A member of Congress is trying to get the US to investigate a Canadian plan to build a radioactive waste dump. Lester Graham reports the radioactive materials would be put in an underground site less than a mile from one of the Great Lakes:
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A member of Congress is trying to get the U.S. to investigate a Canadian plan to build a radioactive waste dump. Lester Graham reports the radioactive materials would be put in an underground site less than a mile from one of the Great Lakes:
Ontario Power Generation wants to construct a Deep Geologic Repository, basically an underground dump, for low-level and intermediate-level radioactive waste from Ontario’s nuclear power plants. Bart Stupak is a member of Congress from Michigan. He says the proposed site would be built near Lake Huron at the Bruce Nuclear Site, where there have been reports of problems with radioactive contamination of water in the past.
“It’s gonna be within a mile of the Great Lakes. I think that’s not appropriate. You know, you’re lying within the watershed and we know no matter what great efforts we may make to keep pollution at a minimum, it does occur. And, unfortunately in this case we’ve seen at that site some radioactive contamination already.”
Stupak has called on the U.S. EPA and other agencies to look into what risks the Canadian radioactive waste dump might pose to the U.S. cities and the ecology of the Great Lakes.
For the Environment Report, this is Lester Graham.
An environmental group is calling on the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to monitor nuclear power plants more closely before there’s a severe accident. Lester Graham reports the group issued a report on nuke plants that have had problems:
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An environmental group is calling on the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to monitor nuclear power plants more closely before there’s a severe accident. Lester Graham reports the group issued a report on nuke plants that have had problems:
The report from the Union of Concerned Scientists looked at problems that caused nuclear reactors to shut down for a year or more. It’s happened 51 times. The report found 36 of those year-plus outages were caused by “excessive” tolerance by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
The nuclear industry notes there has not been a serious accident since Three Mile Island in 1979. The industry says if it can replace its aging plants, things will be even safer.
David Lochbaum is the author of the report. He says hold on, not until you fix the problem.
“Nuclear power plants are aging. But the conditions that led up to these year-plus outages need to be addressed to provide a proper foundation for any new nuclear power plants that are built. Otherwise we’ll just be replicating yesterday’s mistakes.”
The report includes six recommendations to identify and fix problems at nuclear power plants faster.
For the Environment Report, this is Lester Graham.
Having a plaque like this on the outside of a building means that the construction, materials, and utilities of the building are eco-friendly. "Green" building has started to increase in popularity. (Photo courtesy of the U.S. Green Building Council)
The Chicago skyline as seen on a beautiful day from the roof of the Chicago Center for Green Technology. (Photo courtesy of the City of Chicago, Department of Environment)
Screened by native plants, this cistern is one of four at the Chicago Center for Green Technology collecting over 12,000 gallons of rainwater off of the roof. The water is stored and used to irrigate the
landscape. (Photo courtesy of the City of Chicago, Department of Environment)
Buildings consume 70 percent of the electricity and create
most of the landfill waste in the U.S. Some cities are looking at “green building” methods to lessen the burden on the environment. The mayor of one major city has set “green” standards for all new buildings, using a mix of mandates and incentives. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Robbie Harris reports on the economic tug of war over building green:
Transcript
Buildings consume 70% of the electricity and create most of the landfill waste in the U.S. Some cities are looking at “green building“ methods to lessen the burden on the environment. The mayor of one major city has set “green” standards for all new buildings, using a mix of mandates and incentives. Robbie Harris reports on the economic tug of war over building green.
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Last year, the first green police station opened in Chicago. It will use 20% less energy, and 30% less water than a typical police station. It’s built of recycled and locally available materials. But it looks pretty much like the other newer police stations you see around the city. Officer Jeffrey Bella who has worked here since it opened, says most people have no idea this is what’s known as a “high performance green building.”
“…and the fact that nobody talks about it and nobody notices it is pretty much a testament to how well it does work.”
This is the first police station in the country to earn a LEED Silver rating from the US green building council. LEED – that’s L-E–E-D- for Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design, is a rating system that awards points for features such as energy conservation, site usage, indoor air quality, light pollution reduction, even proximity to public transit. Levels range from basic certification to silver, gold and platinum.
Last spring, Chicago Mayor Richard Daley announced every new building built by the city, must meet basic LEED standards. Private developers aren’t required to meet LEED standards but they must meet the less stringent city Energy conservation code.
Even that has the development community concerned about higher costs. The Mayor had this to say at the Building and Design conference in February.
