Reprocessing
Reprocessing - the chemical separation of uranium and plutonium from irradiated reactor fuel - is arguably the most dangerous and dirty phase of the nuclear fuel chain. Reprocessing generates huge waste streams with no management solution and isolates plutonium, the fissile component of a nuclear weapon. Countries such as England and France, where reprocessing has been carried out for decades, face a legacy of contamination and an enormous plutonium surplus vulnerable to theft or attack.
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Here is the link to the Nov. 29, 2020, 56-organization coalition letter of opposition.
Patricia Marida of the Ohio Sierra Club Nuclear-Free Committee has also prepared a concise Opponents' Analysis of HB 104.
Your help is urgently needed. See this link for how to take action, as well as for the coalition's press release.
Magnox reprocessing plant will begin controlled shutdown after 8% of staff self-isolate
As reported by the ExchangeMonitor.
NDAA is short for National Defense Authorization Act.
The high-level radioactive waste that the U.S. Department of Energy would like to now call "low-level" is an inevitable byproduct from reprocessing irradiated nuclear fuel. DOE's hopes to save money by not cleaning up high-level radioactive waste, as at Hanford Nuclear Reservation, and disposing of it in a permanent geologic repository, as is legally required under the Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1982, as Amended.
To abandon high-level radioactive waste in situ, as along the banks of the Columbia River, risks catastrophic releases of hazardous radioactivity into the environment over long enough periods of time.
As reported by the Los Angeles Times:
Holtec officials say that WCS’ problems haven’t deterred their plans for an underground storage site, saying interim storage could save the federal government billions of dollars, particularly if the Yucca Mountain plan is again postponed.
The company has strong support in New Mexico, which already has a dump for nuclear weapons waste, a uranium enrichment plant, a nuclear weapons armory and two nuclear weapons laboratories.
“We are very well-informed,” said Sam Cobb, mayor of nearby Hobbs, rejecting arguments by antinuclear groups that the industry preys on communities that need money and don’t understand the risk.
“It is not a death grab to get money,” he said. “We believe if we have an interim storage site, we will be the center for future nuclear fuel reprocessing.” (emphasis added)
Thus, Mayor Cobb, a top proponet of commercial irradiated nuclear fuel centralized interim storage in southeastern New Mexico, has come right out and admitted the reprocessing is in the plan.
In fact, the logo for the Eddy-Lea [Counties] Energy Alliance, which would host the CISF, is a recyling symbol surrounding an atom!
The Statement of Principles for Safeguarding Nuclear Waste at Reactors includes explicit opposition to reprocessing:
The Obama administration has determined that the Yucca Mountain site, which has been mired in bad science and mismanagement, is not an option for geologic storage of nuclear waste. Unfortunately, reprocessing proponents have used this opportunity to promote reprocessing as the solution for managing our nuclear waste. Contrary to their claims, however, reprocessing is extremely expensive, highly polluting, and a proliferation threat, and will actually complicate the management of irradiated fuel. Nor will reprocessing obviate the need for, or "save space" in, a geologic repository.
The Statement concludes with the following:
Prohibit reprocessing: The reprocessing of irradiated fuel has not solved the nuclear waste problem in any country, and actually exacerbates it by creating numerous additional waste streams that must be managed. In addition to be expensive and polluting, reprocessing also increases nuclear weapons proliferation threats.
The Statement was signed by many hundreds of groups, representing all 50 states, including such anti-reprocessing groups as the Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation, as well as the Council for a Liveable World.
See Beyond Nuclear's pamphlet about Nuclear France, to learn more about the ravages of reprocessing in northwest Europe.
And also see Beyond Nuclear's pamphlet highlighting the many dangers of reprocessing, from its astronomical expense to taxpayers, its nuclear weapons proliferation risks, and its inevitable radioactive ruination of the environment and public health, wherever it is done.
Political cartoon by Adam Zyglis, the Buffalo News[Please note: this scheme is at its core a pro-reprocessing effort by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE). DOE's last reprocessing capability is at the H-Canyon at the nuclear weapons complex at Savannah River Site, in South Carolina. SRS will be paid $60 million, by Canadian authorities, for this "service."]
Media coverage:
Le Téléjournal Ontario (in French);
Citizen-Times of Asheville, NC;
WLOS, ABC News Channel 13 in Western North Carolina;
Press release by environmental coalition, including Beyond Nuclear, re: judge's adverse ruling, allowing unprecedented, high-risk, highly radioactive liquid waste truck shipments from Chalk River Nuclear Lab, Ontario, Canada to Savannah River Site, South Carolina, U.S.A. (See the judge's 18-page Memorandum Opinion, and 1-page Order of Dismissal, both dated Feb. 2, 2017.) Terry Lodge of Toledo, Ohio and Diane Curran of Washington, D.C. serve as the environmental coalition's legal counsel.
November 29, 2020