U.S. plan for nuclear cartel faces reality check

Mike Stuckey Senior news editor • Profile • E-mail

To Greg Simonton and other civic leaders in Piketon, Ohio, population 1,973, it’s all about the jobs. Jobs to bolster the economy of the Appalachian burg where the double-digit unemployment rate is always near the highest in the state. Jobs to replace more than 1,500 that have been wiped out over the past decade with the downsizing of a uranium enrichment plant. Jobs that are so attractive they have led Simonton’s nonprofit agency to pair up with a private enterprise in a venture that could eventually bring Piketon thousands of tons a year of some of the most toxic nuclear waste on the planet.

Piketon is one of 11 communities recently awarded a total of $16 million in study grants by the U.S. Department of Energy. The grants are to be used to determine if they would be suitable sites for the Global Nuclear Energy Partnership, or GNEP, a hotly debated proposal that proponents promise will change the world.

Unveiled by the Bush administration early last year, GNEP envisions a system in which developing nations would receive nuclear power plants and fuel from the West in return for agreeing not to develop their own nuclear technology. The plan hinges on the controversial element of reprocessing spent nuclear rods to produce fuel that can be burned at GNEP plants, an activity that has never been done commercially in the United States.

GNEP supporters say not only will it power up the Third World, it will boost the U.S. nuclear industry, greatly reduce nuclear waste and air pollution and avoid the further spread of nuclear weapons.

Opponents say the program has the same problem as conventional nuclear power: It’s impossibly expensive. But it’s GNEP’s added element of nuclear fuel reprocessing, shelved for more than 30 years as unsafe and unnecessary in the United States, that really inflames critics of the program.

The race for toxic waste
The criticism has not deterred the Department of Energy and job-hungry communities that vied for the study grants. “We are very excited about the opportunity to take a look at this,” Simonton said after Assistant Secretary of Energy Dennis Spurgeon announced in November that the Piketon group was among the grant recipients.

The area’s congresswoman, Republican Rep. Jean Schmidt, was equally enthusiastic, saying the grant “will go a long way toward future economic development opportunities and may bring thousands of jobs to the area.”

Day 1: Industry on verge of rebound? Day 2: The nuclear renaissance man Day 3: Reality check for cartel plan Day 4: The French connection Day 5: Do 'nukeonomics' make sense?

Simonton directs the Southern Ohio Diversification Initiative, a nonprofit whose purpose is to create jobs in a region hit hard by the layoffs at the Portsmouth uranium enrichment plant in Piketon, owned by the Energy Department and operated by the United States Enrichment Corp., currently the only U.S. firm in the enrichment business.

What better way to do that, figured Simonton and his partner, Cleveland entrepreneur and former Enrichment Corp. board member Dan T. Moore II, than to find a new nuclear purpose for a 3,714-acre facility that has been processing radioactive materials for 52 years, first for weapons at the height of the Cold War and later for commercial nuclear power plants?

Politicians in other communities that received GNEP grants also expressed eagerness to cash in on what they believe could be an economic bonanza. “These nuclear fuel recycling facilities would firmly establish our state as the leader in this field,” said Republican Rep. Steve Pearce of New Mexico, where the DOE awarded two study grants. "This is an exciting opportunity for East Tennessee,” echoed Republican Rep. Zach Wamp, whose district includes Oak Ridge National Laboratory, another potential GNEP site.

Welcoming locals are just part of what senior Harvard nuclear researcher Matthew Bunn describes as a large and “unwieldy coalition” that has kept the GNEP proposal afloat despite serious questions about its technical feasibility, concerns over its potential to spread nuclear weapons materiel, doubts that nuclear “have-not” nations will submit to a Western fuel and technology cabal and tepid support and a lack of funding from Congress.

That coalition includes the national nuclear labs, which see the potential for billions in research funding, and some players in the industry, who hope for lucrative contracts as part of GNEP and the general growth of the nuclear power industry that they expect will accompany it.

Cover for waste dump stalemate?
And there appears to be a growing faction that sees it as at least temporary cover for long-delayed efforts to open a nuclear waste dump at Yucca Mountain, Nev., a vital component if the nuclear power industry’s predictions of a “renaissance” are to be realized.

But Energy Department spokesman Craig Stevens denied that finding an interim storage for waste is a GNEP goal.

It’s the "stated policies" that matter, he told MSNBC.com. “This is a big thing. If it’s successful and we can make it work, and make it attractive enough at an economic level, this will change the way we power the world.”

The proposal set off strong protests in anti-nuclear and non-proliferation camps, because it reintroduced the reprocessing of spent reactor fuel to the U.S. nuclear landscape. The critics say the practice would make it far easier for terrorists to get their hands on plutonium that could be used to make crude nuclear weapons. That concern is the major reason reprocessing was banned under the Ford and Carter administrations.

The argument for reprocessing
GNEP proponents maintain that reprocessing — which the nuclear industry and the Department of Energy have taken to calling "recycling" — has the twin benefits of cutting down on nuclear waste and ensuring a rich fuel supply for hundreds of new reactors.

INTERACTIVE Yucca Mountain Finding a home for nuclear waste

In the “once-through” fuel cycle currently used in U.S. nuclear reactors, thousands of tons of uranium ore are mined and processed to produce a relatively small amount of fuel. Once the fuel has been used, it is highly radioactive and must be stored for years in pools of water before it has cooled enough to be placed in concrete casks and eventually transferred to a permanent disposal site.

The only such U.S. site under development, at Yucca Mountain in Nevada, has faced political and regulatory hurdles for decades and is not expected to receive waste for at least 10 years, if ever. That’s currently the most daunting obstacle for the nuclear power industry, which wants to build more plants and thus create more waste.

Reprocessing advocates say that 95 percent of current nuclear waste, chiefly uranium and plutonium, is still rich with energy that could be harnessed by new “recycling” technology. The process could be repeated until virtually all of the energy is sucked out of the waste, allowing far more widespread use of nuclear power and drastically reducing the amount of permanent disposal space required.

MORE FROM POWER PLAY

Power Play Section Front

Part 1: ‘Renaissance’ or second false start? Part 2: The Senate's ‘renaissance’ man Part 3: Reality check for nuke cartel plan Part 4: Nuclear power's French connection Part 5: Do N-plants make financial sense? Video: Debate over nuclear neighbor Interactive: How a nuclear plant works Test your knowledge of all things nuclear Power Play Section Front   Add Power Play headlines to your news reader: