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Budgetary Concerns |
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Environmental Concerns |
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The strontium-90 plume of reprocessing waste at Hanford, WA
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Nuclear Power Experts |
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Mixed Oxide Plutonium Fuel (MOX) |
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Mixed Oxide Plutonium Fuel (MOX) is composed of uranium dioxide and plutonium dioxide powders which are mixed inside of fuel pellets. Because plutonium releases more radioactivity than uranium, this mixed fuel is more difficult to control inside of reactors and requires more safeguards than traditional uranium reactor fuel. In 2008 MOX fuel rods being tested by Duke Energy started warping and Duke withdrew from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s testing agreement.
The additional risks posed by MOX plutonium fuel, along with renewed global skepticism about nuclear power in the wake of the Fukushima disaster, have resulted in the world-wide decline of the MOX industry. Japan has cancelled all of its orders for MOX plutonium fuel and the UK has recently closed its MOX plant in Sellafield due to a lack of customers. With no willing customers, the Department of Energy is pressuring the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) to use MOX plutonium fuel. Some of the reactors that TVA is considering for MOX have the same Mark I exploding design that failed in Fukushima.
The US MOX program results from the 1998 Agreement on the Management and Disposition of Plutonium with Russia. This agreement designates 54 metric tons of surplus weapons grade plutonium for “immobilization” through irradiation as MOX fuel. Most of this plutonium comes from dismantled warheads. Although MOX is funded as a nonproliferation program, it actually increases proliferation risks in two ways: - By transporting dangerous plutonium oxide powder from Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico where the US is currently processing its weapons plutonium to the Savannah River Site in South Carolina where MOX fuel assemblies will be manufactured.
- Encouraging commercial markets for plutonium as reactor fuel.
Today, the Russians have changed their minds about what they will do with their MOX fuel and plan to use it in “breeder reactors” which actually generate more plutonium – hardly a nonproliferation advance. Adding salt to this wounded program is its cost; ballooning from an original estimate of $1.6 billion to $9.7 billion today.
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Reprocessing Spent Nuclear Fuel / Global Nuclear Energy Partnership |
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What is Reprocessing?
Reprocessing refers to the chemical separation of fissionable uranium and plutonium from irradiated nuclear fuel. The World War II-era Manhattan Project developed reprocessing technology in the effort to build the first atomic bomb. With the development of commercial nuclear power after the war, reprocessing was considered necessary because of a perceived scarcity of uranium. Breeder reactor technology, which transmutes non-fissionable uranium into fissionable plutonium and thus produces more fuel than consumed, was envisioned as a promising solution to extending the nuclear fuel supply. Commercial reprocessing attempts, however, encountered technical, economic, and regulatory problems. In response to concern that reprocessing contributed to the proliferation of nuclear weapons, President Carter terminated federal support for commercial reprocessing. Reprocessing for defense purposes continued, however, until the Soviet Union’s collapse brought an end to the Cold War and the production of nuclear weapons. The Department of Energy’s latest initiative to promote new reactor technology using “proliferation-resistant” reprocessed fuel raises significant funding and policy issues for Congress.
Source: "Nuclear Fuel Reprocessing: U.S. Policy Development," Congressional Research Service Report for Congress, 2008.
What is wrong with GNEP? (Click on each to learn more)
-Reprocessing is exorbitantly costly
-Reprocessing generates toxic waste and does nothing to solve the problem of nuclear waste
-Reprocessing undermines nuclear nonproliferation efforts
What can you Do?
In accordance with the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), the Department of Energy (DOE) has drafted a Programmatic Environmental Impact Statement and is in the middle of a comment period in which you can tell DOE what you think about their plan. You do not have to be an expert. You just need to care about the future of your community and country. Check back on this page to see information on upcoming hearings in or near your community.
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| | | published Sunday, November 13, 2011 | 782 Views :: 0 Comments | |  |
| Nov 13, 2011 From the Albuquerque Journal
LOS ALAMOS – From the fourth floor of the newest building on Los Alamos National Laboratory’s plutonium row, geophysicist Terry Wallace can see the Pajarito Fault three miles away.
The fault’s forested stair step, created in a series of earthquakes over the past million years, defines the base of the mountains rising to the west. It has also come to play a defining role in discussions of the major buildings along Pajarito Road, home to the lab’s main nuclear facilities. To the north, the lab’s Plutonium Facility is in the midst of a major retrofit because of concerns about earthquake safety. The work will not be done until 2020.
Up the road, lab officials are struggling to move out as quickly as they can from the Chemistry and Metallurgy Research Building, an old nuclear lab not designed to modern earthquake standards. Below Wallace’s vantage point is the site of what lab officials hope will become, in the next decade, a major new plutonium lab.
Questions about earthquake safety surround all of the projects.
Driven by a desire to harden the new plutonium building against a worst-case future quake, federal and lab officials have been pouring money during the past decade into a design they hope will ensure against such a quake, the type they believe could occur every few thousand years in northern New Mexico. “We have a responsibility on this site to make sure we don’t increase the risk to the public in any way as a result of the failure of a nuclear facility,” Wallace said.
The result in the case of the new building is a massive steel-and-concrete design with internal fixtures, such as fire-control systems, designed to withstand a magnitude-7.3 earthquake on the nearby Pajarito Fault and keep working. The building standards are based on the Department of Energy facility codes that require the building to contain all the nuclear material inside it during the worst-case earthquake, preventing a leak that might threaten the public.
The resulting design could leave the new plutonium building intact in a worst-case earthquake while many of the rest of the buildings on the plateau – office buildings, stores and homes – are not, said University of New Mexico geologist John Geissman. “Everything else could be crumbled to smithereens,” Geissman said.
In the process, the design for the new plutonium lab has driven the cost of the project so high – as much as $5.7 billion – that there are now questions about whether the government can afford to build it. Meanwhile, project officials are under attack from critics who say they are not making it safe enough.
Questions about all those earthquake safety efforts will get a public airing Thursday in Santa Fe before the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board, created by Congress to provide independent oversight of the safety of U.S. nuclear weapons operations. “Our No. 1 goal is to ensure these (lab buildings) are adequately protective of the public and workers,” board chairman Peter Winokur said in an interview.
Los Alamos, the nation’s primary center for working with dangerously radioactive plutonium used in nuclear weapons, is spread across a series of finger mesas west of Santa Fe, jutting out of the Jemez Mountains toward the Rio Grande.
Like much of New Mexico, it is a landscape shaped by earthquakes as Earth’s crust pulls apart. The Rio Grande flows down the valley that results, and the mountains that flank the valley east and west are a product of the geologic forces involved.
On the plateau that houses Los Alamos, great slabs of rock slip slowly downward as the rift pulls away. Geologists have measured several hundred feet of movement on the Pajarito Fault in the past million years, said Wallace, the lab’s associate director for science.
A decade ago, earthquake risk at Los Alamos seemed like less of a problem. A 1999 lab report estimated the last major quake on the Pajarito Fault happened 45,000 years ago. But in the years since, new data collected by lab researchers shows that was wrong. Between 1,400 and 2,000 years ago, the Pajarito saw a quake that could have been as large as magnitude 7 – the strength of the 2010 earthquake in Haiti. The nearby Rendija Canyon and Guaje Mountain faults saw quakes that could have been as large as magnitude 6.5 in the last 10,000 years.
In response to those discoveries, the lab has undergone a major shift in how it thinks about earthquake safety. Current designs for the new plutonium laboratory, known as the Chemistry and Metallurgy Research Replacement-Nuclear Facility, assume a “maximum credible earthquake” of magnitude 7.3. Building a plutonium laboratory capable of withstanding that earthquake not only standing, but with fire protection and other safety systems intact, is now estimated to cost $3.7 billion to $5.7 billion.
