DRC
Flood damage exposes Kinshasa's unbridled urbanisation




Unplanned urbanisation and a lack of maintenance have caused roads

 to collapse in Kinshasa during the rainy season (AFP/ALEXIS HUGUET)

Marthe BOSUANDOLE
Fri, November 26, 2021, 7:05 AM·3 min read

The water transformed a main road into a ravine. It gutted homes, exposing their innards to the world. It left a school playground teetering on the edge of a precipice.

These images come from Kinshasa, capital of the Democratic Republic of Congo, where a population influx combined with scant urban planning has exposed many poor people to the impacts of extreme weather.

Millions of people have moved into the city in recent years, although the exact numbers are unknown as no census has been conducted for more than 30 years.

According to some estimates, the city is home to at least 12 million people, a doubling in two decades, out of a national population of some 90 million.

Many have built homes in areas where there has been little planning oversight, especially on hillsides where drains and channels are needed to cope with runoff during the rainy season.

In November 2019, forty Kinshasans died after heavy rains caused flooding and landslides -- but two years later, the problems posed by extreme rainfall remain.

A woman and a boy look through the collapsed wall of a house after a landslide in Kinshasa (AFP/ALEXIS HUGUET)

- Abyss -

At the top of a cliff in Kinshasa's southern district of Mont-Ngafula, disused water pipes hang in a void and residents must battle through a gully of shifting sand to reach the neighbouring district.

Floodwater dug out an asphalt avenue, replacing it with an abyss at least 15 metres (50 feet) deep, separating the University of Kinshasa from a Jesuit-run library, one of the biggest in Africa.

Widowed mother-of-seven Esperance Tsimba, 57, saw the earth swallow her shop and livelihood as the rains fell.

"I lost my business. Since then, it has been hard to send my children to school", she said.

Local residents are building dykes to protect their homes, piling up sandbags in the hope of slowing the landslide and diverting rainwater flows.

They staged a protest to demand action from the authorities, blocking Highway 1, which crosses the town, said resident Magloire Kangondi.

The authorities sent in a Chinese-owned construction vehicle, which has started to smooth out the sand on the road downstream.

But locals are worried that work will stop at a temporary fix, and not address the underlying problem.

"This isn't the first time that they've repaired the road -- it's been done several times without success," said Sylvain Nsumbu, headmaster of a primary school whose wall had fallen into the abyss.

Nsumbu said children as young as four had to cross the ravine to attend a kindergarten and that some parents even preferred not to send their offspring to school.

Christel Bulembi, an environment management specialist and community leader in the neighbourhood of Ngansele, said the solution was for the authorities to dig at least one rainwater retention pit to minimise the damage caused by runoff onto the road.

The state "must accept its responsibilities" by having allowed the neighbourhood to urbanise, and would win the local population's support by doing so, Bulembi suggested.

mbb/bmb/at/imm/ri

IMAGINE THIS IN ALBERTA

Oil gushing from Nigerian wellhead blasts hopes of those living nearby

#ECOCIDE

A view of an oil spill from a well head is pictured at Santa Barbara, in Nembe, Bayelsa

Fri, November 26, 2021,
By Tife Owolabi

NEMBE, Nigeria (Reuters) - Three weeks after the Santa Barbara wellhead failed, it is still blasting water, gas and oil across Nembe in Nigeria's Delta, littering the shoreline and water with yellow-brown clumps of waste as cleanup crews and booms struggle to contain it.

Santa Barbara wellhead owner Aiteo Eastern E&P, the petroleum minister and Nigeria's president have all promised that specialist workers would quickly stop the spill.

But experts say the difficulties containing it are a reminder of how the once-fertile, fish-filled creeks, mangrove swamps and waterways that crisscross Nigeria's Delta became some of the most polluted areas on the planet amid decades of energy exploration.

"The crayfish that I sell for a living, now they are all dead," said Afieyegha Seiyefa, showing her oil-covered hands after reaching into the water where just a few weeks ago she could fish for a living. "We cannot get anything."

Aiteo has said the high pressure of the leak made access to the wellhead difficult. In a statement on Friday, it said Halliburton subsidiary Boots and Coots would contain the leak within days and was mopping up oil with booms and barges.

Oil gushing from Nigerian wellhead blasts hopes of those living nearbyOil slick is seen on Santa Barbara creek, following an oil spill in Nembe Bayelsa

Environment minister Sharon Ikeazor told journalists this week that the government was considering tougher penalties for firms involved in spills.

Aiteo bought the Santa Barbara well from oil major Royal Dutch Shell in 2015.

Some locals and environmental activists had hoped domestic companies, with closer ties to the region, would be more effective in preventing spills. But local ownership is little comfort to Benson Daniel, the community development chairman of the Sandsand Fishing Settlement.

"We can't even cook in our house because we are scared we may start a fire," he said of the gas smell that permeates the air.

People living in the creeks around the Santa Barbara well say tougher regulatory action cannot come soon enough.

"People that are suffering in the area… they cannot do anything," Kelcy Agbenido, a youth leader for the Nembe-Bassambiri community, told Reuters.

(Reporting By Tife Owolabi, additional reporting by Temilade Adelaja; Writing by Libby George. Editing by Gerry Doyle)

Members of Nembe community paddle a canoe across Santa Barbara, following an oil spill in Santa Barbara, Nembe Bayelsa

Tesla’s Texas Battery Bet Costs Carmaker $1.3 Billion German Aid



Stefan Nicola and Arne Delfs
Fri, November 26, 2021

(Bloomberg) --

Tesla Inc. will forgo 1.14 billion euros ($1.3 billion) of state aid for the factory it’s building in Germany because it has decided to try to produce a new type of battery cell at scale in Texas first, a person familiar with the matter said.

