SONG Review of the SONIC Proposal
SONG
Southern Ohio Neighbors Group
P.O. Box 161, Piketon, OH 45661
SHIPPSONG@aol.com Tel: (740) 289-2549
Review of the SONIC Proposal to Dump
High-Level Nuclear Waste at Piketon
What SONIC Wants to Do
Despite its deceptive language and secretive proceedings, SONIC’s actual proposal is plain. They want to bring high-level nuclear waste—spent fuel containing plutonium and the whole range of fission products—from all over the United States and from foreign countries to Piketon. At Piketon they want to “store” it indefinitely, until the technology exists to build a reprocessing plant that can extract plutonium and enriched uranium from the other waste. In addition, they envision “a burner reactor” at Piketon that would transmute certain waste isotopes to more easily disposable forms of waste. Piketon would become, in this scheme, the central facility of the Department of Energy’s proposed “Global Nuclear Energy Partnership” or GNEP.
DOE has described GNEP only in the most general terms and Congress has not approved the GNEP program or appropriated funding for its implementation. SONIC has not released its application, which nominates Piketon as a host site. It is therefore impossible to know exactly what this proposal entails.
The Technology Does Not Exist
The Federation of American Scientists (FAS) and other organizations have analyzed the GNEP scheme and have concluded that the necessary technologies do not exist and are not close to development. Four kinds of nonexistent technology are needed: first, a new type of nuclear fuel that would make it impossible for terrorists or rogue nations to extract weapons-grade plutonium; second, a safe nuclear reactor design that could operate on this fuel; third, a safe method to extract the plutonium that the terrorists could not copy; and fourth, a burner reactor design for disposing of the most hazardous isotopes. Some of these technologies have been researched for decades, with little progress toward actual solutions. We are asked to buy the package on faith alone.
DOE proposes that national laboratories develop the technology while a “host site” stores the existing waste indefinitely. This is a formula for the repeat of history – Oak Ridge, Los Alamos and Livermore get the funding and the jobs while Piketon gets the waste.
According to FAS, spent fuel reprocessing that is economical will not be feasible until the end of this century, at the earliest. The burner reactor idea is now only a concept, and it is premised on the idea that the Yucca Mountain waste repository will some day open. The US Department of Interior has now stated that there is no factual basis for that assumption.
The Piketon Site is Totally Unsuitable
In the past, commercial-scale reprocessing plants have been located on large downwind bodies of water, where major liquid effluent streams can be diluted and where there are no residents immediately downwind. With only small creeks at the Piketon site, leading to the scenic and sacred Scioto River, and with moderately dense population centers in all directions, there is zero chance that the Piketon site would ever be licensed for a reprocessing plant. The site also sits atop the Teays aquifer, which was not known when the gaseous diffusion plant was sited in 1952. Today, the aquifer alone would prohibit any siting of a facility like a reprocessing plant or burner reactor.
Southern Ohio is within the zone famously impacted by the New Madrid earthquakes of 1811 and 1812, which reached a peak of 8.8 on the richter scale, the largest and most extensive quake in US history. The New Madrid quake spread through a series of connected fault lines, one of which, the Kentucky River Fault zone, passes within twenty-five miles of Piketon. A repeat of the New Madrid quake is today unpredictable, more unpredictable than seismic activity in the western United States. The 2005 discovery of falsified geologic data pertaining to the proposed Yucca Mountain spent fuel repository by DOE scientists is what delayed that project’s licensing, possibly forever, forcing DOE to seek an alternative through GNEP.
Wetlands and Woodlands are not Proper Alternatives to Desert Sites
After more than twenty years in planning, the dry desert at Yucca Mountain in Nevada could not be certified as safe for spent nuclear fuel. After more than ten years in planning, the dry desert of the Goshute Reservation in Utah has been determined as unsuitable for even for claimed “interim” storage of spent nuclear fuel.
In early September of this year, the US Department of Interior moved to block the Utah repository on the grounds that the public record does not inspire confidence that “interim storage” would be temporary. (“Interior Department Rejects Interim Plan for Nuclear Waste,” New York Times, September 8, 2006)
Craig Stevens of the US Department of Energy told the New York Times that DOE wants to replace the lost Utah dumpsite with its selection of a “GNEP host site.” In other words, they intend for the waste that’s been rejected from Nevada and Utah to go to Piketon.
If it Looks like a Dump, and it Quakes like a Dump, it’s a Dump
SONIC suggests that the spent fuel will be kept here on an “interim” basis, for a “guaranteed” maximum of 25 years. Such promises are empty. If the waste stacks up here for 25 years, and then Congress has no place else to put it, Congress will extend the arrangement for 25 more, and 25 after that, ad infinitum. "Interim storage" is a code word for permanent dumping. If the promised reprocessing and burner technologies do not emerge or are banned by international agreement, then there is no way to reduce the volume of the waste for removal.
The GNEP Program is Political not Technical
GNEP was devised to solve political problems, not technical ones. DOE scientists were caught falsifying data in Nevada. Powerful politicians in the desert southwest block any new disposal sites in their states. John McCain and the influential Navajo Nation put Arizona off limits. Harry Reid puts Nevada off limits. Orrin Hatch and the Mormon Church, backed by the Bush Interior Department, put Utah off limits. Bill Richardson puts New Mexico off limits. No one can guarantee that these factors will alter enough to make some final disposal site available in 25 years. The Bush Administration also wants some whiz-bang one-shot technological solution to offer for the problem of nuclear proliferation, especially in Iran and North Korea – so DOE wants to offer to take their nuclear waste and dump it at Piketon.
There is No Other Place to Transfer the Waste
At its invitation-only “educational meeting” in Waverly, SONIC representatives asserted that waste would only be kept at Piketon “for a short time” before being transferred to Yucca Mountain. In reality, Yucca Mountain has not been licensed to accept waste and will not be licensed in the near future. Senator Harry Reid of Nevada is dead set against it. Reid is now Minority Leader, and may soon become Majority Leader in the Senate.
On September 9, 2006 The New York Times reported: “’Construction of Yucca Mountain could be indefinitely delayed by any number of factors, including protracted litigation,” the department [of Interior] said, adding that the Nuclear Regulatory Commission “acknowledges that ‘decades’ are the most relevant unit of time for predicting the completion date.”
No “5,000 Jobs”
SONIC waves the magic wand of promised jobs, expecting to silence every criticism thereby. But those jobs do not exist and will not exist. The vast majority of the promised jobs are associated with the reprocessing plant and the burner reactor, which require technology not in existence, and which, if it did exist, could never be sited at Piketon. If the technology never develops or if these facilities are sited someplace else, Piketon would be left only with the waste.
The jobs associated with a huge waste repository are not production jobs and are not matched to the skills of the Piketon workforce, nor are they high-paying or numerous. A waste repository mainly employs people to watch the waste. John D. Parkyn, the chairman of the board of Private Fuel Storage, said that a proposed spent fuel repository in Utah would employ only twenty people, most of them security guards. (New York Times, September 8, 2006.) Not 2,000 or 200 but 20.
The SONIC proposal would be a huge net job loss for the region, as other businesses, residents, tourists and industries were pushed away.
DOE will decide on the SONIC application October 30, one week before the election, an obvious election-year stunt. Since the five thousand promised jobs are entirely fictional, why stop there? Why not promise fifty thousand jobs or five hundred thousand jobs? Go whole hog, boys, offer the people of Southern Ohio FIVE MILLION NEW JOBS!
The Jobs are all Speculative and Delayed
The promised jobs would not materialize until far in the future, if at all. The Federation of American Scientists places a workable reprocessing technology at the end of this century, at the earliest. Workers in this area have already had to wait since 2001 for the promised jobs of a centrifuge plant in 2011, that now will likely not arrive at all. A hypothetical reprocessing plant could not be licensed before 2015, and could not possibly operate before 2020. Just how long are people supposed to hang on? Nothing in the proposal speaks to transitional strategies for helping the region now.
It’s a Bait’n’Switch Scam
Since losing its monopoly over the sale of Russian downblended uranium, USEC is on the verge of going under. Analysts look for USEC to be renationalized, and steps toward that are already underway as USEC was removed as general contractor at Piketon in mid-July. USEC’s corporate motto was “A Global Energy Company.” GNEP, “Global Nuclear Energy Partnership,” appears to be a lame attempt to re-employ failed USEC managers back in the public sector, where taxpayers can foot the bill. It appears that USEC’s centrifuge project at Piketon was only a shill to keep the site reserved for the taxpayer-funded GNEP proposal, a classic bait’n’switch for the community.
