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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
February 6, 2001
CONTACT:
Don Moniak (803) 644-6953
Janet Zeller (336) 982-2691
GROUP
RELEASES REPORT: PLUTONIUM, THE LAST FIVE YEARS
The Blue Ridge Environmental Defense League
(BREDL) today released a three part report, Plutonium,
The Last Five Years documenting plutonium
hazards and inventories and revealing the
Department of Energy’s mismanagement of its
plutonium storage responsibilities. BREDL called
on the Department of Energy to disclose it
current plutonium and highly enriched uranium
inventories and make safe, secure plutonium
storage its number one priority; and for the new
administration to reverse the trend towards
increased secrecy in DOE’s nuclear weapons
complex.
The release of this report marks the 5th
Anniversary of Secretary of Energy Hazel
O’Leary’s last openness media
conference, at which declassified estimates of
plutonium and highly enriched uranium inventories
were announced. Plutonium, the Last Five
Years documents DOE’s inconsistent
management of 26 metric tonnes of separated,
unstable plutonium contained in more than 100,000
individual items and scheduled to be sent to the
Savannah River Site in South Carolina or buried
as waste at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in
New Mexico. DOE’s mismanagement has
included:
a failure to meet its own
long-term storage criteria for six metric
tonnes of highly dispersible
plutonium oxide powder and more than
eight metric tonnes of plutonium metals.
spending two years
“studying” how to store ten
metric tonnes of plutonium it plans to
begin trucking this year from the Rocky
Flats plant in Colorado to the Savannah
River Site.
The report also details how DOE
mismanagement of 12,000 plutonium pits stored at
the Pantex Nuclear Weapons Plant in Texas is
increasing the uncertainty of the reliability of
its nuclear weapons arsenal and fueling demands
for new plutonium pit production. At the present
time, DOE is storing thousands of plutonium pits
it calls “National Security Assets” in
decades-old facilities and in containers
unsuitable for long-term storage. The Department
has not funded the procurement of new containers
for its “enduring stockpile” plutonium
pits.
A review of the hazards of plutonium reveals
similar disturbing trends with the 21 metric
tonnes of plutonium contained in about 7,000
plutonium pits that DOE intends to truck to SRS
this decade to be disassembled and converted for
use in a plutonium fuel factory:
The Department is
planning to treat plutonium oxide powders
at temperatures that will operations at
its plutonium fuel factory more
vulnerable to explosions, leaks, and
increased radioactive waste generation;
DOE and SRS have no
apparent plan for preventing Chronic
Beryllium Disease at SRS even though
plutonium pit disassembly and conversion
will convert SRS into one of the
government’s largest processor of
high purity beryllium.
Finally, the report details how
plutonium “disposition” facilities have
been sold as “nonproliferation”
missions at the same time DOE has secretly been
planning and upgrading its capabilities to
fabricate 100-500 new plutonium pits per year at
SRS.
“DOE’s own scientific reports point to
plutonium as having the most complex chemistry of
any element known to the human race, yet they are
pursuing agendas that will put people and our
environment at far greater risk from
plutonium,” said Don Moniak of Aiken, South
Carolina, Community Organizer for BREDL.
“The Department of Energy is playing with
something far more dangerous than fire. It is
time to recognize plutonium as a liability and
drop this crazy scheme to use it as fuel,”
said BREDL’s Executive Director Janet
Zeller.
<end>
More Info:
Download .pdf file or view html
files of report.
by Don Moniak
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