MISSION: Southwest Research and Information Center is a multi-cultural organization working to promote the health of people and communities, protect natural resources, ensure citizen participation, and secure environmental and social justice now and for future generations

Pushing Nukes Locally & Globally

The 2006 initiative by the Bush administration to bring about a new international energy strategy is called the Global Nuclear Energy Partnership (GNEP). It is described as “a comprehensive strategy to increase U.S. and global energy security, encourage clean development around the world, reduce the risk of nuclear proliferation, and improve the environment.” However, a close look at the program, especially based on the past 55 years of U.S. nuclear activity and its very long-term impacts on communities, raises major concerns as to whether it is repackaging old, failed ideas and technologies. Rather than bringing energy security, the program could produce new amounts of wastes that will be dangerous for thousands of years, proliferate nuclear materials, further contaminate the environment – and cost hundreds of billions of dollars that could be better spent on development of renewable energy and energy efficiency that could more quickly and cost effectively provide electricity to the U.S. and the world.

WILL WE FORGET OUR HISTORY?
During World War II and the Cold War, the financial, health, and environmental costs of nuclear weapons and how to clean up the radioactive and toxic wastes were not considered and debated before decisions were made to proceed with production facilities. Sites were chosen based on factors such as national security and abundant water resources, and without public debate about the need for and impacts of such facilities.

Between 1944 and 1988, the United States built and operated 14 plutonium-production reactors at Hanford, Washington and Savannah River Site, South Carolina to produce about 100 metric tons of plutonium for nuclear weapons. Through 1994, the Department of Energy (DOE) estimated that nuclear weapons research, production, and testing had cost more than $300 billion. The essential radioactive elements for nuclear weapons are plutonium and uranium, which are extracted from reactor fuel through chemical separation (reprocessing). Reprocessing also generated 105 million gallons of highly radioactive and hazardous chemical waste. Cleanup at the Hanford, Savannah River, and Idaho reprocessing sites will be continuing for decades and, in some areas, significant contamination that will remain, requiring the areas to be off-limits to residents and agricultural production forever. And the cost of what cleanup is done at those three sites will likely exceed $100 billion.

The only U.S. commercial reprocessing facility operated from 1966 to 1972 at West Valley, New York. To reprocess 640 metric tons uranium, West Valley generated 600,000 gallons of liquid high-level waste along with spent fuel rods and transuranic and low-level waste, along with contaminated ground water and soil. In 1980, DOE estimated that cleanup costs would be $285 million, 10 percent to be paid by New York state and the rest by federal taxpayers. Adjusting for inflation, that would be $675 million in 2005 dollars. In fact, New York state has spent around $200 million and the federal taxpayers about $2 billion, with a current estimate of more than $550 million more federal dollars to be spent. That future expenditure appears low since all the high-level and transuranic waste from reprocessing still is at West Valley.

WHAT IS GNEP?
For the U.S. (there are additional international components), GNEP has four major aspects: new nuclear power plants, funded in significant measure by the federal government; new reprocessing technologies, paid for by the federal government; nuclear waste disposal at Yucca Mountain, Nevada, paid for primarily by nuclear power ratepayers; and new advanced burner reactors, paid by the federal government. Except for Yucca Mountain, each is a new program, using untested or nonexistent technology that would be developed and funded over decades. Since the commercial nuclear industry is unwilling to pay for those new facilities, they will not occur without federal funding.

New nuclear power plants are directly subsidized with more than $4 billion under the Energy Policy Act of 2005 – up to $3 billion to offset any delays during construction of the next six power plants and up to $125 million a year for eight years in tax credits for electricity produced by new plants. Other nuclear power subsidies include $1.25 billion for a “Next Generation” power plant at the Idaho National Lab and continuing the Price-Anderson Act for 20 years to provide insurance for nuclear plants, since the commercial insurance industry will not issue because of the potential catastrophic costs of a serious accident.

In the Fiscal Year 2007 budget request, the Bush administration included $243 million for the Advanced Fuel Cycle Initiative (AFCI) to develop new technologies in support of GNEP. The technologies would be used to reprocess fuel from existing commercial reactors and new generation reactors “to support an expanding role for nuclear power in the United States.” Of that amount, $155 million is initial funding for a engineering scale Uranium Extraction (UREX+) demonstration reprocessing plant. According to the Budget Request, that plant would be operational by 2011, but there is no estimate of the total cost. The Budget Request also included $20 million for conceptual design and starting an environmental impact statement process for a new Advanced Fuel Cycle Facility “to test and improve advanced separations and fuel fabrication technologies in an integrated development facility leading to demonstrations up through engineering-scale.” That laboratory is estimated to be operational in 2016, but there is no total cost estimate. The Budget Request also includes $25 million for pre-conceptual design for a sodium-cooled “fast spectrum” Advanced Burner Reactor demonstration to show that transuranic elements in spent fuel could be used in a new design reactor. The demonstration is projected to be operational in 2014, but no total cost estimate is provided.

