Secretive plans for nuclear reprocessing at Savannah Rivers Site

Clements will be first on a panel at 10:55 a.m. on Friday, January 7 and will speak to problems with the secretive push by special interest to pursue reprocessing at SRS, which is unsuited to receive more of the nation’s nuclear waste burden.

National Nuclear Waste Commission to Hear from Public, Environmental Groups on Friday in Augusta | WJBF–TV, 5 Jan 2011, Augusta, GA --A national panel established by President Obama to decide the way forward with high-level nuclear waste will meet in Augusta, Georgia on Friday, January 7. The Blue Ribbon Commission (BRC), which is deciding the fate of commercial spent fuel and Department of Energy high-level waste, will meet at the Augusta Marriott (Two Tenth Street in downtown) all day Friday and hear public comment at the end of the day.

Given the problems with proceeding with the Yucca Mountain waste dump, the Savannah River Site (SRS) in South Carolina is at risk of becoming an “interim” home for radioactive spent fuel or reprocessing of that dangerous material. “We will watch out for the public interest and strongly oppose efforts to dump high-level nuclear waste in South Carolina,” said Tom Clements, Southeastern Nuclear Campaign Coordinator with the environmental organization Friends of the Earth. “Environmental groups will confront efforts by special interests to reprocess nuclear spent fuel as it leaves behind a huge volume of nuclear waste and would make SRS the nation’s de facto nuclear dump, which is totally unacceptable.”

Reprocessing is a dirty and dangerous chemical process that extracts plutonium and magnifies problems with spent fuel storage. Reprocessing of military materials for plutonium production for nuclear weapons is what has resulted in the 36 million gallons of high-level waste at SRS and with which DOE is struggling to manage.

“While some are pushing on the one hand for a way out of South Carolina of high-level nuclear waste, these same people are lobbying for reprocessing at SRS, which means bringing the nation’s spent fuel to SRS.

This effort to bring radioactive spent fuel to SRS for reprocessing will be confronted for what it is – a dangerous deception that could result in a huge nuclear waste problem in South Carolina. Some label reprocessing as ‘recycling’ but most of the resultant waste streams have no practical use, are dangerous to handle and are costly to manage.”

Read more:
http://nuclear-news.net/2011/01/06/secretive-plans-for-nuclear-reprocessing-at-savannah-rivers-site/

 Read whole Article:

And then there is THIS:  

National Nuclear Waste Commission to Hear from Public, Environmental Groups on Friday in Augusta

Friends of the Earth to Challenge those who Aim to Dump Spent Fuel at SRS

 Augusta, GA --

A national panel established by President Obama to decide the way forward with high-level nuclear waste will meet in Augusta, Georgia on Friday, January 7. The Blue Ribbon Commission (BRC), which is deciding the fate of commercial spent fuel and Department of Energy high-level waste, will meet at the Augusta Marriott (Two Tenth Street in downtown) all day Friday and hear public comment at the end of the day.Given the problems with proceeding with the Yucca Mountain waste dump, the Savannah River Site (SRS) in South Carolina is at risk of becoming an “interim” home for radioactive spent fuel or reprocessing of that dangerous material. “We will watch out for the public interest and strongly oppose efforts to dump high-level nuclear waste in South Carolina,” said Tom Clements, Southeastern Nuclear Campaign Coordinator with the environmental organization Friends of the Earth.

“Environmental groups will confront efforts by special interests to reprocess nuclear spent fuel as it leaves behind a huge volume of nuclear waste and would make SRS the nation’s de facto nuclear dump, which is totally unacceptable.”

Included on the formal agenda amongst a long list of politicians with little technical or policy expertise in management of nuclear waste or record of closely tracking issues at the Savannah River Site, several SC and GA environmental groups will present testimony to the BRC. Clements will be first on a panel at 10:55 a.m. on Friday, January 7 and will speak to problems with the secretive push by special interest to pursue reprocessing at SRS, which is unsuited to receive more of the nation’s nuclear waste burden. Reprocessing is a dirty and dangerous chemical process that extracts plutonium and magnifies problems with spent fuel storage. Reprocessing of military materials for plutonium production for nuclear weapons is what has resulted in the 36 million gallons of high-level waste at SRS and with which DOE is struggling to manage.

“While some are pushing on the one hand for a way out of South Carolina of high-level nuclear waste, these same people are lobbying for reprocessing at SRS, which means bringing the nation’s spent fuel to SRS. This effort to bring radioactive spent fuel to SRS for reprocessing will be confronted for what it is – a dangerous deception that could result in a huge nuclear waste problem in South Carolina. Some label reprocessing as ‘recycling’ but most of the resultant waste streams have no practical use, are dangerous to handle and are costly to manage.”

