Reprocessing Nuclear Waste - How to Make a Bad Situation Worse

guest post by Dan Endreson, Minnesota Program Coordinator for Clean Water Action

One of the unfortunate consequences of using nuclear reactors to generate electricity is the toxic radioactive wastes and by-products. This waste is extremely hazardous and remains radioactive for hundreds of generations. In other words, if the ancient Egyptians had created nuclear reactors, their waste would remain radioactive to this day.

Here in Minnesota, the legislature has dealt with our nuclear waste problem by allowing nuclear facilities to store spent fuel waste in casks along the banks of the Mississippi River. These casks were meant to serve as a short term solution to nuclear waste storage while the federal government constructed a geological repository at Yucca Mountain in Nevada. As plans for opening Yucca Mountain have been eliminated, nuclear advocates claim they have found a new silver bullet to the waste problem – reprocessing spent fuel.

The idea behind reprocessing is that spent fuel can be enriched and used again in the nuclear fuel cycle. Nuclear advocates like to compare this to “recycling” and that reprocessing will decrease the levels of spent fuel waste. These claims are completely false.

Not only will reprocessing not solve the waste problem, it will actually make it worse. Reprocessing spent fuel involves treating the waste with nitric acid and other strong chemicals which creates huge volumes of liquid radioactive waste. The Department of Energy estimates that reprocessing spent fuel will result in a 6-fold increase in total waste volume compared to the direct disposal of spent fuel.[1]

Much like the spent fuel currently residing in Minnesota, no one has perfected a safe method for eliminating reprocessed waste. France and Britain, two of the leading reprocessing countries, have been discharging their liquid waste into the Atlantic Ocean, contaminating seafood all the way to the Arctic. Here in the United States, waste from reprocessing nuclear weapons during the Cold War continues to sit in leaky underground tanks that threaten our groundwater resources. The Department of Energy estimates it will cost over $100 billion to clean up the nearly 100 million gallons of high level reprocessing waste. Disposal of this waste may include burying waste-filled containers in a repository or by pouring the liquid waste into our rivers, lakes, and streams similar to the Europeans.

In addition to environmental concerns, reprocessing is also extremely costly and can contribute to nuclear proliferation. France spends about $1 billion extra per year on reprocessed fuel compared to conventional uranium fuel and the reprocessing process extracts plutonium, the same material used in nuclear weapons.[2]

As the years go by, the temporary waste facilities at Minnesota’s nuclear plants appear to become more and more permanent. In our rush to remove this waste, we must not act so hastily that we choose a solution that exacerbates the current environmental problems associated with nuclear reactors.

We urge our elected officials to reject any policy that leads the U.S. down the road of reprocessing of nuclear waste an increased stream of dangerous radioactive pollution.

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[1] U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Nuclear Energy, Draft Global Nuclear Energy Partnership Programmatic Environmental Impact Statement, GNEP PEIS; DOE/EIS-0396, October 2008, links at http://nuclear.gov/peis.html; hereafter PEIS 2008, Table 4.8-6, p. 4-189. See thermal reactor recycle, Option 1. Comparable French data that separate reprocessing and reactor wastes are not readily available

[2] United States General Accounting Office, Report to the Chairman, Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations, Committee on Energy and Commerce, House of Representatives, “Nuclear Waste: Challenges to Achieving Potential Savings in DOE’s High-Level Waste Cleanup Program, GAO-03-593, June 2003

The Kerry-Boxer Bill and Nuclear Power

Environmental and political blogs are a buzz with news and analysis of the Climate Bill recently introduced in the Senate. You may have seen mentions of the "climate bill", or the "Kerry-Boxer bill", or the "Clean Energy Jobs and American Power Act".

Perhaps the greatest environmental and political challenge before our legislators today is to significantly reduce greenhouse gas emissions. The Kerry-Boxer bill does have nuclear provisions, although not as many as many Republicans preferred. For example, Sen. John McCain (R-AZ), advocates for funding to build up to 100 new nuclear power reactors. Energy Secretary Steven Chu currently suggests only 4 or 5 new reactors.

We challenge our legislators even further to consider thoughtfully how to achieve the goal of reducing greenhouse gas emissions without relying on nuclear power. We need to remind ourselves that nuclear power is not cheap, neither is it "clean energy."

Click here to contact your Senator today and urge him or her to vote for truly clean energy that will protect the environment and public health.

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addition (10/6/09)

Grist magazine is trying to find out where senators stand on the Kerry-Boxer bill. Help them out; and let us know, too!

Abandon Waste In Hanford's leaky tanks AND Dump More Waste? Public opposition needed quickly!

Responding to news that GAO urges consideration of abandoning High-Level Nuclear Waste in bottom of Hanford tanks
by Heart of America NW's Executive Director, Gerry Pollet

The article in Oct. 2nd's Herald reporting that the US Government Accountability Office (GAO) urges that USDOE consider abandoning up to fifteen percent of the High-Level Waste in Hanford's tanks is the opening salvo in a public battle for the upcoming hearings on the WA State/USDOE settlement allowing 22 years of delay in emptying the leaking Single Shell Tanks, and on USDOE's Tank Closure Waste Management EIS (TCWMEIS). Hearings on the settlement are in November, and hearings on the EIS are expected early in 2010, with the massive draft EIS due out on October 23rd.

Over a million gallons of deadly High-Level Nuclear Waste has leaked from Hanford's Single Shell Tanks (SSTs). The contamination is moving far more rapidly into the groundwater and towards the Columbia River than USDOE claims is possible, according to monitoring data that USDOE has often hidden.

USDOE has long hoped to abandon ten percent of the waste in the bottom of Hanford's tanks and the waste in miles of pipelines. Heart of America Northwest, the Yakama Nation, NRDC have led opposition to USDOE including in the EIS the option (referred to in impact statements as an "alternative") of leaving ten percent of the waste forever (until it leaks) in the bottom of the tanks.

Why? The ten percent of the waste in the bottom, which is typically highly concentrated with thick sludge and hard crusts, has as much as twenty five percent of all the radiation in the tanks, including much of the waste that poses the greatest risk. This has been documented at the USDOE's Savannah River Site (SRS), for which USDOE won Congressional approval to reclassify the waste at the bottom of the tanks, and, by changing its name from High-Level Nuclear Waste, abandon the waste with a layer of cement grout on top.

Instead of cleaning up Hanford, USDOE wants to delay the emptying of the leaky Single Shell Tanks through 2040, possibly abandon the worst waste forever, AND dump more waste into Hanford's soil near the Columbia River!

Of course, it is far cheaper to abandon the High-Level Nuclear Waste in the bottom of tanks than it is to empty 99% of the waste or empty them to the practical ability of technology - which is what the Hanford Clean-Up Agreement and state hazardous waste law currently requires. USDOE, of course, argues that it can be exempted from the state hazardous waste law and threatens to seek to preempt the requirements.

Grouting the waste in the bottom of the tanks at SRS fails to meet performance criteria because the grout just forms on top of the waste layer - allowing the waste to continue to eat through the tanks and contaminate the soil and groundwater in the future.

Of course, half the "experts' GAO spoke with objected to getting 99% of the waste out of the tanks (or as much as feasible, which has been generally demonstrated to be 99%), since most of them came from USDOE and its contractors.

The public needs to weigh in on these schemes to abandon waste in the tanks, under the tanks and to dump even more waste at Hanford in the upcoming hearings in November on the proposed WA State/USDOE lawsuit settlement.  Another opportunity will be the hearings next year on the TCWMEIS and USDOE's separate proposal to use Hanford as a national waste dump for highly radioactive "Greater than Class C" waste in Spring of 2010.

Comment Today!

• Email your comments to the Department of Energy or WA Ecology 
• Heart of America NW suggests you submit copies of your comments to Governor Gregoire (WA), Governor Kulongoski (OR) and Attorney General McKenna (WA).

ACTION ALERT!!!

Public Comment Period on Proposed Delays to Hanford Cleanup runs from October 1 - December 11

Background:

Tri-Party Agreement (TPA) negotiations began in 2007, when it became clear that the US Department of Energy (USDOE) was going to miss crucial deadlines to clean up tank waste.  The negotiations fell apart, so the State of Washington sued USDOE in November 2008 to empty the tanks and treat the waste faster, and Oregon State joined the lawsuit in early 2009. USDOE managed to reach separate agreements with each of the states in August 2009, without going to court, and the Proposed Settlement Agreement outlines the conditions of the settlement with WA.  The settlement consists of two parts: a Consent Decree -- its deadlines are enforceable in federal court -- and changes to the TPA.

A quick rundown of some of the changes:

• Hanford cleanup is delayed by decades;
• Restrictions on importing off-site waste to Hanford are still unenforceable -- USDOE agrees only to have a "preferred alternative" of not adding more waste to Hanford until 2019 in the upcoming Tank Closure & Waste Management EIS;
  
• Washington State accepts USDOE's delays and missed deadlines;
• Milestone to empty all single shell tanks by 2018 delayed until 2040;
• Milestone to treat all tank waste by 2028 delayed until 2047;
• Milestone to "hot-start" waste treatment plant by 2011 delayed until 2019, with full scale operations not beginning until 2022;
• USDOE will finally comply with Superfund law requiring it to annual submit a lifecycle scope, schedule & cost for completion of Hanford site cleanup.

