ takes place. “The fuel in the core gets very radioactive [so that] anybody who gets close to it without adequate protection is going to keel over dead just because of the penetrating radioactivity that comes off of it.”
The high level of radioactivity is a reason that the reactor is placed in a separate building. “The steam generator, the boiler there, produces steam that goes through a turbine,” in another building, which produces the electricity.
Edwards used an animation to show the splitting of a uranium 235 atom, which is the source of nuclear energy. “Uranium 235 is actually quite rare,” he said. In natural uranium, as it is taken out of the earth, only seven atoms in 1,000 are uranium 235 and all the rest are uranium 238 atoms. “But uranium 238 isnʼt what gives energy. The energy comes from uranium 235. When a uranium 235 atom is hit by a neutron, it breaks into two pieces called fission products, and releases a lot of energy at the same time.”
The fission process also liberates more neutrons, and with more neutrons comes more splitting atoms, more energy, and more fission products. Eventually, hundreds of kinds of fission products are created. These are nuclear wastes that must be stored safely somewhere for millions of years.
13
Edwards explained the meltdown process. “What is a meltdown? A meltdown in a nuclear reactor only happens because of the radioactive waste inside the core of the reactor.”
The fission products produce a lot of heat as they undergo radioactive decay. “Radioactivity means atoms are exploding, and thereʼs no way to stop them from doing so. The fission process can be shut off, but radioactivity cannot be shut off. If we knew how to shut off radioactivity there would be no nuclear waste problem; you would just turn it off.
No, there is no scientific method that can slow down or shut off radioactivity. And thatʼs why they are looking for some place to put all this stuff – maybe up here in Northern Saskatchewan.”
When a reactor is shut down, “they stop splitting the atoms but they canʼt stop the radioactivity. So heat continues to be produced even after the fissioning is finished.” The intensity of the heat generated is “enough to melt the reactor core including all the structural materials.”
Radioactivity keeps adding heat all the time and so the temperature keeps rising, unless the heat is removed as fast as it is being produced. So when the pumps donʼt work you are on your way to a meltdown. This is why the used fuel bundles – the radioactive wastes – are placed in circulating water for 10 years when they first come out of a reactor. If they werenʼt constantly cooled they would overheat and release radioactive gasses and vapours.
14 Part 9 in the Series “What is nuclear waste and why be concerned?”
By Valerie G. Barnes-Connell, The Northerner (Laronge SK), March 1, 2012
(This is the ninth in a public education series, from a scientific perspective, about nuclear waste taken from a presentation given by Dr. Gordon Edwards, one of Canadaʼs most eminent experts and critics of the nuclear industry and the co-founder of the Canadian Coalition on Nuclear Responsibility (CCNR), in Pinehouse Lake on Monday, Nov. 21.)
The 2011 tsunami in Japan made cooling the nuclear reactors at Fukushima impossible by knocking out the backup electric generators. This caused a complete station blackout for an extended period of time, so no power was available to run the pumps. The heat produced by radioactive decay kept building up in the shut-down reactors, causing meltdowns in three of those reactors within a few days.
“The radioactive waste keeps producing heat; if you donʼt have power to run the pumps, the temperature will keep going up,” said Edwards. “Workers have to struggle to keep the temperature from rising and force it to go down instead, but they cannot do this without flushing water through the core of the reactor.”
“At 1800 degrees C the metal cladding (or coating) around the fuel elements starts melting or even burning and that releases a lot of radioactive gasses,” Edwards said. Close to 20 per cent of fission products are gasses. “As soon as there are any cracks or other defects in the cladding those gasses are released and they can go into the atmosphere very easily.”
Four of the six Japanese reactors suffered powerful explosions and severe damage. “The reactors did this damage to themselves. It wasnʼt the earthquake or tsunami that caused those explosions, it was the overheating of nuclear waste inside the reactor core or in the spent fuel bays.”