Nothing Else Could Happen
If Piketon is slated to become a high-level nuclear waste repository, nothing else could happen on the site, both for safety and security reasons. No other manufacturing companies could or would locate here. If the GCEP buildings are left vacant by USEC’s failure, they would remain vacant, costing hundreds of potential jobs.
Piketon Would become Terror Target Number One
Under the SONIC proposal, Piketon would have the largest concentration of nuclear materials in the world, and, accordingly, would become the prime target for terror attacks. The entire area would need to be militarized, with anti-aircraft guns, bunkers, barbed wire, and all that comes with that. Even if no attack occurred, the threat of possible attack would drive away anyone who wants a normal life or normal recreation.
The DOE Reservation Would Swallow the Community
If such facilities ever did locate here, DOE would likely be forced to expand its reservation by eminent domain, acquiring all the land between the current site and the river. Aside from displacing many people, this swatch of land is arguably the richest archaeological and historical zone in the nation, containing numerous ancient burial mounds and earthworks along with historical properties now being renovated. All of that would be destroyed or hidden behind security fences.
Orwellian Language
SONIC only uses the term “recycling” to describe its proposed reprocessing plant. The technical definition of “recycling” is scrap recovery – the reclamation of metals from scrap by mechanical means for reuse. Piketon had a uranium recycling operation for many years called E-Area and use of that word in this community implies that the proposed plant will be similar.
Reprocessing is a chemical process for separating plutonium and enriched uranium from spent fuel. When North Korea does it, we call it reprocessing. Calling it “a recycling center” is a lie. You can’t make a porcupine into a pig by changing its name.
SONIC has Lied about the Nature of its Proposed Project
At its invitation-only “educational meeting” in Waverly, a SONIC representative asserted the spent fuel it want to import contains “only 5% enriched uranium,” contrasting that with the “90% enriched uranium” that has already been handled at the Gaseous Diffusion Plant in Piketon. He implied that the spent fuel would thus be safer than material handled in the past.
This is factually wrong on many levels. 5% enriched uranium fuel is 5% Uranium-235 and 95% Uranium-238. Inside a nuclear reactor, the U-238 atoms absorb neutrons and transmute into atoms of Plutonium-239. The buildup of plutonium and fission products is what makes the fuel “spent” and in need of replacement. Typical spent fuel is 1% U-235, 2% Plutonium-239 and 2% highly radioactive fission products including Strontium-90, Cesium-137 and Iodine-129.
Plutonium-239 is thousands of times more hazardous than uranium, gram for gram. To suggest that spent fuel is “safer” because it contains less enriched uranium is like saying that rat poison is safer because it’s made with purified water.
Every Attempt at Commercial Reprocessing has Resulted in Catastrophe
The plant at West Valley, New York, operated for only six years, from 1966 to 1972, during which time it processed only one year’s worth of spent fuel, then shut down due to gross levels of plutonium contamination and waste leakage. It has been in cleanup status ever since, costing billions of dollars, negating any brief profits from the commercial operations, and consuming vast amounts of energy and attention.
A similar but smaller-scale experience plagued the reprocessing plant at Morris, Illinois, which was declared permanently inoperable in 1974. A third American commercial reprocessing plant was planned for over a decade at Barnwell, South Carolina. With spent fuel stacking up to await the plant’s operation, safety and licensing problems delayed the project for years, until all commercial reprocessing was banned in the United States in 1977, because of concerns about nuclear proliferation.
The Windscale reprocessing plant in Sellafield, England, was sited so as to disperse its radioactive emissions in the fast currents of the Irish Sea – a continuing sore point in relations between Ireland and the United Kingdom. Windscale is now famous mostly as a training ground for epidemiologists, who go there to study the patterns of disease in workers and downwind residents, caused by high exposures to tritium, plutonium and other radioactive isotopes. The Windscale plant was shut down last year for pipe breakage and likely will not reopen.
The French reprocessing plant at Cap de la Hague, on the Brittany coast, was similarly situated so the winds and currents would carry contamination away from France to England. In 1980, a catastrophic fire disabled all of the plant’s electrical systems, requiring the evacuation of workers. For a few tense weeks, no one knew if the plant would explode, which would have sent a plutonium fallout cloud over all of southern England, the Netherlands, Belgium, southern Scandinavia, and northern Germany. The evacuation of northern Europe was averted only because the French government kept the disaster secret until the crisis ended. The plant has increased the net cost of nuclear fuel in France by about three times, subsidized by the French government.
