Key links in the chain, uranium mining and fuel manufacture, are dominated by foreign corporations The production of electricity is still for the most part the domain of US-owned companies, but the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission supports legislation that would remove the current limitations on foreign ownership of nuclear power plants. The industry is not able to dispose safely of its waste; and the academic infrastructure that trains nuclear engineers and scientists is fading away.

Legislation now pending in Congress and additional steps under consideration by the Bush administration give an idea of the initial payment that would be required to recreate a domestic industry. The desiderata include subsidies to the mining and conversion industries; reauthorization of the Price-Anderson Act, which limits the liability of owners and operators of nuclear power plants and also protects the US Enrichment Corporation (USEC); streamlining of the licensing of new nuclear power plants; development of "advanced fuel recycling technology"; and grants, fellowships, and scholarships for students and faculty associated with nuclear engineering programs.

Nevertheless, a domestic nuclear industry is not an essential. If HEU is in demand for new nuclear weapons or submarine fuel, it can be obtained from the weapons that the Bush administration plans to dismantle. Nuclear power plants generate 20% of the electricity that we consume. The Union of Concerned Scientists has found that the nation can meet 20% of its electricity needs through renewable energy resources by 2020, while Amory and Hunter Lovins report that efficient use of energy alone can save four times nuclear power’s output. Energy gains through renewables and energy efficiency cost less than gains through construction of new power plants. A dollar invested in energy efficiency produces roughly double the reduction in greenhouse gasses that a dollar invested in the nuclear industry does.

In fact, the domestic industry is a liability, as the attack on the World Trade Center made evident. Nuclear power plants and, in particular, their pools of irradiated fuel have the potential for releasing radioactivity that could kill thousands of people. Such a catastrophic release could be caused by an accident or by a terrorist action. The transmission lines that distribute the power from such centralized plants are subject to disruptions by terrorists and by extremes of weather. Because electricity grids are interconnected, disruptions could affect large areas. Apart from the terrorist threat, management of irradiated fuel poses an intractable problem.

Given the fact that a domestic uranium industry is not necessary and given the threat of nuclear terrorism, the prudent course would be to phase out the industry as rapidly as practicable. In the meantime, the federal government should not, in our view, subsidize the industry or change laws and regulations to make possible the licensing of nuclear plants by foreign entities or to streamline the licensing of new nuclear plants. If the domestic industry cannot survive without federal subsidies, foreign capital, and a reduction in public oversight, it should not survive.

We also recommend that the Megatons to Megawatts program be drastically changed. Under this program the United States imports for use in US reactors uranium that has been downblended from Russian highly enriched uranium (HEU). The program in its entirety would be an asset only if the nation benefits from continuing to obtain electricity from nuclear power plants. By using the downblended uranium in nuclear reactors, the United States creates plutonium, which, like HEU, is the stuff of nuclear weapons, and contributes to the problem of what to do with irradiated fuel. Securing the stocks of Russian HEU is too serious a matter to be left to the vicissitudes of the commercial nuclear industry, and the blending down should, for security reasons, take place more rapidly than the uranium market could absorb the resulting material.

We recommend that the United States purchase outright all the HEU that Russia is willing to sell, enable Russia to downblend the HEU rapidly, and then have it stored, if possible, in Russia. We also recommend that the federal government give high priority to securing nuclear materials and protecting nuclear plants and their irradiated fuel within the United States.

In addition we recommend that the federal government encourage the implementation of energy efficiency measures and the development and application of renewable energy technologies. The government should give workers who are displaced by the closure of nuclear plants opportunities to be involved in the new decentralized energy system that is rapidly emerging. The manufacture of solar equipment or fuel cells has a brighter future than the enrichment of uranium.

