Don't Waste South Carolina

Fuel reprocessing proposal full of risks

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.

These claims are misleading and obscure the real reason for this government funded initiative.

Basically, GNEP is a huge import/export project of the nuclear industry that requires the U.S. to manufacture nuclear fuel rods, ship them to other countries to run reactors, and then take the highly radioactive fuel rods back for reprocessing in newly constructed facilities.

Eleven potential sites have been awarded $10.5 million to explore the development of these reprocessing centers. The Savannah River Site on the border of Georgia and South Carolina is one of the 11, and is rumored to be the most likely site to be chosen.

At the center of GNEP is the revival of reprocessing, erroneously called "recycling" by supporters. Reprocessing extracts plutonium and uranium from chopped-up spent nuclear fuel rods leaving behind large quantities of highly radioactive, acidic, liquid waste.

The U.S. government reprocessed nuclear fuel from the 1960s through the 1980s, pulling out plutonium and highly enriched uranium to make nuclear weapons. Less than 20 pounds of plutonium are needed to build a simple nuclear weapon.

The Savannah River Site was the site of nuclear fuel reprocessing for the fabrication of nuclear weapons during the Cold War. Today 35 million gallons of reprocessing waste sit in underground carbon steel tanks, awaiting a safe disposal solution. Over the years, these tanks have leaked into the groundwater and contaminated crucial water supplies. The Department of Energy has been charged with cleaning up this Cold War legacy, which will eventually cost taxpayers at least $10 billion.

"Recycling" plutonium from irradiated fuel is the nuclear industry's clever disguise for reprocessing. Actually, the extracted uranium (which accounts for the greatest volume of waste) is not re-used. Low demand for plutonium fuel translates into stockpiles of separated plutonium growing every year. The nuclear power industry prefers using newly enriched uranium because it is so much cheaper to produce.

Lastly, GNEP depends on the construction of an "advanced burner reactor" that is an experimental type of nuclear reactor far riskier than the "light water" reactors used in the industry today. Quoting scientist Ed Lyman of the Union of Concerned Scientists: "These fast burning reactors have a much higher risk of experiencing a runaway nuclear chain reaction that could lead to an explosion like the Chernobyl accident."

GNEP is an untested program that needs much further scrutiny. People are encouraged to come to the North Augusta Community Center on Thursday, Feb. 15, at 6 p.m. to speak out against this dangerous program. It's time we started cleaning up the mess we've made rather than re-embarking on a nuclear path that will require billions of dollars and potentially leave us with another toxic legacy.

Bobbie Paul of Atlanta is executive director Atlanta WAND (Women's Action for New Directions).