DOE itself has raised the possibility of spent fuel storage and reprocessing at SRS, but it is primarily contractors that profit off SRS and nuclear waste management that have been pushing the idea. “As clean-up of SRS continues, we must look for new employment at SRS but those jobs must not be associated with bringing more radioactive waste to SRS,” said Clements. We believe that the public in South Carolina and Georgia will support clean jobs at SRS but not projects that bring yet more deadly nuclear waste to the site.” The charter of the BRC does not directly include consideration of jobs or future use of SRS or any other DOE site.

Friends of the Earth and the South Carolina Chapter of the Sierra Club are running ads in local weekly papers and on radio stations in the Aiken/Augusta area, urging members of the public to attend the BRC meeting and speak out against the nuclear waste threat faced by South Carolina.

On Thursday, January 6, members of the public will tour SRS, on a parallel track with members of the BRC, who will have a tour of their own. Staff of the BRC may well be on the bus with the public and available for interaction about the work of the Commission.


 (See BRC website for more information: http://www.brc.gov/)

A campaign threat to the nuclear power industry

http://niemanwatchdog.org/index.cfm?fuseaction=ask_this.view&askthisid=00314

ASK THIS | January 18, 2008

If a Democrat wins the presidency—and if campaign promises count—it may be time to write the obituary for Nevada's Yucca Mountain nuclear waste site. What happens then to the renewed call for nuclear power in the U.S.?

By Joseph Davis
jdavis2@starpower.net

The top three Democratic presidential candidates, Clinton, Obama, and Edwards tussled before the Jan. 19 Nevada caucus over who was more opposed to the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository. The fuss has importance as more than just campaign mud-wrestling.

It may be a sign that it is finally time to write an obituary for the Yucca Mountain plan – and a sign that the industry-ballyhooed "renaissance" of commercial nuclear electric power in the U.S. is headed for trouble – or for a train-wreck.

Being against Yucca Mountain is a pretty good way to get elected in Nevada. At the MSNBC debate in Las Vegas Jan. 15, the three leading Democrats contended over which of them had been against Yucca Mountain earliest and most strongly. Whichever Democrat is nominated, Vegas oddsmakers might well favor that person to win the White House in November, and he or she would presumably be expected to live up to the campaign rhetoric by killing Yucca Mountain..

The cloud over Yucca Mountain's future is much darker than that. Not only will the likely president want it dead, but also the Majority Leader of the Senate, Nevada Democrat Harry Reid, who has made a career opposing Yucca Mountain and has used his agenda-setting clout against it. The one-two punch of a president and a Senate leader may be the knockout.

On Jan. 8, the Associated Press reported further Energy Department cutbacks in the contract staff working on Yucca Mountain – from a peak of about 250 workers in 2004-2005 to a skeleton crew of about 15 caretakers today. That's because Congress (at Reid's urging) has drastically cut the budget for the repository.

The director of the Yucca Mountain project, Edward Sproat, told Las Vegas Sun reporter Lisa Mascaro that he is now unsure he can meet a June 2008 target for a license application to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC). Any later, and the NRC would be unlikely to act on it before the Bush administration left office and the NRC changed hands. Two of the five NRC seats are vacant right now, which could magnify the leverage of the next administration.

The original idea, under the Nuclear Waste Policy Act and other laws, was to pick a site for nuclear waste disposal based purely on scientific criteria – finding a rock formation to contain waste that would remain highly radioactive for tens or hundreds of thousands of years. But Yucca was born of politics, not science, back in 1987, when Congress told scientists they could pick any site they thought best – as long as it was Yucca Mountain. Nevada never agreed. Some 20 years later, after billions of dollars of study, the Energy Department is not much closer to making an air-tight scientific case.

This year, politics may be the project's final undoing.

Since the Jan. 15 debate, Clinton and Obama have continued to clash over the Yucca issue in radio ads, with Clinton accusing Obama of ties to the nuclear industry and the Obama camp saying that was unfair.

In Nevada, neither candidate, Clinton or Obama, is talking much about the fact that both have expressed willingness to consider expanding commercial nuclear power in the U.S.

*********

Our "Ask This" questions might first go to the candidates themselves. But they could also be asked of Congress members, Energy Department officials, utility and nuclear industry leaders, and environmentalists.

Q. How specifically do Democratic candidates propose stopping Yucca Mountain?

Q. How do any possible GOP supporters of the repository plan to resuscitate it?

Q. What is their proposed alternative to Yucca Mountain?

Q. What state would it be sited in?

Q. If there's no place to put spent fuel and other waste, should the U.S. start licensing new nuclear power plants?

Q. If not, how do they propose responding to the industry push for new plants?

Q. Will the Energy Department submit an application for Yucca Mountain to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission by its June 2008 target? And how long will NRC take to act on it?

Q. Will the current Nuclear Regulatory Commission irrevocably approve the start of a new generation of plants before George Bush leaves the White House?

