BEYOND NUCLEAR

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www.BeyondNuclear.orgApril 2010. Design by AvengingAngels.org

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NUCLEAR POWER IS DIRTY,DANGEROUS, AND EXPENSIVE.ITS WASTES REMAIN DEADLYVIRTUALLY FOREVER. SAFEALTERNATIVES EXIST NOW.

Please contact your u.s. Senators and Representativevia the Congressional switchboard, (202) 224-3121.Urge them to oppose funding for the research anddevelopment of reprocessing.

Please contact President Obama's office at(202) 456-1111. Urge the White House to renewthe Ford/Carter ban on reprocessing. PresidentObama has called for a world free of nuclearweapons. This goal will be unattainable if reprocessingwere to be re-authorized.

successfully lobbied the George W. Bush administrationin 2006 to launch the Global Nuclear EnergyPartnership, designed to revive reprocessing andexpand nuclear power worldwide. Although PresidentObama has cancelled GNEP's environmental review,funding for reprocessing is continuing within theEnergy Department's "Fuel Cycle Research andDevelopment" program.

WHAT YOU CAN DO.............................

Because of the 2010 cancellation of the proposedgeologic disposal facility for irradiated fuel rods atYucca Mountain, Nevada, nuclear power promotersare again advocating reprocessing.

The U.S. nuclear industry, the national nuclear labs,and the French government's atomic giant Areva

cleanup will likely cost taxpayers many hundreds ofbillions of dollars, or more. The only reprocessingof U.S. commercial reactor fuel took place at WestValley from 1966 to 1972. Initiation of that plant'scleanup has been deferred repeatedly, and is alreadyestimated to cost from $10 billion to $27 billion, or more.

Reprocessing plants large enough to handlecurrent U.S. irradiated fuel inventories would cost anestimated $40 billion to $60 billion each to build, and

at least $3 billion eachyear to operate.Taxpayers and/orelectric ratepay-ers would almostcertainly bear thoseadded cost burdens,not the nuclearpower industry.

While no safestorage or disposaloptions exist forirradiated nuclearfuel, reprocessingwould cost two toten times more than

continued on-site storage of rods at reactor sites, andfrom $65 billion to $130 billion more than geologicdisposal, assuming a site were ever located. Aswastes mount with continued reactor operations,reprocessing costs could at least double.

As many as 40-75 liquid-sodium-cooled, fastneutron "advanced burner" reactors (formerly knownas "breeders") would be needed to fission the newplutonium-based fuel and its transuranic constituentsinto shorter-lived radioactive isotopes (although yetmore long lasting radioactive poisons would also begenerated). These reactors could cost U.S. taxpayersyet another $40 billion to $150 billion, or more.

REPROCESSING IN THE U.S.........................................

The operation of reprocessing plants is not onlyhazardous but also extremely expensive. Given thesevere and widespread radioactive contamination,effective post-closure cleanup of the plants and theirsurroundings may not even be possible. The price tagfor cleanup may be incalculable.

Between 1943 and 1990, reprocessing of U.S.military reactor fuel was carried out at Hanford WASavannah River SC, West Valley NY, and the Idaho 'National Lab. As a result, Lake Erie and Lake Ontariothe Columbia, Savannah and Snake rivers, and the 'Tuscaloosa and Snake River aquifers remain at riskof continuing severe radioactive contamination. The

One of the world's worst nuclear accidentsoccurred in 1957 at a former reprocessing plant atMayak in the Ural Mountains of Siberia. A radio-active waste storage tank exploded, exposing 272,000people to harmful radiation. More than half a centurylater, Mayak remains one of the most radioactiveplaces on Earth.

Reprocessing is hazardous for workers and forpeople living downstream and downwind. Radiationcan cause birth defects, mutations, cancer, and otherdiseases. Studies near La Hague have found elevatedrates of leukemia. Studies at Sellafield have found thatchildren of fathers who work there suffer increasedrisks of leukemia and non-Hodgkin's lymphoma.Stillbirths have also increased.

RADIATION EXPOSURE..................................

A TYPICAL 1,DDD-MEGAWATTREACTOR GENERATES ENOUGHPLUTONIUM EVERY YEAR TOMANUFACTURE AT LEAST 4D

NUCLEAR BOMBS

Reprocessing plants also routinely discharge radio-active gases. For example, La Hague discharges moreradioactive krypton-85 gas into the air in one yearthan was released by the more than 500 atmosphericatomic weapons tests detonated worldwide over thecourse of decades. Some of the krypton-85 dischargedtoday will continue to release dangerous radioactivebeta particles for more than 100 years.

The global-warming gas, carbon dioxide, releasedfrom reprocessing plants contains radioactive carbon-14,an extremely harmful isotope that persists for morethan 50,000 years.

