Ecological Wisdom * Social Justice * Grassroots Democracy * Non-Violence
>> Green Party of Michigan <<
http://www.migreens.org
>>> ---------------- <<<
>>> News Release <<<
>>> ---------------- <<<
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:
---------------------
April 23, 2005
For More Information Contact:
----------------------------
Sylvia Inwood, Chair/Green Party of Michigan
e-mail: chair@migreens.org
Art Myatt, Chair/GPMI Platform Committee
e-mail: almyatt@earthlink.net
Greens Renew Call to Make N-Waste Safer -- Now!
===============================================
Vitrification On Site Would Fight Pollution, Proliferation;
Create Jobs Locally; and Clarify the True Costs of Nuclear Power
Amid Earth Day celebrations, the Green Party of Michigan (GPMI)
is renewing its proposal that used nuclear fuel be made safer
where it is -- before transporting it anywhere.
The GPMI plan calls for the used fuel to be captured inside
glass ingots, a process named "vitrification", to prevent the
radioactive material from being scattered on the wind or easily
leached into the water supply.
The work could be done on site at each of the country's still-
running nuclear plants -- employing hundreds of people at each
plant, and linking plants to the cost of cleaning up their nuclear
waste.
As an updated statement from GPMI puts it: "Vitrification
would be a win for safety, a win for job creation, and a win for
assigning more of the true costs of nuclear power to the plants
using it to generate electricity."
The new statement comes as the nation faces serious concerns
over the safety and wisdom of current waste-storage and disposal
plans. On April 6, the National Academy of Sciences reported
that terrorists who took over the storage tanks for used fuel
rods at any of over 100 nuclear-power plants in the United States
could cause a catastrophe -- just by draining the cooling water.
And there are more nuclear reactors which have been shut down
but not defueled, or have been defueled but still have their
used fuel on site. These sites, too, are at risk.
That same day, lawmakers in Nevada were investigating
allegations of data faked to support the use of Yucca Mountain as
a repository for used fuel -- and the US Department of Energy
junked the planned 2010 completion date for the Yucca Mountain
Waste Depository, without setting a new date.
The GPMI platform's plank on vitrification says the idea
would address these problems -- and more -- much better than
existing plans, or this year's Bush energy bill. "Vitrifying
used nuclear fuel greatly reduces the risk of a spontaneous
'meltdown'. It also makes the used fuel unavailable for
reprocessing -- and less of a target for terrorists."
The new statement gives more details: "Metallic uranium is
burned and converted to uranium oxide before being added to the
glass -- so it cannot again be burned chemically. The uranium
oxide is then chemically locked inside the bulk glass, so it can
no longer be blown on the wind."
This would help both protect the environment and provide true
national security, points out GPMI Platform Committee chair Art
Myatt.
So why hasn't it been proposed before? "The nuclear industry
is enthusiastic only about vitrification that would be put off
until some distant future when Yucca Mountain is presumably ready,
and then paid for with public tax money," is Myatt's judgment.
"On-site vitrification, in which every penny of cost can be
charged to the particular power plant whose used fuel is being
processed, has no industry advocates at all."
And they've been trying to shirk their responsibilities for
years. Current GPMI chair Sylvia Inwood recalls attending a 2001
meeting in Detroit on the Yucca Mountain issue. She was "horrified
at the idea of this highly unstable nuclear waste being transported
on trains through residential areas."
When Michigan Greens came out with the vitrification proposal
in August 2003, then-party chair Marc Reichardt observed: "Our
representatives in the US House and Senate complain about 'transport
pollution' when it means tougher ozone standards. Vitrification on
site would fight an even more hazardous type of transport pollution:
spills, accidents, or hijacking of nuclear waste in transit."
Douglas Campbell, Green candidate for governor in 2002 and a
registered professional engineer, adds: "If left in metallic form,
used nuclear fuel corrodes, flakes away, and leaches into the
environment every day as part of the routine procedures of the
nuclear industry. That's what vitrification prevents."
Myatt, main author of the party's updated position statement,
sees vitrification as a win-win-win proposition: more jobs, a
cleaner environment, and better accountability. "It would be a
loss for Bush's clients in the nuclear industry, and a political
loss for Bush, but we can stand that."
Campbell agrees. "Until we have a reasonable procedure for
safely storing super-hot radioactive waste, the very least we can
do is not build more new plants to manufacture more super-hot
radioactive waste."