          The US nuclear industry has for years “used self-sufficiency in uranium fuel as a major selling point.”[i]  Now the Bush administration is reviewing the status of  “domestic nuclear fuel, ‘in part to determine whether a domestic uranium enrichment industry is economically feasible or necessary.’”[ii]  Entities urging the government to support the faltering enrichment industry argue that for reasons of national security we need to maintain a domestic supply of uranium fuel.  An examination of the US fuel chain, however, shows that, no matter how strong the enrichment sector, the nation would not have a viable domestic uranium industry without major changes elsewhere along the fuel chain. 

            Key links in the chain:  uranium mining and fuel manufacture are dominated by  foreign corporations.  The production of electricity is still for the most part the domain of US-owned companies, but the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission supports legislation that would remove the current restriction on foreign ownership of reactors.  The industry is not able to dispose safely of its waste; and the academic infrastructure that trains nuclear engineers and scientists is fading away. 

            In this report, we examine the fuel chain segment by segment with an eye to foreign influences and the ability of various links in the chain to support the nuclear power sector.  We then look briefly at what it would take to revive the entire industry, and draw conclusions.  Basic information about individual facilities is provided in the appendix. 

I.  DOES THE UNITED STATES NOW HAVE A VIABLE DOMESTIC INDUSTRY?

I.A. Mining

            The mining of uranium ore in the United States is dwindling.  Furthermore, foreign companies own the only three mines that are active as of November 2001. 

The United States in 2000 produced by mining a total of only 3.1 million pounds of U3O8 (uranium oxide), 31% less than in 1999. The 3.1 million pounds came from one underground mine and four in situ leaching (ISL) operations. Some additional uranium was recovered from waste mine-water and from restoration activities at closed ISL sites.[iii]  (In in situ leaching, the uranium ore remains in the ground.  A leaching liquid is injected into the ground through wells; the liquid, now bearing uranium, is pumped out through other wells.) 

The underground mine is the Schwartzwalder Project in Colorado, owned by the Cotter Corporation, which is 100% owned by the US firm General Atomics.[iv]. The mine is no longer in operation.  The four in situ leaching operations are Crow Butte in Nebraska; and Highland, Christensen Ranch,  and Smith Ranch in Wyoming.  Crow Butte and Highland are owned by companies that are 100% subsidiaries of Cameco, a Canadian corporation; Smith Ranch is owned by a 100% subsidiary of Rio Algom Mining Corporation, which is in turn 100% owned by the British company Billiton Plc.  Christensen Ranch, which closed before the end of 2000, is 71% owned by the French company Cogéma through COMIN.

Hydro Resources, a subsidiary of the US company Uranium Resources, Inc. is in the process of obtaining authorization to construct and operate four ISL projects in the Eastern Navajo Agency in northwestern New Mexico. The company has said that it will not begin mining until the price of uranium reaches $15.00 a pound.  Currently uranium is selling at under $9.00 a pound.  Residents of the area, with the support of national organizations, are fighting the planned mining, in particular because of fears of water pollution.[v]  Hydro Resources may have been counting on a $30 million subsidy from the  federal government, as it would have been eligible for funding for in situ mining contained in HR 4 and S 472 before the Senate.  However, opponents of the mines have convinced key legislators to remove the subsidy from the bills.[vi]

            Known uranium reserves in the United States that are recoverable at a cost of $30 per pound of U3O8 total 271 million pounds; those recoverable at $50 per pound, total 904 million pounds (that is, the equivalent of five years or eighteen years supply respectively for US reactors).  Total expenditures for uranium exploration and development in the United States in 2000 were $6.7 million, $5.6 million for surface drilling and $1.1 million for land acquisition.  The total represents a reduction of 25% from the previous year.

I.B. Concentration

Production of uranium concentrates in the form of U3O8 totaled approximately 4.0 million pounds in 2000, a reduction of 14% from the previous year.  Only one conventional mill and four unconventional plants operated during 2000.

The conventional mill is the Canon City Mill in Colorado which, like the Schwartzwalder Project, is owned by the Cotter Corporation, a subsidiary of General Atomics.  As of the end of June 2001, this mill was not operating.   

 The unconventional plants are the four in situ leach operations listed above. (The operations may be termed “plants,” because the uranium-bearing water is processed after it has been pumped up to the ground.)  As indicated above, Christensen Ranch is no longer active.

