Tag Archives: Blue Ribbon Commission

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Tom Clements: Nuclear Industry Intent On Moving Waste To SC

Tom Clements, writing in the Friday, July 29 edition of The State newspaper issues a warning and a call to action to South Carolinians about the nuclear industry’s plans to store nuclear waste in SC:

Much of the nation’s 65,000 metric tons of radioactive spent fuel now stored at reactor sites across the country could be brought to South Carolina for “interim” storage and reprocessing. The prospect of becoming the new Yucca Mountain spent-fuel dump surely will be rejected by many South Carolinians, but the federal government’s plans threaten to leave us holding the nuclear waste bag nonetheless.

A blue ribbon commission, established by President Obama in January 2010 after the unraveling of plans for a geologic repository at Yucca Mountain, is charged with recommending the fate of spent fuel. Those recommendations, expected to beissued today, also will address the deadly high-level waste at the Department of Energy’s Savannah River Site [SRS] near Aiken.

Draft subcommittee reports were issued in June, and a central recommendation, certain to be embraced by the full commission, is to “establish one or more consolidated interim storage facilities” for spent fuel. Given its uncertain future as federal funding decreases, SRS is now squarely in the nuclear crosshairs to become an “interim” site, with special interests poised to exploit this situation.

The Savannah River Site and politicians allied with the state’s nuclear industry are actively soliciting the nuclear waste. Under the guise of bringing jobs to SC, the politicians and lobbyists will bring waste for storage. Since there is no long term storage site for spent nuclear waste, there will be nowhere to move the reprocessed waste. The waste will certainly stay in at SRS as an “interim” solution that will stretch out into the future.

And the waste that is stored will be more dangerous to the public as it is shipped and from increased radioactivity after reprocessing. Clements again:

It costs nearly $1 billion per year to immobilize SRS waste in robust containers, and the job won’t be finished for two decades. Reprocessing of commercial spent fuel would produce waste of higher radioactivity and larger volume. We can ill afford to manage more such unstable radioactive material at the site.

Clements and the Friends of the Earth propose a safer interim solution:

  • Store the spent nuclear waste on site in solid containers, not pools of water.
  • Immobilize the plutonium in existing high-level waste at SRS with the goal of removing it to a geologic repository along with spent fuel.

Storing on site will reduce the danger of moving the nuclear waste on railroads or highways.  Immobilizing the plutonium in solid containers would render the existing waste at SRS reasonably safe until a permanent solution can be found.

Moving the waste to SRS only increases the likelihood that the waste storage at SRS will become permanent. Unless the burden of nuclear waste disposal is shared through out the industry and the country, there will be no pressure to find a permanent solution to the problem of nuclear waste.

Keeping the waste away from South Carolina will not be easy.  The state’s congressional delegation and powerful nuclear interests are pushing to place the repository here.

Writing last week, Clements discussed the political forces pushing the waste toward SRS:

If you’re interested or concerned about the issue of high-level nuclear waste storage or disposal in South Carolina, take note of the move by SCE&G to store radioactive spent fuel in “dry casks” at the VC Summer plant.  This may be the best option for deadly spent fuel but is not a viable long-term solution.  See information below for a Nuclear Regulatory Commission meeting to be held on Wednesday about the dry cask facility – you can call in and make a comment at the end of the meeting.

In looking at medium-term and long-term options for spent fuel, be aware that the federal Blue Ribbon Commission (on spent fuel and DOE high-level waste, see http://www.brc.gov/) is set to present its draft recommendations within two weeks and they will recommend for one of more “consolidated interim storage” sites for spent fuel.  Special interests at the DOE’s Savannah River Site (SRS), which hope to receive money from the Nuclear Waste Fund for interim storage, are pushing for SRS to become one of those “interim” spent fuel storage sites.  An official at Savannah River Nuclear Solutions (SRNS), the company which manages SRS, has clearly stated such interest and Jim Rogers, CEO of Duke Energy, has also affirmed this view under questioning at a recent SC Public Service Commission hearing.

Isakson, Chambliss, DeMint, Graham

Saxby Chambliss, Lindsey Graham, Johnny Isakson and Jim DeMint joke with an official at the Savannah River Site, May 1, 2009.

