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Written by Nuclear Information Resource Service
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Monday, 21 May 2007 |
New Maps from Common Sense Campaign Show Likely Waste Routes to Savannah River Site
May 22 - Today 33 community-based groups nationwide teamed with Nuclear
Information and Resource Service and the Common Sense at the Nuclear
Crossroads Campaign are releasing new maps showing the likely transport routes
(road, rail and water) that high-level radioactive waste (irradiated or spent
fuel) would take from nuclear power reactors to the federal Savannah River
Site in South Carolina for reprocessing, if that location is chosen under the
federal Global Nuclear Energy Partnership (GNEP). Eleven sites are currently
under consideration for GNEP; two in South Carolina. Implementation of GNEP
would redirect the transportation of this waste, previously assumed to target
the flawed and unsuitable Yucca Mountain site in Nevada.
Part of a study by John Sticpewich entitled "A Study of the Problems With
Transport and Reprocessing of Nuclear Waste in the Carolinas," the maps were
generated using Department of Energy (DOE) data and the on-line DOE routing
program, TRAGIS. "Credit analysts on Wall Street have suggested that moving
the accumulated high-level waste from the reactor sites would make investment
in new nuclear power more likely," said Sticpewich. "This report documents the
huge tonnage of radioactive waste that must be dealt with, the very high costs
of transporting it, and the potential for impact that such a move would have
on hundreds of communities along the way." John Sticpewich did this work on
behalf of the Common Sense at the Nuclear Crossroads Campaign based in
Asheville, NC. The maps and his report are available at Maps of Waste Routes.
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Written by Gerald Rudolph
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Monday, 21 May 2007 |
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John Sticpewich from Common Sense At the Nuclear Crossroads Campaign, in conjunction with Nuclear Information Resource Service has taken Department of Energy data and an on-line DOE routing program called TRAGIS and created maps showing the routes the radioactive waste is likely to take from nuclear power reactors to the Savannah River Site. See Radioactive Waste Routes Published by NIRS and 33 Organizations. Most of the routes go through the Columbia area.
The maps following are the summary maps for the road, rail and water routes to SRS that are
presented in the report. A PDF version of the map can be downloaded by clicking on the title of
each map.
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Written by Gerald Rudolph
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Tuesday, 22 May 2007 |
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The full report by
John Sticpewich is available on cd by contacting John at 828-675-1792 or Kevin Kamps at 301-270-6477 ex 14 or
This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it
.
Parts of the report can be found here:
 Title Page
Table of Contents
Executive Summary
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Written by Gerald Rudolph
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Monday, 21 May 2007 |
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The Savannah River Site is a likely destination for the spent fuel from nuclear power plants from across the nation if the administration's GNEP program is enacted. GNEP, Global Nuclear Energy Partnership, is a plan to reprocess the spent rods to separate the plutonium. Although there are questions about the possibility of using the plutonium for weapons, the GNEP plan involves using the plutonium to create more nuclear fuel rods to ship back to power plants.
In addition to the fuel rods, the reprocessing will also create large amounts of highly radioactive liquid wastes and will result in larger volumes of waste than the original. The plan calls for this waste from reprocessing to be shipped to a final repository, but no site for such a repository has been found. Yucca mountain in Nevada was previously the planned destination, but Nevada has refused to allow waste to be sent to the site. Regardless of the lack of a destination, the Department of Energy is pressing places who want to be considered for GNEP to agree to receive the waste even before the reprocessing facilities are constructed and before a final repository site is determined. Does anyone really believe the waste will be removed from SRS once it arrives?
The shipments that were originally destined for Yucca Mountain and which would be sent to SRS if it is selected as the GNEP site would be in the tens of thousands of truck shipments, most of them coming down I26 and I20 through Columbia metropolitan area to SRS. NIRS and John Sticpewich from Common Sense At the Nuclear Crossroads Campaign have used DOE data and DOE software to create maps of the expected routes of waste from nuclear power plants across the Eastern half of the US to Savannah River Site.
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Written by Robert Alvarez
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Wednesday, 25 April 2007 |
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Robert Alvarez has completed a report on the waste to be generated by GNEP. It shows some surprising results and projects waste streams significantly larger than anything South Carolina has seen.
Radioactive Wastes And The Global Nuclear Energy Partnership 1.36 Mb
Original
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Written by Bobbie Paul (Atlanta Wand)
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Thursday, 12 April 2007 |
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Fuel reprocessing proposal full of risks
Published in the Atlantic Journal Constitution on 2/9/07
President Bush's latest weapon of
"mass deception," being heavily marketed by the nuclear industry is
called Global Nuclear Energy Partnership. This initiative is
expected to cost between $3 billion and $6 billion in its first
five years. GNEP offers a misguided plan to expand global nuclear
energy production, while solving the nuclear waste problem here at
home and creating a "proliferation resistant" technology to keep
nuclear materials out of the hands of terrorists.
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Written by Gerald Rudolph
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Wednesday, 11 April 2007 |
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Matthew Bunn, a strong proponent of nuclear energy, says that the proposed technologies and strategies for reprocessing spent nuclear fuel is more likely to increase nuclear proliferation than decrease it, and is considerably more expensive to U.S taxpayers. Referring to GNEP and its heavy focus on reprocessing and recycling, he says,
...the future of nuclear energy will be best promoted by making nuclear energy as safe, cheap, proliferation-resistant, and uncontroversial as possible, and recycling using the technologies available today or likely to be available in the near term points in the wrong direction on each of those counts.
Read his opposition to GNEP plans for reprocessing here .
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