So what exploded? “The heat inside the reactor vessel caused steam pressure to build up. If you donʼt relieve the pressure the vessel will burst, so they had to let the steam out, even though that let out the radioactive gasses as well. The overheated waste also produces hydrogen gas, which is very explosive, and that too was let out.” It was the hydrogen gas that exploded, blowing the roofs off four of the reactors and causing a lot of damage.
When the used fuel reaches 2800 degrees C, it begins to melt; then the solid radioactive fission products still left in the waste are vapourized and a lot of it escapes. “This can happen even in the spent fuel bay. After several days of no cooling, the water in the pool boils off and the fuel cladding starts burning and all these radioactive gasses and vapours are let off from the spent fuel.” At Fukushima helicopters were used to drop water onto the exposed fuel bays; water cannons were also used, all in an effort to keep
15 the fuel under water – “to keep the temperature from soaring out of control completely.”
Edwards noted accidents have been happening for a long time, but the situation in Japan is a reminder of what nuclear fuel waste can do. “This is what nuclear fuel waste does when itʼs really in a bad situation, when things go really bad.”
He added that spent fuel ready to be placed in a deep geological depository would also be heat-generating and would have radioactive gasses, vapours and solids inside, which could be released if damage occurred to the container, but in a less dramatic fashion. The main problem would be gradual contamination of water or the food chain.
16 Part 10 in the Series “What is nuclear waste and why be concerned?”
By Valerie G. Barnes-Connell, The Northerner (Laronge SK), March 8, 2012
(This is the tenth in a public education series, from a scientific perspective, about nuclear waste taken from a presentation given by Dr. Gordon Edwards, one of Canadaʼs most eminent experts and critics of the nuclear industry and the co-founder of the Canadian Coalition on Nuclear Responsibility (CCNR), in Pinehouse Lake on Monday, Nov. 21.)
Edwards cited a report from an all-party committee of the Ontario Legislature, which looked at the possibility of a catastrophic accident in a CANDU reactor. Such an event “could involve the spread of radioactive poisons over large areas, killing thousands immediately, killing others through cancer … and contaminating large land areas for future habitation or cultivation,” said the report. The damage would be done by nuclear waste being spread around.
Edwards told the meeting, “This is not scare mongering. This is information – good information, sound information, information people are entitled to know. These were elected representatives of the people who felt obligated to share that information with the people.”
He showed a slide of the core of a CANDU reactor before it was operational, with a man standing in front of it. “If this reactor had been operating for a couple of months, then shut down for a couple of months, and then he went and stood there, he would be risking his life. In fact he would be dead in a short time.” Once the reactor is started up it becomes intensely radioactive and remains so because of the high-level radioactive waste produced inside the core.
Edwards also showed a slide of a spent fuel pool under construction. “They have to cool the fuel in these pools with circulating water for at least 10 years. If they stop the cooling, the spent fuel will overheat and damage itself and release radioactive gasses and vapors. Thatʼs why they have to cool it for at least 10 years and why they cannot move this nuclear waste away from the reactor for decades.”
Edwards showed a reactor in Quebec, built to last 30 years, but the pool was only designed to last for 10 years. “So go figure,” he said.
And the reasoning behind their planning? “They thought they would soon have a solution to the nuclear waste problem. They always thought it would be a relatively simple matter to just dig a hole and put it down the hole and cover it up – and that would be the end of the problem.”
When Edwards first raised concerns about the nuclear waste problem in Ontario in the 1970s, he said, “I was laughed at by some of the people in the industry. They said
17 nuclear waste is not a technical problem, just a PR problem. I wonder to this day whether they might still feel that way.”
The cost estimates related to nuclear waste management have gone up, Edwards said. “Since 1989, the cost estimate for ʻdisposingʼ of all of Canadaʼs anticipated spent fuel – and itʼs not really disposal, theyʼre just babysitting it – has gone up from $8 billion to $16 billion to $26 billion, and I donʼt know where itʼs going to go from there. And yet this is only a small problem, we used to be told!”
