BLUE
RIDGE ENVIRONMENTAL DEFENSE LEAGUE
PO
Box 3487 Aiken, South
Carolina 29802
Phone
(803) 644-6953
Fax (803) 644-7369
Email: donmoniak@earthlink.net Website: www.bredl.org
FOR
IMMEDIATE RELEASE
January
10, 2001
CONTACTS:
Don
Moniak (803) 644-6953
Louis
Zeller (336) 982-2691
GROUP
URGES HALT TO PLUTONIUM FUEL FACTORY
Today
in a letter to US Department of Energy (DOE) Secretary Bill Richardson, the Blue
Ridge Environmental Defense League
(BREDL) urged immediate action to halt the plutonium fuel factory project at the Savannah River Site
(SRS). The group charged that the
recently released Environmental
Report reveals that the project’s Environmental Impact Statement was incomplete
and incorrect.
BREDL
asked that Richardson, who leaves office next week, act now to authorize a
Supplemental EIS to address huge
disparities in waste volumes and activity, to establish waste management
and disposal plans, and to account
for the doubling of the facility operations from 10 to 20
years.
In
his letter to the Secretary, Donald Moniak, BREDL’s SRS Project Coordinator,
wrote that the contractor’s new
waste estimates “make the Department’s final analysis look like fiction.” Moniak expressed grave concerns about a new
highly radioactive liquid waste stream not included in the EIS. He charged, “Neither the Department nor the
contractor has a plan for what to do with this waste, a clear indication that the
plutonium fuel program is a throwback to the disastrous era of the ‘produce first, worry later’ operations
of the Cold War.”
Today’s
request for a Supplemental EIS follows delivery of the Environmental Report for
the Duke Cogema Stone and Webster
Mixed Oxide Fuel Fabrication Facility submitted to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission on December
20, 2000. The report was submitted
by DOE contractor Duke, Cogema,
Stone and Webster (DCS), which has a lucrative contract to design,
construct, and operate a the
plutonium fuel fabrication facility--commonly called the Mixed Oxide (MOX)
Fuel Fabrication Facility–at DOE’s
Savannah River Site near Aiken, SC.
The
report discloses large radioactive waste streams never managed before by SRS and
impacts from plutonium fuel
fabrication unreported or grossly underestimated in earlier DOE analysis. Compared to earlier DOE estimates, the
latest report shows the plutonium fuel factory annually generating
:
•
More than 80,000 gallons a year of previously unreported liquid “high activity
alpha waste” never before produced at SRS and for which neither the contractor
nor the Department have disposal plans;
•
7,500 times more liquid low level radioactive waste;
•
5 times more solid transuranic (TRU) radioactive waste.
Although
a year ago DOE claimed in its Surplus Plutonium Disposition Environmental
Impact Statement that no
“remotely” handled radioactive waste would be produced, hundreds of thousands of
gallons of waste are anticipated over the life of the plant. The plan now calls
for 81,300 gallons of liquid waste to be transferred to the F-Area high level
waste “tank farms” at SRS, which
are already short on space. The contractors and DOE propose deferring the future
disposition of this waste by allowing DOE’s Environmental Management department
at Savannah River Site to accept
and manage it—thus shifting and obscuring the real costs of the plutonium fuel program.
Last
September BREDL launched the SRS project of their Southern Anti-plutonium
Campaign. Working out of the
Aiken field office, Moniak serves as SRS project coordinator. For the past
17 years, BREDL has worked on
high-level and low-level radioactive waste issues in the
southeast.
-end-
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Letter
to te Secretary of Energy:
BLUE
RIDGE ENVIRONMENTAL DEFENSE LEAGUE
PO
Box 3487 Aiken, South
Carolina 29802
Phone (803) 644-6953
Fax
(803) 644-7369
Email:
donmoniak@earthlink.net
Website:
www.bredl.org
January
10, 2001
Secretary
of Energy Bill Richardson
Forrestal
Building
1000
Independence Ave.
