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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.


Heart of America Northwest Press Release
published Monday, December 01, 2008  7763 Views :: 1 Comments

Federal Plan to Double Nuclear Power Relies on Dumping

More Highly Radioactive Waste at Hanford

Energy Department Hearings This Week Exclude Seattle, Portland and Spokane – only NW hearings to be in Tri-Cities (Monday) and Hood River (Tuesday)

Increase in trucking radioactive wastes would lead to as many as 800 fatal cancers in public along truck routes – including Portland or Spokane – according to Energy Department’s own environmental impact statement

Hanford Clean-Up watchdogs urge Obama Administration to launch a national dialogue about a clean energy future that fights global warming and prioritizes clean up of existing radioactive and toxic contamination before making more


For Information: Gerry Pollet JD, Executive Director For Release: Monday Nov. 17, 2008

(206)382-1014 / cell: 206-819-9015


The Bush Administration and federal Energy Department (USDOE) will hold two hearings in the Northwest this week on their proposed plan to double nuclear power in the nation. The Hanford Cleanup watchdog group Heart of America Northwest says that the plan, detailed in an environmental impact statement, relies on burying vast amounts of radioactive wastes in near surface landfills at Hanford and making more of the same liquid High-Level Nuclear Wastes which the Energy Department has been unable to treat and solidify at Hanford.

Hearings on the environmental impact statement for the Administration’s “Global Nuclear Energy Partnership” plan (GNEP) will be held only in Pasco, WA (Monday evening) and Hood River, Oregon on Tuesday evening, despite repeated requests for hearings in Portland, Seattle and Spokane. (Hood River hearing is at the Best Western Marina hotel right off I-84 at 7 PM, with a pre-hearing citizens’ workshop held by Heart of America Northwest and Columbia Riverkeeper at 6:15).


“Our nation needs a clean energy plan to fight global warming, not a scheme to create more nuclear waste to be buried at Hanford and threaten the Columbia River,” said Gerry Pollet, Director of the region’s leading Hanford Clean-Up watchdog group, Heart of America Northwest. “It’s not clean energy if it contaminates our water and kills hundreds when the waste is trucked around the nation.”


The plan to double nuclear power in the US relies on “reprocessing” the highly radioactive fuel rods removed from commercial reactors to chemically extract some of the Plutonium and Uranium from them for reuse in new types of reactors, which have yet to be demonstrated. The Energy Department and industry have renamed this “recycling” and “closing the fuel cycle.” However, this is the same basic process which created the 53 million gallons of deadly liquid High-Level Nuclear Waste sitting in tanks at Hanford, for which there is no treatment plant. Over a million gallons of those wastes have leaked from older Single-Shell Tanks and the contamination is spreading more rapidly towards the Columbia River than the Energy Department had claimed was possible.
 

Under GNEP, instead of the fuel rods being sent to a deep underground geologic repository, such as the stalled effort at Yucca Mt., Nevada, the fuel rods would be melted in acids to have Plutonium and Uranium extracted – leaving highly radioactive chemical hazardous liquid wastes. These wastes would then be buried in shallow landfills after being turned to solids.

USDOE admits that trucking these highly radioactive wastes will cause as many as 816 fatal cancers in the public exposed to the radiation from the trucks along the routes for reprocessing and burial – even if there are no accidents or terrorist attacks (EIS Table S.4-10, page S-52).


The Energy Department has stated in other decision documents that it has already chosen Hanford to be its national disposal site for mixed radioactive and hazardous chemical wastes; and, one of two national burial grounds for radioactive wastes that it refers to as “low-level” even though they may be as radioactive as, or more radioactive than, High-Level Nuclear Waste.


“The Bush Administration and USDOE are improperly trying to hide the impacts to Hanford, the Columbia River and the Northwest, from their scheme for reprocessing nuclear waste,” says environmental attorney and Heart of America Northwest Director Gerry Pollet. The law requiring an environmental impact statement (the National Environmental Policy Act, NEPA) also requires that other decisions to dispose of USDOE’s wastes have to be disclosed along with the impacts of those related decisions. The USDOE’s GNEP impact statement says it only analyzes generic locations – even though USDOE has separately issued a decision to bury such wastes at Hanford. “This is an effort to ‘piecemeal’ the consideration of the environmental impacts in order to avoid public comment.”


USDOE also proposes to use Hanford’s unlined and leaking commercial “Low-Level Radioactive Waste” landfill for waste from reprocessing facilities around the nation, if commercial disposal is used. Currently, that landfill – operated under lease from the State of Washington – is limited to waste from the Northwest and Rocky Mountain States. The EIS discusses asking Congress to remove that restriction and changing the license for the site. The other two commercial radioactive waste disposal sites are either closing or can not accept the more radioactive wastes that would be generated from reprocessing.


Heart of America Northwest is calling on the in-coming Obama Administration to halt the nuclear reprocessing program and have a national dialogue on a clean energy program to fight global warming, along with a firm commitment to fund the cleanup of nuclear waste and not use Hanford as a national radioactive chemical waste dump.


Columbia Riverkeeper and Heart of America Northwest are offering a biodiesel bus from Portland to the Hood River hearing on Tuesday evening:


Travel to GNEP Hearing in Hood River on our Biodiesel Bus – We’ll give you an issue update and Feed You on the Way
When: Meet at 5:00 pm/Bus will leave at 5:15 pm/Arrive in Hood River around 6:30 pm/Depart Hood River at 9 pm/Arrive in Portland around 10:00 pm

RSVP: Sasha Cornellier(Heart of America) (206) 382-1014 sasha@hoanw.org or Lauren Goldberg with Columbia Riverkeeper lauren@columbiariverkeeper.org

###


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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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