Still dirty, still dangerous: Reprocessing could be headed to Idaho

The Energy Department (DOE) announced funding for two proposals to study Idaho sites to host the costly, dirty, dangerous, and proliferating Global Nuclear Energy Partnership (GNEP). Nine other proposals across the country got funding as well.

EnergySolutions, which runs a nuclear waste dump in Utah, received $915,448 to study a privately owned site near Atomic City in Bingham County next to the Idaho National Laboratory. A consortium received $648,745 to study some section of land on the INL itself. The consortium includes Areva, which is owned by the French government and operates the huge—and hugely polluting—reprocessing plant at La Hague; Battelle Memorial Institute; Washington Group International; and the Regional Development Alliance, which encourages economic development in eastern Idaho.

GNEP is the federal government’s attempt to jumpstart the stagnant nuclear power industry. Normally, in the US, commercial nuclear reactors burn nuclear fuel to generate steam for turbines, which in turn generate electricity. When the nuclear fuel is used for a while and becomes less efficient at producing heat (called “spent fuel”), it is removed from the reactor. Once removed, the fuel is cooled in pools of water, and later is stored in dry casks on site. For decades now, the ultimate plan was to ship all the nation’s spent fuel (which is extremely radioactive) to a national repository for permanent storage. What GNEP proposes to do is add a middle step between burning the fuel and storing it permanently. GNEP is a fancy acronym for reprocessing, and as history shows, would generate vast amounts of liquid high-level waste, create an opportunity for nuclear weapons material (plutonium) to be diverted from the fuel cycle and into the hands of potential enemies, and create a global system whereby supplier countries would provide nuclear reactors and fuel to user nations and then take the irradiated fuel back.

Congress has cautioned sites that volunteer to host the reprocessor and reactor to be prepared to store irradiated fuel for up to a century. In 1995 the State of Idaho negotiated a settlement of a lawsuit against the DOE and the Department of the Navy that included a ban on irradiated fuel from commercial nuclear reactors entering the state. The grants to EnergySolutions and the Areva consortium will fund some of the standard site characterization needed for an environmental impact statement.

Comment on GNEP by June 4, 2007:
GNEP PEIS Document Manager
Office of Nuclear Energy
US DOE
1000 Independent Avenue SW
Washington, DC 20585-0119
GNEP-PEIS@nuclear.energy.gov

Snake River Alliance GNEP Information Sheet
Testimony to Congress on GNEP by Matthew Bunn, September 14, 2006
Frank von Hippel, "Managing spent fuel in the United States: The illogic of reprocessing"
Alliance for Nuclear Accountability GNEP Fact Sheet