Eight Senators Call For Reduced Nuclear Reprocessing Funding
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: November 21, 2007
CONTACT: Leonor Tomero or Travis Sharp
Washington, D.C. – The Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation commended eight Senators for urging funding cuts to the Department of Energy (DOE)'s efforts to resume nuclear spent fuel reprocessing in the United States and re-use of nuclear weapons-usable material in power reactors pursuant to the Global Nuclear Energy Partnership (GNEP).
In their letter, Senators Russ Feingold (D-WI), Ron Wyden (D-OR), John E. Sununu (R-NH), Tom Harkin (D-IA), Bernard Sanders (D-VT), John F. Kerry (D-MA), Daniel K. Akaka (D-HI), and Edward M. Kennedy (D-MA) asked Senate Energy & Water Appropriations Subcommittee Chair Senator Byron Dorgan (D-ND) and Ranking Member Pete Domenici (R-NM) to cut funding for the reprocessing and re-use of commercial spent nuclear fuel.
The funding is contained in the Fiscal Year 2008 Energy & Water Appropriations Bill that is expected to be rolled into an omnibus appropriations bill next month.
The eight Senators expressed "significant concerns with [the Department of Energy's] plans to initiate commercial reprocessing of nuclear fuel in the United States, setting in motion a massive and multi-decade government-subsidized nuclear reprocessing program."
Leonor Tomero, Director for Nuclear Non-Proliferation at the Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation, noted: "This letter reflects a growing skepticism in Congress about the Administration's reprocessing initiative."
"There are a variety of concerns about the program ranging from cost, to nuclear proliferation risks, to past failures in this area," continued Tomero.
She added "There is an increasing awareness that reprocessing and GNEP will not provide a viable solution to the nuclear waste problem and is not worth the hundreds of millions of dollars that DOE has requested for FY 2008."
The letter (full text below) stated that the Senators' concerns include: "Reprocessing and plutonium reprocessing fuel use could cost taxpayers $200 billion," "[p]ast efforts to reprocess and re-use spent fuel in the U.S. have been failures," "GNEP has morphed into a large-scale construction project well beyond research and development (R&D)," "[r]eprocessing is not a viable solution to the nuclear waste problem," and "[r]eprocessing undercuts U.S. non-proliferation efforts."
The Senate Energy & Natural Resources Committee recently held a hearing on the Global Nuclear Energy Partnership where Senators expressed concerns about the Department of Energy's plans and raised questions based on the recently-released National Academy of Sciences that criticized DOE's current proposal.
Dr. Matthew Bunn, Advisor to the Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation and Senior Research Associate at Harvard University's Project on Managing the Atom, testified at the hearing. Testimonies are available online and an archived webcast is available here.
FULL TEXT OF THE LETTER
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November 20, 2007
The Honorable Byron Dorgan
Chairman Subcommittee on Energy and Water
Development Appropriations
United States Senate
Washington, DC 20510
The Honorable Pete V. Domenici
Ranking Member Subcommittee on Energy and Water
Development Appropriations
United States Senate
Washington, DC 20510
Dear Chairman Dorgan and Ranking Member Domenici:
We are writing to ask you to cut funding for the Department of Energy (DOE)'s efforts to initiate the reprocessing and re-use of commercial nuclear spent fuel. This effort, which is promoted as part of the Administration's Global Nuclear Energy Partnership, is primarily funded under the Advanced Fuel Cycle Initiative.
The Senate Energy and Water Development Appropriations bill currently provides $243 million for the Advanced Fuel Cycle Initiative, whereas the House version provides $120 million.
We have significant concerns with DOE's plans to initiate commercial reprocessing of nuclear fuel in the United States, setting in motion a massive multi-decade government subsidized nuclear reprocessing program. A new report from the National Academy of Sciences states "the GNEP program should not go forward," calling DOE's accelerated timetable and efforts to initiate commercial-scale facilities "unwise," "[lacking] economic justification" and that it "will create significant technical and financial risks."
Our concerns include:
- Reprocessing and plutonium fuel use could cost taxpayers $200 billion. Although DOE has failed to provide an official cost analysis of the entire program, it is clear that reprocessing is drastically more expensive than the current practice of "once through" fuel cycle systems. In 1996,the National Academy of Sciences estimated reprocessing and transmutation could easily cost $100 billion to deal only with the current spent fuel in the U.S., and a 2007 NAS report found that contrary to DOE claims, technical challenges likely will result in GNEP costing-rather than saving the United States money. Furthermore, industry has expressed no interest in cost sharing, almost ensuring that the entire burden would fall on the taxpayers.
- Past efforts to reprocess and re-use spent fuel in the U.S. have been failures. In 1983, Congress canceled the Clinch River Breeder Reactor, initially estimated to cost $400 million, when GAO cost estimates reached $8.8 billion. In 1972, the West Valley, New York reprocessing facility shut down after only reprocessing in its six years of operation the equivalent of four months of spent fuel produced by the current fleet of U.S. reactors. Its $5.3 billion clean-up effort is still ongoing today.
- GNEP has morphed into a large-scale construction project well beyond research and development (R&D). even though the technologies that GNEP proposes are not available. Since first unveiling GNEP to Congress in February 2006, the Administration has changed its plans at least four times and is now proposing to build a commercial-scale reprocessing plant and a full-scale fast reactor, even though currently available technologies do not meet GNEP's goals. Much of the necessary technology will not be viable for 40-50 years at best, as GNEP hinges on the development and deployment of dozens of fast-neutron reactors - a type of reactor that has not been successfully commercialized anywhere despite 50 years of U.S. and international research.
- Reprocessing is not a viable solution to the nuclear waste problem. According to the recently released Keystone Center report, which is the product of a federal, industry, academic, and non-profit collaborative process, "reprocessing of spent nuclear fuel does not eliminate the need for a geologic repository, because there is residual high level waste from the reprocessing stream that needs to be sequestered in a geologic repository." Reprocessing would only divert attention away from a viable long-term solution to nuclear waste, and the GNEP program may further complicate the waste disposal problem as it proposes to reprocess spent fuel from not only new domestic reactors, but also from foreign reactors.
- Reprocessing undercuts U.S. non-proliferation efforts. Commercial reprocessing in the United Kingdom, France, Japan, and Russia has resulted in the accumulation of about 250 metric tons of separated plutonium that can be used to make nuclear weapons, exacerbating the risk of terrorists gaining access to this material. Similarly, DOE's proposed technologies would also result in material that could be easily processed to make a nuclear weapon. At a time when the United States is seeking to limit the spread of reprocessing technology and expertise to other countries, resuming reprocessing would reverse decades of U.S. leadership that contributed to countries such as Argentina, Brazil, South Korea, and Taiwan abandoning their reprocessing ambitions.
We have serious concerns about the implications of current plans for commercial spent fuel reprocessing and urge you to cut funding for spent fuel reprocessing in the Fiscal Year 2008 Energy and Water Development appropriations bill.
Thank you for your consideration of this important matter.
Sincerely,
Russell D. Feingold
United States Senator
Ron Wyden
United States Senator
John E. Sununu
United States Senator
Tom Harkin
United States Senator
Bernard Sanders
United States Senator
John F. Kerry
United States Senator
Daniel K. Akaka
United States Senator
Edward M. Kennedy
United States Senator
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