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Plutonium Fuel (MOX)
Budgetary Concerns

ANA's Nuclear Reality Check$ report on the Department of Energy budget

Environmental Concerns

The strontium-90 plume of reprocessing waste at Hanford, WA
ANA's 2011 Environmental issues
fact sheet.


 


Mixed Oxide Plutonium Fuel (MOX)
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.

Reprocessing Spent Nuclear Fuel / Global Nuclear Energy Partnership
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.


ANA Director Susan Gordon Testimony
published Tuesday, November 25, 2008  5482 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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MOX Facts
  • The MOX program's $9.7 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

Institute for Energy & Environmental Research's Science for Democratic Action issue on MOX

Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists article on MOX vs. other plutonium disposal methods.

Freedom of Information Act Documents
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)

Reprocessing Resources
Blue Ribbon Commission final report, including recommendations on reprocessing.

ANA comments from the New Mexico scoping hearing for a Supplemental Environmental Impact Statement regarding surplus plutonium disposition.

ANA comments to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission regarding proposed rulemaking on reprocessing


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