EPA agrees tailings pile near Moab shouldn't stay

[struggle4progress]

By Janet Wilson
Los Angeles Times

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has told the Department of Energy that its proposal to leave 12 million tons of radioactive waste next to the Colorado River near Moab is "environmentally unsatisfactory" and a potential prolonged risk to public health.

Dianne Nielson, executive director of the Utah Department of Environmental Quality, called the EPA's comments significant, saying, "If the Department of Energy chose to leave the pile in place, it would have to produce significantly more information to the EPA to address the concerns. And frankly, there isn't a cost-effective way to do that."

The EPA joined mounting opposition from Western governors, bipartisan members of Congress, water agencies and others who say leaving the waste pile from an abandoned uranium mill would threaten drinking water for millions of people downstream.

"The impact of the EPA's decision, we hope, will be to convince the Department of Energy it ought to move the tailings off the banks of the Colorado River," Nielson said. <snip>

http://www.sltrib.com/utah/ci_2598103


EPA Fights Waste Site Near River

<snip> "There are 12 million tons of material sitting just a couple hundred feet from the Colorado River, which is a known volatile body of water," Hiltscher said. "No water agency is going to want to deliver radioactive water to its customers…. As of today there is no known treatment for removing radioactive waste from water. Period." <snip>

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/inland/la-me-moab05mar05,1,3652898.story?coll=la-editions-inland-news&ctrack=3&cset=true

[NVMojo]

1. Good!!

This needs to be cleaned up! The same with any mine pulling dough off lands in the US and shipping the profits overseas today!!

[NNadir]

2. Dumb, dumb, dumb.

Saying the word "radioactive" does not, in spite of national stupidity to the contrary, mean "dangerous."

How radioactive? What is the risk to human health? What is the risk to the environment? Is it more risky than the mercury (and Uranium!) that rains on my head ever damn day from midwestern coal plants? Has anyone demonstrably been killed by radioactivity in this water shed? What is the measured radioactivity in the local waters? By what amount does it exceed background radiation? How does this compare to a chest x-ray? A cross country flight? Utah has the third highest life expectancy in the United States. How does that jive with the claim that this is "dangerous?"

Unless we can answer these questions we may spend billions saving two or three lives while spending zero that can save millions of lives. This is exactly the kind of thinking that will 1) Cost lives, maybe vast numbers of lives, 2) Doom us to environmental ruin, 3) Doom us to poverty 4) Actually make life on the planet untenable.

The problem with this particular form of ignorance is that it substitutes the word "radioactive" for the far more important word "risk." Here's a clue for the uniformed: Every living thing on the planet is "radioactive."

There is NO science here, no description of the chemistry of these tailings, leach rates, solubility, the quantity of residual activity, expected mobility. There is only the scare word "radioactive" next to "public water supplies" and a whole bunch of politicians and media types claiming that they are "doing something." But are they doing something useful? What is the environmental impact of moving 12 million metric tons of anything? I know that moving 12 million metric tons of coal per day is dangerous, but it is necessary? How many lives will be saved? How many lost? What is the measure in cost per life saved? What alternative amounts of money might save more lives? Who's making the money on this project? Is it Halliburton? Bushco trucking company?

Now I've been around here long enough to know that zero questions here that I have asked here will be answered. But I'm not going to stop asking them. I'm exposing them for exactly what they are: More bullshit from the bullshit media gobbled up and spread by bullshit thinkers with bullshit understanding of real environmental issues.

[jpak]

3. Now I see

Radionuclide emissions from coal-fired power plants are "bad".

But radionuclides in drinking water orginating from uranium mines are "good" and a non-problem.

But why should we care anyway????

Hormesis advocates say radiation is good for you!!!!

What horseshit.

[NNadir]

4. No. It is simply a matter that radionuclides in nuclear power plants

are smaller.

There is a whole subset of people, paranoids mostly with very poor educations, who think that all radioactivity is bad even though it exists everywhere in the universe.

Those of us who actually know something about radioactivity are hopelessly amused by the poorly educated people who think that they are going to somehow stop radiation by opposing nuclear power. It's a hilarious reflection of exactly how little they know. All day long I hear from people who know less than zero about nuclear energy and I have yet to hear from one of them who recognizes the total activity released to the environment by the average coal fired plant is higher than the activity put out by a nuclear plant.

Those of us who know actually don't give a shit about this piddling thinking really. We merely point it out. We know that the hazard of coal is not about the radiotoxicity of uranium. We know that it's about chemotoxicity, because we have something unknown to the uninitiated, something called context. We understand that lead and mercury - both elements of the status quo - are probably more dangerous than the uranium. We understand comparitive risk and don't make statements that seem to claim that states of no risk exist.

The fact is that one of the big disadvantages of nuclear power for the long term is that it will cause the radioactivity of the planet to fall much faster than it would otherwise. This may have unanticipated consequences, inasmuch as life evolved bathed in radiation.

It doesn't matter though. Some countries will be building nuclear capacity and some won't. The one's that build it will survive and the one's that don't will be dominated by terrified little paranoid mad hatters on mercury, saying "This could happen! Could could could! Might! Might! Might!"

Fuck if there's one of them with even enough weak vision to know what IS happening.

Those who are living in the latter types of countries should not stay up at not chanting "Radiation and isotopes and scares, oh my! Radiation and isotopes and scares, oh my!" The world is now safe for ignorance. Ignorance has triumphed and one can say whatever stupid ridiculous shit one wants to say without any reference to reality. Shit, our "president" does the same thing every damn day. It's pure comedy now. The ignorant therefore have nothing to fear. They've won.

I'm trying as hard as I can to get enough money to get out of this country with my wife and my boys. I want to take them somewhere safe. Maybe I can teach them to speak French. It is amazing, just amazing, how illiterate we've become here. It breaks my heart. They were born when it seemed that the insightful Al Gore seemed likely to be the next President. I can't believe it's come to this in so short a time, before my boys even had the chance to reach puberty.

[jpak]

5. LOL!

It's comforting to know that radionuclides in nuclear power plants are "smaller".

Is 239-Pu in spent reactor fuel "smaller" than 235-U in coal?????

Really????