Q. Will President Bush try to fill the two vacancies on the 5-seat NRC before leaving office? And how will Congress respond?

Q. Who might the next president appoint to the NRC?

Joseph A. Davis has been writing about the environment, energy, and natural resources for 30 years. E-mail: jdavis2@starpower.net

Surplus Plutonium to be Consolidated in South Carolina??

Surplus Plutonium to Be Consolidated in South Carolina

WASHINGTON, DC, September 6, 2007 (ENS) - The U.S. Department of Energy, DOE, says it will consolidate surplus radioactive plutonium at its Savannah River Site, a 310-square-mile complex bordering the Savannah River between South Carolina and Georgia. The facility is one of several that manages the U.S. nuclear weapons stockpile and nuclear materials.

Starting in 30 days, the agency will move some 3,000 plutonium storage containers across the country to their new location, a process that will not be finished until 2010.

The plutonium will come from the Hanford Site in Washington state, the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California, and the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico.

"Consolidation is a key part of the department's efforts to properly manage surplus plutonium and follows our dedication to non-proliferation, environmental management and national security," said Assistant Secretary of Energy for Environmental Management James Rispoli announcing the move on Wednesday.

"Today's decision continues the momentum for the safe disposition of surplus materials," he said.

Some 2,300 plutonium storage containers from Hanford and close to 700 from Lawrence Livermore and Los Alamos Labs will be transported to the Savannah River Site.

The agency said moving the plutonium to Savannah River would reduce the number of sites holding special nuclear material, "enhancing the security of these materials and reducing the costs associated with plutonium storage, surveillance and monitoring, and security at multiple sites."

Only non-pit plutonium will be shipped, that is plutonium which comes from sources other than nuclear weapons triggers, or pits.

Once the material is at the Savannah River Site, the department plans to make mixed oxide, MOX, fuel by mixing plutonium and uranium oxides to use in specially equipped nuclear power reactors.

The first U.S. MOX Fuel Fabrication Facility is currently under construction.

In another disposal plan, the agency says it will use the existing H-Canyon facility, so called because of the long, narrow shape of the building in which chemical separations of radioactive materials takes place.

H Canyon provides a path for recycling the uranium into commercial nuclear power plant fuel in lieu of planned disposal at a federal geologic repository at Yucca Mountain, Nevada, which is stalled in budgetary and political conflict.

A third plan is to immobilize some of the surplus plutoniuim in a proposed new, small-scale plutonium vitrification plant that would encase it in glass.

"DOE will evaluate reducing and possibly eliminating the need for the vitrification capability, and instead disposing of all the surplus plutonium through the MOX facility and H-Canyon," the agency said today.

The citizens group Nuclear Watch South says it "acknowledges the urgent need to provide security for plutonium" but opposes MOX manufacturing.

Coordinator Glenn Carroll warns that

"Transporting highly toxic plutonium - one-millionth of a gram can induce lung cancer in a human - risks the health of millions of citizens along transportation routes. No analysis of risk of terrorism for shipping plutonium has been done."

The MOX plutonium fuel program "is already nine years behind schedule" and the plutonium proposed to be shipped for storage to Savannah River Site is of similar quality to 12 tons of "orphan" plutonium already at the site that is unsuitable for conversion to MOX fuel, Carroll says, cautioning that the plutonium arriving at the site "is likely to add to the stockpile that has defied disposition to date."

"The plutonium 'disposition' program is in disarray," Carroll says, pointing out that MOX is dependent on 30 years of sustained Congressional support and Congress has displayed increasing discomfort with the MOX program, cancelling it completely for several months earlier this year.

Plutonium vitrification, also called immobilization, a process that encases the radioactive material in glass, is supported by Nuclear Watch South and other environmentalists, and the junk "orphan" plutonium is well suited to vitrification, says Carroll.

He notes that DOE's commitment to immobilization is weak.

"We recognize the unique infrastructure of Savannah River Site and abilities of its workforce to perform the mission of plutonium disposition via immobilization," said Carroll. "We oppose shipping the plutonium until DOE has reconciled the conflicts in its internal vision and created a solid plan for plutonium disposition."

The DOE says it has notified Congress and provided a plan for the disposal of the surplus plutonium once it gets to Savannah River, as required under the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2002.

Consolidation of surplus plutonium at Savannah River has been analyzed in a Supplement Analysis and DOE issued an Amended Record of Decision for the Storage and Disposition of Weapons-Usable Fissile Materials Final Programmatic Environmental Impact Statement. To see these documents, click here.

Separately from this consolidation announcement, the Energy Department is preparing a Supplemental Environmental Impact Statement for Surplus Plutonium Disposition at the Savannah River Site to evaluate the potential environmental impacts of alternative methods of disposing of the surplus, non-pit plutonium materials.

Copyright Environment News Service (ENS) 2007. All rights res