GAO confirms that parking lots dumps could easily serve as stepping stones to reprocessing

In a 2009 report comparing costs of dumping high-level radioactive wastes at Yucca Mountain versus regional "centralized interim storage" (parking lot dumps) versus very long term on-site storage at nuclear power plants (centuries), the U.S. Government Accountability Office admitted (on page 29) that "In fact, reprocessing facilities could be built near or adjacent to centralized facilities to maximize efficiencies." With President Obama's Blue Ribbon Commission on America's Nuclear Future advocating parking lot dumps, and Energy Secretary Chu advocating reprocessing, the risks of weapons proliferation, environmental destruction, health damage, and astronomical costs associated with reprocessing linger on.

NRC staff warn agency has cut safety corners at MOX plant

MOX Fuel Fabrication Facility on November 19, 2007 (National Nuclear Security Administration)As the Obama/Chu "Blue Ribbon Commission on America's Nuclear Future" continues to flirt with a "revival" of commercial reprocessing in the U.S. (as by centralizing high-level radioactive waste storage at regional parking lot dumps), safety short cuts at a weapons plutonium mixed oxide (MOX) fuel fabrication facility raise red flags. The supposed goal of commercial reprocessing would be to provide plutonium for just such a MOX fuel fabrication facility, but the agency mandated to protect public health, safety, the environment, and the common defense seems much more concerned about nuclear companies' construction schedules and profit margins.

Two scientists retained by the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission to oversee the construction of the mixed-oxide (MOX) fuel fabrication plant in South Carolina (pictured left) say the agency took safety shortcuts that seriously jeopardize the project. According to an expose by the news service, ProPublica,  first Alex Murray, the lead chemical process engineer on the NRC review team, and then his replacement, Dan Tedder, a chemical engineering professor from the Georgia Institute of Technology, called out safety problems but were either removed from the job (Murray) or resigned in frustration (Tedder).  The MOX plant is supposed to process left over plutonium pits from the U.S. atomic arsenal into commercial reactor fuel, although no U.S. reactors are designed to use MOX and the utility slated to use it - Duke - has withdrawn from the project.

According to the scientists, as reported by ProPublica: "Work on the facility was allowed to begin, they say, before some of the most essential questions were fully answered. They have been particularly concerned about the danger of chemical explosions, the adequacy of the ventilation and radioactive waste disposal systems and the way the plutonium will be tracked as it is processed."

According to Tedder, the NRC's "primary focus is staying on schedule and not doing anything to delay the applicant, rather than identifying dominant risks and safety issues.”

The NRC has a lamentable track record, called out by Beyond Nuclear staffers for years, of prioritizing industry profit motives over public safety. Needless to say, the NRC has denied the assertions of their former staffers.

Japan to reconsider reprocessing in wake of Fukushima nuclear catastrophe?

The Mainichi Daily News has quoted the head of the Japanese Communist Party as saying that Prime Minister Kan told him that as part of reviewing energy policy "from scratch," the long established policy of reprocessing high-level radioactive waste would also be reevaluated.

170 groups oppose reprocessing with "Principles for Safeguarding Nuclear Waste at Reactors"

170 national and grassroots environmental organizations, representing every state in the country, have signed onto the "Statement of Principles for Safeguarding Nuclear Waste at Reactors." It urges decision makers, including Energy Secretary Chu's blue ribbon commission on radioactive waste, to require hardened on-site storage (HOSS) for high-level radioactive waste stored at nuclear power plants across the U.S. The Statement also expresses adamant opposition to the dirty, dangerous, and expensive extraction of plutonium (reprocessing) from irradiated nuclear fuel. (Image reprinted from Dr. Gordon Thompson's report Robust Storage of Spent Nuclear Fuel: A Neglected Issue of Homeland Security, commissioned by Citizens Awareness Network and published by the Institute for Resource and Security Studies in Jan. 2003.)

Hanford "clean up" will take at least 37 more years, cost as much as $100 billion, and still leave behind radioactive risks lasting thousands of years

An article in the Oregonian, written as the U.S. Department of Energy holds public hearings on its draft environmental impact statement for "cleaning up" high-level radioactive waste storage tanks and managing additional radioactive wastes and lingering radioactive contamination at the Hanford Nuclear Reservation, reports that nearly a half century more ("clean up" has already been underway for decades), and a price tag that could top $100 billion, will be needed before the site's "clean up" is "finished." Even then, hazardous radioactive contamination will persist for many thousands of years, threatening the adjacent Columbia River and points downstream. The high-level radioactive wastes, and much of Hanford's contamination, have resulted from military reprocessing from 1943 to 1988. Commercial reprocessing of irradiated nuclear fuel, proposed as the latest "illusion of a solution" to nuclear power's waste problem, would involve vastly more waste than was ever reprocessed at Hanford, waste that is significantly more radioactive than military irradiated nuclear fuel. Thus, commercial reprocessing would likely cause radioactive ruination of the environment wherever it is carried out, with serious health consequences downwind and downstream for millenia.