Decommission Vermont Yankee in 2012

[Suzy]

 NIRS Energy Fact Sheet ---------------------
 
 
Reprocessing Is Not the “Solution” to the Nuclear
Waste Problem
 
The Radioactive Waste Burden
Splitting atoms to make electricity has created an
enormous problem: waste containing 95% of the
toxic radioactivity produced during the Atomic
Age. Nuclear weapons production, industrial
activity, research and medicine combined, create
only 5% of this problem.
 
Every nuclear power reactor annually generates
20-30 tons of high-level nuclear waste since the
irradiated fuel itself is the waste when removed
from the reactor core. Like fuel, the waste is a
solid ceramic pellet, stacked inside a thin metal
tube or ‘cladding.’ In addition to residual
uranium, the waste is about 1% plutonium that is
formed inside the fuel rods by the reactor. The
waste also contains about 5% highly radioactive
fission products like cesium, strontium and iodine,
making it millions of times more radioactive than
“fresh” uranium fuel. Unshielded, it delivers a
lethal dose in seconds and will remain a hazard
for at least 12,000 human generations.
 
No End in Site
High-level waste is piling up at reactor sites,
stored outside of containment in pools, and in
large dry containers called casks. A growing
security threat, storage has been repeatedly
approved to enable continued reactor operation,
and therefore continued nuclear waste production,
making risks greater. Now new reactors are being
proposed, even though there is no credible
solution for the approximately 120,000 tons of
waste the first generation of reactors will produce.
 
The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) has
devoted nearly 20 years to the development of a
high-level dump at Yucca Mountain, a
geologically unstable, sacred site of the Western
Shoshone people in Nevada. The State of Nevada
and the Shoshone Nation have vigorously opposed
this dump. Growing evidence substantiates that
the Yucca site will fail in the fundamental goal of
a repository: to isolate radioactivity from our
environment. A second, industry-owned,
alternative for centralizing the waste on an Indian
Reservation in Utah let by a consortium called
Private Fuel Storage (PFS) meeting enduring
opposition from that state. Both Yucca and PFS
would trigger a “Mobile Chernobyl”–the largest
nuclear waste shipping campaign in history–with
so many transport miles that accidents are
inevitable and security is an oxymoron.
 
Disregarding Hard-Won Wisdom
The Bush / Cheney administration and its
congressional allies are intent on reversing over
30 years of extraordinarily rare common sense in
nuclear policy. In the 1970s it was decided that
irradiated fuel and the plutonium it contains,
should be treated as waste–not as a resource. This
was in part due to the catastrophic failure after
only one year of operations at West Valley, New
York–the only commercial reprocessing site to
operate in the U.S. West Valley’s reprocessing
mess is still not cleaned up – and the projected
cost is over $5 billion.
 
Every reprocessing site (France, UK, Russia, and
soon Japan have the largest sites) is an
environmental catastrophe, with massive releases
of radioactivity to air, land and water; high worker
radiation exposures; and residues that are harder
to handle than the terrible waste it begins with.
Reprocessing creates stockpiles of nuclear
weapons-usable plutonium, and is unviable
without large taxpayer subsidies. President Carter
banned reprocessing as a nuclear non-proliferation
measure; while Reagan lifted the ban, no
commercial interest has pursued this expensive
boondoggle, since it is not a profitable enterprise.
Our current president apparently intends for
taxpayers to pay for the relapse to reprocessing.
 
At the end of 2005, Congress awarded $50 million
to the U.S. Department of Energy with
instructions to make a new waste-reprocessing
plan. DOE is directed to use one of its sites–in
2006 it instructed to hold a “competition” and the
“winner,” to be announced in 2007, will get the
--------------------- NIRS Energy Fact Sheet ---------------------
 
new reprocessing site. Congress specified (another
promise?) that the site should be opened by 2010.
 
Reprocessing Destabilizes Waste --
The fuel rods are taken out of the assemblies,
chopped up and then dissolved in nitric acid. The
resulting highly radioactive and caustic stew is
then processed to remove the plutonium and the
uranium, leaving the highly radioactive fission
products in the liquid. While there are methods to
attempt to re-stabilize this material, there has been
a fundamental loss in the stability of the dry
ceramic pellet in the metal clad fuel rod.
 
Completely False Claims
1. Reprocessing is NOT recycling. The
formation of fission products in the fuel rods
makes high-level waste fundamentally
different from the uranium it came from. It is
not possible to remake the original fuel again
from high-level waste – thus it is not a cycle.
 
2. Reprocessing does not reduce radioactivity.
No credible expert says reprocessing reduces
total radioactivity; some less informed sources
imply this. Reprocessing does change not the
amount of radioactivity – except to smear it
around a large surface area, thereby diluting it
without any actual reduction of radioactivity.
 
3. Reprocessing does not reduce waste
volume; to the contrary, fuel pellet volume is
magnified by a factor of 100–100,000. The
resulting “dilution” allows the reclassification
from “high-level,” to the so-called “low-
level” waste category, which is still deadly.
 