The U.S. automaker has been working on so-called 4680 battery cells at a site near its car plant in Fremont, California. Chief Executive Officer Elon Musk said last year that after the company proved it could make them on a pilot assembly line there, it would manufacture them at scale at the factory it’s been constructing outside Berlin.

This made Tesla eligible to receive public funds from Germany as part of the European Union’s Important Project of Common European Interest initiative, which backs first industrial deployments of battery projects in member states. Now that Tesla has shifted gears and is further along producing 4680 cells at its factory under construction in Austin, Texas, it is no longer eligible for the money, according to the person, who asked not to be identified discussing private information.

Tesla informed German authorities it won’t tap the support package, Beate Baron, a spokesperson for the country’s Economy Ministry, said earlier Friday. She didn’t discuss the reason for the decision.

“It has always been Tesla’s view that all subsidies should be eliminated, but that must include the massive subsidies for oil & gas,” Musk tweeted after the ministry’s announcement. “For some reason, governments don’t want to do that …”

Musk, who also runs rocket maker Space Exploration Technologies Corp., has bristled for years at detractors faulting him for taking advantage of government support. Examples of this include the U.S. loan that helped Tesla get the Model S sedan into production, which the company paid back early. SpaceX is a major contractor for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration and U.S. Defense Department.

After his initial post, Musk revisited a three-and-a-half-year-old exchange with another Twitter user who criticized Tesla and SpaceX’s use of subsidies.

“Combined Tesla+SpaceX market cap is now over $1.2T,” wrote Musk, who then took issue again with a figure mentioned in a May 2018 Twitter thread. Tesla shares fell 3.1% on Friday.

Tesla has almost completed construction of an EV factory in the small town of Gruenheide, southeast of the German capital, and also plans to manufacture battery cells at the site.

While Musk wants to start assembling Tesla Model Ys in Gruenheide before the end of the year, local authorities still haven’t granted final approval for the project.

Germany’s Economy Ministry estimates that Tesla is investing around 5 billion euros in Gruenheide. Der Tagesspiegel newspaper reported Tesla’s decision earlier on Friday.

Musk, 50, is the world’s richest person with a $304.4 billion fortune, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. He’s added $134.7 billion to his net worth this year, more than double the next-biggest gain in the index.

Most Read from Bloomberg Businessweek

Most plastic recycling produces low-value materials – but we've found a way to turn a common plastic into high-value molecules


Susannah Scott, Distinguished Professor of Chemistry, University of California Santa Barbara
Fri, November 26, 2021, 

Bales of plastic waste destined for recycling. Koron/Getty Images

If you thought those flimsy disposable plastic grocery bags represented most of our plastic waste problem, think again. The volume of plastic the world throws away every year could rebuild the Ming Dynasty’s Great Wall of China – about 3,700 miles long.

In the six decades that plastic has been manufactured for commercial uses, more than 8.3 billion metric tons have been produced. Plastics are light, versatile, cheap and nearly indestructible (as long as they don’t get too hot). These properties make them incredibly useful in an enormous range of applications that includes sterile food packaging, energy-efficient transportation, textiles and medical protective gear. But their indestructible nature comes at a cost. Most of them decompose extremely slowly in the environment – on the order of several hundred years – where they are creating a global epidemic of plastic trash. Its consequences for human and ecosystem health are still incompletely known, but are potentially momentous.

I am a chemist with experience in designing processes for making plastics, and I became interested in using plastic as a large, untapped resource for energy and materials. I wondered if we could turn plastic waste into something more valuable to keep it out of landfills and the natural environment.

A new way to use plastic waste

Plastics are made by stringing together a large number of small, carbon-based molecules in an almost infinite variety of ways to create polymer chains.

To reuse these polymers, recycling facilities could, in principle, melt and reshape them, but plastics’ properties tend to deteriorate. The resulting materials are almost never suitable for their original use, although they can be used to make lower-value stuff like plastic lumber. The result is a very low effective rate of recycling.

A new approach involves breaking the long chains down into small molecules again. The challenge is how to do this in a precise way.

Since the process of making the chains in the first place releases a lot of energy, reversing it requires adding a large amount of energy back in. Generally this means heating up the material to a high temperature – but heating up plastic causes the stuff to turn into a nasty mess. It also wastes a lot of energy, meaning more greenhouse gas emissions.

My team at UC Santa Barbara, working with colleagues at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and Cornell, discovered a clean way to turn polyethylene into useful smaller molecules.

Polyethylene is one of the world’s most useful and most used plastic types. It is also one of the largest contributors to plastic waste. It represents a third of the nearly 400 million metric tons of plastic the world makes every year, for purposes ranging from sterile food and medical packaging, waterproof films and coatings, cable and wire insulation, construction materials and water pipes, to wear-resistant hip and knee replacements and even bulletproof vests.
How the new process works


The process we have developed does not require high temperatures, but instead depends on tiny amounts of a catalyst containing a metal that removes a little hydrogen from the polymer chain. The catalyst then uses this hydrogen to cut the bonds that hold the carbon chain together, making smaller pieces.

The key is using the hydrogen as soon as it forms so that the chain-cutting provides the energy for making more hydrogen. This process is repeated many times for each chain, turning the solid polymer into a liquid.

The chopping slows down naturally when the molecules reach a certain size, so it’s easy to prevent the molecules from becoming too small. We’re able to recover the valuable liquid before it turns into less useful gases.

A majority of the molecules in the recovered liquid are alkylbenzenes, which are useful as solvents and can easily be turned into detergents. The global market for this type of molecule is about US billion annually.

Turning waste plastic into valuable molecules is called upcycling. Although our study represented a small-scale demonstration, a preliminary economic analysis suggests that it could easily be adapted to become a much larger-scale process in the next few years. Keeping plastic out of the environment by reusing it in a way that makes good economic sense is a win-win.

This article is republished from The Conversation, a nonprofit news site dedicated to sharing ideas from academic experts. It was written by: Susannah Scott, University of California Santa Barbara.