Production of concentrate in 2001 is down from production in 2000.  In the first two quarters of 2000, production totaled a little more than 2.0 million pounds; in the first and second quarters of 2001, production totaled just under 1.5 million pounds, a decrease of roughly 28%.  The Energy Information Administration (EIA) predicts that production for 2001 as a whole will be less than 3.0 million pounds.

Owners and operators of US civilian nuclear power reactors have calculated that they will need for refueling purposes natural uranium equivalent to a maximum of 518.4 million pounds of U3O8 during the ten-year period 2001-2010 or about 50 million pounds of U3O8 per year.  In 2000, uranium equivalent to 51.4 million pounds of U3O8 was used by US utilities.[vii]  Thus the domestic industry is far from meeting the need.

I.C. Conversion

The United States has only one operating plant to convert U3O8 (uranium oxide), known as yellowcake,[viii] to UF6 (uranium hexafluoride), the feed for plants that enrich uranium by the gaseous diffusion or centrifugation method.  The plant, Honeywell Specialty Chemicals in Metropolis, Illinois, has a nominal capacity of 12,700 metric tons[ix] of uranium per year.  It is owned by Honeywell International Corporation, based in Minneapolis.  ConverDyn, a joint venture of Honeywell and General Atomics, markets the UF6 produced at the plant.  A conversion plant owned by Sequoyah Nuclear Fuels in Gore, Oklahoma, stopped converting U3O8 to UF6 in 1992 and is now undergoing decommissioning. 

The Honeywell plant has suffered financially in the past few years because of a decline in the price paid for conversion.   The cost of conversion on the spot market fell from $5.85 per kilogram of uranium as UF6 early in June 1997 to $2.30 per kilogram in August 2000.[x]  ConverDyn reported in late 2000 that the average cost of production at the Metropolis plant for 2001 through 2003 will be $4.56 per kilogram of uranium, and that, in spite of diversification initiatives, the plant was in danger of closing.  ConverDyn blamed the drop in prices on sales by USEC of natural and enriched uranium hexafluoride obtained from DOE and from Russia.[xi]  The conversion services in the Russian high-enriched uranium that USEC imports in downblended form, as executive for the US-Russian HEU accord, is, in fact, roughly the equivalent of the production of the Metropolis plant in 2000, 9180 metric tons of uranium as UF6 from Russia and 9300 metric tons from Metropolis.  Prices are, however, rebounding.  As of June 2001, the price in the spot market was $5.00 per kilogram of uranium as UF6.[xii] 

            The Metropolis plant does not have sufficient capacity to meet the conversion needs of US reactors, which total approximately 17,500 metric tons of natural uranium a year.[xiii] However, even if it did, US utilities would be likely to buy from a mix of domestic and foreign sources.

I.D. Enrichment

            Only one US company enriches uranium, the United States Enrichment Corporation (USEC).  It is struggling to remain profitable, but at the present time does not have the capacity to meet the enrichment needs of US utilities. 

USEC came into existence in July 1993 as a government-owned corporation to take over enrichment operations, which had formerly been run by DOE and its predecessors.  In July 1998, USEC, through an initial public stock offering, became a privately owned company.  USEC leases from DOE two enrichment plants, the Paducah Gaseous Diffusion Plant in Kentucky and the Portsmouth Gaseous Diffusion Plant in Ohio. Until mid 2001, Paducah enriched uranium hexafluoride only to 2.75% uranium 235.  The UF6 was then shipped to Portsmouth to be further enriched to the level desired by customers, generally between 3.5% and 5% uranium 235.

USEC, though a private company, is the US executive agent for the US-Russian HEU accord.  Through the accord, the United States agreed to purchase over a twenty-year period, 500 metric tons of highly-enriched uranium (HEU) taken from Russian weapons and downblended in Russia to low-enriched uranium.[xiv] As of September  2001, with implementation of the agreement in its seventh year, USEC had  imported 125 metric tons of HEU in downblended form (22.4 million SWU).[xv]  There is, however, an inherent conflict between USEC’s role as a private company, which must strive to make a profit for stockholders, and its role as an instrument of US non-proliferation policy.

