Reusing Commercial Nuclear Fuel Debated
By Annette Cary, Herald staff writer
Speakers were split on whether the nation needs to get a faster jump on reusing spent commercial nuclear fuel or drop plans to reprocess it during comments at a public hearing Monday evening in Pasco.
About 120 people came to the hearing on a new draft environmental study for the Global Nuclear Energy Partnership, or GNEP, that considered whether fuel should be used more than the one time now allowed in the United States.
The draft study favored reprocessing fuel to use multiple times, but did not pick a preferred way of doing that.
It also did not look at specific sites for reprocessing fuel, as expected when 300 people attended a meeting on GNEP in Pasco last spring and Tri-City residents promoted a new production mission for Hanford.
Any plans for specific facilities and their sites would be covered in possible future studies.
Hanford still would be an ideal site for reprocessing used commercial reactor fuel for reuse, said several speakers at Monday's hearing.
The Tri-City Development Council has consistently said cleanup of the Hanford nuclear reservation is its top priority, said Gary Petersen, TRIDEC vice president of Hanford programs. But reprocessing fuel could not only be good for economic development, but also help clean up Hanford by recycling the spent fuel sitting at Energy Northwest, he said.
"Our community has familiarity and respect for nuclear," he said. It also has unused facilities at Hanford, such as the Fast Flux Test Facility complex, and a skilled work force, he said.
But Tom Carpenter of Hanford Challenge said there's an irony to discussing bringing possible nuclear reprocessing facilities to Hanford. The site already has 53 million gallons of high level waste stored in underground tanks, all of them past their design life and many of them known to have previously leaked.
"Forty-five years of reprocessing created one of the most contaminated sites in the Western Hemisphere," he said. During World War II and the Cold War, irradiated fuel was processed to remove plutonium for the nation's nuclear weapons program.
Although the Department of Energy is building a vitrification plant to turn tank waste into a stable glass form for disposal, there's concern among some engineers and scientists that the plant won't work, he said. Reprocessing commercial fuel also would create some liquid nuclear waste, but DOE has said it will deal with the waste immediately, possibly through vitrification.
The nation would do better to focus on cleanup and conservation, Carpenter said. Much work on solar and wind power could be done in Eastern Washington with a far quicker payoff than developing proposed plans for nuclear fuel reprocessing, he said.
"People don't seem to understand the difference between civil nuclear power and the Department of Defense," said Chris Orton, a third-generation Hanford worker, who said he represented the up and coming engineers and scientists.
Work has been done to correct problems in the past, he said. Now the nation has to move more quickly to start reprocessing commercial fuel, he said.
Robert Beach, who said he's spent 50 years in the nuclear field, said the United States should follow the lead of other countries and start reprocessing now rather than developing more "exotic" reprocessing methods because of proliferation concerns.
Another speaker, retired nuclear engineer Richard Smith, said it appeared that any reprocessing plans outlined in the draft study would require at least 20 years work before they were operating.
"We are in an energy crisis of epic proportions," said Claude Oliver, Benton County commissioner. Dependence on foreign oil only will be broken if the nation develops production of an alternative such as nuclear, he said.
Nuclear power only is sustainable if nuclear fuel is reused, said Carl Holder of Pasco, who described himself as a nuclear advocate.
Members of Veterans for Peace from Corvallis and Eugene spoke against the use of nuclear power because the production of fuel creates depleted uranium, which then may be used for munitions.
But one topic that some on both sides of the reprocessing debate could agree on was that the draft study, an environmental impact statement, needed to look at the costs of reprocessing.
"Conceptually I support the closed nuclear fuel cycle," said Smith, the retired nuclear engineer. But the Department of Energy needs to compare the costs per kilowatt-hour of producing nuclear energy with reprocessed fuel with the costs of producing energy by other means, he said.
DOE has said that reusing nuclear fuel as proposed could help support the expansion of nuclear energy production, which now supplies 19 percent of the nation's electricity, while reducing the risks of nuclear proliferation and the impacts of disposing of nuclear fuel in geologic repositories.
Yucca Mountain has yet to open as the nation's repository for disposing of used commercial nuclear fuel, but the nation will have enough spent nuclear fuel to fill it to its legal capacity by 2010, according to DOE. Reprocessing fuel could reduce the volume, heat and radiotoxicity of high level radioactive waste, it said.
Another public hearing on the draft study is at 7 p.m. today at the Hood River Inn, Hood River, Oregon. Just two hearings are planned in the Northwest.
The draft study is posted at www.gnep. energy.gov. Public comment will be accepted until Dec. 16. Comments can be left at www.regulations.gov or mailed to Francis Schwartz, GNEP PEIS Document Manager, Office of Nuclear Energy NE-5, DOE, 1000 Independence Ave. S.W., Washington, DC 20585.
w Annette Cary: 582-1533; [email protected]
www.tri-cityherald.com/kennewick_pasco_richland/story/387790.html
Speakers were split on whether the nation needs to get a faster jump on reusing spent commercial nuclear fuel or drop plans to reprocess it during comments at a public hearing Monday evening in Pasco.