Read more:

If you recycled all the plastic garbage in the world, you could buy the NFL, Apple and Microsoft

The world’s plastic problem is bigger than the ocean

COVID-19 has resurrected single-use plastics – are they back to stay?

Susannah Scott receives funding from the US Department of Energy, Mitsubishi Chemical, and Dow Chemical, for her work in polymer upcycling. She is a coinventor on a US patent application related to this discovery, filed by the University of California.

CRIMINAL CAPITALI$M
‘Their goal is to bleed owners dry.’ $34 million victory in Florida HOA lawsuit is rare, experts say

Trevor Fraser, Orlando Sentinel
Wed, November 24, 2021

When Martin Kessler moved to the Solivita development in Poinciana, Florida in 2008, he says he quickly realized it was a big mistake. This was the first place the 97-year-old had ever lived with a homeowners association.

“Living in an HOA is not really a pleasant thing for a resident,” Kessler said. A retired economist, he said the fee he was required to pay was “a capitalist’s perfect dream of a business. People must join whether they like it or not, and they pay all the expenses of the business.”

Kessler is among more than 5,000 members of the 55-plus community locked in a class action lawsuit since 2017 against Solivita developer Avatar Properties, which they allege improperly collected HOA fees. On Nov. 2, Polk County, Florida, Circuit Judge Wayne Durden awarded the residents $34.8 million.

“That’s the biggest award I’ve ever heard of,” said Harvella Jones, president of the National Homeowners Advocate Group. Based in Texas, Jones’ organization specializes in helping people fight HOAs and lobbies for homeowner protections. “We get calls from all over the country, but no one has ever reported to us a win as large as (Solivita).”

Experts agree that fighting HOAs is hard for residents and big wins are even rarer. In Florida, HOAs govern more than 44% of the population, according to research by analysts at iProperty Management.

With fees that can reach into the thousands of dollars from an estimated 3.5 million homes in the state, HOAs can make lawsuits long and costly for residents.

“Their goal is to bleed owners dry,” said Jan Bergemann, president of Cyber Citizens for Justice, a homeowner’s advocacy group based in DeLand. “They will hit you with motion after motion, tie it up for years.”

HOAs are infamous for limiting what signs can go up yards, raising free speech issues. They sometimes even ban basketball goals or other sports equipment from yards or tell residents how many cars they can have. A Florida HOA was accused this month of threatening a family with a $100 a day fine for putting up Christmas lights too early.

Avatar, which was purchased by homebuilder Taylor Morrison in 2018, developed Solivita and other communities in Poinciana in the early 2000s. Avatar also built amenities such as pools and clubhouses. When the time came to turn management of the community over to the Poinciana Community Development District, Avatar wanted to sell them to the community for $73 million.

But there was a problem. A certified appraiser said the amenities were only worth about a quarter of that.

“I was immediately against it. It was the most stupid thing in the world,” Kessler said.

Avatar based its number on the future value of a roughly $86 a month club fee they were charging, said attorney Carter Andersen of Bush Ross in Tampa, who represented the residents. That fee, the lawsuit alleged, was illegal. Residents couldn’t opt out of it and could even have their homes foreclosed upon for nonpayment.

Taylor Morrison, who has handled the defense in this case since acquiring Avatar, did not return requests for comment for this story.

Andersen said the $34 million figure is only the beginning. He estimates another $27 million in pre-judgment interest, and at least $4 million in fees collected this year that were not added to the ruling.

There will also be, Andersen estimates, $5 million to $10 million in attorneys’ fees for the two firms that represented the residents. The case was taken on a contingency with no retainer from the residents, which means it was a gamble for the lawyers who fought for it.

Bergemann says it’s rare to find attorneys who will take such a complicated case without some assurance of payment. “Unfortunately, wins [such as Solivita] would be very common if the owners had the money,” he said.

Bergemann says he’s spoken to attorneys who want thousands of dollars just to get building documents residents should be able to see anyway. “And who just has that?” he said.

Jones said another problem residents face is harassment for speaking up, which she says happens when residents don’t act together. “You can’t have one or two people taking the brunt of everything,” she said.

For Jones, much of the problem is a lack of government oversight. She says many HOA board members cling to their power.

“Even when we have rules about elections, they still won’t hold [to] them,” she said. “If you can’t get rid of them, that’s the main problem.”

Jones got started fighting a homeowners association in the 1990s when she lost her Texas home for nonpayment of HOA fees. “They take advantage of foreclosures, which is why they should be regulated,” she said.

Although Andersen says the Solivita case is likely to be appealed by the developer, Bergemann said wins such as Solivita’s are important because they can create a domino effect leading to more victories for homeowners around the state.

“Homeowners have rights but they often aren’t being enforced,” he said. “[HOAs] don’t want decisions coming down for homeowners.”

The win gives hope to people such as Slade Chelbian, a resident of the Bellalago community in Poinciana, also built by Avatar.

Chelbian has been a plaintiff in a class-action suit for the same activity that led to the Solivita suit since 2019.

“This was great news in the fight to stop this sort of action,” Chelbian wrote in an email. “This makes me believe we can win this action in court.”

For Chelbian, winning would mean an end to the fee he’s been challenging.

“Defeat is the status quo,” which he said is, “paying the developer a mandatory ‘for profit’ fee forever. That is not fair.”

NUKE NEWS 

Pilgrim nuclear plant may release 1M gallons of radioactive water into bay. 

What we know


Doug Fraser, Cape Cod Times
Wed, November 24, 2021

PLYMOUTH — One of the options being considered by the company that is decommissioning the closed Pilgrim Nuclear Power Station is to release around one million gallons of potentially radioactive water into Cape Cod Bay.

