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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 10, 2001
CONTACT:
Don Moniak (803) 644-6953
Lou Zeller (336) 982-2691
GROUP
URGES HALT TO PLUTONIUM FUEL FACTORY
Today in a letter
to US Department of Energy (DOE) Secretary Bill
Richardson, the Blue
Ridge Environmental Defense League (BREDL) urged
immediate action to halt the plutonium
fuel factory project at the Savannah River Site.
The group charged that the recently released
Environmental Report reveals that the
project’s Environmental Impact Statement
(EIS) was
incomplete and incorrect.
BREDL asked that Richardson, who leaves office
next week, act now to authorize a
Supplemental EIS to address huge disparities in
waste volumes and activity, to establish waste
management and disposal plans, and to account for
the doubling of the facility operations from
10 to 20 years.
In his letter to the Secretary, Donald Moniak,
BREDL’s SRS Project Coordinator, wrote
that the contractor’s new waste estimates
“make the Department’s final analysis
look like
fiction.” Moniak expressed grave concerns
about a new highly radioactive liquid waste
stream
not included in the EIS. He charged,
“Neither the Department nor the contractor
has a plan for
what to do with this waste, a clear indication
that the plutonium fuel program is a throwback to
the disastrous era of the ‘produce first,
worry later’ operations of the Cold
War.”
Today’s request for a Supplemental EIS
follows delivery of the Environmental Report
for the Duke Cogema Stone and Webster Mixed Oxide
Fuel Fabrication Facility submitted to
the Nuclear Regulatory Commission on December 20,
2000. The report was submitted by DOE
contractor Duke, Cogema, Stone and Webster (DCS),
which has a lucrative contract to design,
construct, and operate a plutonium fuel
fabrication facility--commonly called the Mixed
Oxide
(MOX) Fuel Fabrication Facility--at DOE’s
Savannah River Site (SRS) near Aiken, SC.
The report discloses large radioactive waste
streams never managed before by SRS and
impacts from plutonium fuel fabrication
unreported or grossly underestimated in earlier
DOE
analysis. Compared to earlier DOE estimates, the
latest report shows the plutonium fuel factory
annually generating :
• More than 80,000
gallons a year of previously unreported
liquid “high activity alpha
waste” never before produced at SRS,
and for which neither
the contractor nor the Department have
disposal plans;
• 7,500 times more liquid low level
radioactive waste;
• 5 times more solid transuranic
(TRU) radioactive waste
Although a year ago DOE claimed in its Surplus
Plutonium Disposition Environmental
Impact Statement that no “remotely”
handled radioactive waste would be produced,
hundreds of
thousands of gallons of waste are anticipated
over the life of the plant. The plan now calls
for
81,300 gallons of liquid waste to be transferred
to the F-Area high level waste “tank
farms” at SRS, which are already short on space. The
contractors and DOE propose deferring the future
disposition of this waste by allowing DOE’s
Environmental Management department at
Savannah River Site to accept and manage it--thus
shifting and obscuring the real costs of the
plutonium fuel program.
Last September BREDL launched the SRS project of
their Southern Anti-plutonium
Campaign. Working out of the Aiken field office
since October, Moniak serves as SRS project
coordinator. For the past 17 years, BREDL has
worked on high-level and low-level radioactive
waste issues in the southeast.
-end-
more info: BREDL
letter to US Department of Energy (DOE) Secretary
Bill Richardson , DOE reply to letter , Insights
from Offsite (No. 2001-1 2/15/01)
Southern
Anti-Plutonium Campaign
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