            The enrichment plants that USEC leases are more than forty years old and use a technology that is no longer competitive, largely because it requires large amounts of electricity.  A gas centrifuge plant typically demands 2,500 kilowatt hours per Separative Work Unit (SWU--a means of measuring the work of enrichment).[xvi] A centrifuge plant requires only 50 to 400 kilowatt hours per SWU.[xvii]  Two of USEC’s competitors, Minatom in Russia and Urenco in Germany, the Netherlands, and United Kingdom, use centrifuges.  France is planning to replace the Eurodif plant, another USEC competitor, with centrifuges when that plant reaches the end of its useful life. 

            USEC’s financial situation has deteriorated since privatization, to such an extent that various stockholders are suing for misrepresentation at the time of the Initial Public Offering. Net income was $152.4 million for FY 1999; $35 million for FY 2001.  USEC has in the past been wont to blame its lack of financial success on its role as executive agent for the US-Russian HEU accord.  In May 1999, USEC stated, “Cost of sales has been, and will continue to be, affected by amounts paid to purchase SWU under the Russian Contract at prices that are substantially higher than marginal production cost at the plants.  As a result of Russian SWU purchases, USEC has operated the plants at lower production levels resulting in higher unit production costs.”[xviii]  Nevertheless, in 2001 USEC is counting on Russian uranium to enable it to stay afloat financially.

            As a cost-cutting measure USEC decided to shut down the Portsmouth plant.  To do so, it had to upgrade the Paducah plant to enable this plant to enrich uranium hexafluoride to up to 5.5% uranium 235.  The US Nuclear Regulatory Commission  certified the new enrichment level in March 2001.  The Portsmouth plant closed in May 2001 and, with the help of government funding, is now on cold standby.  Paducah sends enriched uranium to Portsmouth for transfer and shipping, but no other procedures are carried out at that location.

Since stopping enrichment at Portsmouth, USEC has been severely limited in its production capability. In 1998, the Paducah plant’s nominal capacity was 11.3 million SWU per year.  However, USEC’s 10K report to the SEC for FY 2001 states “USEC estimates that the maximum capacity of the existing equipment at the Paducah plant is about 8 million SWU per year.”  The report continues “USEC expects to utilize the production equipment to produce about 5 million SWU in fiscal 2002.”  Some observers think that USEC will experience difficulty in producing more than 4.3-4.5 million SWU a year at Paducah, in part because the plant reduces production in the summer to cut electricity costs.

            Even at 8 million SWU, Paducah would not be able to turn out enough SWU to meet the demands of US utilities if they were to try to buy enrichment services only from USEC.  In 2001 US utilities purchased 11.8 million SWU (5.2 million from USEC and 6.6 million from foreign sources).[xix]  Furthermore, USEC cannot meet, with Paducah’s production, the demands of its present foreign and domestic customers—approximately 11 million SWU per year. 

Whether Paducah can actually produce enriched uranium that will meet the requirements of utilities is an open question.  According to an informed source, as of early November 2001, Paducah had not been able to enrich uranium hexafluoride to 5% uranium 235 and had not been able to provide laboratory samples to verify commercial quality. 

USEC is obviously dependent on obtaining at least part of the enrichment service that it sells, from sources other than future production at Paducah.  At the close of FY 2001, the company had a SWU inventory valued at $918.3 million, up from $596 million at the close of FY 2001[xx]; and BWX Technologies is blending down for USEC 50 metric tons of HEU, containing 3.4 million SWU, a gift from DOE at the time of privatization.  However, the main source on which USEC has been planning is the Russian Federation. 