The option had been discussed briefly with state regulatory officials as one possible way to get rid of water from the spent fuel pool, the reactor vessel and other components of the facility, Holtec International spokesman Patrick O'Brien said in an interview Wednesday. It was highlighted in a report by state Department of Environmental Protection Deputy Regional Director Seth Pickering at Monday's meeting of the Nuclear Decommissioning Citizens Advisory Panel in Plymouth.

"We had broached that with the state, but we've made no decision on that," O'Brien said.

Pilgrim Nuclear Power Station in Plymouth, which was permanently closed in 2019 and is undergoing decommissioning.

As of mid-December, Holtec will complete the process of moving all the spent fuel rods into casks that are being stored on a concrete pad on the Pilgrim plant site in Plymouth. After that, O'Brien told the panel, the removal and disposal of other components in those areas of the facility will take place and be completed sometime in February.

O'Brien said the remaining water used to cool the fuel rods in the pool and inside the reactor will be dealt with — the process to decide on a disposal method will get underway within the next six months to a year. Two other possible options discussed at Monday's meeting are trucking the water off-site to an approved facility, as Vermont Yankee Nuclear Power Plant did in shipping its contaminated water to a site in Idaho or to evaporate it, a process that has already been employed in some areas of the Plymouth plant.

Before they decide on any options, O'Brien said they would do an analysis to determine what contaminants the water contains. Likely, it will be metals and radioactive materials, he said.

Decommissioning process: Main emissions stack at Pilgrim Nuclear Power Station set to come down

Radioactive water inspected before it is released

Pickering pointed out that any water discharged under the federal Clean Water Act discharge permit overseen by the federal Environmental Protection Agency would have to be part of an approved plan reviewed by the EPA, the DEP and the state Department of Public Health.

"Mass DEP, and the U.S. EPA have made the company aware that any discharge of pollutants regulated under the Clean Water Act, (and) contained within spent fuel cooling water, into the ocean through Cape Cod Bay is not authorized under the NPDES (National Pollution Discharge Elimination System) permit," Pickering said. But he went on to say that radioactivity is not listed under the NPDES as a pollutant and is regulated by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.

Pine duBois, vice chair of the citizens decommissioning panel, cited a memorandum of understanding signed by Holtec that governed the decommissioning of Pilgrim — negotiated by the state Attorney General's office — that stated discharge of pollutants into Cape Cod Bay is not permitted.

"It's not permitted by the EPA, but that doesn't mean it can't happen if the NRC allows it," duBois said.

O'Brien noted that it was a fairly common practice in the nuclear industry, known as "overboarding," to release water, including radioactive water, into the ocean from power plants. He said it happened recently during the decommissioning of New Jersey's Oyster Creek facility, which is also being done by Holtec.
Opposition to plan comes from Cape Cod resident and officials

But state Sen. Susan Moran, D-Falmouth, said she is opposed to any release of radioactive water into Cape Cod Bay as part of the decommissioning process. She called for Holtec to release plans on how they will handle all waste materials at the plant.

The Nov. 7 accidental release of over 7,200 gallons of water into Cape Cod Bay — when contractors, seeking to drain a flooded electrical vault to do repair work following the October nor'easter, pumped water into a storm drain that emptied into the sea — did not inspire confidence in the execution of protocols, plant watchdogs say. That discharge was believed to be non-radioactive water.

"Although the recently reported violation of the station national pollutant discharge elimination system has been described as isolated, it brings to light that there are not sufficient safeguards and procedures in place to prevent discharges of contaminated water into the Cape Cod Bay. The potential for pollutants and dangerous materials being discharged in our water resources is alarming," Moran said in an email Wednesday. "Further, it is imperative that the federal agencies stop kicking the can down the road and determine long term solutions for the removal of these materials safely and expeditiously."

Diane Turco, of Harwich, the director of Cape Downwinders, a citizen group that was at the forefront of the effort to close Pilgrim, called any option that included sending radioactive water into the bay "outrageous" and "criminal." Turco said she has no confidence in the decommissioning process.

"The process has been to allow radioactivity into the environment," she said. "The answer should be no you can't do that."

Richard Delaney, the president of the Center for Coastal Studies, agreed.

"My immediate reaction to putting radioactivity into the ocean, into that part of Cape Cod Bay is that it would be nature-negative," he said. "We have been monitoring water quality in Cape Cod Bay for 20 years and there's already enough pollutants going into the bay. To put radioactive waste on top of that — it shouldn't be an option."

Delaney said he wondered if it was included as an option to be analyzed, but one that in the end wouldn't seriously be considered. DuBois agreed.

"I have a hard time thinking the NRC overrules (the EPA)," duBois said, adding that Holtec will be careful about damaging the environment.

"I think Holtec wants to do this right because they want to be a giant of the (decommissioning) industry. If they mess up Pilgrim, their reputation is dead," duBois said.

Turco called on the public to start paying more attention to the decommissioning process and attend citizens advisory board meetings in person and remotely. But O'Brien and duBois said the public comment period pretty much passed with the issuance of the NPDES permit.

"I don't think there's a requirement for public comment," duBois said.

Contact Doug Fraser at dfraser@capecodonline.com. Follow him on Twitter: @dougfrasercct.

This article originally appeared on Cape Cod Times: Pilgrim nuclear plant may release radioactive water into Cape Cod Bay

Tepco finds melting of ice wall at Japan's Fukushima Daiichi plant


An employee of TEPCO looks up at a tank reserved for storing treated water at the tsunami-crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant in Okuma town


Thu, November 25, 2021, 

TOKYO (Reuters) -Tokyo Electric Power Co (Tepco) will launch remedial works at the stricken Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant to strengthen an ice wall intended to halt the flow of groundwater after testing indicated partial melting.

The work could begin as early as the start of December, according to a presentation from the plant operator dated Thursday, part of a costly and troubled effort to secure the site following the 2011 earthquake and tsunami.

The ice wall is intended to limit the seepage of groundwater into the plant, which has created large amounts of toxic water being stored by Tepco in tanks.

