Two Ways to Watch Occupy Columbia Live on the Web

WordPress won’t cooperate with hosting the livestream feed here, so travel over to these URLs to watch what is going on at the State House. Speakers are broadcast live, and rebroadcast during downtimes. Meetings and assemblies are broadcast live as well, giving you a taste of the cooperative and open way things are working.

Direct feed: http://occupycolumbiasc.org/livestream/

Rebroacast by The State (!): http://www.thestate.com/2011/10/18/2014150/live-video-occupy-columbia-protestors.html

Many pictures have been taken over the past week out there.  Here are a few dozen that have mostly appeared on the SC Green Party Facebook page, now reposted here for the world to see.

It is important to note that the Occupy events aren’t partisan.  They aren’t Democratic, Republican, Libertarian or Green events.  The Green Party of the US broadly supports the movement, as do other groups like the AFL-CIO.   It is evident from participating on the ground that the occupations are going to work in their own way.  Preexisting groups can be revitalized by the movement, or they can fight it, but they shouldn’t try to control it.

Playing Monopoly on the State House lawn.

First Night Out.

Tom Clements talks about the Savannah River Site at Occupy Columbia on Thursday, October 20, 2011. Tom shared information on the history of SRS and the plans of industry and the federal government to reprocess the nation’s nuclear waste here in South Carolina. There is a great danger that the reprocessed waste will simply remain in South Carolina, as there is no means of reusing it as fuel.

 

Tom Clements: No Nuclear Waste Storage In SC

Tom Clements of Friends of the Earth, and the SC Green Party’s 2010 nominee for U.S. Senate, is encouraging the public to let Governor Nikki Haley know where you stand on nuclear waste storage in the state of South Carolina.

It is possible that SC will become a repository for spent nuclear fuel rods. This is a recommendation of the President’s Blue Ribbon Commission on nuclear waste storage.

Right now, this old fuel is stored on site at the nuclear plants where it was used.  Many of these rods are stored in water, and are subject to exposure should the water level dropped – as happened at the Fukushima reactors in Japan in April 2011.

These waste rods could be stored in dry concretized containers on site.   But such are the dangers of the waste, that people around the country would rather see them exported to anyplace else that will take them.   South Carolina could be that place.

It is likely that any temporary storage of this waste will become permanent.    There is no permanent repository for the spent nuclear fuel.  Without a permanent plan for disposing of these rods, South Carolina will be made a dumping ground.

Tom covers the controversy completely in a recent opinion column printed in Columbia’s The State newspaper.

Take a moment to print this letter, and mail it to Governor Haley, or fax it to 803-734-5167.  Let her and your local officials know that South Carolina cannot be the nuclear waste dump of the nation.

Print and mail or fax this letter to SC Governor Nikki Haley. Email the text to Governor Haley via this link: http://www.governor.sc.gov/contact/Pages/Contact.aspx.

Read Tom’s guest editorial in The State after the jump:

Tom Clements: Nuclear Industry Intent On Moving Waste To SC

Tom Clements, writing in the Friday, July 29 edition of The State newspaper issues a warning and a call to action to South Carolinians about the nuclear industry’s plans to store nuclear waste in SC:

Much of the nation’s 65,000 metric tons of radioactive spent fuel now stored at reactor sites across the country could be brought to South Carolina for “interim” storage and reprocessing. The prospect of becoming the new Yucca Mountain spent-fuel dump surely will be rejected by many South Carolinians, but the federal government’s plans threaten to leave us holding the nuclear waste bag nonetheless.

A blue ribbon commission, established by President Obama in January 2010 after the unraveling of plans for a geologic repository at Yucca Mountain, is charged with recommending the fate of spent fuel. Those recommendations, expected to beissued today, also will address the deadly high-level waste at the Department of Energy’s Savannah River Site [SRS] near Aiken.

Draft subcommittee reports were issued in June, and a central recommendation, certain to be embraced by the full commission, is to “establish one or more consolidated interim storage facilities” for spent fuel. Given its uncertain future as federal funding decreases, SRS is now squarely in the nuclear crosshairs to become an “interim” site, with special interests poised to exploit this situation.