If the spent fuel were to be brought to SRS, the momentum for “reprocessing” of that material would greatly increase.  Reprocessing separates the 1% of plutonium in the spent fuel for possible reuse as nuclear fuel and leaves behind a radioactive mess with a host of hard-to-manage nuclear waste streams.  An SRS-SRNS plan entitled “Enterprise SRS,” which has not been released to the public but which we have posted at http://www.nonukesyall.org/pdfs/Enterprise_SRS%20future%20draft%205.2011.pdf, clearly shows interest in reprocessing as the site scrambles for reduced federal funding. (See diagram on page 7 of this document.)  Reprocessing boosters are using a green washing term – recycling – in attempt to trick the public into thinking that reprocessing is clean, so don’t be fooled.  If brought to SRS, spent fuel may well never leave, so consolidated storage and reprocessing threaten to make SRS the new Yucca Mountain and it will take public involvement and participation to help stop this from happening.

The President’s blue ribbon commission today released the draft full commission report.  A quick review of the document reveals that they recommend an interim site be developed as soon as possible.  The BRC makes no recommendation as to where that site should be, but they do acknowledge the danger of an interim placement becoming permanent.

…[T]he most important objection and one that will need to be thoughtfully addressed is the concern that any consolidated storage facility could become a de facto permanent disposal facility and—by reducing the pressure to find a long-term solution—thwart progress toward developing the deep geologic disposal capacity that will ultimately be needed.

There will be hearings and greater discussion about this in the coming weeks and months.  South Carolinians will need to educate themselves on this topic through the work of groups like the Friends of the Earth and the Sierra Club to head off this drive to turn the Savannah River Site into a dumping ground.

More Information:

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South Carolina Ranks Near Top Of States In Storage Of Nuclear Waste

A few weeks ago we published accounts of the open hearing conducted by the Blue Ribbon Commission on America’s Nuclear Future in Augusta, Georgia.

The Commission was taking public and industry statements on the proposal to reprocess spent nuclear fuel at the Savannah River site.

Today, Matthew McKinzie of the National Resources Defense Council discusses where spent nuclear waste is located around the country.

Even without the proposal to use the Savannah River Site for reprocessing and further storage, South Carolina already stores more nuclear waste than any other state, except for Illinois and Pennsylvania.

Nuclear power plants receive new nuclear fuel once every 18 months to two years, and about one-third of the reactor core is then removed as spent fuel. This spent fuel is cooled in a storage pool next to the reactor, and either remains in the pool or is transferred to casks licensed by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission for so-called “dry” storage nearby. For the most part, then, all of the spent fuel produced by U.S. nuclear reactors hasn’t left the grounds of the nuclear power plant – in fact a large portion of it remains in the pools.  The most recent data we have on the quantities of spent fuel at the U.S. reactors is from the U.S. Energy Information Administration, from 2002, and I have mapped this up in Google Earth here. The total quantity of spent fuel stored at U.S. nuclear reactors in 2002 was 47 thousand tons. An additional 20 tons of spent fuel discharged per year from 104 reactors for 9 years totals 18.7 thousand tons, so our estimate is that the total quantity of spent nuclear fuel currently stored at U.S. reactors exceeds 60 thousand tons.

So in terms of where the spent fuel is located, Illinois tops the list, with more than ten percent of the commercial reactor spent fuel in the country. Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Michigan, and New York, Alabama and Florida come next on the list – these seven states together hold more than half of the country’s spent nuclear reactor fuel. And as you can see in Google Earth, many of these spent fuel storage sites are on the shores of the Great Lakes and major rivers like the Mississippi, and along the Pacific and Atlantic coasts – because those waters provide the reactors’ cooling.

In absurdist fashion, the new Waste Confidence Rule contains a “predictive” safety “finding” that simply stipulates spent reactor fuel can be disposed of safely at some unspecified time in the future, whenever it becomes “necessary” to dispose of it. The Rule also concludes that for at least sixty years after the cessation of reactor operations, spent fuel can be safely stored at reactor sites or in “special” facilities.