Comment Today!

• Email your comments to the Department of Energy or WA Ecology 
• Heart of America NW suggests you submit copies of your comments to Governor Gregoire (WA), Governor Kulongoski (OR) and Attorney General McKenna (WA).

TIPS FOR COMMENTING

1. Include in the TPA an enforceable ban on USDOE adding more off-site waste until existing wastes are brought into compliance and are cleaned up: the “Clean-Up First” principle.

• This has been the number one public concern in the last three years;
• Put the ban on adding off-site waste to Hanford  in the Consent Decree as a part of the settlement of the lawsuit;
• The Governor of Washington’s office said that “Clean-Up First” would be part of the negotiations and settlement, but it is not included in a way that requires enforcement;
• The Hanford hazardous waste permit should include the “Clean-up First” principle for all landfills;
• Instead, it will be included in an upcoming Environmental Impact Statement (Tank Closure & Waste Management); the EIS will say that the “preferred alternative” is not import off-site waste until 2019.  This is not a binding statement and this alternative should be removed. 

2. Reject taking until 2040 to empty single shell tanks (SSTs).

• All of the leak-prone, inadequate single shell tanks (SST) were originally supposed to be emptied by 2018.  This date has been delayed 32 years to 2040.  Meanwhile, over 1 million gallons of radioactive waste have already leaked;
• The deadline for treating the waste was originally 2028, but has been delayed 19 years to 2047;
• USDOE should take steps to empty 40 of the 140 remaining tanks by 2019, instead of 9 as proposed in this settlement;
• It is “unconscionable” (to use Governor Gregoire’s words) to allow waste to remain in the leaky SSTs until 2040; it is doubly unconscionable to allow DOE to add more waste to Hanford while these tanks have not been emptied!

3. Complete the Waste Treatment Plant (WTP) as soon as possible – no more delays!

• Construction was supposed to be complete by 2011, but the date for “hot-starting” the plant has been delayed 8 more years to 2019;
• The plant will not be fully operational until 2022;
• This project has a long history of mismanagement of funds and resources and is already over budget by $8 billion.  Let’s do it right – increase accountability to finish on time and without wasting taxpayer dollars.

Report evaluates rising costs, leaving more waste in Hanford tanks

A Government Accountability Office (GAO) report released in September evaluated DOE's tank waste cleanup strategy at Hanford.  53 million gallons of radioactive and hazardous waste are stored in 140 single shell and 28 double shell underground tanks at Hanford.  67 of the single shell tanks have already leaked over 1 million gallons of waste and all of them are out of compliance because they were designed in the 40's and 50's to last for 20 years.

The GAO report suggests that DOE consider leaving more waste in the tanks -- DOE is currently legally required to remove 99% of tank waste, or to empty the tanks to the limits of technology.  GAO states that leaving more waste in the tanks could significantly cut costs, as they predict that tank waste cleanup costs could top $100 billion.  DOE currently estimates that a cool $77 billion will finish the job.  Read the Tri-City Herald article here.

The bottom line is that these tanks are leaking, and wastes must be fully removed and treated to protect the environment and public health.   There's no price tag too high for the protection of the groundwater and the Columbia River for generations to come.

Hanford budget gets big boost

Hanford's fiscal year 2010 starts today, with a bonus of $87 million more than originally proposed by the Obama administration. The federal government is spending over $2 billion a year on Hanford clean-up. This year, the budget is supplemented by an additional $2 billion in stimulus funding (ARRA). Read the full story here.

The additional money is to be targeted towards groundwater clean-up and treating the radioactive sludge leftover from the K basin removal. The vitrification plant is fully funded for the year with $690 million. This year, tank farms have $408 million dedicated toward cleanup, up $320 million from FY2009. That's good news, but doesn't make sense paired with the proposed consent decree, which would delay emptying and treating tank waste by decades.

Hanford finishes shipping plutonium, unirradiated fuel

Two years ago, the Department of Energy decided to consolidate the nation's leftover weapons grade plutonium, in an effort to reduce security requirements at all sites but one. Savannah River, South Carolina, shown in the picture to the right, was targeted to receive the waste.

This article in the Tri-City Herald reports that Hanford finished shipping over 2,000 coffee-canister sized containers of plutonium-239 to Savannah River two years ago; in September 2009, they finished shipping unirradiated fuel off-site. Hanford still has some plutonium-238, originally received from Savannah River in the 1960's, that

was never used and is now slated to return to its origins. Looks like the DOE gets a kick out of transporting highly radioactive isotopes cross-country, a process which inherently exposes communities to radiation. We have to remain on guard, though, to be sure that DOE does not continue to target Hanford as a national radioactive and "mixed" radioactive and hazardous waste dump!