Meanwhile, using funding appropriated by Congress for this year, DOE is evaluating 26 proposals from groups, including in Lea County, New Mexico, that may have “volunteer” sites for the UREX+ demonstration plant. Congress provided $50 million “to develop a spent nuclear fuel recycling plan.” Of that amount, $20 million would be available with a maximum of $5 million per site for a “site selection competition.” The House Energy and Water Appropriations Subcommittee, which created that special fund, is now strongly critical of the DOE’s process. In its May 19, 2006 report with the 2007 appropriations bill, the subcommittee’s stated view is that all the AFCI facilities would be at the same site and that in addition that site would be a long-term interim storage site for spent fuel now at nuclear power plants. Yet the DOE notice that resulted in the proposals made no mention that all facilities would be co-located. The subcommittee report also states: “A first test of any site’s willingness to host such a facility is its willingness to receive into interim storage spent fuel in dry casks that provide safe storage of spent fuel for 50 to 100 years or longer. In this Committee’s view, if any site refuses to provide interim storage as needed to support the operation of an integrated recycling facility, at whatever scale, then that site should be eliminated from all further consideration under GNEP.”

To back its criticisms, the House Appropriations Committee cut AFCI funding to $120 million and provided no funds for conceptual or preliminary design for the UREX+ demonstration plant. The Committee further prohibited “decisions on fuel types or technologies for the advanced burner reactor” until an independent panel of experts has reviewed a systems analysis. A report regarding such an analysis as well as life cycle cost projections for research and development for GNEP must be provided to Congress by January 31, 2007. In addition, the National Academy of Sciences must do a peer review “of the spent nuclear fuel recyling technology plan, encompassing all the proposed technologies and facilities.”

The Senate Energy and Water Appropriations Subcommittee Chairman, Sen. Pete Domenici (R-NM) is very supportive of GNEP and has said that he will try to provide more than the $243 million requested. Thus, the amount of funding and any restrictions on GNEP for the October 1, 2006 to September 30, 2007 fiscal year will not be finalized for several months.

Yucca Mountain. Congress picked Yucca Mountain in Nevada as the only site to be developed as a commercial spent fuel/high level (reprocessing) waste site in 1987. The site has many unresolved technical problems, and strong opposition from citizens and Nevada state officials, which have not been overcome by the more than $7 billion already spent on the site. It cannot open to receive waste for several more years, if ever. The commercial nuclear power industry, President Bush, and many in Congress continue to support Yucca Mountain and want to spend another $500 million+ in the next year. Nonetheless, many of the Yucca Mountain supporters also back GNEP. As Rep. Mike Simpson (R-ID) said on the House floor on May 24, 2006: “And GNEP promises to make Yucca Mountain the only repository our Nation will need for the final disposition of spent nuclear fuel....if we don’t pursue GNEP, then we better start looking and debating on this floor where we are going to put Yucca II, Yucca III, Yucca IV, and Yucca V, because that is what is going to happen.”

WHAT ARE MAJOR CONCERNS ABOUT GNEP?
Cost. Many members of Congress, citizen organizations, and others have raised serious concerns about the lack of cost analysis for GNEP. A 1996 National Academy of Sciences report indicated that the additional cost of reprocessing and transmutation beyond the existing costs for the nuclear waste repository “is uncertain but is likely to be no less than $50 billion and easily could be over $100 billion if adopted in the United States.”

Thus, the costs are unknown, but, based on past history of major cost overruns, which could be repeated, costs could be hundreds of billions of dollars. Clearly, the commercial nuclear power industry is unwilling to fund reprocessing since the disaster at West Valley demonstrated that such facilities are not economical.

Importantly, the costs are for technologies and facilities that, if they work, will not be available for at least a decade and would not generate any significant electricity benefits for at least 15 years. So any funding for the next few years, as with the tens of millions of dollars spent on “new” reprocessing technologies over the past decade, will produce nothing in return in the foreseeable future. Alternatively, similar funding for renewable energy would result in electricity almost immediately, and could provide storage technologies that would make solar and wind technologies even more usable.

Science and technology. No one is supporting the continuing use of the U.S. proven plutonium-uranium extraction (PUREX) reprocessing technique, because of its costs and manifest environmental problems. The DOE’s current preferred technique is UREX+ which is supposed to leave plutonium mixed with some other transuranic elements, although which such elements is unclear. Those elements may make the product less usable in nuclear power plants, but still do not make them unusable for nuclear weapons since the mixture would continue to be about 80 percent plutonium.

