Reprocessing



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Reprocessing

March 31, 2008: New report slams President Bush’s Global Nuclear Energy Partnership (GNEP) program, finding—among other problems--that no economic cost-benefit analysis has been done, the technologies proposed do not exist, and the program would be too slow and expensive to address climate change. Report is from Institute for Policy Studies, Friends of the Earth, Government Accountability Project and Southern Alliance for Clean Energy.

May 23, 2007: 30 minute television interview hosted by Dave Kraft of Nuclear Energy Information Service of Chicago, with guests Shaun Burnie (European nuclear waste consultant) and Aileen Mioko Smith (of Green Action in Kyoto, Japan) on the many risks of commercial nuclear waste reprocessing under the Bush Administration's Global Nuclear Energy Partnership proposal:

January 26, 2006: 28 groups write to all 535 Members of Congress urging opposition to the reprocessing relapse

January 23, 2006: Federal Decision Triples Radioactive Burden In Permanent Sacrifice Zone of the Southeast. NIRS Southeast press release.

January, 2006. Reprocessing is NOT the Solution to the Nuclear Waste Problem. NIRS factsheet.

October 20, 2005: Group Letter to Energy & Water Appropriations Conferees: Oppose Interim Storage & Reprocessing of Nuclear Waste.

Urge your Member of Congress to oppose pro-reprocessing and Mobile Chernobyl language in the House Energy & Water Appropriations Bill by supporting the Spratt and Markey-Holt Amendments. NIRS Action Alert. May 24, 2005.

Radioactive Waste Reprocessing. NIRS factsheet. May 2005.

Great Lakes United Resolution on West Valley Nuclear Wastes. June 2004

Natural Resources Defense Council letter to U.S. Senator Lindsay Graham ( 1,18Mb)(R-SC) urging him to desist from sponsoring DOE-written legislation enabling the abandonment of high-level radioactive waste from reprocessing in underground storage containers next to major rivers and above major aquifers, May 12, 2004

West Valley Nuclear Site “Cleanup” 1996 Draft Environmental Impact Statement

Volume 1, Chapters 1-3
Volume 1, Chapter 4
Volume 1, Chapter 5-7
Volume 2, Part 1
Volume 2, Part 2
Volume 2, Part 3
Volume 2, Part 4

In 1996 the US Department of Energy (DOE) and the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA) released their Draft Environmental Impact Statement (DOE/EIS-0226-D) on the Completion of the West Valley Demonstration Project and the Closure or Long-Term Management of the Facilities at the Western New York Nuclear Service Center.

Page 3-135 (in Chapter 3, first link) indicates that total site exhumation and removal would cost of $8.3 Billion in 1996 dollars. Exhumation and removal of the commercial radioactive waste burial area alone was estimated to cost $3.1 Billion in 1996 dollars. If that is excluded from the $8.3 Billion, it was estimated to cost $5.2 Billion in 1996 dollars to clean up the reprocessing and related waste and site contamination.

DOE is attempting to ignore this 1996 DEIS, has split it into 2 separate EIS’s (the Waste Management EIS [completed December 2003, ROD issued ~2005] and the decommissioning EIS now in prerelease draft review form). The latter, decommissioning EIS is now proposed to be split again.

Related Links

Alliance for Nuclear Accountability’s web page has lots of info on DOE trying to abandon HLRW in South Carolina and Idaho (and maybe someday Washington and New York).

IEER - have done work on La Hague, France and Sellafield, UK (Cumbrians Opposed to a Radioactive Environement, for example).

Excellent compilation of background information opposing Bush’s Global Nuclear Energy Partnership (GNEP) and a relapse into commercial high-level radioactive waste reprocessing.

January 26, 2006: 20+ groups warn Congress against Bush Administration reprocessing initiative