The storage of spent fuel is taken more seriously now. “They canʼt get away with saying itʼs only a small problem any more,” Edwards said.
When the spent fuel is finally taken out of the spent fuel pool it is put into dry storage casks. Edwards showed slides of the casks, approximately 100 tonnes each. “Most of that weight is not spent fuel, but shielding material that has to be put around the spent fuel.” The shielding is put in place to keep people around the casks from getting exposed to massive doses of radiation.
“When the Nuclear Waste Management Organization (NWMO) folks talk about finding a willing host community, one of the things they will be doing is building a deep geological repository.”
Edwards spoke of the 15 years of research done by the Atomic Energy of Canada Limited (AECL) at its Whiteshell Laboratories and the Underground Research Laboratory in Manitoba. And yet, Edwards said, the Manitoba government has passed a law making it illegal to import nuclear waste into that province for the purpose of disposal. “Of all the provinces in Canada, Manitoba has had the most experience with what nuclear waste disposal entails – and they have decided they donʼt want any part of it,” he said.
18 Part 11 of the Series
What is nuclear waste and why be concerned?
By Valerie G. Barnes-Connell, The Northerner (Laronge SK), March 15, 2012
(This is the eleventh in a public education series, from a scientific perspective, about nuclear waste taken from a presentation given by Dr. Gordon Edwards, one of Canadaʼs most eminent experts and critics of the nuclear industry and the co-founder of the Canadian Coalition on Nuclear Responsibility (CCNR), in Pinehouse Lake on Monday, Nov. 21.)
Continuing his talk on radioactive wastes, Edwards used graphics to explain why used nuclear fuel canʼt be taken directly out of a reactor for permanent storage underground. For several years, the radioactivity of the used fuel is so intense that a great deal of heat is generated. If that heat is not removed as fast as it is produced, it will drive the temperature up so high that the metallic coating of the used fuel will be damaged or melted and dangerous radioactive gasses and vapours will escape.
For the first seven to ten years, the used fuel has to be kept in a deep pool where it can be cooled by constantly circulating water. The water also acts as a biological shield to protect the workers against lethal doses of radiation exposure. After 10 years, the used fuel can be put into dry storage containers that are air-cooled for another 20 or 30 years at least. But it still canʼt be buried. If the wastes are buried underground too soon, there will be overheating and the containers will start disintegrating, because there is nowhere for the heat to go except into the containers and the rocks surrounding the used fuel.
“The heat doesnʼt stop.” A series of graphics from Atomic Energy of Canada Limited was used to illustrate how the underground rock was expected to heat up even if the waste is cooled for 70 years before burial. After certain time lapses – 4,400 years, 8,800 years after burial – the subterranean rocks get hotter and hotter, culminating after 50,000 years “at which time the temperature of the rock returns to about the same as the initial temperature. It is only about twice as hot as it started out – and they consider that close enough.” This period of 50,000 years is called the “thermal pulse”. “A pulse is like a little blip on a radar screen, and thatʼs what they call this 50,000 year period.” Just a blip.
Using a graph from the Ontario Royal Commission on Electric Power Planning, Edwards showed that the nuclear waste remains dangerous in excess of 10 million years. “From that point of view, 50,000 years really is a very short time – just a blip on the screen.”
Edwards went on to talk about the health dangers of the dozens of fission products contained in the used nuclear fuel. These are the same radio-toxic materials that are created when an atomic bomb explodes. Fission products, such as radioactive Cesium- 137, are produced whenever uranium atoms are split, whether in a bomb or in a reactor.
19 But in one nuclear reactor there is more radioactive Cesium-137 than has been released by all the nuclear weapons that have been tested all over the world up to the present time.”
Cesium-137 is chemically similar to potassium, so the human digestive system puts the radioactive cesium into the blood stream and into the soft internal organs. In animals, the cesium-137 goes to the meat, so the food becomes contaminated and unusable for human consumption.