UREX+ fuel could not be used in existing U.S. nuclear power plants. Also, the Advanced Burner Reactors are required. Unfortunately, attempts for the past 50 years at developing such “fast” reactors in the U.S, Britain, France, Japan, Russia, and Germany have been very expensive failures. For example, the U.S. Clinch River (TN) breeder reactor cost about $8 billion even though it never operated.

Nuclear materials proliferation. In 1974, in response to India’s first nuclear weapons test, President Ford announced that the U.S. would not further export reprocessing technology, since it could be used for nuclear weapons. In 1977, President Carter said the U.S. would not reprocess because of nuclear proliferation concerns, and he encouraged other nations to stop reprocessing for the same reasons. Even though in 1981 President Reagan reversed the Carter policy, commercial reprocessing has not been further developed in the U.S.

Even those who opposed the Carter policy agree that existing reprocessing technologies do allow proliferation of nuclear materials. Thus, the Bush administration says: “A basic goal of GNEP is to make it nearly impossible to divert nuclear materials or modify systems without detection. In order for the IAEA [International Atomic Energy Agency] to effectively and efficiently monitor and verify nuclear materials, GNEP will design advanced safeguards approaches directly into the planning and building and the expanding base of nuclear energy systems and fuel cycle facilities.” How those safeguards will be done is uncertain. And the Natural Resources Defense Council has pointed out that techniques to determine what happens to relatively small quantities of plutonium in large-scale reprocessing facilities will be difficult to track, especially on a timely basis. And those small quantities of plutonium would still be useful in one or a few nuclear devices.

Nuclear waste. Although proponents claim that less waste would be created by GNEP’s reprocessing and nuclear power plants, the wastes generated would still require new disposal sites. Morever, since the new facilities would not be available for a decade or more, existing U.S. nuclear plants will continue to produce waste in excess of the 63,000 metric ton limit for Yucca Mountain. So at least a second repository, or long-term on-site storage, or interim storage sites will be needed. And those existing power plants could continue to operate for years more, producing more waste, while the new reactors are coming on line.

Rather than build more repositories, the House of Representatives in the Energy and Water Appropriations Act passed on May 24, 2006 approved funding for “interim storage facilities” where spent fuel would be stored for decades or longer, even though necessary authorizing legislation has not passed. The House provides $30 million to begin the process, including $20 million for sites that may want to “volunteer.”

INTERNATIONAL ASPECTS OF GNEP
The three international aspects of GNEP are the proposed improved international safeguards, enriched and reprocessed fuels for other nations, and small-scale reactors. The U.S. and other nuclear nations would use their enrichment and reprocessing plants, which would have to be expanded, apparently another cost to U.S. taxpayers, to supply the fuel that the new small-scale reactors would use. And the nuclear waste from those power plants could be brought to the U.S. for disposal.

WHAT HAPPENS NOW?
Over the next few months, Congress will determine how much money GNEP will receive for the next year. At least for the next two years of the Bush administration, there will be continuing proposals to substantially increase funding for GNEP, which will be strongly opposed by many citizen groups and some in Congress.

In localities that may become “volunteer” GNEP sites, there could be substantial opposition from citizens and communities. Past efforts to find volunteer dump sites have not succeeded. DOE will have to decide how to proceed, or start over, in finding “volunteer” locations.

On local, national, and international levels, there should be increased public debate and concern about whether the “new generation” of nuclear power is affordable, necessary, technologically feasible, proliferation resistant, and environmentally desirable.

FOR MORE INFORMATION: The federal government’s official GNEP website has many materials: www.gnep.energy.gov Peddling Plutonium: An Analysis of the President’s Global Nuclear Energy Partnership, a critical analysis by the Natural Resources Defense Council is available at: http://www.nrdc.org/nuclear/gnep/agnep.pdf “Is U.S. Reprocessing Worth The Risk?” Arms Control Today, Steve Fetter and Frank N. von Hippel, September 2005 is available at: http://www.armscontrol.org/act/2005_09/Fetter-VonHippel.asp The Executive Summary of the 1996 National Academy of Science’s Nuclear Wastes: Technologies for Separations and Transmutation is available at: http://fermat.nap.edu/execsumm_pdf/4912 “Fast Reactors: Unsafe, Uneconomical, and Unable to Resolve the Problems of Nuclear Power,” Public Citizen fact sheet is available at: http://www.citizen.org/documents/FastReactors.pdf "Smarter Use of Nuclear Waste," Scientific American, William H. Hannum, Gerald E. Marsh and George S. Stanford, December 2005, a pro-fast reactor view is available at: www.nationalcenter.org/NuclearFastReactorsSA1205.pdf