Note to reporters: President Bush is expected to address and advocate for nuclear power in his State of the Union speech tonight. Although he may make only passing reference to his plans to revive the reprocessing of commercial waste fuel, this program is central to the Bush administration’s efforts to jump-start the moribund nuclear power industry. We offer the following statement for citation and quotation on this issue. We also include beneath the statement a short backgrounder on reprocessing. Our spokespeople are available for further comment by calling: 301-270-6477
January 31, 2006. “President Bush’s misguided obsession with nuclear power has reached a critical and dangerous juncture. The administration has been desperate to find a nuclear waste solution in order to resuscitate the moribund and unpopular nuclear power industry by moving forward quickly on the scientifically-flawed Yucca Mountain waste dump in Nevada. Instead it has found itself spinning its wheels in the mire of Yucca Mountain’s geologic instability and the scandal of covering up these data. Faced with an industry impatient to move its on-site waste, the administration is now clutching at a new nuclear straw.
“Its latest scheme is reprocessing of irradiated commercial fuel, one of the dirtiest and most proliferation-vulnerable processes in the nuclear fuel chain. Abandoned in this country for more than 30 years, countries where it has been done including Britain, France and Russia are now reaping its hideous environmental legacy of contamination and disease.
“The price tag in dollars as well as in health impacts will be enormous if this country is allowed to venture back down the reprocessing road. The only U.S. commercial reprocessing site ever to operate – in West Valley, New York is projected to cost more than $5 billion to clean up despite reprocessing only a fraction of the waste sent there between 1966 and 1972. Now Congress has awarded the U.S. Department of Energy $50 million of our money to set this debacle in motion once again although the totals are likely to reach the hundreds of billions of dollars.
“The existing nuclear reactors around the globe are already sitting-duck terrorist targets. Separating plutonium from nuclear power waste fuel as reprocessing does simply sets up new and inviting opportunities for terrorists to seize fissile, bomb-capable materials. Support for a reprocessing program makes a mockery of statements coming out of this administration that protecting the American people from terrorism is paramount. Instead, it will put more Americans in harm’s way.”