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Bush Global Nukes Program in Trouble

President Bush’s Global Nuclear Energy Partnership (GNEP) still is rhetorically promoted by the Department of Energy (DOE) and others in the administration, but it is not being supported by many in Congress, people living near most of the 11 localities being considered as possible GNEP sites, the National Academy of Sciences, and even much of the nuclear power industry. The announced schedule for key aspects of the program is months behind schedule, raising questions as to whether GNEP will survive even in this administration, let alone the next one. Nonetheless, sometime in the first months of 2008, DOE plans to release a draft GNEP programmatic environmental impact statement (PEIS) and hold hearings at more than 15 sites around the country. (For background, see Voices, Winter 2006/2007).

Between February 13 and March 26, 2007, DOE held 13 public scoping meetings about what should be included in the PEIS near the 11 potential sites and in Washington, DC. Written comments were accepted until June 4, and at least 14,000 were received.

At all of the scoping meetings, some people supported GNEP because of the construction and long-term jobs and to support nuclear energy. But also, there was significant opposition because of concerns about continuing contamination and cleanup at the six DOE sites and for site-specific reasons. For example, Paducah, Kentucky is near the New Madrid fault, one of the major earthquake zones in the nation. At Oak Ridge, some of the people generally supportive of GNEP opposed the undeveloped site that is being considered. At Savannah River Site (SRS), people from both South Carolina and Georgia were concerned about water contamination. In Washington and Idaho, opponents strongly emphasized the possible water contamination. In Piketon, Ohio, in addition to water contamination and other problems, there were many people opposed and more than 1,300 people had signed a petition in opposition.

At the two privately owned sites near Roswell, New Mexico, and Morris, Illinois, the substantial majority of speakers, even including some elected officials, opposed the sites being considered for GNEP. At the two privately owned locations near DOE proposed sites (Idaho and SRS), the DOE facilities were the most strongly supported.

Moreover, some speakers and thousands of people submitted written comments, pointed out major fundamental flaws with GNEP – its more than $100 billion price, the contamination and proliferation problems that would result from reprocessing, the lack of technologies to do what DOE proposed, the dangers of waste storage and disposal, among others. In addition, the legal problems of the process including that there is not sufficient, accurate information to adequately examine the five privately-owned sites and that DOE doesn’t have enough information about the technologies and their impacts.

On February 5, 2007, President Bush submitted his budget for Fiscal Year 2008 (October 1, 2007 through September 30, 2008), including $395 million for GNEP, a huge increase above the $79.2 million for 2006 or the $167 million DOE allocated for 2007 (since Congress did not pass the appropriation bill). On July 17, the House passed the Energy and Water Development Appropriations bill and cut GNEP to $120 million. The bill report included many criticisms of GNEP, including: “[T]he Administration abandoned any pretext that GNEP will promote international nuclear nonproliferation by relenting to partner demands that ‘partnership’ countries can continue to produce weapons-usable plutonium in their reprocessing activities….The Department [DOE] has failed to convince the Committee that advanced separations technology coupled with fast reactors is a viable, comprehensive approach to recycling spent fuel….In addition, before the Department can expect the Committee to support funding for a major new initiative, the Department must provide a complete and credible estimate of the life-cycle costs of the program [and] demonstrate that it can manage and control the costs of its ongoing projects.”

The Senate Appropriations Committee provided $243 million for GNEP, but also stated that it: “believes the administration must come forward with greater scientific, technical, and policy information that examines more alternatives in the fuel cycle and recycling process.” Like virtually all other appropriations bills, Congress has yet to pass the final GNEP budget. But it seems likely that there will be very substantial cuts over what was requested and likely no more funds than the past year.

In June 2007, the Nuclear Power Joint Fact-Finding report was issued by the Keystone Center. The report was the result of a year-long dialogue, primarily funded by nuclear companies, among 27 individuals-- environmental and consumer advocates, the utility and nuclear power industry, non-governmental organizations, state regulators and former federal regulators, public policy analysts, and academics -- about nuclear power technology, economics and regulatory oversight, and the risks and benefits of its expansion. The report concludes that “critical elements of the GNEP are unlikely to succeed because:

• GNEP requires the deployment of commercial-scale reprocessing plants, and a large fraction of the U.S. and global commercial reactor fleets would have to be fast reactors.
• To date, deployment of commercial reprocessing plants has proven uneconomical.
• Fast reactors have proven to be uneconomical and less reliable than conventional light-water reactors.”

On October 29, 2007, a committee of the National Research Council of the National Academy of Sciences released its Review of DOE’s Nuclear Energy Research and Development Program. The 17 committee members included former high-ranking DOE officials, nuclear industry personnel, and academics in nuclear engineering and physics. The report states: “all committee members agree that the GNEP program should not go forward and that it should be replaced by a less aggressive research program.”

In the face of the public and scientific opposition and even the lack of nuclear industry support, DOE has not met its schedule to release the draft PEIS in the summer of 2007. The draft is months late and will not be out until 2008, so the final PEIS cannot be completed by May 2008, as scheduled. Apparently, DOE will substantially scale back what the PEIS includes. It seems certain that it will not include a ranking of the 11 sites and that no GNEP site selection can occur as a result of that document. The discussion of technologies should show that the reprocessing and fast reactor technologies that are the centerpiece of GNEP are decades away, so no technology decisions can be made. Thus, what technologies would be used and where GNEP facilities will be built cannot be decided while the Bush administration is in office.

Nonetheless, it will be important for thousands of people at the proposed sites and around the country to point out the many flaws in the draft PEIS and to voice their objections to GNEP, and to support further funding cuts by Congress in 2008.

FOR MORE INFORMATION: The federal government’s official GNEP website: www.gnep.energy.gov The Keystone Center report: www.keystone.org/spp/documents/FinalReport_NJFF6_12_2007(1).pdf The NAS report: http://books.nap.edu/catalog.php?record_id=11998#toc