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Waste & Environmental Cleanup
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CNN interviews residents of Shell Bluff, GA about the lack of monitoring in their community which hosts a nuclear power station and is across the Savannah River from a radioactive superfund site.

Cleanup Sites
Click here to view the Department of Energy's list of Environmental Management sites by state
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Past and Present

The Department of Energy (DOE) has produced radioactive materials for nuclear bombs; designed, built, and tested nuclear weapons; and developed reactor and other technologies with little concern for the environmental harm those activities cause. The inevitable result is that all DOE sites are polluted. Nevertheless, DOE remains far more interested in protecting its pollution-causing activities than in correcting the harm they have already done.



DOE is not meeting its legal and ethical responsibility to clean up the legacy of more than 60 years of radioactive and toxic contamination. Instead, DOE is promoting nuclear activities that will create additional pollution and threaten the health of future generations. Currently, water near some DOE facilities, such as Paducah, KY, and Pantex, TX, remains unfit to drink. Some of the nation’s major water sources, including the Columbia River, Snake River Aquifer, and Ogallala Aquifer, are threatened.


After declaring the Yucca Mountain project dead, the Obama Administration called for a "Blue Ribbon Commission on America's Nuclear Future" to determine what should be done with US high level nuclear waste. The Blue Ribbon Commission has issued its draft report. A final report will be issued in January

Peace alliance analyzes Y-12's future
published Wednesday, November 04, 2009  3820 Views :: 11 Comments
Peace alliance analyzes Y-12's future

The Oak Ridge Environmental Peace Alliance today released a "white
paper" that analyzes the missions at the Y-12 nuclear weapons plant and
proposes that the Oak Ridge plant refocus its efforts entirely on
dismantlement.

"Changes in U.S. policy, concern over nuclear proliferation, and global
realities have created an environment in which the power of arguments
for a new production facility has eroded significantly," the report,
titled The Future of Y-12, says.

The report said that the U.S. nuclear stockpile will be coming down
dramatically over the next couple of decades, and there will be little
reason for an expensive new production facility -- the proposed Uranium
Processing Facility -- to meet needs for refurbished warheads. That
money could be better used to focus exclusively on taking apart
warheads, the report said.

"What makes sense is not spending $3.5 billion on a new bomb production
plant, but investing in a new state-of-the art single-purpose facility
dedicated to dismantlement and disposition of retired warhead assemblies
and materials," Ralph Hutchison, coordinator of the peace alliance and
lead author of the report, said in a statement released to the news media.

"The bottom line is the limited production activities necessary for the
Life Extension Program will be completed by the time a new Uranium
Processing Facility would come on line, and surveillance activities
necessary to assure a safe and secure stockpile while we move to zero
can be conducted in a consolidated, down-sized, upgraded facility in an
existing building, and we would save billions," Hutchison said.

Posted by Frank Munger on November 3, 2009 at 7:24 PM

The 9-page report is online at:
http://blogs.knoxnews.com/munger/y12orepa.pdf
Resources

Public Comments


ANA's statement to the Blue Ribbon Commission at their Denver meeting in September 2011


ANA's comment on the April 2011 Department of Energy Greater than Class C Waste Draft Environmental Impact Statement.


FACT SHEETS

2011 ANA fact sheet on Nuclear reactors and Waste


Greater Than Class C Waste Fact Sheet from the Snake River Alliance


Department of Energy
Environmental Cleanup:�
Underfunded and Inadequate  2007


Yucca Mountain:
Not the Solution to Nuclear Waste  2007


Spent Fuel Reprocessing and the Global Nuclear Energy Partnership


ANA Water Report: 


DANGER LURKS BELOW
The Threat to Major Water Supplies from US Department of Energy Nuclear Weapons Plants


GTCC Resources
The Department of Energy is seeking comments to determine the scope of the planned Environmental Impact Statement dealing with the "Disposal of Greater-Than-Class-C (GTCC) Low-Level Radioactive Waste." 

Watch this space and this page for resources helpful in composing your own comments.


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