For more information on the Green Party of Michigan and its
positions on the environment, energy, and other issues, visit:
http://www.migreens.org
# # #
Green Party of Michigan * 548 S. Main Street *
* Ann Arbor, MI 48104 * 734-663-3555
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The Green Party of Michigan was formed in 1987 to address
environmental issues in Michigan politics. There are Greens
organized in all 50 states and the District of Columbia. Each
state Green Party sets its own goals and creates its own structure,
but US Greens agree on Ten Key Values:
Ecological Wisdom * Grassroots Democracy
Social Justice * Nonviolence
Community Economics * Decentralization
Feminism * Respect for Diversity
Personal and Global * Future Focus/
Responsibility Sustainability
created/distributed using donated labor
========================= text of plank =========================
Green Party of Michigan -- Platform
===================================
Part III -- Ecology
A -- Environmental Sustainability
2 -- Industry in the Environment
h -- Spent Nuclear Reactor Fuel
Radioactive waste, including spent nuclear fuel, can be made
safer by capturing it inside glass ingots. This process, called
"vitrification", prevents the radioactive material from being
scattered on the wind or easily leached into the water supply.
Vitrifying spent nuclear fuel greatly reduces the risk of a
spontaneous "meltdown". It also makes the spent fuel unavailable
for reprocessing -- and less of a target for terrorists.
The Bush regime wants to leave U.S. spent fuel in its current
dangerous form until the Yucca Mountain storage site is declared
"ready." Then it would be shipped -- still in its most hazardous
form -- to Nevada, where it would be vitrified. There is no cost
advantage to a large national vitrification plant instead of
smaller plants located where the spent fuel is now. There is
a safety advantage to making radioactive waste safer as soon as
possible. As a bonus, vitrifying the waste now would create
jobs now, in all areas of the country that have nuclear power
plants -- including Michigan.
Greens propose:
* Making spent nuclear fuel safer now, by vitrifying it on
the sites where it is now stored.
* Prohibiting shipment of spent nuclear fuel on any public
right-of-way unless it is first vitrified.
========================= GPMI statement =========================
Green Party of Michigan -- April 23, 2005
Statement on Vitrification of Used Nuclear Fuel
-----------------------------------------------
Spent nuclear fuel -- used nuclear fuel -- is again in the news.
On Wednesday, April 6, the National Academy of Sciences released
a report which concludes that, at any of over 100 nuclear power
plants in the United States, terrorists taking over the storage
tanks for spent fuel rods could do enormous damage. They would
only have to drain the cooling water to enable a catastrophe. As
_The North County Times_ put it while looking at their local
situation, ". . . the resulting fire and meltdown could spew
radiation for many miles, potentially depopulating vast tracts of
San Diego, Orange, Riverside and Los Angeles Counties. Think
Chernobyl, only much bigger, and imagine the panicked and permanent
evacuation of perhaps millions of people." The same applies to a
hundred other localities -- anywhere downwind of a nuclear power
plant.
Also on April 6, lawmakers in Nevada were investigating
allegations that data supporting the use of Yucca Mountain as
a repository for used fuel material was fraudulent. A planned
completion date of 2010 for the Yucca Mountain Waste Depository
was abandoned by the US Department of Energy. No new date has
been set. Even if the tunnel at Yucca Mountain were ready, the
process of getting the used fuel from where it is now to the
tunnel is controversial because it is risky.
The problem is that used nuclear fuel is dangerous stuff.
It's intensely radioactive, much more so than when it went into
the reactor. It contains the breakdown products of uranium
fission. The fission reaction of the original uranium can be
controlled by manipulating the environment of the fuel rod.
The fission of the breakdown products in the used fuel rod cannot
be controlled. The fuel rods have to be removed when they get
too hot and too uncontrollable. As a metal, uranium burns easily.
As an oxide (after it is chemically burned), it is a very fine
dust, easily dispersed on the wind and thus capable of
contaminating large areas quickly.
After the used fuel rods spend several years in a cooling
pool, the radioactivity from their short-lived breakdown products
dies out -- at least enough that the material does not need to be
water-cooled. At this stage, the rods could be removed from the
pools -- but they have not been removed. Instead of holding only
several years' worth of fuel rods, cooling pools around the country
have accumulated several decades' worth.