Japan plans to release https://www.reuters.com/article/disaster-fukushima-water-release-idTRNIKBN2HQ0FT more than 1 million tonnes of water into the sea after treating it. The water contains the radioactive isotope tritium, which cannot be removed.

(Reporting by Sakura Murakami and Sam Nussey; Editing by Muralikumar Anantharaman and Stephen Coates)

Waste Isolation Pilot Plant gets 13K nuclear waste shipments, plans to 'ramp up' to 17 a week

Adrian Hedden, Carlsbad Current-Argus
Fri, November 26, 2021

A 13,000th shipment of nuclear waste was delivered to the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant repository near Carlsbad Nov. 11, marking a milestone since the facility first began accepting waste in 1999.

The shipment was made up of transuranic (TRU) waste from the U.S. Department of Energy’s Idaho National Laboratory from that facility’s Advanced Mixed Waste Treatment Project.

About half of WIPP’s shipments in its lifetime came from the Idaho lab, about 6,600.


More: WIPP readies 8th panel to dispose of nuclear waste, altering air quality requirements

During that same week, eight shipments arrived at WIPP, including two from Los Alamos National Laboratory in northern New Mexico.

TRU waste is made up of clothing materials, equipment and other wastes like sludge irradiated during nuclear operations.

Most of the shipments were labeled “contact-handled (CH) waste, meaning that have lower radioactivity than remote-handled (RH) waste and can be handled safely without additional shielding during processing, transportation and disposal emplacement.

More: WIPP: Air shaft project to resume despite objections at nuclear waste site near Carlsbad

Of the 13,000 shipments of waste sent to WIPP in the last two decades, 775 were considered RH waste, handled in shielded casks and emplaced in the walls of the WIPP underground – an underground salt deposit that gradually buried the waste permanently and blocks radiation.

To get that waste to the WIPP facility from nuclear sites owned by the DOE around the country, truck drivers logged about 15 million miles, per a DOE news release, without a “serious injury” or radiological release.

DOE Environmental Management (EM) Senior Adviser William White commended WIPP’s workers for reaching 13,000 shipments, including underground miners, waste handlers and drivers that move the waste across the country.

More: Safety issues at Waste Isolation Pilot Plant slow disposal of nuclear waste near Carlsbad

“It's another huge milestone for the EM program,” White said. “I want to congratulate everyone involved in this milestone, from the employees at the generator sites who certify and package the waste, to the workers at WIPP who mine the disposal rooms and prepare the waste before it's permanently disposed underground.”

WIPP’s first shipment was delivered for disposal from Los Alamos in March 1999, and the site went on to dispose of waste from 13 facilities around the U.S.

The final shipment from Rocky Flats and Environmental Technology Site in Colorado came in 2005, and the 10,000 shipment was received – also from Idaho – in 2011.

More: Waste Isolation Pilot Plant adds space for nuclear waste disposal near Carlsbad

The first RH waste shipment was disposed of at WIPP in 2007, and the facility hasn’t receive RH waste since 2014, although the process of resuming RH waste was underway and expected to take about three years.

Reinhard Knerr, manager of the DOE’s Carlsbad Field Office said WIPP was a key part of the DOE’s efforts to clean up nuclear waste in the U.S.

“WIPP continues to be the cornerstone of DOE’s efforts to reduce the legacy defense TRU waste footprint,” Knerr said. “WIPP’s transportation program has been a tremendous success, and I congratulate everyone involved on a job well done.”

More: Groups look to block controversial air shaft project at Waste Isolation Pilot Plant

During a recent public meeting, Knerr explained WIPP’s progress in increasing weekly shipments in pursuit of a goal of 17 shipments per week.

Over the last year, Knerr said WIPP received 199 shipments. He touted continued waste emplacement despite multiple halts in operations amid the COVID-19 health crisis which first struck New Mexico in March 2020.

WIPP officials projected 258 shipments this year, Knerr said, but despite not reaching the goal he said he still considered the number “successful” during the pandemic.

More: U.S. Senate bill has implications for New Mexico nuclear waste projects

“Given the pandemic and the large spikes of COVID-19 that we’ve had in the community, we take a look back at this year as a very large success,” Knerr said. “We do project a ramp up to 17 shipments per week on average.”

Reinhard Knerr, manager of the U.S. Department of Energy's Carlsbad Field Office (CBFO) gives an update on operations at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant, Nov. 18, 2021 at the CBFO building in Carlsbad.

That’s about 680 shipments per year, and WIPP will continue to prioritize shipments from Los Alamos and Idaho, Knerr said, for the “bulk” of the next decade.

Knerr said increasing shipments can be achieved ahead of an ongoing rebuild of the facility’s ventilation system planned to go into service in 2025 or 2026.

More: WIPP: Judge upholds change in how nuke waste is counted. Could keep site open to 2050

“We believe we’re going to be ready to resume increased shipments well before that,” he said.

To achieve that goal, Knerr said WIPP must complete multiple projects: filling and closing out the 7th waste disposal panel by 2022 and finishing emplacement in Panel 8 by 2025.

Then, he said WIPP hopes to emplace waste in Panels 11, 12 in the coming years and Panel 13 by 2034.

More: WIPP: Critics accuse feds of expanding nuclear waste repository before New Mexico task force

Plans were recently announced to mine Panels 11 and 12, described by WIPP officials as “replacement” panels for capacity lost in an accidental radiological release in 2014 that led to a three-year halt of WIPP’s primary operations.

To support the increase in waste emplacement and mining, Knerr said a fourth shift was intended to be added to the WIPP workforce.

“We have to make sure that we are mining,” Knerr said. “That includes the access drifts as well as mining out the panels themselves. We need to be sure that we have enough staff on site to support not only the mining needs that we have, but the waste emplacement as well.”

Adrian Hedden  @AdrianHedden on Twitter.

