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ANA Director Susan Gordon Testimony
published Tuesday, November 25, 2008  5483 Views :: 2 Comments
Alliance for Nuclear Accountability
Testimony by Susan Gordon
November 20, 2008

Global Nuclear Energy Partnership PEIS

The Alliance for Nuclear Accountability (ANA) is a network of more than 36 local, regional and national organizations representing the concerns of communities in the shadows of the U.S. nuclear weapons sites and radioactive waste dumps. Many of our member organizations are in areas targeted for reprocessing facilities and are gravely concerned that their communities will become nuclear waste dumps just like West Valley, New York, Pocatello, Idaho, Richland, Washington, and Aiken, South Carolina.

ANA objects to the Global Nuclear Energy Partnership (GNEP) draft Programmatic Environmental Impact Statement’s (PEIS) support for reprocessing of high-level radioactive waste. As stated in the draft PEIS, GNEP intends to provide nuclear power that is safe, secure and economical while “reducing the impacts associated with spent nuclear fuel disposal and reducing proliferation risks.” ANA, however, finds that the GNEP proposal would actually exacerbate the inherent proliferation, cost, safety, waste, and security risks associated with nuclear power.

The Global Nuclear Energy Partnership is a Bush Administration scheme to revive the dangerous practice of reprocessing irradiated nuclear fuel. GNEP would endanger the environment, encourage nuclear bomb-making, squander U.S. taxpayer dollars, and deepen the nuclear waste problem. Under the GNEP plan, some countries would supply and fuel nuclear reactors for other, as yet-unnamed countries that would agree to forgo uranium enrichment and plutonium reprocessing. Once the fuel rods were irradiated, they would be sent back to the suppliers for eventual reprocessing.

Reprocessing is the fundamental link between a nuclear reactor and a plutonium bomb. Irradiated, or “spent,” fuel is separated into its constituent ingredients, usually using acid. One of the ingredients, plutonium, can be used to make new reactor fuel — or nuclear bombs. Separated plutonium encourages nuclear weapons proliferation.

This would perpetuate a system of nuclear-have countries and nuclear-have-not countries. This approach clearly has failed US foreign policy and has not served to stop countries from attempting to obtain nuclear weapons or technology to enable the development of nuclear weapons.

The draft PEIS diminishes many of these risks by minimizing environmental impacts of reprocessing; and by not providing a full proliferation risk or life cycle cost analysis for GNEP.

Furthermore, it overstates the need for reprocessing by exaggerating projections of increased U.S. nuclear power production capacity in the future. Finally, the no action alternative supports funding for the Advanced Fuel Cycle Initiative, which conducts research for reprocessing. Instead of the preferred or no action alternatives, the final PEIS should support the establishment of hardened on-site storage (HOSS) of nuclear waste.

Waste Volumes

DOE’s contention that GNEP will reduce waste volumes does not take into account the environmental discharges from reprocessing facilities.

The history of reprocessing in the US and abroad has demonstrated that these facilities have a catastrophic effect on the environment. The reprocessing facility in West Valley, New York, which was the site of the only US commercial reprocessing plant that operated for six years, accumulated 600,000 gallons of high-level waste onsite.

The tanks used to store this liquid high-level waste must be cooled or the waste will explode. In 1957, one such tank exploded in Russia, contaminating 6,000 square miles. Liquid high-level waste from Cold War reprocessing present the greatest contamination threat and cleanup challenge in the U.S. nuclear weapons complex. At Hanford, Washington; Savannah River Site, South Carolina; and the Idaho National Laboratory, millions of gallons of liquid waste sit in aging “tank farms,” all of which have leaked, threatening crucial water resources.

Since it went on line, the French reprocessing facility at La Hague has discharged 100 million gallons of radioactive liquid wastes annually into the English Channel and continues to blow gaseous forms of krypton-85 and carbon-14 downwind. In the United Kingdom, the Sellafield reprocessing facility has discharged 1,000 pounds of plutonium into the Irish Sea.

The draft PEIS must address how DOE will handle waste streams that include, but are not limited to, strontium, cesium, radioactive lanthanides, technetium, uranium, and krypton gas.

No Proliferation Analysis

Despite that one of GNEP’s fundamental stated purposes is to reduce proliferation risks, no analysis of GNEP's proliferation impacts is provided. Instead, the National Nuclear Security Administration plans to release a separate nonproliferation assessment at a later date. This is unacceptable. Due to the dramatic shift in U.S. policy, concerns by many independent experts, and the fundamental rationale for GNEP, the PEIS must include a proliferation impact analysis. The analysis should also include a risk assessment that addresses the potential for loss of nuclear material or diversion by terrorists. In order for us to fully analyze GNEP, all aspects of the program should be consider in total, not as separate unrelated components.

No Life Cycle Cost Analysis

This draft PEIS does not include a life-cycle cost estimate for GNEP. However, in 1996 the National Academy of Sciences issued a report estimating that a reprocessing project like GNEP could cost more than $500 (1996 dollars) billion. Additionally, the Congressional Budget Office has stated that "Reprocessing of U.S. spent fuel would cost 25 percent more than plans for direct disposal" in a permanent repository. Under the current plan for GNEP, the tax-payer and rate-payers, not the nuclear power industry, would bear this cost. The Department of Energy must provide a full cost analysis for GNEP and its impacts on both rate-payers and tax-payers.

In accordance with the Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1982, nuclear waste would eventually be stored in a geologic repository. However, disposal in a geologic repository is not the only option available for managing nuclear waste, and other means – like waste storage in dry casks - need to be examined in this report. ANA supports the Principles for Safeguarding Nuclear Waste at Reactors. These principles, which are supported by more than 100 national organizations and local communities near reactors, would store reactor waste in reinforced dry casks as near as possible to the sources of generation. As a result, the waste can be managed for 100 to 200 years while some of the most radioactive elements, such as cesium-137 and strontium-90, decay away, making the waste less dangerous to handle.

This document is incomplete and should never have been released. The goals and plans for GNEP have shifted repeatedly since it was first proposed. This is a symptom of a program that is trying to justify itself. The Bush Administration is trying to push its “nuclear renaissance” during its last few days in office. Nuclear power and reprocessing are not the solution to climate change and will only serve to divert money into the pockets of the nuclear industry. It is time for this proposal to be withdrawn.

I would like to add our name to the list of organizations requesting an extension on the comment period.

Thank you.


 



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