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October 20, 2005

Re: Oppose Interim Storage & Reprocessing of Nuclear Waste in the Energy & Water Appropriations Conference Report

Dear Energy & Water Appropriations Conferee:

We urge your opposition to any effort to include any language in the Energy & Water Appropriations Conference Report that would provide taxpayer funding for research and development of reprocessing technologies, which cannot solve our nuclear waste problem. We also urge you to oppose any language that would require the Department of Energy (DOE) to start transporting 50,000 metric tons of commercial nuclear waste to one or more DOE sites in 2006 for “interim” storage.

Without any public hearing, language was inserted into the report of the House Energy & Water Development Appropriations bill that would create a new Spent Fuel Recycling Initiative, requiring one or more DOE sites to begin receiving nuclear waste from commercial nuclear power plants in 2006 for “interim” storage and requiring DOE to “prepare an integrated spent fuel recycling plan for implementation in FY2007.” This proposal will not move our country towards a solution for nuclear waste.

Interim Storage cannot solve the nuclear waste problem
Proponents argue that irradiated fuel will be safer consolidated at a few DOE sites, but as long as nuclear power plants continue to operate, nuclear waste will be at reactors as the waste must be cooled in pools on site at least 5 years before transportation. The House language also opens up the possibility of storing the waste at other federal government sites or closed military bases. Interim storage means unnecessary additional shipments of this waste, risking public health and safety as waste is transported on busy highways and railroads across the nation. Moreover, states are far from prepared to begin a massive waste transportation program and interim storage. In addition, no DOE site has been licensed by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission for such storage. Interim storage at DOE sites is contrary to legal agreements made with states and tribes as DOE has already committed to cleaning up these sites, not adding more pollution to them.

Reprocessing would exacerbate the waste problem
Reprocessing is expensive and polluting, and weakens the global non-proliferation regime. Approximately $100 billion has been spent globally trying to commercialize plutonium. The only private commercial reprocessing facility in the United States, West Valley in New York State, was an economic and environmental disaster, reprocessing only one year's worth of fuel in six years and resulting in high-level radioactive waste, transuranics and so-called “low-level” radioactive waste that is still threatening the groundwater and the Great Lakes watershed more than 30 years later. Estimates for cleaning up the part of the site that did reprocessing exceed $5 billion.

More than 200 metric tons of plutonium from commercial reprocessing has been separated globally. This separated plutonium is vulnerable to theft. Reprocessing will send a signal to the rest of the world that the U.S. intends to engage in a process that extracts plutonium that could be used in nuclear weapons, at a time when the United States is seeking to discourage other nations from acquiring such technologies. A DOE official admitted in testimony before the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Energy & Water Development on March 17 that DOE has doubts whether the reprocessing technology under study can ever be made “proliferation-resistant.”

Reprocessing does not even significantly reduce the radioactivity of the waste that must be stored in a repository. France and England are often held up as models of how commercial reprocessing can solve our waste problem. But the reality is that these countries also have massive quantities of highly radioactive waste with nowhere to go. In fact, they are dumping some of the radioactive waste into the sea, much to the ire of other European nations. Moreover, no country in the world reprocesses irradiated MOX fuel, because it is too expensive—which ultimately results in the problem of finding a disposal site for the highly radioactive irradiated MOX fuel.

Given the clear unsuitability of the Yucca Mountain site for a geologic repository, a more responsible approach would be to phase out nuclear power to limit the total amount of waste and, at least in the medium-term, store high-level nuclear waste as close as safely possible to where it was generated to forego the considerable risks of transporting it. Properly managed, hardened storage of irradiated fuel could be much more securable than shipment on trucks, trains and barges that cannot be adequately protected.

We urge you to oppose funding and language for the interim storage and reprocessing of commercial nuclear waste, including the Advanced Fuel Cycle Initiative. We thank you for your consideration of this important matter. If you have any questions, please contact Michele Boyd at Public Citizen (202-454-5134).

Sincerely,

Susan Gordon
Director
Alliance for Nuclear Accountability

Alice Slater
Executive Director
GRACE Public Fund

Jim Riccio
Policy Analyst
Greenpeace
Shaun Bernie
Nuclear Campaign Coordinator
Greenpeace International

Gerald Pollet, JD
Executive Director
Heart of America Northwest

Wenonah Hauter
Director, Energy Program
Public Citizen

Judy Treichel
Executive Director
Nevada Nuclear Waste Task Force

Carah Ong
Washington DC Office Director
Nuclear Age Peace Foundation

Michael Mariotte
Executive Director
Nuclear Information and Resource Service

Jay Coghlan
Director
Nuclear Watch of New Mexico

Kimberly Roberts
Deputy Director,
Nuclear and Security Programs
Physicians for Social Responsibility

Dave Hamilton
Director, Global Warming and Energy Program
Sierra Club

Jeremy Maxand
Executive Director
Snake River Alliance

Don Hancock
Director, Nuclear Waste Safety Program
Southwest Research and Information Center

Anna Aurilio
Legislative Director
U.S. Public Interest Research Group

Susan Shaer
Executive Director
Women’s Action for New Directions