The Chelyabinsk reprocessing plant in southern Russia experienced what is still the worst nuclear disaster in history, releasing more radioactivity by far than the Chernobyl accident. In 1957, plutonium waste from Chelyabinsk accumulated at the bottom of a holding pond and exploded. More plutonium has been released to the global environment from the Chelyabinsk facility than from all other human activities combined, including all of the atmospheric explosions of nuclear bombs. The cleanup costs at Chelyabinsk, if calculated according to usual methods of public health priority, would easily exceed all the money in all the treasuries of the world.
No wonder that SONIC doesn’t want to use the word “reprocessing.”
This is NOT a “Study”
SONIC bills this proposal as only for a “study grant,” suggesting that no commitment is implied. That is a deception. DOE is free to assess the proposal as it pleases, meaning that DOE can proceed to site selection, even if the community changes its mind upon reflection and education. SONIC promises that a “public process” will happen later as part of the “study.” Actually, the community does not want this process to begin.
Nothing Happens at the Site Pending DOE’s ruling on GNEP
USEC as a company, and its centrifuge project, may not last more than a couple months, past the election. When they go, the DOE reservation would become a prime location for alternate industries. The GCEP buildings, now cleaned out at taxpayer expense, would be available for leasing. We could site an ethanol production plant on the reservation, with community support, helping to solve real energy needs, providing real jobs, and boosting the local farm economy. However, we cannot do any of this if DOE has a pending review of the SONIC proposal. DOE would then hold the site off limits to any alternate use until the entire GNEP program was complete, and DOE has set no fixed date for ending its site selection process.
SONIC Kills Cleanup
DOE has drastically cut funds for cleanup at the Piketon site, and has reduced cleanup standards on the argument that the site will continue in “nuclear production.” Pike County has been engaged in a continuing dispute with DOE about whether the majority of the site should be cleaned up to reuse standards, even though a small portion is currently used by USEC for proposed nuclear production. The great majority of current and foreseeable jobs at the site are related to cleanup operations.
However, with the SONIC proposal, DOE can argue that the whole site is still a nuclear production site, even though no nuclear production has happened since 2001. We would get the worst of all worlds—no production, no cleanup, no site availability, no jobs.
No Public Process
SONIC has submitted an application to DOE’s GNEP program that includes a statement of community support, but SONIC developed its proposal in secret. There was no process for informing the community other than a last-minute press release. There were no consultations with local residents. There were no public hearings. There was no opportunity in advance of proposal submission for local residents to speak to their elected representatives in any informed way. Elected officials had no opportunity to learn about the project AND its flaws, and they had no time to consult their constituents. The entire episode was a gross violation of public process and is challengeable in court. To date SONIC has not released any copy of its application to the community, and it claims that it has no copy of the application, either in paper or electronic form, at its Piketon office.
SODI, which is supposed to represent community interests and which signed off on the SONIC application, claims it never saw that application prior to submission.
The Community Opposes the Importation of Waste to Pike County
When SONIC was revealed to the public through newspaper articles at the end of August, opposition immediately sprang up among nearby residents, who have formed an organization to fight the proposal called SONG: Southern Ohio Neighbors Group. SONG has been going door-to-door in Scioto Township and has yet to find a single nearby resident who supports the SONIC proposal. The community and its elected officials have taken a united stand against the importation of radioactive waste to Piketon from Fernald, Ohio; Oak Ridge, Tennessee; Paducah, Kentucky; and Hanford, Washington.
A Formula for Decades of Litigation
Employment from the SONIC proposal would mainly be for lawyers. Local residents would be forced to challenge the proposal in court from day one. GNEP is already a target for environmental groups, and if Piketon progressed through site selection, every public interest group and preservation society would get in on a piece of the action. The community could look forward to decades of division and recrimination. Would that do anything to help anyone here at home?
Much Better Alternatives
The alternative to the SONIC proposal is a comprehensive redevelopment plan for the site, with a united front working for the restoration of cleanup funds. As at other DOE sites that have reverted to local ownership, cleanup provides the transitional employment until other industries can be located here. Pike County has been searching for a site for an ethanol plant; the DOE reservation is ideal and that concept has already been studied. Archaeological and environment restoration would produce additional good jobs, and would help build a vibrant tourist economy.