The Savannah River Site and politicians allied with the state’s nuclear industry are actively soliciting the nuclear waste. Under the guise of bringing jobs to SC, the politicians and lobbyists will bring waste for storage. Since there is no long term storage site for spent nuclear waste, there will be nowhere to move the reprocessed waste. The waste will certainly stay in at SRS as an “interim” solution that will stretch out into the future.

And the waste that is stored will be more dangerous to the public as it is shipped and from increased radioactivity after reprocessing. Clements again:

It costs nearly $1 billion per year to immobilize SRS waste in robust containers, and the job won’t be finished for two decades. Reprocessing of commercial spent fuel would produce waste of higher radioactivity and larger volume. We can ill afford to manage more such unstable radioactive material at the site.

Clements and the Friends of the Earth propose a safer interim solution:

• Store the spent nuclear waste on site in solid containers, not pools of water.
• Immobilize the plutonium in existing high-level waste at SRS with the goal of removing it to a geologic repository along with spent fuel.

Storing on site will reduce the danger of moving the nuclear waste on railroads or highways.  Immobilizing the plutonium in solid containers would render the existing waste at SRS reasonably safe until a permanent solution can be found.

Moving the waste to SRS only increases the likelihood that the waste storage at SRS will become permanent. Unless the burden of nuclear waste disposal is shared through out the industry and the country, there will be no pressure to find a permanent solution to the problem of nuclear waste.

Keeping the waste away from South Carolina will not be easy.  The state’s congressional delegation and powerful nuclear interests are pushing to place the repository here.

Writing last week, Clements discussed the political forces pushing the waste toward SRS:

If you’re interested or concerned about the issue of high-level nuclear waste storage or disposal in South Carolina, take note of the move by SCE&G to store radioactive spent fuel in “dry casks” at the VC Summer plant.  This may be the best option for deadly spent fuel but is not a viable long-term solution.  See information below for a Nuclear Regulatory Commission meeting to be held on Wednesday about the dry cask facility – you can call in and make a comment at the end of the meeting.

In looking at medium-term and long-term options for spent fuel, be aware that the federal Blue Ribbon Commission (on spent fuel and DOE high-level waste, see http://www.brc.gov/) is set to present its draft recommendations within two weeks and they will recommend for one of more “consolidated interim storage” sites for spent fuel.  Special interests at the DOE’s Savannah River Site (SRS), which hope to receive money from the Nuclear Waste Fund for interim storage, are pushing for SRS to become one of those “interim” spent fuel storage sites.  An official at Savannah River Nuclear Solutions (SRNS), the company which manages SRS, has clearly stated such interest and Jim Rogers, CEO of Duke Energy, has also affirmed this view under questioning at a recent SC Public Service Commission hearing.

Saxby Chambliss, Lindsey Graham, Johnny Isakson and Jim DeMint joke with an official at the Savannah River Site, May 1, 2009.

If the spent fuel were to be brought to SRS, the momentum for “reprocessing” of that material would greatly increase.  Reprocessing separates the 1% of plutonium in the spent fuel for possible reuse as nuclear fuel and leaves behind a radioactive mess with a host of hard-to-manage nuclear waste streams.  An SRS-SRNS plan entitled “Enterprise SRS,” which has not been released to the public but which we have posted at http://www.nonukesyall.org/pdfs/Enterprise_SRS%20future%20draft%205.2011.pdf, clearly shows interest in reprocessing as the site scrambles for reduced federal funding. (See diagram on page 7 of this document.)  Reprocessing boosters are using a green washing term – recycling – in attempt to trick the public into thinking that reprocessing is clean, so don’t be fooled.  If brought to SRS, spent fuel may well never leave, so consolidated storage and reprocessing threaten to make SRS the new Yucca Mountain and it will take public involvement and participation to help stop this from happening.

The President’s blue ribbon commission today released the draft full commission report.  A quick review of the document reveals that they recommend an interim site be developed as soon as possible.  The BRC makes no recommendation as to where that site should be, but they do acknowledge the danger of an interim placement becoming permanent.

…[T]he most important objection and one that will need to be thoughtfully addressed is the concern that any consolidated storage facility could become a de facto permanent disposal facility and—by reducing the pressure to find a long-term solution—thwart progress toward developing the deep geologic disposal capacity that will ultimately be needed.