During its 2001 fiscal year, USEC paid around $90 per SWU for Russian enrichment service.[xxi]  The contract under which USEC buys SWU from Russia expires at the end of 2001.  USEC and Tenchsnabexport (Tenex), the Russian executive agent, negotiated a tentative agreement in 2000 under which the SWU imported under the HEU agreement would be market-priced, but USEC would buy additional commercial SWU from Russia.

The Bush administration has not approved the tentative agreement, and the Russian government may no longer be willing to accept it.  The administration, in fact, told USEC in October to negotiate a price for and to order weapons-uranium SWU from Russia but not to import commercial SWU for calendar year 2002.  The final price for 2002 could scarcely be lower than the price for 2001, since under the terms of the existing contract between USEC and Tenex, the 2001 price is in effect for 2002 if no new agreement is reached.

The price of the Russian SWU is crucial to USEC’s balance sheet.  In USEC’s  1999 fiscal year, 31% of its  produced plus purchased supply of SWU came from the Russian federation.  USEC intends to obtain  60% from Russia in 2002.  According to an informed source, the cost to USEC for enriched product from Paducah, at less than 4% uranium 235, averages around $140 per SWU ($109 for production costs at Paducah, about $5 for transfer and shipment at Portsmouth, and about $25 for costs at headquarters (overhead and debt).  The market price for SWU in the United States under long-term contracts was $102 per SWU on June 30, 2001.[xxii]  Apparently USEC had hoped to pay Russia around $75 per SWU in 2002 and also to import commercial SWU.[xxiii]  Combining the high-cost Paducah product with low-cost Russian SWU would enable it to sell SWU at a competitive price.

Additional factors complicate the operation of the Paducah plant. Paducah, like Portsmouth, uses Freon, an ozone destroying chemical, as its primary coolant.  The Freon has long leaked “from pipe joints, sight glasses, valves, coolers and condensers.”  USEC states that it has enough Freon to supply the Paducah plant “through at least fiscal 2003,”[xxiv]  but production of Freon ended in the United States in 1995.  After USEC’s supply runs out, price, if not availability, will likely pose difficulties.[xxv]  Another complicating factor is the inability of Paducah to enrich uranium to the level that will be required by at least one version of the proposed new Pebble Bed Modulated Reactor-- 8.1% uranium 235.[xxvi]  

According to its 10-K report for FY 2001, USEC plans to select an advanced enrichment technology in FY 2002.  It will choose between Silex, a laser-based technology, which the Australian firm Silex Systems Limited is developing (USEC is paying for exclusive rights to the application of Silex to uranium enrichment) and gas centrifuge technology developed by DOE, on which USEC has been working with University of Tennessee-Battelle at Oak Ridge.  During the past year they cooperated, at USEC’s expense, under a DOE-approved Cooperative Research and Development Agreement or Crada, which USEC hopes that DOE will extend.  USEC  “believes new enrichment facilities using either gas centrifuge or Silex could be ready by the end of the decade.”[xxvii] Following a successful demonstration of centrifuges, USEC would license, construct, and operate a lead cascade “at a gaseous diffusion plant.”  It would then seek financial partners to construct a centrifuge plant, which it would expand incrementally.[xxviii]   Whether USEC can survive until it is ready to deploy a new technology and whether the technology that USEC chooses will operate successfully are open questions.

Meanwhile, a US alternative to USEC is in the offing.  Officials of Exelon and Duke have sent a letter to President Bush stating that a group of US utilities and additional partners are “actively seeking to deploy proven and competitive enrichment technology in the US.”  They asked the administration not to take any steps that would give a special advantage in building a new plant in the United States to USEC and also asked the administration to consider appointing a group known as Nuclear & Energy Security Partnerships as a second executive agent under the US-Russian HEU agreement.[xxix]   The “additional partners” include Urenco, which owns and deploys in Europe centrifuge technology that is now in its sixth generation. In October the chief executive officer of Urenco briefed Congressional leaders in Washington on Urenco centrifuge technology. Urenco is owned by the governments of the United Kingdom and the Netherlands and by two German utilities. Again we are back to the foreign factor.