The “Midas-Touch” in Reverse
The King Midas story of childhood teaches about
the hazard of greed. Radioactive waste
contaminates everything it comes in contact with--
but instead of turning it all to gold, everything it
comes in contact with is turned to expensive,
dangerous radioactive waste!
 
Kicking the Can... 
A stated goal of reprocessing is to use plutonium
for reactor fuel. The most common form is MOX
(short for ‘mixed oxide’), made from plutonium
and uranium 238 (depleted uranium). While
today’s reactors can use MOX fuel, it is both
riskier and more hazardous: MOX is harder to
control, and twice as deadly as uranium fuel if
control is lost.  MOX does not “solve” the waste
problem since reprocessing MOX fuel is even
harder than reprocessing uranium fuel, and not
widely done. Princeton’s Dr. Frank Von Hippel
likens MOX use to “kicking the can down the
road”–not dealing with the waste problem at all.
 
Plutonium Destabilizes Our World
High-level nuclear waste contains so much lethal
radioactivity that the plutonium inside the waste
fuel rods is effectively safeguarded. Separating
out the plutonium makes it available for weapons
use. For the United States to reverse more than 30
years of policy against recovering civil plutonium
also reverses the moral authority with which the
U.S. calls on other nations to refrain from this
activity. North Korea and Iran are the most recent
examples of countries ready to join the “nuclear
weapons club.” Reprocessing is a direct
contradiction to US reprimands of these nations
for nuclear proliferation. The clear intention of the
Bush / Cheney team to return to full-scale
production of new nuclear weapons adds to this
atomic hypocrisy.
 
Far from putting the atomic genie back in the
bottle, reprocessing creates millions of gallons of
highly radioactive, caustic, destabilized high-level
waste that history shows will leak; be evaporated;
residues put into glass that may, or may not retain
the radioactivity for even a generation; and now,
under a new policy, be left forevermore on the
reprocessing site, mixed only with grout in a thin
effort to keep it from contaminating soil, water,
food and our bodies. This is NO SOLUTION. 
--Mary Olson, January 2006
 
Nuclear Information
and Resource
Service 
1424 16th St. NW   # 404 
Washington, DC  20036 
202-328-0002
www.nirs.org 
 
NIRS Southeast Office 
PO Box 7586 Asheville, NC  28802
828-675-1792 nirs@main.nc.us 

[Suzy]

January 27, 2009

Dear Friends:

Thank you to everyone who called the Environmental Protection Agency last week asking the agency not to publish dangerously deficient Protective Action Guides (PAGs) written by the Bush Administration. As we noted then, these guides would permit radioactivity in drinking water hundreds to millions of times higher than longstanding EPA standards.

We're happy to tell you that your calls worked! Here is the first part of an article from this morning's Inside EPA trade journal:

"The Obama EPA will review a controversial draft guide for responding to nuclear emergencies -- which the Bush administration approved in its waning hours despite strong activist outcry -- prior to publishing the document for public review and comment in the Federal Register, an agency spokeswoman says.

"The decision to review the document, signed as a draft Federal Register notice by former Bush EPA Deputy Administrator Marcus Peacock Jan. 15, is a victory for environmentalists who recently urged the Obama EPA to halt the notice's publication. Activists, some EPA staffers and state regulators argue the guide could lead to dramatically weakened public protections.

"However, an activist cautions that the new administration could still ultimately decide to move forward with the guidance as written after it completes its review.

"The EPA spokeswoman says the Obama administration wants to review the scientific basis for the document, known as the draft Protective Action Guidance for Radiological Incidents, "before proceeding with a broad notice of availability and public comment on the draft." The spokeswoman says the guide is "an important science-based guideline that addresses safe levels for radiation exposure" and that "new team at EPA wishes to review the scientific basis" of the document."

Lisa Jackson has now been confirmed as EPA Administrator by the Senate and is in her job. We encourage you to call her office at 202-564-470, thank her for temporarily suspending the radiation PAGs pending review, and urge her to permanently block them until the outrageous parts put in by the departing Administration are removed:  in particular, the astronomical increases in radioactivity permitted in drinking water compared to Safe Drinking Water Act levels, and the shockingly high radiation levels permitted for long-term cleanup.

*The January 21 White House Call-In Day, which was suspended because the White House phones weren't working, has not been rescheduled. However, watch soon for Alerts from NIRS on a campaign to e-mail your legislators on nuclear loan guarantees (it looks like the industry wants Congress to pass $100 BILLION in new loan guarantees!), and on a National Lobby Day in Washington on February 27 (just before the start of the huge Power Shift conference in DC) to stop nuclear subsidies and support clean, safe, sustainable energy.

*Finally, please help us continue and expand this type of outreach and activity. We know it works! Please make a small, tax-deductible donation to NIRS and support our work for a nuclear-free, carbon-free energy future. You can do so here. Just imagine: if each of you receiving this e-mail donated just the equivalent of a cup or so of coffee a month--just $5--we could hire 2 new people and expand our outreach budget by 50%! That's the kind of huge difference your contributions can make!

Thanks for calling the EPA and thanks for all you do,

Michael Mariotte

Executive Director

Nuclear Information and Resource Service

nirsnet@nirs.org

www.nirs.org