Environmental advocates like the National Resources Defense Council and Friends of the Earth want to stop the production of nuclear processing.

We aim to require the Government to include the costs and environmental risks of spent fuel disposal within the scope of the licensing review of new nuclear reactors, and weigh the relative costs and benefits of new nuclear reactors against far cheaper energy efficiency savings and new renewable electricity sources.

While it may seem that reprocessing offers an alternative to storage at scattered nuclear reactors, the proposal to use the Savannah River Site does nothing to discourage the continued operation of nuclear plants.

If the Savannah River Site were to be come a major reprocessing facility, as both Senators Jim DeMint and Lindsey Graham desire, then South Carolina could become a dumping ground for waste far into the future.

Tom Clements of Friends of the Earth, and U.S. Senate candidate for the SC Green Party told The State back in February:

“We don’t want South Carolina to become the new Yucca Mountain, and we’re going to fight it,’’

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News Roundup on Recent Nuclear Reprocessing Hearing

In the two previous posts we covered the recent hearings by the presidential blue ribbon commission on nuclear waste reprocessing at the South Carolina’s Savannah River Site.

Isakson, Chambliss, DeMint, Graham

Saxby Chambliss, Lindsey Graham, Johnny Isakson and Jim DeMint joke with an official at the Savannah River Site, May 1, 2009. Source. U.S. Senate.

Subsequent news reports have tended to emphasis the words of Senators Lindsey Graham and Jim DeMint. Graham attended the Augusta hearing, and had this to say, according to The State.

“I’m very willing for the Savannah River Site to be the research and the development facility for the nation to make that idea a reality,’’ Graham, R-S.C., told the Blue Ribbon Panel on America’s Nuclear Future, which held the hearing. “The goal of reprocessing and recycling is to reduce your storage footprint, right?”

DeMint did not appear, but issued the following statement through his spokesman, again quoted by The State:

“I would urge the commission to fully explore the possibilities available in dealing with this waste, including nuclear recycling….Without a final destination for our nation’s nuclear waste, I fear that our nuclear industry will never reach its full potential…’’

Both DeMint and Graham strongly endorsed bringing nuclear waste to the SRS despite the lack of a permanent depository after reprocessing. Yucca Mountain in Nevada was once intended as a more-or-less permanent site, but this project was terminated in the previous Democratic congress.

The Yucca site was supposed to take much of the nation’s burden by disposing of the highly radioactive material inside a hollowed out mountain some 90 miles from Las Vegas. But it was highly controversial in Nevada, home of influential Democratic Sen. Harry Reid, and President Obama dropped the plan after taking office. Billions of dollars have been spent developing the site over the past two decades.

Tom Clements, a nuclear policy expert and South Carolina Green Party 2010 nominee for U.S. Senate, spoke to the panel and was also quoted by the paper:

Tom Clements of Columbia, a nuclear program coordinator with Friends of the Earth, told panelists that reprocessing is a bad idea. The nation needs a permanent disposal site for nuclear waste, but there is no rush, he said. Commercial radioactive waste can be stored safely at power plants for a century, he said, citing a Nuclear Regulatory Commission document. Environmentalists say reprocessing can result in the nation’s spent nuclear fuel being sent to SRS, effectively making it a dumping ground.

“We don’t want South Carolina to become the new Yucca Mountain, and we’re going to fight it,’’ Clements said.

Leslie Minerd, a member of the SC Green Party steering committee and 2010 Green Party candidate for SC Attorney General, also addressed the panel.

We will continue to follow developments on the proposal to reprocess and store nuclear waste at SRS.

Further Coverage:

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Webcast of SRS Nuclear Waste Reprocessing and Storage Hearing, January 7.

The Blue Ribbon Commission on America’s Nuclear Future is streaming today’s hearing at the Augusta Marriott Hotel and Suites on nuclear waste reprocessing and storage at the Savannah River Site.

A link to site of stream is here: http://webcast.streamlogics.com/audience/index.asp?eventid=14194887

The stream is apparently in Windows Media or Real Player. Although the audio appears to be working, the video is scrambled. There is a helpful closed caption text, however.