I.E. Fuel fabrication 

            Fabrication of fuel for civilian reactors, like production of uranium, is today largely in foreign hands.  Four plants located in the United States produce civilian fuel.  The only one that can be considered a US-directed operation is Global Nuclear Fuel—Americas, which manufactures fuel for boiling water reactors in Wilmington, North Carolina.  The owner is Global Nuclear Fuel--General Electric 51%, Hitachi Ltd. 24.5%, and Toshiba Corporation 24.5%.  Westinghouse Electric, which produces fuel for pressurized water reactors in Columbia, South Carolina, is now a 100% subsidiary of the British-owned British Nuclear Fuels Ltd (BNFL). (Westinghouse Electric closed a fuel production plant in Hematite, Missouri, in the summer of 2001 following BNFL’s purchase of the nuclear fuel operations of Swiss-based ABB, which had owned the plant.)  Framatome ANP, which operates a plant in Lynchburg, Virginia that produces fuel assemblies, and a plant in Richland, Washington, that produces pellets and assemblies for boiling water and pressurized water reactors, is owned 66% by the French company Framatome and 34% by the German company Siemens.  (Prior to the creation of Framatome ANP in  2001, Framatome-Cogéma Fuels, a subsidiary of two French companies, had owned the Lynchburg plant, and Siemens Power Corporation, the Richland plant.)

            For two additional plants the fabrication of fuel for the US Navy is a major project.  As would be expected, these plants, which are authorized to handle highly enriched uranium, are owned by US companies.  They contribute to the commercial fuel chain, notably by blending down uranium.

            In order to render surplus plutonium removed from weapons unsuitable for future weapons, the US Department of Energy (DOE) has contracted with a consortium to build a plant to produce mixed oxide fuel at DOE’s Savanna River site, also to manage the irradiation of the fuel in civilian reactors, and the eventual deactivation of the fuel production plant.  The members of the consortium are Duke Engineering Services, Stone and Webster, and Cogéma, Inc., the US subsidiary of the French company Cogéma.   Subcontractors include Nuclear Fuel Services (United States) , Belgonucléaire (Belgium), Framatome ANP through Framatome Cogéma Fuels (France and Germany).

I.F. Generation of electricity

            In 2001, 103 reactors produced 753.9 billion kilowatt hours, approximately 20% of US electricity. The total was 3.5% above the 1999 figure of 728.1 billion kilowatt hours.  The average net capacity factor in 2000 was 89.1%.[xxx]  All of the reactors are wholly or partly owned by US firms, but the industry seems poised for change.

The joint venture AmerGen Energy was formed by the US utility PECO[xxxi] and the foreign entity British Energy to buy US nuclear power plants.[xxxii]  This venture is today a partnership in which the US utility Exelon[xxxiii] (formed by the merger of PECO and Unicom) and the foreign entity British Energy each own 50%.

The Atomic Energy Act of 1954, as amended, and the NRC’s regulations in 10 CFR 50.38 make foreign entities ineligible to apply for and obtain a license to operate  nuclear power plants.  The NRC staff evaluates license transfer applications that involve foreign ownership by using the Final Standard Review Plan (SRP) on Foreign Ownership, Control, or Domination, issued September 29, 1999.  In addition, the NRC must determine that a license or license transfer “would not be inimical to the common defense and security of the United States.”  However, apart from a prohibition on 100% ownership by a foreign entity, there is no fixed percentage above which foreign ownership is strictly prohibited.