“Here in the city of Chicago we have to really educate architects, and engineers and I mean you talk about challenges, that alone – and contractors- because they look at money. Money is the source of their profession, like any other profession. How much money… developers, engineers, archiects, contractors, and subcontractors …so green technology to them means money, it doesn’t mean the technology that maybe you and I think about.”
Even the mayor wouldn’t dispute that most LEED certified construction costs more up front. Washington D.C. economist Greg Kats puts it at roughly 2 percent more. Kats ran a performance study of 40 LEED-certified buildings around the country and found higher initial costs were offset ten fold by a variety of benefits.
“And those benefits pay back very quickly in the form of lower energy costs, lower water costs lower operations and maintenance costs, better building operations. And frankly, people are more happy, they’re more productive, kids’ test scores go up, asthma and allergy problem, which is a real concern for a lot of parents like me, tend to go away in green builings.”
On February 14th, one of the city’ largest real estate firms, LR Developers broke ground on what will be the first LEED-certified luxury high rise in Chicago. LR’s Kerry Dixon says, they built green to differentiate themselves in the luxury condo market, and although they’re not required to be LEED certified, they knew it would please the Mayor. But Dixon says it hasn’t exactly been an important selling point.
“We’re not getting feedback from the marketing and sales staff that yeah, everbody’s interested in it.”
If most condo-buyers are not showing much interest in green buildings, more and more large corporations that want to project greener images are.
“We are one of the nation’s largest energy producers. We are by far the nation’s larger operator of nuclear power plants. Some love us for that, and some are skeptical because of that.”
John Rowe is the CEO and chairman of Exelon. The company is looking to consolidate 3 corporate offices into one location and Rowe was fascinated with the idea of building a new green headquarters.
“But it basically worked out so that it would probably be cheaper. And that if we worked on being green we could probably get just as much credit for using an existing building as a new one.”
That’s because the U.S. Green Building Council also certifies commercial interiors. When it’s finished in 2007 Rowe is confident Exelon’s new corporate headquarters will qualify for LEED’s silver rating. He’s hoping it even makes gold.
For now, the Daley administration has chosen to LEED by example – and hope the private sector follows.
At a recent meeting in Detroit, the G-8 energy ministers were looking for alternatives to non-renewable resources such as oil and gas. Nuclear energy was high on that list of alternatives. But as the Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Dan Karpenchuk reports, on the north shore of Lake Ontario, at least, renewing the drive towards nuclear power is becoming too costly:
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At a recent meeting in Detroit, the G-8 energy ministers were looking for alternatives to non-renewable resources such as oil and gas. High among those alternatives was emphasis on nuclear energy. But as the Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Dan Karpenchuk reports, on the north shore of Lake Ontario, at least, renewing the drive towards nuclear power is becoming too costly:
The nuclear power plant at Pickering, on the shores of Lake Ontario, holds some of the oldest reactors in North America. Environmentalists have long argued that the 30-year-old reactors in the Pickering power plant should be mothballed. But a couple of years ago, Ontario Power Generation said it would completely overhaul the reactors, estimating a cost of about one billion dollars Canadian.
But the costs, complexity, and time it would take to do the work turned out to be more than anyone expected. The scheduled re-opening has now been twice delayed …and the cost of doing the work has already soared to more than two billion dollars.
While environmentalists in the Great Lakes region may take heart at the delays and the increased
costs, the Ontario government is sticking with it.
Senior officials at the plant say no matter what the costs, re-furbishing is by far the best option for the province. They say even carrying the two billion dollar price tag, it would be competitive with other energy sources such as gas and oil. And, in that context, they say, it still makes commercial sense.
For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Dan Karpenchuk.
Great Lakes boaters will find some areas of the lakes closed to them this boating season. The terrorist attacks last September prompted federal agencies to make parts of the lakes off-limits. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Lester Graham explains:
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Great Lakes boaters will find some areas of the lakes closed to them this
boating season. The terrorist attacks last September prompted federal
agencies to make parts of the lakes off-limits. The Great Lakes Radio
Consortium’s Lester Graham reports:
The Coast Guard and the Army Corps of Engineers are establishing security
zones where pleasure boaters and commercial fishing boats will be
restricted. For example, a temporary security area around nuclear power
plants was established on Lake Michigan. Now those will become permanent.
