Vermont Yankee wants to raid decommission fund

[bananas]

http://www.timesargus.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080426/NEWS02/804260346/1003/NEWS02

Vermont Yankee wants to raid decommission fund

April 26, 2008

By Louis Porter Vermont Press Bureau

MONTPELIER – A new twist has hit the contentious debate over how to force the owners of Vermont Yankee to assure there's enough money required for decommissioning the nuclear plant in Vernon.

Documents show the owner of the Vermont Yankee nuclear plant has asked for federal permission to use the plant's decommissioning fund to pay for storage of waste rather than for taking the plant apart.

The fund needs roughly to double from its current $420 million to pay for dismantling of the plant and it was discovered that the fund actually has shrunk recently by about $17 million.

<snip>

Part of Entergy's proposal for managing its spent fuel – some of which is now stored on the Vernon site in metal and concrete "dry casks" or a water-filled pool – is to use $157 million from the decommissioning trust fund to pay for storage.

<snip>

[sam sarrha]

1. spent uranium fuel., turn it into DU bullets, shoot it at women children in Iraq, already1200 tons

has been cheaply dumped in iraq. 16% of births reported have "Extrene Birth Defects"


snip-"Both the Pentagon and the British Ministry of Defence officially deny that there is any significant danger from exposure to DU ammunition. And whilst it is conceivable that the US led attacks on Iraq's nuclear power stations could be a contributory factor, most reseachers point to DU as the most likely source of both deformities and cancers. The rising number of cases in Iraq, particularly in the South where the greatest concentration of DU was fired, is simply staggering. Iraqi physicians have never encountered anything like it, and have made the perfectly reasonable point that similar increases in cancer and deformities were experienced in Japan after the two US atomic bomb attacks. Cancer has increased between 7 and 10 fold; deformities between 4 and 6 fold."

http://www.mindfully.org/Nucs/2004/DU-Trojan-Horse1jul04.htm
snip-"Depleted Uranium:
The Trojan Horse of Nuclear War
LEUREN MORET / World Affairs – The Journal of International Issues 1jul04


Heat not a furnace for your foe so hot that it do singe yourself.
William Shakespeare (1564-1616)

The use of depleted uranium weaponry by the United States, defying all international treaties, will slowly annihilate all species on earth including the human species, and yet this country continues to do so with full knowledge of its destructive potential.

LEUREN MORET

Since 1991, the United States has staged four wars using depleted uranium weaponry, illegal under all international treaties, conventions and agreements, as well as under the US military law. The continued use of this illegal radioactive weaponry, which has already contaminated vast regions with low level radiation and will contaminate other parts of the world over time, is indeed a world affair and an international issue. The deeper purpose is revealed by comparing regions now contaminated with depleted uranium — from Egypt, the Middle East, Central Asia and the northern half of India — to the US geostrategic imperatives described in Zbigniew Brzezinski’s 1997 book The Grand Chessboard."-snip


however out Government says not to worry
http://usinfo.state.gov/media/Archive/2005/Jan/24-107572.html
You Are In: USINFO > Resource Tools > Identifying Misinformation

False Allegations Regarding Depleted Uranium
Rumors of adverse health effects proved inaccurate

There is a great deal of misinformation and unwarranted fears about depleted uranium (DU), which U.S. armed forces use in several types of ammunition to take advantage of its unsurpassed ability to penetrate armored vehicles.

Depleted uranium is a derivative of natural uranium, a very common element in our environment. Many people don't realize that our environment contains small amounts of natural uranium, which we breathe, eat, and drink every day.

U-235 and U-234 are the highly radioactive isotopes in natural uranium, extracted to make nuclear fuel or enriched weapons-grade uranium. Depleted uranium is what is left over after much of these highly radioactive isotopes have been removed. Depleted uranium is actually 40% less radioactive than the natural uranium in the environment around us, and much less radioactive than fuel-grade or weapons-grade uranium. Unfortunately, most people confuse depleted uranium with these dangerous substances.


but i think the Iraqi women worry...
if you scroll down past the script here there are graphic photos of our dirty work in Iraq
http://www.xs4all.nl/~stgvisie/VISIE/extremedeformities.html

snip-"In an act of stark cruelty, the US dominated Sanctions Committee refuses to permit Iraq to import the clean-up equipment that they desperately need to decontaminate their country of the Depleted Uranium ammunition that the US fired at them. Approximately 315 tons of DU dust was left by the use of this ammunition.The Sanctions Committee also refuses to allow the mass importation of anti-cancer treatments, which contain trace amounts of radio-isotopes, on the grounds that these constitute '...nuclear materials.."snip


this is a hugh colluction of various information
http://www.xs4all.nl/~stgvisie/VISIE/ud_main.html

[enough]

2. This story seems like a perfect metaphor for the entire industry.

The future was never real to the people who made the projections. Future costs were never accurately factored into the equation. Now the future is arriving, and the available funds are pathetically unequal to the task. And the real tasks (decommissioning and PERMANENT storage) haven't even begun yet.

Anyone who wants to talk about nuclear as the solution to anything has got to deal with these costs honestly.

[jpak]

3. VT Yankee got no money for decommissioning and spent fuel disposal??? No problem

VT tax and rate payers have lots and lots and lots of money to bail the out.

Same as it ever was....