Legislation to cut $100 billion from a “bloated” U.S. nuclear weapons budget over the next decade includes a provision to halt further funding for the National Nuclear Security Administration’s $4.8 billion mixed oxide fuel plant under construction at Savannah River Site.

The Smarter Approach to Nuclear Expenditures (SANE) Act of 2012, introduced Wednesday by U.S. Rep. Ed Markey, D-Mass., and about 30 co-sponsors, also would cut the current nuclear submarine fleet, reduce the nation’s ICBM missile inventory, delay construction of new nuclear-capable bombers and end current nuclear strike bomber missions.

for immediate release: Thursday, January 26, 2012

for further information, contact:

Bob Schaeffer: 239-395-6773

Katherine Fuchs: 202-544-0217, ext. 2503

local contacts listed at end of advisory

The Blue Ribbon Commission on America’s Nuclear Future report released today received mixed reviews from groups that monitor sites where large quantities of radioactive waste are stored. The Alliance for Nuclear Accountability (ANA) said major flaws in the report include the Commission’s “failure to advocate prompt removal of commercial spent fuel from reactor cooling pools with placement in hardened On-Site Storage (HOSS) to safeguard commercial spent fuel at nuclear power plants.” ANA and hundreds of community groups had told the Commission that HOSS could protect the heavily reactive material for the decades needed to develop a scientifically sound and publicly acceptable waste disposal program.

31 JANUARY 2012 

Article Highlights:

January 22, 2012

By Rob Pavey
From the Augusta Chronicle

The government’s $4.8 billion quest to rid itself of tons of high-grade plutonium from old nuclear bombs is veering in new directions this year.

The broad plan is to build a mammoth mixed oxide, or “MOX” plant at Savannah River Site, where the material will be rendered forever unusable in weapons by blending it into commercial nuclear reactor fuel.

For Immediate Release: January 12, 2012

Contact:  Tom Clements, Columbia, SC, 803-834-3084

KatherineFuchs, Washington, 202-544-0217

 

Washington, DC – Under growingbudgetary stress, the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) announced that it is amendinga troubled program to dispose of surplus weapons plutonium[i].  DOE aims to eliminate a costly new facility fordisassembling plutonium cores (pits) from nuclear bombs and is considering processingthe pits in existing facilities at the Savannah River Site (SRS) in SouthCarolina and the Los Alamos National Lab in New Mexico. 

Facing a host of hurdles, DOE aims to turn the separated plutonium into controversial new mixed uranium-plutonium oxide fuel (MOX) for use in unnamed nuclear power reactors.  Today’s notice reveals that DOE is widening its search for utilities willing to accept MOX and states that they “will analyze use of MOX fuel in a generic reactor in the United States to provide analysis for any additional future potential utility customers.”  

The following article discusses the MOX plutonium fuel program, which ANA opposes. Touching on several of the problems with the program, the Reporter quotes two ANA members, Tom Clements and Jay Coghlan.

Nov. 16, 2011

By Wren Abbott
From the Santa Fe Reporter

Los Alamos National Laboratory is doubling down on a project that helps create a controversial, highly reactive new fuel used in nuclear power plants. Beginning next year, LANL will create twice as much plutonium oxide, an essential component of mixed oxide, or MOX, fuel, which combines uranium and plutonium. 

MOX fuel is believed to have amplified the effects of the recent nuclear disaster in Fukushima, Japan.