Iodine-131, another fission product, concentrates in the thyroid gland, where it can cause thyroid cancer and also interfere with the normal development of young children, possibly causing mental retardation and stunted growth. Strontium-90, yet another fission product, is similar to calcium and so it is stored in the bones, the teeth, and motherʼs milk. Radioactive strontium-90 can cause bone cancer and blood diseases such as leukemia and life-threatening anemia.
Of course these radioactive poisons cannot harm people unless they escape into the environment. Edwards said that it caused him great concern when, in 1976, he read a British report by a nuclear physicist, Dr. Brian Flowers, who noted that if nuclear reactors had been built all around Europe prior to WWII, “Those reactors would have been targeted during the war. Anybody doing ordinary sabotage worth their salt could cut off the electricity to a nuclear reactor and keep it off for a few day. Thatʼs all you need to make a nuclear reactor melt down and release the radioactive wastes. The same result could be obtained by a conventional bomb dropped from the air, causing a melt down. When I thought about that, I thought, Wow.”
Large areas in Europe would have been rendered uninhabitable by radioactive contamination, just as “some people in Japan are beginning to realize they may never be able to go home again.” The Japanese government recently confirmed the fact that many of these contaminated areas will remain uninhabitable.
20 Part 12 in the Series “What is nuclear waste and why be concerned?”
By Valerie G. Barnes-Connell, The Northerner (Laronge SK), March 22, 2012
(This is the twelfth in a public education series, from a scientific perspective, about nuclear waste taken from a presentation given by Dr. Gordon Edwards, one of Canadaʼs most eminent experts and critics of the nuclear industry and the co-founder of the Canadian Coalition on Nuclear Responsibility (CCNR), in Pinehouse Lake on Monday, Nov. 21.)
Edwards said that questions about the on-going problem of nuclear waste often occur to people, such as “Why on earth did we let this whole thing get started?”
“The answer is: Back then, nobody told us it was a problem. The industry didnʼt tell the politicians, they didnʼt tell the public, they didnʼt tell the scientific community. When I graduated from the University of Toronto in 1961 with a Gold Medal in mathematics and physics, I had no idea that nuclear reactors produced dangerous indestructible nuclear waste. I was completely ignorant of the fact and I was quite shocked when I discovered it years later.”
Between 1945 and 1975, 30 years worth of high-level radioactive waste from nuclear reactors had accumulated in Canada, “during which time nobody in the general public and nobody in the political field knew it was a problem because the industry never told them.” The organization of which Edwards is president, the Canadian Coalition for Nuclear Safety, was founded in 1975. “And we started raising the question of nuclear waste strongly at that time.”
In 1976 the Canadian government came out with its first publication on nuclear waste, a discussion paper entitled The Management of Canadaʼs Nuclear Waste. “By that time it was a case of shutting the barn door after the horse has escaped, because we had already produced a lot of nuclear waste … and the industry could say, ʻNow you have a problem that you are stuck with. Maybe you never would have wanted to create this waste if you knew about it ahead of time, but itʼs too late for that now – now youʼre stuck with it.ʼ "Itʼs very important to realize how seriously misinformed people have been.” Nuclear power was always touted as "clean, safe, and non-polluting.” But, Edwards said, the question then arises, “Why should there be this long-lived toxic waste?” In 1977 both the government of Ontario and the government of Canada launched prolonged inquiries into nuclear waste. One was the Ontario Royal Commission on Electric Power Planning and the other involved a House of Commons committee, which held extensive hearings on nuclear waste.
The House Committee received over 300 briefs sounding alarms over Canadaʼs nuclear waste problems. One submission was made by the Dean of Engineering of Queenʼs University, who was also the vice-chairman of Ontario Hydro at the time. “He said in his 21 submission that the danger of nuclear waste is so serious that Ontario should stop building nuclear plants altogether until it has solved the nuclear waste problem definitively – which it has not done to this day,” Edwards said. The Ontario Royal Commission reached a similar conclusion in September 1978, recommending a moratorium on new nuclear reactors unless the waste problem is nearing a final solution by 1985.