When AmerGen sought a license transfer that would enable it to operate Three Mile Island, Unit 1, the NRC,  “Based on a ‘negation action plan’ developed pursuant to the SRP to mitigate foreign ownership, control or domination . . . found that the foreign partner did not control or dominate the safety-related decision making related to the plant. Based on this assessment, the NRC was able to approve AmerGen’s purchase of Three Mile Island, Unit 1, as well as subsequent license transfers involving AmerGen,” the NRC states.[xxxiv] 

The subsequent license transfers through November 2001 have been for the Clinton and Oyster Creek plants.  AmerGen failed in an attempt to purchase Vermont Yankee, because Vermont regulators opposed the purchase and also did not succeed in acquiring Nine Mile Point, because a single stockholder exercised his right to veto.[xxxv]  

            The NRC states that it has analyzed proposals for license transfers by entities other than AmerGen with some degree of foreign involvement.  “As industry consolidation progresses, it is anticipated that there will be additional situations in which foreign organizations seek to acquire domestic nuclear power plants and domestic utility organizations. . . . Since 1999, the Commission has developed and submitted proposed legislation that would remove restrictions on foreign ownership.  [italics ours]  Senator Domenici has introduced in the current session of Congress, S. 472,  ‘Nuclear Energy Electricity Assurance Act of 2001,’ which, among other things would eliminate the foreign ownership restrictions for nuclear power plants.” [xxxvi]

A look at non-nuclear power plants in the United States gives an idea of what could be ahead for the nuclear sector if the regulation on foreign ownership changes.  The British utility Powergen acquired Louisville Gas and Electric (headquarters in Louisville, Kentucky) and Kentucky Utilities Company (headquarters in Lexington, Kentucky).  Then in April 2001 the German company E.On AG offered to buy Powergen; and Powergen accepted the offer.   If regulatory authorities in the United States and Europe agree, Kentucky consumers will be served by the second-largest energy service provider in the world. 

The German utility group RWE AG is interested in investing in US electricity suppliers and has not ruled out nuclear plants.[xxxvii]  The Canadian Cameco Corp., which already owns uranium mines in the United States, is also among the foreign companies interested in US power plants.  It is considering investing in idle reactors or completing unfinished facilities in the United States.[xxxviii]

I.G. Waste management

            The major problem in regard to commercial nuclear waste is the lack of means of disposing of the waste as safely as possible. The problem is not limited to the widely publicized issue of what to do with irradiated fuel.  A low-level waste crisis is in the offing. Foreign corporations with experience in waste management are eager for US contracts, and one of them has made a major contribution to the dissemination outside the industry of contaminated metal.  Below we look briefly at the waste situation by type of waste as defined in the United States.

I.G.1.High-level waste (irradiated fuel, the products of reprocessing irradiated fuel, and other high activity, long-lived waste from military activities)

            The 1982 Nuclear Waste Policy Act made DOE responsible for siting, constructing, and operating a deep underground repository for irradiated fuel and other high-level waste.  The agency was to complete construction of a repository and assume responsibility for the fuel by February 1998.  It missed the deadline.

A 1987 amendment to the act directed DOE to examine only one of the three sites that were under intensive scientific study at the time, Yucca Mountain, Nevada.  (If DOE finds Yucca Mountain unsuitable, the agency must seek new direction from Congress.)  Opposition to Yucca Mountain has been intense, with many people regarding Congress’s choice as the result of politics rather than science. 

DOE is expected to decide later in 2001 whether Yucca Mountain is acceptable for a repository.  If DOE finds the site suitable, the NRC will have to determine whether to license it. A repository at Yucca Mountain will not open before 2010 at the earliest. Meanwhile, irradiated fuel is accumulating in pools and in dry casks at reactor sites.  As of September 2000, about 42,000 metric tons of irradiated fuel from nuclear power plants awaited a repository.  By 2035, the 42,000 tons from power plants could double, and an additional 2,500 tons from research reactors, naval reactors, and reactors to produce material for weapons may need disposal.[xxxix] 

I.G.2. Transuranic waste (waste contaminated by transuranics, i.e., radioactive elements that are heavier than uranium and extremely long-lived.)

