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BLUE RIDGE ENVIRONMENTAL DEFENSE LEAGUE
PO Box 88 ~
Glendale Springs, North Carolina 28629 ~ Phone
(336) 982-2691 ~ Fax (336) 982-2954 ~ Email:
BREDL@skybest.com
PRESS
RELEASE
FOR
IMMEDIATE RELEASE
January 24, 2001
CONTACTS:
Don Moniak (803) 644-6953
Kristen Ostling (613) 789-3634
Gordon Edwards (514) 489-5118
GROUPS URGE SUSPENSION
OF PLUTONIUM FUEL EXPERIMENT IN CANADA
Yesterday in a letter to the Canadian Nuclear
Safety Commission (CNSC), twenty-five
organizations from three countries urged the CNSC
to take immediate action to suspend a U.S.
Department of Energy (DOE) test--called
Parallex--of mixed oxide (MOX) plutonium fuel
planned in Canada’s National Research
Universal (NRU) reactor. The letter requested a
review of quality assurance documentation held at
Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico,
U.S.A., and the Bochvar Institute in Moscow,
Russia. The letter is available at: http://www.bredl.org/sapc/CNSC_letter012301.html
Several instances of questionable work quality
within the Los Alamos plutonium fuel fabrication
program were cited in the letter, including:
the recent disclosure by Oak Ridge
National Laboratory that plutonium fuel
pellets made at Los Alamos for another
project contained numerous and very large
plutonium agglomerations;
Los Alamos’ plutonium fuel program
employed equipment deemed unreliable for
making suitable plutonium fuel pellets;
Los Alamos encountered difficulties
making plutonium fuel pellets for the
Parallex test that met technical
specifications, and had to reject
unspecified amounts of plutonium fuel
pellets.
Area resident Ole Hendrickson adds that the
age of the NRU reactor aggravates the issue.
“We’re worried about what this means
for safe operation of the 44-year old NRU
reactor,” said Dr. Hendrickson, a researcher
for Concerned Citizens of Renfrew County and Area
who lives 30 miles from the Chalk River
Laboratory. “The authorities should halt the
test until questions about the quality of the
plutonium fuel are resolved.”
The plutonium fuel test--known as
“Parallex”--is the first step towards
using plutonium fuel from surplus U.S. and
Russian military plutonium in Canadian Deuterium
Uranium (CANDU) nuclear reactors to use MOX fuel
made from. The Parallex plutonium fuel is
scheduled to be inserted this month into the NRU
reactor at the Atomic Energy of Canada’s
(AECL) Chalk River Nuclear Laboratory in Renfrew
County, Ontario. AECL is the DOE contractor
responsible for assembling the fuel bundle and
conducting post-irradiation exams.
The CANDU plutonium fuel program originated in
the early 1990’s, and DOE spent millions of
dollars on the project in spite of major
opposition on both sides of the U.S./Canadian
border, lukewarm support from Russia, and
nonproliferation concerns within DOE. In January
1997 the DOE office of Nuclear Nonproliferation
wrote that, “the CANDU alternative would
mean encouraging the use of plutonium fuel in a
foreign non-nuclear-weapon state which is not
currently using plutonium fuels.” Any future
efforts to irradiate tens of tons of military
plutonium in CANDUs is already in question
because the U.S. National Academy of Sciences
concluded in a November 2000 report that the
CANDU option is insufficient in terms of
preventing future re-use of the plutonium in
nuclear weapons.
“Plutonium fuel irradiated in CANDU reactors
fails to meet the ‘spent fuel standard’
established by the NAS to deter subsequent
removal of the plutonium via reproccessing,”
said Tom Clements, Executive Director of the
Nuclear Control Institute in Washington D.C.
“The technical quality assurance problems
with the plutonium fuel are another reason the
test should be stopped,” added Kristen
Ostling of the Campaign for Nuclear Phaseout in
Ontario. “We remain firmly opposed to the
plutonium fuel project on the grounds that it
will stimulate a global plutonium economy thereby
encouraging increased circulation of plutonium
and making it more accessible for nuclear
weapons.”
“In addition to stimulating traffic in
plutonium worldwide, the use of plutonium fuel in
nuclear reactors puts nearby populations at much
greater risk of devastating nuclear reactor
accidents, particularly if the plutonium fuel is
incorrectly manufactured,” said Gordon
Edwards of the Canadian Coalition for Nuclear
Responsibility. “The strategy of using
plutonium fuel is simply invalid,” he added.
“While more important programs suffer from a
lack of funding, DOE has spent millions of
dollars on a program that will yield symbolic
results at best,” added Don Moniak of the
Blue Ridge Environmental Defense League.
-end-
Southern
Anti-Plutonium Campaign
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