Vitrification could make these used fuel rods safe -- not
perfectly safe, but as safe as possible. Done correctly,
vitrification makes a meltdown almost impossible, instead of
something that must be actively prevented. Vitrification also
makes accidental or deliberate dispersion of uranium oxide very
difficult.
To put it in simpler terms, vitrification is essentially
glassmaking, using the used fuel as an ingredient of the glass.
Radioactivity is dispersed into the bulk of the glass ingots that
are the product of vitrification. The other components of the
glass are chosen so that the resulting ingots have a much higher
melting point than the untreated fuel rods. Metallic uranium is
burned and converted to uranium oxide before being added to the
glass -- so it cannot again be burned chemically. The uranium
oxide is then chemically locked inside the bulk glass, so it can
no longer be blown on the wind.
You would not want the glass ingot to be the base of a lamp
in your living room, because it is still radioactive. Nothing we
can do, short of waiting millions of years, would change that.
Still, once vitrified, used fuel is pretty safe. The ingots
could be stored above ground for ready accessibility and
monitoring, as the Green Party recommends. They could be stored
underground, as the Department of Energy has planned at Yucca
Mountain. In either case, minimal cooling would not be needed
for long-term storage.
Vitrified, the used fuel is safe in another way, as well.
It would be very difficult to reprocess glass ingots to extract
the unused uranium and the plutonium newly created in the reactor.
If it were extracted, uranium and plutonium could be used for new
reactor fuel -- or for nuclear weapons. The industries and
politicians wishing to build new nuclear plants and new nuclear
weapons look on the unvitrified used fuel as a valuable resource
for this purpose. They are willing to let the used fuel sit in
cooling pools, at whatever hazard to us, until they can get to it.
Vitrification prevents reprocessing.
The DOE's Yucca Mountain plan, as it exists on paper, is
insane. It calls for the used fuel rods -- in their current
dangerous form -- to be shipped from their scattered locations
across the country to a central vitrification plant in Nevada.
People across the country who don't want trainloads of used fuel
trundling through their cities or truckloads of it on the roads
they drive daily have loudly objected to this plan. The insane
part of the plan is that there is absolutely no need for the
material to be shipped anywhere before it is vitrified.
Glassmaking, like cement-making, can be done on any desired
scale and in any convenient location. Gravel and cement are not
shipped to one national plant in Nevada to be turned into concrete.
Concrete is made in small plants all over the country. Glass can
also be made anywhere there is sufficient energy to melt the
ingredients.
This means that there is no technical obstacle to every
nuclear reactor's having its own on-site vitrification plant,
right next to the cooling pool. There is no way to get around
the fact that a fuel rod fresh out of the reactor needs cooling
for a few years. That's simply an unavoidably dangerous step --
or at least, one that could have been avoided only by a decision
not to build a nuclear reactor in the first place.
There is no excuse for allowing thirty years' worth of used
fuel rods to accumulate in a cooling pool. Twenty-five years'
worth, at a minimum, could have been vitrified already.
Twenty-five years' worth of used fuel could be vitrified now --
removed as a danger to everyone downwind; removed as a target for
terrorists; and removed from the possibility of reprocessing for
new nuclear adventures. The still-operating nuclear plants can
supply all the energy needed for vitrification.
Worried about nuclear terrorism? Vitrify now. Worried about
transporting dangerous material to whatever final storage site?
Vitrify now, and transport used fuel only after it has been made
safe. Want to do something to prevent a new nuclear economy?
Vitrify now.
An on-site vitrification program will provide hundreds of
jobs in every area with a nuclear-power plant. On-site
vitrification could be used to force each nuclear-power plant
to account for the costs of this step in disposing of their
particular nuclear waste. The alternative is to have society
pay the cost, either in taxes for a vitrification program after
the power plants shut down . . . or in terrible destruction
if the used fuel is not vitrified soon enough.
Vitrifying now is the flip side of the coin that says "No
New Nukes!" on its face. It's what we can do now to put our
society on a path away from nuclear hazard. Vitrification has
some risks, but they are small compared to the risks of leaving
used fuel rods as they are. Vitrification would be a win for
safety, a win for job creation, and a win for assigning more
of the true costs of nuclear power to the plants using it to
generate electricity. It would be a loss for Bush's clients
in the nuclear industry, and a political loss for Bush, but
we can stand that.
[=============================================]
Other Contacts:
Green Party of Michigan
548 S Main St
Ann Arbor, MI 48104
734-663-3555
info@migreens.org
posted to web 1 May 2005