What SONG Wants
Reject the SONIC proposal and withdraw the application that has been submitted. DOE received 14 applications on Septembet 7th; one has already been withdrawn.
Hold public hearings on the SONIC proposal in every affected county NOW, before DOE decides on grant selection.
Ban the storage of commercial waste or spent fuel, or nuclear reprocessing at Piketon.
Inform the DOE that the site is off-limits to all waste importation and storage and should be reclassified for long-term cleanup and return to local ownership.
Complete the treatment of onsite waste and remove it from the site as rapidly as possible.
A community-based process of planning for the long-term cleanup, restoration and conversion of the Piketon site, with real jobs in safe industries that meet local needs.
Selected Sources on GNEP and Reprocessing
Comprehensive Articles and Reports:
Federation of American Scientists on the Global Nuclear Energy Partnership (GNEP), August 2006 (http://www.fas.org/main/content.jsp?formAction=297&contentId=525 )
Peddling Plutonium: Nuclear Energy Plan Would Make the World More Dangerous, Natural Resources Defense Council, March 2006
(http://www.nrdc.org/nuclear/gnep/agnep.pdf)
“No Hurry To Recycle,” Mechanical Engineering, Frank N. von Hippel, May 2006 (http://www.memagazine.org/backissues/may06/features/nohurry/nohurry.html)
“Is U.S. Reprocessing Worth The Risk?” Arms Control Today, Steve Fetter and Frank N. von Hippel, September 2005 (http://www.armscontrol.org/act/2005_09/Fetter-VonHippel.asp)
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Plutonium End Game: Stop Reprocessing, Start Immobilizing, Institute for Energy and Environmental Research, February 2001 (http://www.ieer.org/sdafiles/vol_9/9-2/puend.html)
The Nuclear Alchemy Gamble: An Assessment of Transmutation as a Nuclear Waste Management Strategy, Institute for Energy and Environmental Research, August 25, 2000 (http://www.ieer.org/reports/transm/report.pdf, summary available at http://www.ieer.org/sdafiles/vol_8/8-3/transm.html)
General overview of reprocessing:
Reprocessing Cannot Solve Our Nuclear Waste Problem, Public Citizen (http://www.citizen.org/documents/reprocessingfactsheet.pdf)
Nuclear Power Fuel Cycles and GNEP, Public Citizen (http://www.citizen.org/documents/FuelCycles.pdf)
Plutonium Reprocessing and Recycling, Federation of American Scientists, January 6, 2006 (http://fas.org/ssp/fc/reprocessing.ppt)
Extracting Plutonium from Nuclear Reactor Spent Fuel: Would Increase Risk of Terrorists Acquiring Nuclear Weapons and Exacerbate Nuclear Waste Problem, Union of Concerned Scientists (http://www.ucsusa.org/global_security/nuclear_terrorism/extracting-plutonium-from-nuclear-reactor-spent-fuel.html)
Reprocessing: Why we can and should wait, Frank N. von Hippel, Princeton University, Presentation, November 16, 2005 (http://www.armscontrolcenter.org/resources/20051116_frank_von_hippel_reprocessing_presentation.pdf)
Proliferation:
U.S. Nuclear Fuel Reprocessing Initiative: Department of Energy Research Shows Technology Does Not Reduce Risks of Nuclear Proliferation and Terrorism, Union of Concerned Scientists, (http://www.ucsusa.org/global_security/nuclear_terrorism/doe_proliferation_resistance.html)
Implications of Commercial Spent Fuel Reprocessing, Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation, June 8, 2005 (http://www.armscontrolcenter.org/archives/001712.php)
International Experience:
Nuclear Fuel Reprocessing Plant Accident at Sellafield, UK, Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation (http://www.armscontrolcenter.org/resources/20060428_repro_sellafield_factsheet.pdf)
International experience with reprocessing and related technologies, Institute for Energy and Environmental Research, January 25, 2006 (http://www.ieer.org/fctsheet/repro-intl.pdf)
Rokkasho: A Troubled Nuclear Fuel Cycle Complex, Institute for Energy and Environmental Research, August 2001 (http://www.ieer.org/sdafiles/vol_9/9-4/rokkasho.html)