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Nuclear Dumping Hearing In Augusta Tomorrow, Jan 7. Clements, Others To Speak

Tomorrow, January 7, the Blue Ribbon Commission on America’s Nuclear Future (www.brc.gov) will meet in Augusta, Georgia from 8 AM to 3 PM at the at the Augusta Marriott Hotel and Suites, Two Tenth Street, Augusta, GA 30901 [map]. The meeting will “hear from regional representatives about the nation’s nuclear waste policy. The Commission will hear brief PUBLIC COMMENTS starting at about 2 pm (you have to sign up in person by 1 pm).” For information, email Maryo@nirs.org, 828-252-8409 or 828-242-5621.

Tom Clements, SC Green Party candidate for US Senate, will be at the hearing as a representative of Friends of the Earth. Other speakers from the South Carolina Sierra Club and other interested parties, both pro and against nuclear dumping, will speak at the meeting. Environmentalists will engage this issue at the meeting as well as the long term unsustainability of nuclear power.

As efforts continue to close Yucca Mountain as a “permanent” storage facility for nuclear waste, it is quite likely that the waste processed at SRS will become stuck there.

Today’s The State quotes Clements in the following article as an expert in nuclear power and policy issues:

Nuclear dumping in SC a concern
Forum Friday to discuss role SRS should play now that Yucca Mountain site is off the table

By Sammy Fretwell, – sfretwell@thestate.com
Thursday, Jan. 06, 2011

[...]

Critics, however, say reprocessing creates its own toxic waste stream, doesn’t recycle all the used fuel — and produces a demand for nuclear waste. If reprocessing doesn’t work, nuclear fuel shipped to SRS for recycling would likely remain there, critics say. Reprocessing has long been a topic of intense debate. Reprocessing defense material has occurred for decades at SRS, but that helped create some 37 million gallons of toxic nuclear waste. Although done in Europe, commercial reprocessing was abandoned in the U.S. in the late 1970s because of safety concerns.

“We will watch out for the public interest and strongly oppose efforts to dump high-level nuclear waste in South Carolina,” said former U.S. Senate candidate Tom Clements, a nuclear campaign coordinator with Friends of the Earth. “Environmental groups will confront efforts by special interests to reprocess nuclear spent fuel as it leaves behind a huge volume of nuclear waste and would make SRS the nation’s de facto nuclear dump, which is totally unacceptable.”

Susan Corbett, who chairs the state Sierra Club, said SRS has a recent history of bringing in the nation’s unwanted nuclear material to feed a mixed oxide fuel plant. But the plant has no customers, raising the possibility surplus plutonium will remain at SRS indefinitely, she said.

Bringing atomic waste to SRS for a possible reprocessing facility would only continue the state’s legacy as a site to dump the nation’s waste, she said. Until just a few years ago, South Carolina had a national low-level nuclear waste dump near Barnwell, a national medical waste incinerator at Hampton, and a regional hazardous waste landfill on Lake Marion. The state also has several major regional garbage dumps and entertained ideas last year of allowing a new incinerator near Chester.

“We’ve had a lot of waste that was orphaned here,’’ Corbett said.

[...]

Senator Lindsey Graham is cited in the article as a proponent of the nuclear recycling in South Carolina. According to a July 5 article in The State, Graham presumes that Yucca mountain will remain open, despite Democratic efforts to close it. Other supports of nuclear reprocessing at SRS echoed that opinion in today’s article, quoted above.

After Obama moved to mothball Yucca, U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham, a Republican from Seneca, introduced a bill in April 2009 to give nuclear utility consumers rebates for the Yucca surcharges that they had paid.

“The decision by the Obama administration to close Yucca Mountain was ill-advised and leaves our nation without a disposal plan spent nuclear fuel or Cold War waste,” Graham said.

Senate Democratic leaders have stymied Graham’s bill, which hasn’t moved from the Senate Energy and Commerce Committee.

Jim DeMint and Governor Sanford, who also support reprocessing nuclear waste at SRS, are also invited to attend the hearing.

Meeting time and information made available by the South Carolina Progressive Network.

Read more: http://www.thestate.com/2011/01/06/1633342/nuclear-dumping-in-sc-a-concern.html