While the chair of the S.C. Sierra Club, Susan Corbett, testified to the Blue Ribbon Commission on America’s Nuclear Future on November 16 against reprocessing and against the creation of more waste, a proposal to ship spent nuclear fuel from out-of-state reactors to South Carolina for recycling has been emerging.
Savannah River Nuclear Solutions, the private company that operates the Savannah River Site under contract with the Department of Energy, has proposed to create four experimental nuclear power plants capable of burning radioactive waste for fuel. The company estimates that it could be potential alternatives to the Yucca Mountain repository which has been closed this year by President Barack Obama because it had reached its legal capacity. The supporters of the project also insist on the fact that it would generate 25, 000 high-paying jobs and electricity without contributing to global-warming.
While the chair of the S.C. Sierra Club, Susan Corbett, testified to the Blue Ribbon Commission on America’s Nuclear Future on November 16 against reprocessing and against the creation of more waste, a proposal to ship spent nuclear fuel from out-of-state reactors to South Carolina for recycling has been emerging.
Savannah River Nuclear Solutions, the private company that operates the Savannah River Site under contract with the Department of Energy, has proposed to create four experimental nuclear power plants capable of burning radioactive waste for fuel. The company estimates that it could be potential alternatives to the Yucca Mountain repository which has been closed this year by President Barack Obama because it had reached its legal capacity. The supporters of the project also insist on the fact that it would generate 25, 000 high-paying jobs and electricity without contributing to global-warming.
But this new proposal exasperates Susan Corbett who thinks that “we are once again to become the nation’s nuclear dump”. She says that environmental groups across the state of South Carolina are ready to band together to fight against shipments of spent fuel to Savannah River Site. Tom Clements, South-Eastern Nuclear Campaign Coordinator for Friends of the Earth, adds that “there’s going to be a fight if we’re going to become the New Yucca Mountain”. The activist, who ran unsuccessfully for the US Senate from South Carolina on the Green Party ticket during the last mid-term elections, has sent appeal to get as many people as possible to attend and to speak on the record during the next meeting of the Blue Ribbon Commission on January 6 and 7, 2011 which will focus on the fate of commercial spent fuel. Clements wants to show “to the Blue Ribbon Commission, the Department of Energy and Savannah River Site that there indeed is opposition to the dangerous dumping scheme”.
It would also be a fight against reprocessing in general while the Blue Ribbon Commission, launched in January 2010 by President Barack Obama, is seriously considering it as a potential option to deal with the country’s growing nuclear waste problem. The United States stopped reprocessing in the 1970’s because of concerns regarding proliferation of nuclear weapons (see our other article).
http://www.thesunnews.com/2010/11/22/1826741/nuclear-fuel-plan-raises-hope.html
