Foes Slam Nuclear Waste Plan

November 27th, 2008

by Anne Paine of the Tennessean

A Bush administration project aimed at reprocessing nuclear waste in a global sharing arrangement is bringing opposition that's not always from anti-nuclear advocates as public hearings come to Oak Ridge and Paducah next week.
Both of those locations are potential receiving sites for what could be domestic and foreign waste. In the case of Oak Ridge, at least part of the highly radioactive materials could travel through Nashville.

The Tennessee Valley Authority, the nation's largest public power producer, has been working with the U.S. Department of Energy on the feasibility of the long-controversial practice of re-tooling nuclear waste.
This path - abandoned in years past over concerns about costs and its generation of bomb grade materials - is promoted today as a move toward recycling, removing plutonium from the waste to reuse to create electricity.

"If you 'recycle' plutonium, it doesn't help at all," said Professor Frank von Hippel, of the Program on Science and Global Security at Princeton University.

"You still have huge amounts of plutonium in the spent fuel, and you've created a lot of new waste streams."

Von Hippel, unlike some critics of what's called the Global Nuclear Energy Partnership, is anti-reprocessing but not anti-nuclear. He's coming to Tennessee for the hearing in Oak Ridge and, also, a speaking engagement.

The Government Accountability Office estimated just the construction of a reprocessing plant would cost more than $40 billion, said von Hippel, a former assistant director for national security in the White House Office of Science and Technology.

Most of the nuclear waste at commercial reactors around the country is stored on site. The federal government committed years ago to utilities that it would build a disposal facility and take the waste, but has hit obstacles with the Department of Energy's Yucca Mountain site in Nevada.

Reprocessing is seen as an option, though a disposal site would still be needed.

The global partnership supports research and eventual reprocessing as keys to advancing nuclear power and has issued a "draft programmatic environmental impact statement" that is the subject of the public hearings.

Reprocessing criticized
While more than $179 million has been allocated for the project and studies in the last two years, including about $894,000 for researching Oak Ridge and $664,600 for Paducah, the document deals with the overall possibilities rather than specific sites.

"That's a source of fuel," said Professor H.L. Dodds, head of the University of Tennessee engineering department, who backs GNEP.

Also, high-level nuclear waste would be reduced so Yucca Mountain could take all of it from around the country someday, instead of many sites being needed, he said.

Reprocessing occurs in several countries and has taken place for 60 years in this country for making nuclear weapons, he said.

"Nobody has died or been seriously injured," he said.

Contaminated sites where the work has taken place can easily be cleaned up, he said.

"Now we have new technology that's better and safer," he added.

Touted for its lack of global warming gases, nuclear power would benefit developing nations with growing electricity needs. Other countries, like the U.S., could assist with the waste, according to DOE project information.

The Partnership, which now includes Bulgaria, Jordan, Ghana, Senegal, China and 17 other countries, recognizes the potential proliferation or misuse of nuclear materials as issues that must and can be dealt with.

Von Hippel sees the answer in keeping nuclear waste where it is - at nuclear plants where security is tight - until a disposal site opens.

"We do need a spent fuel policy, someplace to send it," he said. "We have time."

When it comes to reprocessing, however, he said: "If everybody did it, the world would be a much more dangerous place."

Contact Anne Paine at 615-259-8071 or [email protected].