This article originally appeared on Carlsbad Current-Argus: Waste Isolation Pilot Plant gets 13K nuclear waste shipments

#FRACKQUAKES
'The time is now': New Mexico taking action on oil and gas-induced earthquakes


Adrian Hedden, Carlsbad Current-Argus
Fri, November 26, 2021

A growing threat of earthquakes in southeast New Mexico prompted the State to take action by upping its seismic monitoring and calling for oil and gas operators to curb the amount of produced water disposed of underground.

The byproduct water, known as produced water in industry terms, is a combination of flowback water created during hydraulic fracturing operations and water brought up from underground shale formations along with oil and natural gas.

Traditionally this water, briny and contaminated with toxic chemicals, is pumped back into the shale for disposal, but such a process was recently linked to increased seismic events in the Permian Basin shared by southeast New Mexico and West Texas.

More: Eddy County oil and gas revenue collections rise in September

Earlier this year, the Texas Railroad Commission announced it was establishing two seismic response areas (SRAs) in the Midland area and along the Texas-New Mexico border in Culberson and Reeves counties. It called for reductions in produced water injection volumes and advocated blocking any new permits for saltwater disposal wells (SWDs).

And on Tuesday, New Mexico’s Oil Conservation Division (OCD) announced similar actions as a string of earthquakes were reported in New Mexico throughout November.

Permits under review for SWDs in the area south of Malaga, near the Texas State Line, will require additional review, the department said.

More: Oil and gas 'the future' of Carlsbad and New Mexico

Meanwhile, a “statewide response protocol” was put in place by the OCD that will increase reporting and monitoring measures while also reducing the volume of water injected based on further observed seismic activity.

“Category 1” of the protocol would go into effect when two quakes of magnitude (M) 2.5 or higher occur within 30 days and within a 10-mile radius of each other.

An M 2.5 earthquake is the first level where it could be lightly felt, according to the Richter Scale. Serious damage can occur at a M 3 or greater.

More: New Mexico environmentalists, industry debate impact of EPA oil and gas methane rule

With 10 miles of the epicenter of such an event, operators would be required to provide to the state weekly reporting of daily injection volumes and average daily surface pressure, while digitally measuring injections volumes and pressure and providing analysis and data to the OCD when requested.

At “Category 2,” which goes into effect if one M 3 event occurs, all of Category 1 requirements would be imposed, along with requirements that operators within 3 miles reduce injection rates by 50 percent.

Within 3-6 miles, operators would be required to cut injection by 25 percent.

More: New Mexico, Permian Basin oil and gas environmental concerns heard at UN's COP26 summit

If a M 3.5 or higher quake is reported, operators with 3 miles must shut in their wells, and cut injection by 50 percent at 3-6 miles, and 25 percent at 6-10 miles.

OCD Director Adrienne Sandoval said most of the recent significant seismicity was reported on the Texas side of the basin, but the State was taking action to prevent the threat to New Mexico.

Adrienne Sandoval was hired in April as the director of New Mexico's Oil Conservation Division.

“The Oil Conservation Division is taking a proactive approach to managing seismic activity tied to oil and gas activity in New Mexico,” she said. “While some of the biggest events have occurred over the state line in Texas, the time is now to ensure larger events do not occur in our part of the oil field.

“Using solid data and working with our stakeholders and state partners, the plan laid out today takes a pragmatic approach to addressing this issue.”

More: New Mexico's oil and gas water research studies economics, toxicity

A map of magnitude 2.5 earthquakes reported along the Texas-New Mexico border in 2021, per the U.S. Geological Survey.
Data shows earthquakes increased while oil boomed in the Permian Basin

Data from the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) showed that along the Texas-New Mexico border in the Permian Basin, 422 earthquakes of M 2.5 or higher were reported in 2021, with 22 reported in November alone.

Last year, the USGS reported just 209 such quakes in that same area and only 51 in 2019.

In 2018, the USGS database showed 16 M 2.5 or greater quakes in the area and four in 2017 – the year commonly associated with the most recent boom in oil and gas credited to expanded use of hydraulic fracturing.

More: Xcel Energy completes southeast New Mexico power loop to account for oil and gas demand

Most recently, on Nov. 23 a M 2.7 quake was reported about 35 miles south of Whites City, per USGS data, just over the border in Texas, along with an M 2.6 the day before in the same location.

Several more were reported throughout the month close to that area, just south of the state line.

An M 3.2 was reported Nov. 13 about 23 miles southwest of Monument, a ranching community just outside Hobbs.

More: Risk of earthquakes caused by oil and gas operations in New Mexico rising

About 50 M 2.5 or higher quakes were reported on the Texas side in October, per the USGS, with none in New Mexico. An M 3.3 occurred in an area about 19 miles southeast of Malaga almost directly on the border.

The previous month saw three M 2.5 or higher quakes near Jal on Sept. 1, 9 and 20. The next day, an M 3.2 quake was reported near Malaga.
How do injection wells cause earthquakes?

The injection of oil and gas wastewater was found to induce seismicity through a process called poroelasticity, the result of the interaction between fluid and solid but porous rock formations, per a May study from Virginia Tech published in the journal Science Daily.

More: Pioneer Resources exits Delaware Basin, New Mexico in $3.25B sale of oil and gas assets

This interaction can stress the rock and active deep or “basement” faults, the report read.

"It is quite interesting that injection above the thick, overall low-permeability shale reservoir can induce an earthquake within the deep basement, despite a minimal hydraulic connection," said Guang Zhai, a postdoctoral research scientist in the Department of Geosciences, part of the Virginia Tech College of Science.

“What we have found is that the so-called poroelastic stresses can activate basement faults, which is originated from the fluid injection causing rock deformation."

More: Lujan Grisham's pledge to cut carbon emissions attacked by New Mexico oil and gas supporters

The study reported seismicity in the Permian Basin was observed to increase “significantly” since 2010 in shallow wastewater injection which led to deep seismicity.