Lake St. Clair will have a security zone on the waters around Selfridge Air
National Guard Base near Detroit. And near Sheboygan County, Wisconsin, a
15-mile-wide danger zone, about six miles offshore, is being reestablished as
a live fire exercise area for the Wisconsin Air National Guard. The Army
Corps of Engineers indicates it would have no significant effect on small
businesses, but Wisconsin state officials are furious because the Army Corps
of Engineers has been vague about what it will actually mean for commercial
anglers and pleasure boaters who use the area.
For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, this is Lester Graham.
The federal government is offering to buy special anti-cancer pills for people who live near nuclear power plants. There are 24 nuclear power plants in the Great Lakes states… and state officials are now pondering whether to accept the offer. In Ohio, the debate reflects the pro and con arguments across the region. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Bill Cohen has details:
The Great Lakes Basin hosts 44 nuclear reactors, plus a variety of uranium mining and refining facilities and nuclear waste dumps. Their presence has been contentious and divisive, and critics of nuclear power have often been seen as extremists who have polarized the issue. But one remarkable Canadian activist managed to bring both sides of the debate together. Great Lakes Radio Consortium commentator Suzanne Elston says her recent death is a tragedy for all Great Lakes residents:
Canadian environmentalists are concerned that nuclear power plants located on the Great Lakes are vulnerable to a potential terrorist attack. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Karen Kelly has the story:
Scientists who monitor pollutants in rain and snow in the U.S. are offering their monitoring network to be used in the event of a wide scale bioterrorist attack. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s David Sommerstein has more:
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Scientists who monitor pollutants in rain and snow in the U.S. and Great Lakes are offering their monitoring network to be used in the event of a wide scale bioterrorist attack. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s David Sommerstein has more.
The National Atmospheric Deposition Program is best known for its early detection of acid rain in the 1970s. It has a network of over 200 sites that measure chemicals like sulfur dioxides and mercury in precipitation. But coordinator Van Bowersox says the network could also be used in the case of an environmental emergency to trace things like anthrax spore.
“To help track perhaps the source of the material or perhaps just how wide dispersed the material may be. So this would be, for example, for a widespread release of a bioterrorism agent over a broad area.”
Bowersox says the samples of such agents would be sent to a special laboratory for analysis.
The idea wouldn’t be an unprecedented use for the network. The NADP surveyed the nation’s atmosphere for nucleotides following the Chernobyl nuclear disaster. It also measured the amount of particles in the air after the eruption of Mount St. Helens.
For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m David Sommerstein.
Russia has recently begun construction on a floating nuclear power
plant, designed to bring electricity to remote northern regions of that
country. Great Lakes Radio Consortium commentator Suzanne Elston
wonders
what could happen if we brought these floating plants to the Great
Lakes:
Transcript
Okay, so on the surface it sounds like a really bad idea. Build
floating nuclear power plants, with dependable Russian nuclear
technology, and dot them along the shore of the Arctic Ocean. Sort of
like a little fleet of mini-Chernobyls-to-go. Critics are saying that
these barges will be sitting ducks, waiting for terrorists to tow
them away. And then there’s that ever-present threat to the
environment.
But I say, let’s not be hasty here. I think there’s a potential for
using these barges in the Great Lakes. First of all, they could help
us get rid of our nuclear waste problem. What Russia plans to do
with the spent fuel is tow the barges into shore every dozen years
and unload it. But I say flip it around. Take all the waste from our
land-locked plants and stick it on the barge.
This would solve no end of problems. No more worrying about burying
it in a mountain somewhere. Problem solved at a fraction of the cost.
We actually could float the stuff in the water around the barge,
which would solve another major environmental problem. There’s been
so much concern about invading species in the Great Lakes. A good
dose of radiation should render even the hardiest invader sterile.
Another problem solved.
And that’s just the beginning. The glow from all this spent fuel
would light up the water around the reactor. This would make it a lot
easier for sports fishermen to see what they’re doing. After all,
nobody’s supposed to eat the fish they catch from the Great Lakes,
anyway. If we keep the barges nice and close to the shoreline, they’d
light up those dark and dangerous beaches. We’d save on energy and we
wouldn’t have to worry about lighting bonfires. That would put an end
to all those rowdy beach parties. The glow would also help boaters
find their docks at night. No more search and rescue. Another bonus.
The more I think about it, the more I have to admit, this is one hot
idea. You gotta hand it to those Russians. I wonder what they’ll
think of next.
Suzanne Elston is a syndicated columnist living in Courtice, Ontario. She comes to us by way of the