But in June 1978, while these two inquiries were still going on, before either one had completed its work, the federal government and Ontario signed a $700 million, 15-year research program to study burying nuclear waste underground, under the control of Atomic Energy of Canada Ltd. “Thatʼs when the underground repository research in Canada began – shortly after the unsolved waste problem had been identified as a potential stumbling block to the future of nuclear power.”
22 Part 13 in the Series “What is nuclear waste and why be concerned?”
By Valerie G. Barnes-Connell, The Northerner (Laronge SK), March 29, 2012
(This is the thirteenth in a public education series, from a scientific perspective, about nuclear waste taken from a presentation given by Dr. Gordon Edwards, one of Canadaʼs most eminent experts and critics of the nuclear industry and the co-founder of the Canadian Coalition on Nuclear Responsibility (CCNR), in Pinehouse Lake on Monday, Nov. 21.)
In speaking about the history of nuclear waste in Canada, Edwards talked about the steps, which led to the creation of the Nuclear Waste Management Organization (NWMO) in 2002.
In 1978, Atomic Energy of Canada Limited (AECL) was given the go-ahead by Ottawa to investigate the concept of “geologic disposal” of nuclear waste. But in a 1980 Report, an Ontario Parliamentary Committee (Select Committee on Ontario Hydro Affairs) expressed concern about AECLʼs methods in the northern part of the province – in particular, their manner of dealing with small communities.
In 1988 the federal government launched an independent environmental assessment of AECLʼs geologic disposal concept for nuclear fuel waste, which lasted close to 10 years and was headed up by Blair Seaborn. It was called the Seaborn Panel.
Public hearings were held in four different provinces and the panel heard from a number of different people. “They came to the conclusion that the concept [of burying nuclear waste] was interesting and deserved further study [but] that it was not ready to go to siting. The Panel found it was too early to choose a site partly because the public acceptability of the concept was not there. There needed to be more of a consensus among the Canadian population that this was the way to go. The feeling was enunciated by many groups, including ours, that the industry was really in a state of denial – denying the seriousness of the problem by trying to pretend they had a solution, when they didnʼt. They were trying to say that all we have to do is dig a hole and put it underground and cover it up and itʼs not going to be a problem anymore.”
Many groups disagreed. “If you want to confront some of these people who are promoting the idea, ask them to give you a scientific definition of the word disposal. The fact is there is no scientific definition of the word disposal because in science, that concept does not exist. We have never, as a human race, every successfully disposed of anything. Nature is a great recycler and when we put something out in nature, nature finds a way to recycle it. This has happened over and over and over again.”
He spoke about poison gas cylinders from World War II, which were buried. “The gas came bubbling up to the surface decades later.” In Sarnia, deep wells were used to inject chemical toxic materials. “They came up as toxic blobs in the St. Claire River. They come back.” 23 The option of burying nuclear waste raises many questions. “They talk of an undisturbed geological formation. But you canʼt get waste into an undisturbed geological formation without disturbing it. As soon as you excavate, you create passageways that never existed in nature. And science does not know how to restore those passageways to the integrity of the original rock.”
Many uncertainties exist, Edwards said. “If somebody tells you they have a solution to this problem, itʼs not true. They have an idea, which may seem better than a lot of other ideas, like, for example, paving the highways with it. But that doesnʼt mean itʼs a solution. Itʼs like claiming youʼve got a cure for cancer, when you donʼt. All you have is an idea. All youʼve got is a concept.”
The final report of the Seaborn Panel “called for the creation of a fully independent nuclear waste agency. It was a unanimous recommendation that any nuclear waste agency should be ʻat armʼs lengthʼ from the nuclear industry. The Board of Directors should represent people whose only concerns are health, safety and environmental protection.”