Most of the quakes were small and largely unfelt but could point to a trend of increased magnitudes and potentially larger events, the study read.

Zhai said the problem could get worse as energy needs increase around the world, and shallow disposal injection remains the cheapest method of wastewater management.

More: Feds move forward with sale of southeast New Mexico public land to oil and gas industry

People should use the research, Zhai said to rethink the human role in induced seismicity resulting from fossil fuel development.

"As the future energy demands increase globally, dealing with the enormous amount of coproduced wastewater remains challenging, and safe shallow injection for disposal is more cost-efficient than deep injection or water treatment," Zhai said.

"We hope the mechanism we find in this study can help people rethink the ways induced earthquakes are caused, eventually helping with better understanding them and mitigating their hazards."

Adrian Hedden  @AdrianHedden on Twitter.

This article originally appeared on Carlsbad Current-Argus: New Mexico taking action on oil and gas-induced earthquakes

California denies most fracking permits ahead of 2024 ban


In this Feb. 6, 2015, file photo, protesters prepare to take down a makeshift oil derrick that was set up in front of the California State Office Building to protest fracking in San Francisco. California regulators are citing climate change for the first time as they deny new permits for hydraulic fracturing, a process used to extract oil and gas from the ground. In denying 50 fracking permits this year, the state's oil and gas supervisor said he was using his discretion to protect public health, safety and environmental quality and to mitigate greenhouse gas emissions. (AP Photo/Jeff Chiu, File)More

Wed, November 24, 2021

SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) — California regulators haven't approved permits for the controversial oil and gas extraction process known as fracking since February, effectively phasing out the process ahead of Gov. Gavin Newsom's 2024 deadline to end it.

The state's Geologic Energy Management Division, known as CalGEM, has rejected an unprecedented 109 fracking permits in 2021, the San Francisco Chronicle reported. That's the most denials the division has issued in a single year since California began permitting fracking in 2015. Fifty of the permits, mostly from Bakersfield-based Aera Energy, were denied based solely on climate change concerns.

State oil and gas supervisor Uduak-Joe Ntuk wrote in a September letter to Aera that he could “not in good conscience" grant the permits “given the increasingly urgent climate effects of fossil-fuel production” and “the continuing impacts of climate change and hydraulic fracturing on public health and natural resources.”


Newsom, a Democrat, called in 2020 for state lawmakers to ban the practice by 2024. But a proposal before lawmakers failed, leading Newsom to direct CalGEM to proceed with the timeline on its own. It’s only one piece of Newsom’s climate change agenda, which includes a complete end to oil and gas production in the state by 2045, long after he’s left office.

Kern County, where most fracking in the state occurs, and the Western States Petroleum Association have sued the state over the denials. WSPA's lawsuit, filed in October, argues state law requires CalGEM to permit fracking if it meets technical requirements and that the denials amount to a de facto ban on the process that hasn't been approved by the Legislature.

A hearing in the Kern case is scheduled for Monday and the state must respond to WSPA's lawsuit by Dec. 2.

Fracking is the process of injecting a high-pressure mix of mostly water with some sand and chemical additives into rock to create or expand fractures that allow for the extraction of oil and gas. Permitted fracking operations account for just 2% of oil production in California. But the practice is controversial due to concerns about the chemicals used in the fracking fluid contaminating groundwater.

Environmental justice organizations representing low-income communities and people of color have protested fracking for its potential water contamination and the methane released by the process. Methane is a highly potent greenhouse gas.

Juan Flores, a community organizer based in Kern County with the Center on Race, Poverty & the Environment, said by denying the permits Newsom and his administration are living up to expectations set by voters.

“This is a type of action that we expected," he said.

WSPA said in its lawsuit that the state's permitting process includes stringent requirements designed to protect public health and safety.

These actions “don’t really deliver the positive benefits for a fight against climate change, but what they do is impose big impacts on Californians — to their finances, to their freedoms and, essentially, how they live and work every single day,” WSPA President Catherine Reheis-Boyd told the Chronicle.

CalGEM has approved just 12 fracking permits this year, down from 83 in 2020 and 220 in 2019.

In his letter to Aera explaining why the state denied permit applications, Ntuk cited extreme heat, drought and wildfires as examples of the dangers caused by climate change. He argued that CalGEM must ensure the activities it regulates match the state's environmental, public health and climate change goals. He said a 2014 law that gave the agency permitting power over fracking does not require the state to approve permits even if applications are complete.

Kathy Miller, an Aera spokeswoman, did not respond to an email seeking comment.

What the archaeological record reveals about epidemics throughout history – and the human response to them

Michael Westaway, Australian Research Council Future Fellow, Archaeology, School of Social Science, The University of Queensland, Charlotte Roberts, Professor of Archaeology, Durham University, and Gabriel D. Wrobel, Associate Professor of Anthropology, Michigan State University

Fri, November 26, 2021, 

Dead men do tell tales through their physical remains. AP Photo/Francesco Bellini

The previous pandemics to which people often compare COVID-19 – the influenza pandemic of 1918, the Black Death bubonic plague (1342-1353), the Justinian plague (541-542) – don’t seem that long ago to archaeologists. We’re used to thinking about people who lived many centuries or even millennia ago. Evidence found directly on skeletons shows that infectious diseases have been with us since our beginnings as a species.

Bioarchaeologists like us analyze skeletons to reveal more about how infectious diseases originated and spread in ancient times.

How did aspects of early people’s social behavior allow diseases to flourish? How did people try to care for the sick? How did individuals and entire societies modify behaviors to protect themselves and others?

Knowing these things might help scientists understand why COVID-19 has wreaked such global devastation and what needs to be put in place before the next pandemic.

Clues about illnesses long ago

How can bioarchaeologists possibly know these things, especially for early cultures that left no written record? Even in literate societies, poorer and marginalized segments were rarely written about.