There will be hearings and greater discussion about this in the coming weeks and months.  South Carolinians will need to educate themselves on this topic through the work of groups like the Friends of the Earth and the Sierra Club to head off this drive to turn the Savannah River Site into a dumping ground.

More Information:

• Friends of the Earth’s Nuclear Reactor Page
• South Carolina Sierra Club’s Nuclear Energy Page

Clements Calls Attention To Dangers Of Mini-Reactors

Today’s The State quotes 2010 US Senate candidate Tom Clements on the dangers of a new nuclear “mini-reactor” applications in SC. Clements is Southeastern Nuclear Campaign Coordinator for Friends of the Earth and a nuclear policy expert and is frequently consulted by the local press on energy issues.

A press release from Clements’ office at Friends of the Earth, illuminates the fact that the reactors are being built as experimental prototypes in order to avoid proper licensing.

The revelation that two prototype “small modular reactors” are being pursued by Savannah River Nuclear Solutions, the private contractor that manages the Department of Energy’s Savannah River Site near Aiken, South Carolina, “in advance of any design certification and licensing by the NRC” has drawn the charge from Friends of the Earth that such a move does not comply with pertinent U.S. regulations and must be dropped.

“We call on Savannah River Nuclear Solutions and the Department of Energy to immediately affirm that no experimental nuclear reactors will be pursued in South Carolina without the required license from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission,” said Tom Clements, Southeastern Nuclear Campaign Coordinator for Friends of the Earth. “Construction of ‘small modular reactors’ that are not licensed by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission would violate U.S. law as well as endanger the public and we will strongly oppose any attempt to avoid required licensing of such reactors.”

Small modular reactors are being pursued by various companies but at present only exist as concepts. Although such reactors would be smaller than those currently operating, modular reactors would still produce nuclear waste and pose the same safety and proliferation problems of larger reactors. Licensing discussions between at least one firm and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission have begun.

Jeff Wilkinson’s article in The State quotes nuclear industry officials, and also some academics, but does a pretty good job of relaying the environmental concerns:

Nuclear power critic Tom Clements, with the environmental group Friends of the Earth, said relatively little is known about the dangers of mini-nuclear reactors.

But it is clear that mini-reactors would create nuclear waste, just as larger, conventional reactors would, he said.

The nation’s high-level nuclear waste was to be shipped to a burial ground in Nevada for disposal, but President Obama pulled the plug on the project after protests from western lawmakers, leaving utilities looking for new ways to get rid of the radioactive trash.

Clements’ group this week charged that a proposal to develop mini-nuclear reactors at the 310-square-mile Savannah River Site was an attempt to avoid scrutiny from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, which must approve any license for a nuclear power plant. The Department of Energy, which runs the site near Aiken, denied the charge.

“There’s a lot to work out about this, Clements said. “That’s why I think the cheerleading for these reactors is way ahead of reality.”

In the absence of any plan for the long-term storage of nuclear waste, its almost certain that the radioactive waste produced by these reactors would stay in South Carolina. There should be hearings on these “mini-reactors” just as for any other nuclear reactor. Savannah River Nuclear Solutions’ attempt to circumvent the process is disturbing. Any hearings would drive home the dangers presented by the proliferation of nuclear reactors and the long-term hazards of stored nuclear-waste.

See also:

Columbia journalist Kevin Alexander Gray also posted the full FoE press release on his blog: http://thenewliberator.wordpress.com/2011/01/21/foia-documents-show-plan-to-pursue-experimental-nuclear-reactors-at-savannah-river-site-without-required-nrc-licenses/
.

Gray provides a link that indicates the extreme danger of allowing nuclear waste into SC. According to a presentation made only last September, the Savannah River Nuclear Solutions company is floating the idea of “permanent” nuclear waste storage at the Savannah River Site:

As an indication that some are thinking of SRS as the new Yucca Mountain, in a SRNS presentation to the SRS Citizens Advisory Board on September 29, 2010 entitled SRS Energy Park – Vision and Implementing Concepts, the SMRs are pitched as part of a “potential alternative to Yucca Mountain.”