There were more than 1,000 atomic tests in Nevada s desert between 1951 and 1992, including about 100 above ground, but this one was the first in that succession. It was also the first such test in the U.S. since an experimental atomic explosion in New Mexico six years earlier.
Michael Benanav / Searchlight New Mexico and is republished here by permission.
For most New Mexico businesses, the arrival of COVID-19 wreaked havoc, caused shutdowns or threatened doom. But for one enterprise potentially one of the world’s largest nuclear waste sites the pandemic offered an unusual opportunity.
A long-planned nuclear waste storage facility in the southeastern New Mexico desert was rushed through the approval process during the pandemic, according to New Mexico’s congressional delegation, environmentalists and other opponents.
Typically, project foes would have been able to voice their disapproval at Nuclear Regulatory Commission hearings around the state. The coronavirus brought an end to such public gatherings, however, so New Mexico lawmakers asked the NRC to pause the hearings.
Feb 3, 2021
Two fishing villages in Hokkaido are vying to host the final storage facility for half a century of Japanese nuclear waste, splitting communities between those seeking investment to stop the towns from dying, and those haunted by the 2011 Fukushima disaster, who are determined to stop the project.
In the middle is a government that bet heavily on nuclear energy to power its industrial ascent and now faces a massive and growing pile of radioactive waste with nowhere to dispose of it. Since it first began generating atomic energy in 1966, Japan has produced more than 19,000 tons of high-level nuclear waste that is sitting in temporary storage around the country. After searching fruitlessly for two decades for a permanent site, the approaches from Suttsu, population 2,885, and Kamoenai, population 810, may be signs of progress.
Is Waterford’s nuclear waste dump status permanent? January 31. 2021 The Day , By Paul Choiniere p.choiniere@theday.com Paul Choiniere The highly radioactive nuclear waste being stored at Millstone Power Station in Waterford, as well as the nuclear material left behind in Haddam after the Connecticut Yankee plant was dismantled, isn’t going anywhere anytime soon. Maybe never. And that’s not…