Radioactive wastes are released directly into theenvironment during the routine operation ofreprocessing plants. The British Sellafield plant hasdumped its waste liquids, laced with a total of over1,000 pounds of plutonium, into the Irish Sea. TheFrench La Hague plant discharges tens of millions ofgallons of liquid radioactive waste into the EnglishChannel every year. Such discharges would beillegal if dumped overboard in barrels from ships.But France and the U.K. have circumvented a decades-old international treaty against ocean dumping byusing underwater discharge pipes. If located in theU.K., the sea beds adjacent to the French dischargepipe could themselves qualify as intermediate-levelradioactive waste, requiring deep geologic disposal,under British law and regulation. These radioactivepoisons continue to contaminate the food chain.Liquid wastes from La Hague have been traced as faraway as the Arctic Ocean. Plutonium, almost certainlyoriginating at Sellafield, has been found in teeth ofchildren living hundreds of miles downstream.

America's abstinence from commercial reprocessingsince the 1970s has no doubt helped to avert the pro-liferation of atomic arsenals in other countries - mostnotably in Argentina, Brazil, South Korea, and Taiwan.

RADIOACTIVE RELEASES....................................

France and the U.K. alone have already extractedand stockpiled enough commercial plutonium tomake over 30,000 Nagasaki-type atomic weapons.

1945. The Soviet Union in 1949, the U.K. in 1952,and France in 1960 also tested atomic weapons usingreprocessed plutonium. In the 1960s, Israel beganto reprocess research reactor fuel to extract plutoniumfor its atomic arsenal. By 1967, China began toextract weapons-grade plutonium via reprocessing.In 1974, India detonated a nuclear device by usingplutonium reprocessed from its researchreactor fuel. (The reactor came from Canada; thereprocessing technology came from the U.S.) Forat least the past decade, evidence has mounted thatPakistan may be pursuing plutonium-based weaponsto add to its highly-enriched uranium arsenal. In2006 and 2009, North Korea tested atomic weaponstriggered by reprocessed plutonium extracted froma small research reactor's fuel.

Japan already has a large stockpile of separatedcommercial plutonium, which will grow substantiallywhen its new Rokkasho reprocessing facility becomesoperational. If it so chose, Japan would have thetechnical capability to manufacture nuclear weaponswithin months. But fortunately, Japan - the onlycountry ever attacked by atomic weapons - continuesto renounce them.

Both Presidents Ford and Carter banned commercialreprocessing in the U.S. because they feared that thetechnology's spread would be used for the worldwideproliferation of nuclear weapons. In addition to theuse of extracted plutonium in nuclear weapons, theleft-over reprocessing wastes can be used to turn anordinary bomb into a dirty bomb that is designed todisperse radioactivity. President Reagan overturned thereprocessing ban, but the exorbitant cost of buildingand operating such plants has kept reprocessing frombeing revived in the U.S. since 1972.

The U.S. invented re-processing in the 1940sto separate plutoniumfrom irradiated nuclearfuel for use in theTrinity bomb test inNew Mexico and inthe atomic bomb thatdestroyed Nagasaki in

have been shipped to Siberia for indefinite storage.Reprocessing plant structures and components alsobecome radioactively contaminated and corrodedduring operations, turning them into radioactivewaste, as well.

THE WEAPONS LINK..............................

A fraction of the separated plutonium fromreprocessing is intended for use in new reactor fuel.When used, though, the new fuel would then itselfgenerate more plutonium and other long-livedradioactive wastes. Plutonium-239 continues releasingharmful particles and rays for at least 240,000 years.

No safe technology or disposal site exists to isolatethe radioactive wastes that reprocessing generates.Especially because the solid irradiated rods aretransformed into high-level radioactive liquids andsludges, reprocessing increases rather than decreasesthe volume of homeless radioactive waste. The wastebyproducts cannot be re-used. They have to beabandoned on-site or dumped elsewhere. For example,French uranium wastes left over from reprocessing

In nuclear power plants, the highly radioactive fuelrods are removed from the reactor after about fiveyears of fissioning and are replaced with fresh rods.Reprocessing involves physically chopping up theirradiated rods and then dissolving them in acid toextract plutonium and uranium. Separated plutoniumcan be used to make nuclear weapons. Commercialreprocessing currently takes place in five countries -France, India, Japan, Russia, and the United Kingdom.

No permanent waste repository exists on theplanet - and none may ever exist - for the disposal ofthe fuel rods currently in reactors or those that havealready been removed. Irradiated rods are thereforebeing stored at every reactor site. They remainvulnerable to terrorists and accidental releases, andthey increase the radiation exposure of workers. TheU.S. nuclear industry is promoting reprocessing as itslatest illusion of a solution to the high-level radioactivewaste problem.

MORE WASTE CREATED, NOT LESS...................................................

WHAT IS REPROCESSING?......................................