24 Part 14 in the Series “What is nuclear waste and why be concerned?”
By Valerie G. Barnes-Connell, The Northerner (Laronge SK), April 4, 2012
(This is the fourteenth in a public education series, from a scientific perspective, about nuclear waste taken from a presentation given by Dr. Gordon Edwards, one of Canadaʼs most eminent experts and critics of the nuclear industry and the co-founder of the Canadian Coalition on Nuclear Responsibility (CCNR), in Pinehouse Lake on Monday, Nov. 21.)
Edwards spoke about the decision to create a nuclear waste management agency and the involvement of Aboriginal people.
Since 1978 the nuclear industry has been ʻunder the gunʼ to develop a means to deal with the management of spent/used nuclear fuel. “They canʼt expand the nuclear industry if they havenʼt solved – or at least appear to have solved – this problem.”
The Seaborn Panel, which deliberated on this question between 1989 and 1998, was chaired by Canadian public servant and diplomat Blair Seaborn. That Panel unanimously recommended the creation of an agency “at armʼs length from the nuclear industry”, which would be responsible for Canadaʼs long-term management of spent/used nuclear fuel.
The Canadian government of the time, under Jean Chretien, did not follow the Seaborn Panel recommendation. Instead it created the industry-dominated Nuclear Waste Management Organization (NWMO) in 2002. Over the years the NWMO Board of Directors has had strong representation from the nuclear industry, including Ontario Power Generation (OPG, formerly Ontario Hydro), Hydro Quebec and the New Brunswick Power Corporation – the three utility companies that own and operate all the nuclear power reactors in Canada.
The Seaborn Panel operated for 10 years at a cost of approximately $7 million, culminating in a report with recommendations for the federal government. The Panel concluded that “a nuclear waste management agency is what we need, but itʼs got to be at arms length from the utilities and from AECL (Atomic Energy of Canada Ltd.) – and this is absolutely the opposite of NWMO. Its board of directors should be representative of key stakeholders. That means, among others, you people, you should be on the board of directors; you should be the ones making the decisions as to how the money is being spent. According to this unanimous recommendation of the Seaborn Panel, based on 10 years of hearings, this is how things should be done.”
“Instead the Government of Canada has given [the leading role to] the nuclear industry, the ones that created this problem . . . . They have been given the authority by the government to move ahead almost as if they were the government – and often times they act like they are! You would think they owned the place instead of just being another industry body representing its own long-term corporate interests.”
While AECL does not have representation on the NWMO board of directors, it “has a considerable role to play.” AECL has its own stock of high level nuclear waste from several small reactors. Moreover AECL is the agency that elaborated the concept of geologic storage of nuclear wastes in the first place.
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OPG has 22 reactors. Hydro Quebec has two, one of which only operated for 180 days and didnʼt produce any usable electricity. New Brunswick Power Corp. has one reactor. AECL has about a dozen: the Whiteshell reactor in Manitoba, the Douglas Point and NPD reactors in Ontario, the Gentilly-1 reactor in Quebec, and several research reactors at their Chalk River, Ontario, site.
Another point Edwards made was about the importance given to the involvement of Aboriginal people in the process by all parties, from the Seaborn Panel right through to the NWMO. In its Final Report, “the Seaborn Panel said that ʻto be considered acceptable the concept of management of nuclear fuel waste needs the support of Aboriginal peopleʼ. Isnʼt that an interesting statement? Wouldnʼt you be surprised to see this statement in connection with other Canadian policies? Like, Canada cannot conclude an international trade policy without the consent of Aboriginal people; or Canada cannot negotiate a free trade agreement without the consent and support of Aboriginal people! Isnʼt it odd that Aboriginal people are singled out as very important to have support from? I wonder why? Could it possibly be that they were seen from the very beginning as the prime candidates for receiving the nuclear wastes?”
“People in the industry tell you what they want you to hear,” Edwards said. He encouraged those in attendance to listen carefully to all sides of the debate and to insist on being informed on the topic from a number of independent sources when considering nuclear waste storage and/or disposal.
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