An Affair to Forget: the Global Nuclear Energy Partnership (GNEP)

During the last nuclear renaissance, the United States unsuccessfully attempted to reprocess spent nuclear fuel. Instead of finding the silver bullet for nuclear waste, we shot ouselves in the foot by creating more waste, environmental and economic calamities. Like the saying goes, fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me. The Bush Administration and his nuclear industry backers are seeking to do just that with their recently unveiled Global Nuclear Energy Partnership (GNEP). But we won't be fooled into reprocessing again.

There are two primary components of the GNEP program: under the “G” provision of GNEP, the United States and other nuclear fuel “supplier” nations would aim to increase the use of nuclear power abroad by providing fresh nuclear fuel to other countries. The U.S. would then import the used, irradiated nuclear fuel and assume the liability for its disposal. The second and most dangerous component of the GNEP program concerns the resumption of spent nuclear fuel reprocessing (sometimes incorrectly referred to as “recycling”). Reprocessing is an extremely expensive and dangerous process scrapped by the Ford and Carter administrations because of serious technical, economic, environmental and national security failures.

Current reprocessing technology involves the separation of uranium, plutonium, and other fission products (i.e. shorter-lived, but extremely radioactive elements) to make new fuel for reactors. This process, which was initially created to help the United States produce plutonium for the nuclear bomb, is currently used by France, Britain, Russia, India and Japan. Wherever it has been used, it has been an unequivocal environmental disaster. Three of the most contaminated sites in the western hemisphere: Hanford, Washington, Idaho National Laboratory and the Savannah River Site, were home to reprocessing facilities and will be forever contaminated. It is also an economic boondoggle. The only attempt to commercialize reprocessing was conducted in West Valley, New York and after 6 years of technical failures, the site was scrapped leaving taxpayers with a multi-billion dollar bill. Furthermore, reprocessing creates stockpiles of weapons usable plutonium that can be easily converted to make bombs. There is enough plutonium sitting around the world today to make over 30,000 bombs!

These grim facts are not enough to sway the likes of this administration and EnergySolutions. They argue GNEP will reduce the amount of waste created AND that they can develop a “proliferation-resistant” reprocessing technology. They fail to mention, of course, that the “new” reprocessing technology is not new and is yet unproven.¹ Not only that, GNEP will also rely up the existence of so-called “fast reactors” to burn plutonium and other long-lived waste products from irradiated fuel rods. Unfortunately, despite the $100 billion that has been spent in developing “burner” reactors on a global scale, no country has yet invented a commercially viable model.²

What does this mean for Utah?

In spite of the enormous technical, economic, environmental and national security concerns regarding reprocessing, the Department of Energy awarded nearly $10.5 million in January of this year to nine special interest groups to conduct siting studies for potential GNEP facilities. In a surprise to few, EnergySolutions was one of the awarded companies to receive taxpayer dollars to look into this reprocessing relapse. The company, having recently acquired the reprocessing technology used in Britain, touts itself as the only U.S.-owned firm that can deliver, “entire reprocessing facilities [and] treatment and disposition of all waste streams.”³

A careful examination of their touted British-technology, however, reveals a troubling history of accidents, shutdowns, and cost-overruns.⁴ The simple fact is neither EnergySolutions, nor any other company should be involved in the re-consummation of a process that the U.S. rightly foreswore years ago. EnergySolutions’ actions send a clear and sharp message to Utahns: they not only want to be the nation’s nuclear waste dump but they also want to produce it themselves to ensure their business for years to come. Their self-fulfilling ways must be opposed at all costs.

In addition, the nuclear fuel cycle promoted by reprocessing harmfully impacts Utah. Uranium mining and milling bears a heavy toll on Utah's health and environment. Taxpayers have dolled out over $500 million in cleanup costs. Waste from reprocessing facilities could end up being dumped in Utah as well.