Washington,
DC 20037
Re:
Request for Supplemental Environmental Impact Statement on
Surplus
Plutonium Disposition and Mixed Oxide Fuel Fabrication
Facility
Dear
Secretary Richardson:
I
write on behalf of the Board of Directors of the Blue Ridge Environmental
Defense League, Inc. to request that you take immediate action to halt design,
construction, and licensing work on the
proposed Mixed Oxide (MOX) Fuel Fabrication Facility (MFFF) at the
Department’s Savannah River Site in
South Carolina. A year ago you
signed the Record of Decision (ROD) for the Surplus Plutonium Disposition
Environmental Impact Statement (SPDEIS), which approved the use of surplus military plutonium as nuclear
reactor fuel in commercial nuclear power plants. Because recent revelations about this program
prove that the document you signed was based on incomplete and incorrect
information, we ask that you order a Supplemental Environmental Impact Statement before resuming work on the
MFFF.
When
you signed the Record of Decision allowing for the design and construction of
this plutonium fuel factory, the
Department claimed that it could handle and manage the liquid radioactive
wastes generated by plutonium
purification using liquid acid processing--a necessity for making plutonium fuel. For example, in response to
concerns about the liquid radioactive waste stream, the Department stated that no remotely
handled transuranic waste would be created and “generation rates for
contaminated liquid waste would generally be small.” (Page 3-972, SPDEIS).
Quite frankly, today’s estimates
makes the Department’s final analysis--based largely on the contractor’s
proposal--look like fiction.
The
new numbers prove this and other similar statements in the Department’s analysis
to be untrue. Instead of 680 cubic
meters of transuranic waste being generated, today the estimate is 3,200 cubic meters. Instead of 570 gallons of liquid low
level radioactive waste, today the estimate is 4,280,000 gallons. Without explanation, facility operations
have been extended from 10 to 20
years.
Most
notable is the fact that more than one million gallons of a new liquid
radioactive waste stream at
Savannah River Site–called “liquid high alpha activity waste”–will be produced
during the operating life of the
plant. At the present time, the Department and its contractor only have
plans for where to store this waste
at the already filled-to-capacity F-Area Tank Farm at Savannah River Site. Neither the Department nor the
contractor has a plan for what to do with this new waste, a clear indication that the plutonium fuel
program is a throwback to the disastrous era of the produce first, worry later” operations of the
Cold War.
The
table below illustrates the stark differences between what the Department
predicted in its final analysis one year ago and the reality reported in the
Environmental Report (ER) for the Duke
Cogema Stone and Webster (DCS) Mixed Oxide (MOX) Fuel Fabrication
Facility submitted to the Nuclear
Regulatory Commission (NRC) on December 20, 2000. These changes are aggravated
by the fact that whereas the
Department claimed ten years of operation, the contractor is now claiming twenty
years of operation.
In
essence, this program continues to represent the worst kind of bait-and-switch.
The Department’s estimates reported
in the final SPDEIS were based on earlier estimates from Duke Cogema Stone and Webster and published
by DOE in the Environmental Synopsis of Proposal for MOX Fuel Fabrication And Reactor
Irradiation Services in April 1999. Before that, the Department claimed in its Draft SPDEIS in July 1998
that a plutonium fuel plant would generate less than 1 gallon of contact-handled
TRU waste and that liquid acid plutonium processing—quaintly called plutonium oxide polishing in official
reports–was an “unreasonable alternative.”
In reality, the Department
decided in September 1997 to abandon its experimental “dry” plutonium pyroprocessing scheme it claimed would
work for MOX, but never told the public.
The
Department of Energy is obligated under the National Environmental Policy Act to
provide accurate and complete
information before embarking on projects on federal land. The Department failed in this fundamental duty. While
we believe this level of misinformation calls for the Department to abandon the
plutonium fuel program, we will accept as a minimum a Supplemental Environmental
Impact Statement to be completed prior to the expenditure of additional
funds. We at BREDL recognize that you have only a
few days in office; therefore, we urge you to act now to right this wrong.
We
look forward to hearing your reply to this request.
Respectfully
submitted,
Don
Moniak