Mary Olson
From: Mary
Olson
Sent: Monday,
July 20, 1998 3:25 PM
To: Michael
Mariotte
Subject:
MOX
Alert final
MOX ALERT!!!!!!!!!!!!
DRAFT EIS ON MOX IS OUT -- DEMAND A HEARING IN YOUR AREA
Remember the Department of Energy? They are the ones who made all those nuclear bombs out of plutonium. Now they want to put that same plutonium in the nuclear power reactor nearest you. To quote a World Tree Peace Center bumper sticker: "The Peaceful Atom is a Bomb!" So they are preparing a Draft Environmental Impact Statement (DEIS) which you can comment on.
MOX -- or mixed oxide (plutonium-239 and uranium-238) reactor fuel is DOE's preferred answer for what to do with plutonium removed from bombs that are being taken apart. While taking nuclear war heads apart is a good thing, the rub comes because this experimental program places reactor communities -- and indeed, the global community-- at greater risk. Both by raising the probability of a severe reactor accident AND by more than doubling the radioactivity that could be released should an accident happen.
Why does DOE want to do this? Putting plutonium as MOX in a reactor does not make it go away -- while some plutonium is being split, more is being made. The reactor does however make it highly radioactive by mixing it with the alphabet soup of fission products, and much more difficult to use in another bomb.
There are non-reactor alternatives for how to make the plutonium unavailable for use in another bomb, which are generically called plutonium immobilization. The DOE is currently conducting an Environmental Impact Statement to inform the Department's decision about whether to make MOX fuel, and if so, how much MOX to make from a total of 50 pounds of plutonium that is considered "excess" -- isn't ALL plutonium excess? The plan is to immobilize the rest.
DOE has just announced that they are releasing their Draft Environmental Impact Statement (DEIS), and holding public meetings to get comments. As with their scoping meetings, not one of the locations(see below) is designed to be accessible to reactor or transport corridor communities. We who live near power reactors are invisible in this decision as to whether to put plutonium in the reactors. Why? Because we are also powerful. We hold the key as to whether a nuclear reactor operator in a “deregulated, open” market can survive while using nuclear fuel at all, and especially experimental, never-been-tried-before bomb fuel.
Suggested Action Steps follow this DOE information--
DOE meetings and comment info: To get a copy of the DEIS, call 1-800-820-5156 -- that is a recording and also fax line, where you can request information, register for the meetings or ask for the document.
Meetings are in all cases held twice on the same day in each location, in the afternoon from 1 - 4 p.m. and in the evening from 6 to 9 p.m.
LOCATIONS: August 4, Hanford -- Richland, WA
August 11 Pantex -- Amarillo, TX
August 13 Savannah River Site -- North Augusta, SC
August 18 Portland, OR
August 20 Idaho National Engineering and Environmental Lab
Idaho Falls, ID
If you want more information about these meetings, call DOE, or to talk it over with us, contact: Mary Olson, 202-328-0002 or maryo@igc.org (call if time sensitive).
DOE is also accepting written comments until September 16, 1998.
Their address for comments is:
US Department of Energy
Office of Fissile Materials Disposition
P.O. Box 23786
Washington, DC 20026-5134
NIRS ACTION STEPS:
1) The most important thing is to shine light on the dark and secret ways of the plutonium gang. If you live anywhere near a nuclear power reactor, demand a DOE hearing on the Draft Environmental Impact Statement hearing in your area. We will be affected by this major Federal Action, but we are being left out of the process. Make your comments to DOE in the form of a letter to the Editor of your local paper. -- Or a letter to your Congress person. In any case make a "cc" list that includes:
your paper editor
your Congress Person (US House Washington, DC 20215
both your Senators (US Senate, Washington, DC 20210
any state official you want -- Governor or state agency
us at NIRS (Mary Olson 1424 16th St NW Suite 404 Washington, DC 20036)
DOE (address above)
NRC (Shirley Anne Jackson, Chair, US Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Washington, DC 20555)
2) Get comments in to DOE. Message: NIX MOX!!! In your comments, we strongly urge anyone living a hundred miles of a nuclear reactor to complain that you were left out of the scoping meetings, these comment meetings and also that the DOE is going to use two meetings that were boycotted by this community (in SanDiego and Chicago in June) as if it were your in-put under NEPA (the National Environmental Policy Act.) (This is assuming that the DOE has not been compliant and held a meeting in your area.
Please get something in early, and then later if there is the chance to do more detailed comments based on analysis that may be posted to the net, there is no problem with sending a second comment.
3) Part of "shining the light" on the plutonium lies is more out-reach in our communities on the MOX issue. August observances of Hiroshima and Nagasaki days provide an opportunity to do this. In a very real way, the US investment in the Manhattan project was the beginning of the possibility of a plutonium economy. The bomb that destroyed Nagasaki was a plutonium bomb. It is a fitting time to bring this issue forward.
In Portland, Oregon there are plans to include MOX in the program for August 6th. In Port Huron, Michigan folks recently held a talk on MOX since the trucks carrying US plutonium to Canada under the CANDU option would pass over the Clear Water Bridge. Let us know if you are going to make MOX part of your community's August remembrance of the destructive essence of the Nuclear Age.
4)A NIX MOX Organizer's manual is almost done! Watch for another alert announcing how to get one hot off the press -- at very low cost.
Mary Olson
Nuclear Information & Resource Service
1424 16th St NW Suite 404
Washington, DC 20036
202-328-0002 fax 202-462-2183