Friday
Apr052013
Unprecedented, high-risk shipment of liquid high-level radioactive waste approved by Obama White House
An infrared photo of solid irradiated nuclear fuel being shipped by rail. Liquid high-level radioactive waste could have a similar thermal -- as well as radiological -- "signature," if heat-generating radioactive isotopes are retained in the solution.Liquid high-level radioactive waste (HLRW) has never been shipped in North America, according to Dr. Gordon Edwards of the Canadian Coalition for Nuclear Responsibility.But, thanks to the vigilant watchdogging of the Savannah River Site (SRS) nuclear weapons complex, by FOE's Tom Clements in South Carolina, we now know that the Obama White House has approved a U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) plan to rush such shipments from Chalk River in Ontario, Canada to South Carolina for reprocessing.
As Dr. Edwards' backgrounder (see below) points out, the driving motivation seems to be, not nuclear weapons non-proliferation (as the Obama administration and DOE are trying to claim (the liquid HLRW contains potentially weapons-usable HEU, highly enriched uranium), but rather the Canadian government's attempt to save money, and bother, by paying DOE $60 million to simply take it off their hands, and ship it to SRS. For its part, SRS hopes to keep its dirty, dangerous, and expensive reprocessing capability on life support. The multiple, high-risk shipments could cross the border in the Northeast, New York, and/or Michigan, and cross numerous states before reaching South Carolina.
Please contact President Obama, your U.S. Senators, and your U.S. Representative, and urge them to stop this unprecedented high-risk shipment of liquid HLRW! If your U.S. Senator serves on the Energy and Natural Resources Committee, urge him or her to ask Ernest Moniz about the risks of these proposed shipments during his Senate confirmation hearing for DOE Secretary. If your neither of your Senators serve on the ENR Committee, urge them to urge their colleagues who do to ask the question. You can be patched through to your Members of Congress via the U.S. Congressional Switchboard at: (202) 224-3121.
President Obama can be contacted by calling the White House at 202-456-1111, writing him online via the White House web form, or writing him at: President Obama; The White House; 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW; Washington, DC 20500.
BACKGROUND
On April 1, 2013, Dr. Gordon Edwards of the Canadian Coalition for Nuclear Responsibility wrote the following "Note to everyone concerned about the shipment of high-level liquid radioactive waste from Chalk River [Ontario, Canada] to Savannah River [Site, South Carolina]":
On April 1, 2013, Dr. Gordon Edwards of the Canadian Coalition for Nuclear Responsibility wrote the following "Note to everyone concerned about the shipment of high-level liquid radioactive waste from Chalk River [Ontario, Canada] to Savannah River [Site, South Carolina]":
Tom Clements [Friends of the Earth, Columbia, SC] has been notified by telephone today that the US DOE has determined, through a "supplementary analysis" (with no public input) that there is no need for a "supplementary environmental assessment" as requested by Tom some time ago.
Such a supplementary EA would have at least delayed the project for six months or so, while giving the public an opportunity to intervene in this dossier.
Tom was told that the US Government has now approved these shipments -- and that the approval has come from the White House, justified as part of Obama's non-proliferation initiative -- via Laura Holgate, the same woman who was in charge of the weapons-grade-plutonium-into-reactor-fuel (MOX) program previously. (She played an important role in the shipment of weapons-grade plutonium to Chalk River from Los Alamos for testing the use of MOX ("mixed oxide") fuel in CANDU reactors.)
There will be a short notice sent to some press and interested individuals very soon (perhaps even today or tomorrow [April 1 or 2]) that approval for the shipments has been given. So at this point either the US decision will have to be challenged in court or the Canadian approval process will have to be delayed and opened up if there is to be any chance of public intervention.
It seems clear that the "non-proliferation" goal of repatriating weapons-grade uranium is being subverted for other purposes.
On the US side, the main goal of the Savannah River management is to keep the H-canyon reprocessing facility running -- it has been very difficult for them to get enough business to keep the reprocessing plant running. On the Canadian side it is cheaper to pay $60 million to send the contents of the FISST tank down to the US than to deal with those wastes on-site.
Important points to bear in mind:
(a) High-level radioactive LIQUID waste has never been transported over public roads and bridges in North America up to now.
(b) The 23,000 litres of high-level radioactive liquid waste that is supposed to be shipped from Chalk River down to Savannah River (almost 2000 km) is all from one tank -- the Fissile Solution Storage Tank (FISST). But the use of this tank has been discontinued since 2003....
