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| | | published Monday, April 25, 2011 | 2753 Views :: 0 Comments | |  |
April 22, 2011
MEDIA ADVISORY:
Contact Glenn Carroll, Nuclear Watch South, 404-378-4263
Atlanta, GA: The federal register today published an opportunity for public hearing about proposed changes at the MOX plutonium fuel factory already under construction at Savannah River Site. Shaw Areva MOX Services (SHAMS) has filed a request to redesign the factory for which construction authorization was given in 2005 by the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission. Construction began in 2007 and is supposedly 40% complete despite its unfinished design and unlicensed operation.
Plutonium disposition watchers see SHAMS request to redesign the mammoth project as a desperate attempt to salvage a beleaguered U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) program that was recently spotlighted by Union of Concerned Scientists as "The Factory to Nowhere." Nuclear Watch South and others have a legal intervention before the NRC where the groups’ legal challenges to the adequacy of SHAMS’ plutonium accounting program were recently accepted for a public hearing.
The troubled MOX plutonium fuel program is over 10 years behind schedule and costs have ballooned from $1 billion to $5 billion. The program proposed to convert up to 50 metric tons of excess U.S. weapons plutonium into reactor fuel as a so-called safeguards method was delivered a game-changing setback with the failure of MOX plutonium fuel tests in Duke Power reactors in 2008 and the subsequent withdrawal of Duke from the controversial MOX program.
DOE is heavily courting Tennessee Valley Authority to undergo lengthy licensing and testing for loading MOX into the antiquated Browns Ferry reactors on the Tennessee River in Alabama. The Browns Ferry reactors are of the unfortunate design which exploded at Fukushima where one of the exploding reactors included MOX in its core. Plutonium fuel melts at lower temperatures than the uranium fuel conventionally used in reactors.
Glenn Carroll, coordinator of Nuclear Watch South says, "The MOX program's best prospect for a customer is a captive federal agency and aging Fukushima-style reactors. This project is at best a dead-end for safeguarding plutonium and at worst a potential deadly threat to public health. Congress should free taxpayers from this huge and pointless tax burden."
Environmentalists including Nuclear Watch South still advocate for dispositioning the weapons-grade plutonium, especially tons of plutonium already stored in the defunct K reactor at SRS, in the high-level liquid waste from its original manufacture which is still stored in underground tanks at SRS.
"All the hot fission products the MOX plutonium program seeks to produce in a risky reactor project are right there threatening to leak from the ancient tanks," says Ms. Carroll. "Plutonium can be safeguarded using the waste and the glassification factory on site. It's win-win for everybody. It's time to get on with it."
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Links:
FEDERAL REGISTER 4/22/11:
http://www.nonukesyall.org/pdfs/MOX_FR_4.22.11.pdf
Letter from Shaw AREVA MOX Services to NRC:
http://www.nonukesyall.org/pdfs/MOX_CARamend.pdf
DOE Interim Action Determination:
http://www.nonukesyall.org/pdfs/EIS-0283-S2_InterimActionDeterminationMFFF_04_11.pdf
Union of Concerned Scientists:
http://allthingsnuclear.org/post/3332906391/its-time-to-pull-the-plug-on-the-mox-factory-to |
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