About 120 people came to the hearing on a new draft environmental study for the Global Nuclear Energy Partnership, or GNEP, that considered whether fuel should be used more than the one time now allowed in the United States.
The draft study favored reprocessing fuel to use multiple times, but did not pick a preferred way of doing that.
It also did not look at specific sites for reprocessing fuel, as expected when 300 people attended a meeting on GNEP in Pasco last spring and Tri-City residents promoted a new production mission for Hanford.
Any plans for specific facilities and their sites would be covered in possible future studies.
Hanford still would be an ideal site for reprocessing used commercial reactor fuel for reuse, said several speakers at Monday's hearing.
The Tri-City Development Council has consistently said cleanup of the Hanford nuclear reservation is its top priority, said Gary Petersen, TRIDEC vice president of Hanford programs. But reprocessing fuel could not only be good for economic development, but also help clean up Hanford by recycling the spent fuel sitting at Energy Northwest, he said.
"Our community has familiarity and respect for nuclear," he said. It also has unused facilities at Hanford, such as the Fast Flux Test Facility complex, and a skilled work force, he said.
But Tom Carpenter of Hanford Challenge said there's an irony to discussing bringing possible nuclear reprocessing facilities to Hanford. The site already has 53 million gallons of high level waste stored in underground tanks, all of them past their design life and many of them known to have previously leaked.
"Forty-five years of reprocessing created one of the most contaminated sites in the Western Hemisphere," he said. During World War II and the Cold War, irradiated fuel was processed to remove plutonium for the nation's nuclear weapons program.
Although the Department of Energy is building a vitrification plant to turn tank waste into a stable glass form for disposal, there's concern among some engineers and scientists that the plant won't work, he said. Reprocessing commercial fuel also would create some liquid nuclear waste, but DOE has said it will deal with the waste immediately, possibly through vitrification.
The nation would do better to focus on cleanup and conservation, Carpenter said. Much work on solar and wind power could be done in Eastern Washington with a far quicker payoff than developing proposed plans for nuclear fuel reprocessing, he said.
"People don't seem to understand the difference between civil nuclear power and the Department of Defense," said Chris Orton, a third-generation Hanford worker, who said he represented the up and coming engineers and scientists.
Work has been done to correct problems in the past, he said. Now the nation has to move more quickly to start reprocessing commercial fuel, he said.
Robert Beach, who said he's spent 50 years in the nuclear field, said the United States should follow the lead of other countries and start reprocessing now rather than developing more "exotic" reprocessing methods because of proliferation concerns.
Another speaker, retired nuclear engineer Richard Smith, said it appeared that any reprocessing plans outlined in the draft study would require at least 20 years work before they were operating.
"We are in an energy crisis of epic proportions," said Claude Oliver, Benton County commissioner. Dependence on foreign oil only will be broken if the nation develops production of an alternative such as nuclear, he said.
Nuclear power only is sustainable if nuclear fuel is reused, said Carl Holder of Pasco, who described himself as a nuclear advocate.
Members of Veterans for Peace from Corvallis and Eugene spoke against the use of nuclear power because the production of fuel creates depleted uranium, which then may be used for munitions.
But one topic that some on both sides of the reprocessing debate could agree on was that the draft study, an environmental impact statement, needed to look at the costs of reprocessing.
"Conceptually I support the closed nuclear fuel cycle," said Smith, the retired nuclear engineer. But the Department of Energy needs to compare the costs per kilowatt-hour of producing nuclear energy with reprocessed fuel with the costs of producing energy by other means, he said.
DOE has said that reusing nuclear fuel as proposed could help support the expansion of nuclear energy production, which now supplies 19 percent of the nation's electricity, while reducing the risks of nuclear proliferation and the impacts of disposing of nuclear fuel in geologic repositories.
Yucca Mountain has yet to open as the nation's repository for disposing of used commercial nuclear fuel, but the nation will have enough spent nuclear fuel to fill it to its legal capacity by 2010, according to DOE. Reprocessing fuel could reduce the volume, heat and radiotoxicity of high level radioactive waste, it said.
Another public hearing on the draft study is at 7 p.m. today at the Hood River Inn, Hood River, Oregon. Just two hearings are planned in the Northwest.
The draft study is posted at www.gnep. energy.gov. Public comment will be accepted until Dec. 16. Comments can be left at www.regulations.gov or mailed to Francis Schwartz, GNEP PEIS Document Manager, Office of Nuclear Energy NE-5, DOE, 1000 Independence Ave. S.W., Washington, DC 20585.
w Annette Cary: 582-1533; [email protected]
www.tri-cityherald.com/kennewick_pasco_richland/story/387790.html