In most archaeological settings, all that remains of our ancestors is the skeleton.


For some infectious diseases, like syphilis, tuberculosis and leprosy, the location, characteristics and distribution of marks on a skeleton’s bones can serve as distinctive “pathognomonic” indicators of the infection.

Most skeletal signs of disease are non-specific, though, meaning bioarchaeologists today can tell an individual was sick, but not with what disease. Some diseases never affect the skeleton at all, including plague and viral infections like HIV and COVID-19. And diseases that kill quickly don’t have enough time to leave a mark on victims’ bones.

To uncover evidence of specific diseases beyond obvious bone changes, bioarchaeologists use a variety of methods, often with the help of other specialists, like geneticists or parasitologists. For instance, analyzing soil collected in a grave from around a person’s pelvis can reveal the remains of intestinal parasites, such as tapeworms and round worms. Genetic analyses can also identify the DNA of infectious pathogens still clinging to ancient bones and teeth.

Bioarchaeologists can also estimate age at death based on how developed a youngster’s teeth and bones are, or how much an adult’s skeleton has degenerated over its lifespan. Then demographers help us draw age profiles for populations that died in epidemics. Most infectious diseases disproportionately affect those with the weakest immune systems, usually the very young and very old.

For instance, the Black Death was indiscriminate; 14th-century burial pits contain the typical age distributions found in cemeteries we know were not for Black Death victims. In contrast, the 1918 flu pandemic was unusual in that it hit hardest those with the most robust immune systems, that is, healthy young adults. COVID-19 today is also leaving a recognizable profile of those most likely to die from the disease, targeting older and vulnerable people and particular ethnic groups.


We can find out what infections were around in the past through our ancestors’ remains, but what does this tell us about the bigger picture of the origin and evolution of infections? Archaeological clues can help researchers reconstruct aspects of socioeconomic organization, environment and technology. And we can study how variations in these risk factors caused diseases to vary across time, in different areas of the world and even among people living in the same societies.
How infectious disease got its first foothold

Human biology affects culture in complex ways. Culture influences biology, too, although it can be hard for our bodies to keep up with rapid cultural changes. For example, in the 20th century, highly processed fast food replaced a more balanced and healthy diet for many. Because the human body evolved and was designed for a different world, this dietary switch resulted in a rise in diseases like diabetes, heart disease and obesity.

From a paleoepidemiological perspective, the most significant event in our species’ history was the adoption of farming. Agriculture arose independently in several places around the world beginning around 12,000 years ago.

Prior to this change, people lived as hunter-gatherers, with dogs as their only animal companions. They were very active and had a well balanced, varied diet that was high in protein and fiber and low in calories and fat. These small groups experienced parasites, bacterial infections and injuries while hunting wild animals and occasionally fighting with one another. They also had to deal with dental problems, including extreme wear, plaque and periodontal disease.

One thing hunter-gatherers didn’t need to worry much about, however, was virulent infectious diseases that could move quickly from person to person throughout a large geographic region. Pathogens like the influenza virus were not able to effectively spread or even be maintained by small, mobile, and socially isolated populations.

The advent of agriculture resulted in larger, sedentary populations of people living in close proximity. New diseases could flourish in this new environment. The transition to agriculture was characterized by high childhood mortality, in which approximately 30% or more of children died before the age of 5.

And for the first time in an evolutionary history spanning millions of years, different species of mammals and birds became intimate neighbors. Once people began to live with newly domesticated animals, they were brought into the life cycle of a new group of diseases – called zoonoses – that previously had been limited to wild animals but could now jump into human beings.

Add to all this the stresses of poor sanitation and a deficient diet, as well as increased connections between distant communities through migration and trade especially between urban communities, and epidemics of infectious disease were able to take hold for the first time.
Globalization of disease

Later events in human history also resulted in major epidemiological transitions related to disease.

For more than 10,000 years, the people of Europe, the Middle East and Asia evolved along with particular zoonoses in their local environments. The animals people were in contact with varied from place to place. As people lived alongside particular animal species over long periods of time, a symbiosis could develop – as well as immune resistance to local zoonoses.

At the beginning of modern history, people from European empires also began traveling across the globe, taking with them a suite of “Old World” diseases that were devastating for groups who hadn’t evolved alongside them. Indigenous populations in Australia, the Pacific and the Americas had no biological familiarity with these new pathogens. Without immunity, one epidemic after another ravaged these groups. Mortality estimates range between 60-90%.


The study of disease in skeletons, mummies and other remains of past people has played a critical role in reconstructing the origin and evolution of pandemics, but this work also provides evidence of compassion and care, including medical interventions such as trepanation, dentistry, amputation and prostheses, herbal remedies and surgical instruments.

Other evidence shows that people have often done their best to protect others, as well as themselves, from disease. Perhaps one of the most famous examples is the English village of Eyam, which made a self-sacrificing decision to isolate itself to prevent further spread of a plague from London in 1665.


In other eras, people with tuberculosis were placed in sanatoria, people with leprosy were admitted to specialized hospitals or segregated on islands or into remote areas, and urban dwellers fled cities when plagues came.

As the world faces yet another pandemic, the archaeological and historical record are reminders that people have lived with infectious disease for millennia. Pathogens have helped shape civilization, and humans have been resilient in the face of such crises.

This article is republished from The Conversation, a nonprofit news site dedicated to sharing ideas from academic experts. It was written by: Charlotte Roberts, Durham University; Gabriel D. Wrobel, Michigan State University, and Michael Westaway, The University of Queensland.

Ancient DNA is a powerful tool for studying the past – when archaeologists and geneticists work together

Plague was around for millennia before epidemics took hold – and the way people lived might be what protected them

How Yersinia pestis evolved its ability to kill millions via pneumonic plague

Michael Westaway receives funding from the Australian Research Council.

Charlotte Roberts and Gabriel D. Wrobel do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.