(c) The liquid in the FISST tank is a fiercely radioactive solution of nitric acid containing many fission products including cesium-137 and strontium-90, several transuranic elements including plutonium and americium, and residual amounts of weapons-grade uranium-235. This material gives off deadly levels of penetrating gamma radiation for centuries and will remain highly radiotoxic for hundreds of millennia, long after the gamma radiation has died down.
(d) The high-level radioactive liquid solution that used to be added to the FISST tank was waste left over from the production of medical isotopes; that same liquid material is still being produced at Chalk River from isotope production, but now the liquid is being solidified by a "cementation" process instead of being stored in a liquid form.
(e) In addition to the FISST tank, there is a "tank farm" at Chalk River containing 13 other tanks of liquid radioactive waste -- and this liquid waste is already being solidified by AECL [Atomic Energy of Canada, Limited] using a process of cementation.
(f) So there are a number of important questions that have not been dealt with:
(1) If Chalk River has been solidifying other liquid wastes and will continue to do so, why are they not solidifying the contents of the FISST tank?
Such a supplementary EA would have at least delayed the project for six months or so, while giving the public an opportunity to intervene in this dossier.
Tom was told that the US Government has now approved these shipments -- and that the approval has come from the White House, justified as part of Obama's non-proliferation initiative -- via Laura Holgate, the same woman who was in charge of the weapons-grade-plutonium-into-reactor-fuel (MOX) program previously. (She played an important role in the shipment of weapons-grade plutonium to Chalk River from Los Alamos for testing the use of MOX ("mixed oxide") fuel in CANDU reactors.)
There will be a short notice sent to some press and interested individuals very soon (perhaps even today or tomorrow [April 1 or 2]) that approval for the shipments has been given. So at this point either the US decision will have to be challenged in court or the Canadian approval process will have to be delayed and opened up if there is to be any chance of public intervention.
It seems clear that the "non-proliferation" goal of repatriating weapons-grade uranium is being subverted for other purposes.
On the US side, the main goal of the Savannah River management is to keep the H-canyon reprocessing facility running -- it has been very difficult for them to get enough business to keep the reprocessing plant running. On the Canadian side it is cheaper to pay $60 million to send the contents of the FISST tank down to the US than to deal with those wastes on-site.
Important points to bear in mind:
(a) High-level radioactive LIQUID waste has never been transported over public roads and bridges in North America up to now.
(b) The 23,000 litres of high-level radioactive liquid waste that is supposed to be shipped from Chalk River down to Savannah River (almost 2000 km) is all from one tank -- the Fissile Solution Storage Tank (FISST). But the use of this tank has been discontinued since 2003....
(c) The liquid in the FISST tank is a fiercely radioactive solution of nitric acid containing many fission products including cesium-137 and strontium-90, several transuranic elements including plutonium and americium, and residual amounts of weapons-grade uranium-235. This material gives off deadly levels of penetrating gamma radiation for centuries and will remain highly radiotoxic for hundreds of millennia, long after the gamma radiation has died down.
(d) The high-level radioactive liquid solution that used to be added to the FISST tank was waste left over from the production of medical isotopes; that same liquid material is still being produced at Chalk River from isotope production, but now the liquid is being solidified by a "cementation" process instead of being stored in a liquid form.
(e) In addition to the FISST tank, there is a "tank farm" at Chalk River containing 13 other tanks of liquid radioactive waste -- and this liquid waste is already being solidified by AECL [Atomic Energy of Canada, Limited] using a process of cementation.
(f) So there are a number of important questions that have not been dealt with:
(1) If Chalk River has been solidifying other liquid wastes and will continue to do so, why are they not solidifying the contents of the FISST tank?
(2) If, for the last ten years (2003-2013) Chalk River has been solidifying liquid HLW containing HEU, why is DOE content to have AECL store that material onsite but is not content to have AECL continue to store (solidified or not) the liquid contents of the FISST tank?
(3) Since HEU is weapons-grade material the risk of a criticality accident (a spontaneous chain reaction) will become increasingly worrisome as the liquid in the tank is being "drawn down"; how is this to be analyzed and prevented?
(4) Since HLW in liquid form is extremely mobile in the environment and since the existing Environmental Assessment documents for shipping HEU-bearing irradiated fuel makes no mention of shipping liquid HLW, how is it possible that a supplementary EIS is not required?
Gordon Edwards.
April 5, 2013