Retrofitting the 1970s-era Plutonium Facility to handle stronger earthquakes could cost tens of millions of dollars, and federal officials have decided that retrofitting the even older Chemistry and Metallurgy Research Building to meet earthquake standards simply can’t be done.
But even as that additional spending has drawn questions from Congress about cost, lab critics question whether magnitude 7.3 is enough. Independent geologist Robert Gilkeson, working with the Santa Fe group Concerned Citizens for Nuclear Safety, argues that quakes rupturing multiple faults in the area at roughly the same time could unleash a magnitude-8.0 earthquake, and the design needs to take that risk into account. Gilkeson also argues there is substantial uncertainty in the lab’s knowledge of area earthquake history, which urges caution.
Gilkeson’s group believes a worse-case scenario could result in a major plutonium release.
Gilkeson’s argument played a significant role in environmental hearings on the new plutonium lab this summer, with citizens opposed to the project citing it repeatedly.
Other independent analysts side with the lab’s lower number for the maximum credible earthquake. The U.S. Geological Survey’s earthquake risk mapping program concluded that earthquakes of magnitude 7.0 are possible but extremely rare in this region of northern New Mexico, while the risk of an 8.0 is essentially zero.
Geissman said an 8.0 earthquake would be inconsistent with everything geologists know about earthquakes on fault systems in New Mexico.
The Safety Board – which has a reputation of being a frequent thorn in the lab’s side on nuclear safety issues – in a report to Congress said it agreed with the lab’s earthquake risk analysis. |
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MOX Facts |
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- The MOX program's $12 billion+ cost puts real nonproliferation programs at risk.
- There are no US customers for MOX plutonium fuel - it's a project with no purpose.
- Russia isn't holding up its end of the bargain, their program will create more plutonium.
Ploughshares Fund fact sheet on cutting MOX out of the budget.
Issue brief on MOX from Friends of the Earth.
Letter to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission regarding MOX fuel testing
Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists article on MOX vs. other plutonium disposal methods. |
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Freedom of Information Act Documents |
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Response from the National Nuclear Security Administration regarding ANA's FOIA request for the Feb. 15, 2012 Congressionally mandated report on the MOX program.
Impact Study on the use of MOX fuel at Browns Ferry and Sequoyah nuclear power plants
Summary of 2009 TVA meeting: discussing MOX in Tennessee Valley Authority (AL) and Energy Northwest (WA) reactors.
MOX FOIA dump #1:
- Report No. EN-MOX-002, Oct. 2009
- MOX Loading Procedures in Europe, Energy Northwest Comments
- Major Steps during FUel Receipt
- Energy Northwest MOX Summary, Aug. 2009
- MOX Fuel Board Presentation, Jun. 2009
- Report No. EN-MOX-001, May 2009
- MOX Fuel Long term & Near Term Focus Presentation, May 2009
- MOX Status Presentation, April 2009
- Memorandum of Understanding between the Tennessee Valley Authority and Energy Northwest for Advanced Fuel Cycle Demonstration, Mar. 2009
MOX FOIA dump #2:
- Energy Northwest Request for Public Records Form including delegation letter from JL Lewis to S Gambhir (2pgs)
- Energy Northwest Public Records Request Act Privilege Log Request Control Number (8pgs)
- 31 emails dating from April 2009-January 2010 (86pgs)
- "Request for Proposal in Support of Paragon Fuels Response to DOE RFP DE-RP02-98CH10888 for Mixed Oxide (MOX) Fuel Fabrication and Reactor Irradiation Services" letter from JW Baker to Kathleen A. Wehlan. (29pgs)
- "Questions for BPA" (4pgs)
- "The Use of MOX Fuel" (3pgs)
- MOX Fuel OVerview Presentation (7pgs)
- Draft Results from FY11-20 Strategic Planning Session (8pgs)
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