Waste classed in the United States as “transuranic” comes for the most part from Department of Defense and Department of Energy programs.  The DOE’s Waste Isolation Pilot Project, a controversial waste disposal site deep underground in a salt formation near Carlsbad, New Mexico, is receiving “transuranic waste.”   Waste classed and handled as “low-level” is allowed to contain some transuranics. [xl]

I.G.3. Uranium mill tailings (waste material produced by the milling and other processing of uranium ore to concentrate the uranium)

 Since the uranium ore mined in the United States contains less than 1% uranium by weight, essentially all of the treated ore ends up as tailings.  The tailings are normally heaped near the facility where they were created.  They typically consist of a slurry containing “ground-up, sand- and clay-size, waste-rock particles, most of [the] uranium-daughter nuclides, and hazardous chemical residues.” Releasing gamma radiation and radon among other substances, they can contaminate the water, air, and soil.

            Under the Uranium Mill Tailings Remedial Action Project, the Department of Energy, in cooperation with states, Indian tribes, and owners of specific sites, has carried out remediation activities on more than twenty sites where uranium was milled from the early 1940s through 1970.  The aim has been to store the tailings, still normally near the point of production, in such a way as to prevent further contamination of the environment, and to clean up existing contamination.  The total cost of the program, as of December 31, 1999, was $1.48 billion.[xli]  Tailings piles are yet to be remediated at additional sites.  The 10.5 million tons of tailings dumped by the Atlas Corporation mill on the Colorado River near Moab, Utah are a notorious example.[xlii]

I.G.4. Low-level waste (essentially all waste that is not classified as high-level or transuranic and does not consist of uranium mill tailings, certain other by-product material or weapons material)[xliii]

            The 1980 Federal Low-Level Radioactive Waste Policy Act, as modified in 1985, mandates that each state must take title to and “provide for” the disposal of all “low-level” waste generated within its boundaries.  To encourage development of disposal sites but limit their number, it allows states that form waste disposal compacts to exclude from a regional compact facility the “low-level” radioactive wastes generated outside the compact region.

            Most states have now entered into multi-state compacts.  However, none of the compacts has as yet created a waste disposal site. Low-level waste is shipped to three privately-operated waste disposal facilities:  Chem-Nuclear’s site at Barnwell, South Carolina; US Ecology’s site at Richland, Washington (US Ecology is a subsidiary of American Ecology Corporation), and Envirocare of Utah’s site in Utah.  Only one of the three sites, Barnwell, accepts all types of low-level waste generated across the nation. Richland accepts low-level waste only from the Rocky Mountain and Northwest Compact states.  Envirocare, because of the terms of its license, takes mainly large-volume, low-activity waste such as soil and mill tailings. Such waste is classified as Class A.  The waste classified as “Classes B and C” are more radioactive and tend to contain isotopes with very long hazardous lives.  Barnwell, which accepts “B and C” waste will stop receiving waste “from all but a handful of states” in 2008.  In 2000 South Carolina entered into an Atlantic Low-Level Radioactive Waste Management Compact with Connecticut and New Jersey.  The South Carolina legislature closed Barnwell to waste from states other than compact members as of 2008.[xliv]

            The category of low-level waste includes  brooms and protective booties with a few hundred becquerels (Bq) of radioactivity. It also includes ion exchange resins and cartridge filters, used for purifying the water that circulates in a reactor and in its irradiated fuel pool. The resins and filters are contaminated, after use, with long-lived radionuclides, notably iodine129 and plutonium 239.  In addition, low-level waste includes reactor components that have become highly radioactive because of neutron bombardment within the reactor and also the reactors themselves.

            Since 1980, the NRC has tried to solve part of the low-level waste problem by deregulating the less contaminated (but vast) portion of this waste variously called by the authorities “de minimis” (i.e., “trivial” waste), “Below Regulatory Concern,” and “Incidental Radioactive Material.”  The agency wanted to allow this waste to be dumped into municipal solid waste landfills and sewers or to be recycled into unlabeled consumer products.  The Energy Policy Act of 1992 thwarted the agency’s initial deregulation plan, but it has since been revised under various guises.[xlv]

            At the present time the NRC, DOE, Department of Transportation, and even the Environmental Protection Agency –in cooperation with the International Atomic Energy Agency and European Union-- would like to set a one millirem per year dose standard for deregulated low-level radioactive waste, which would allow the release of a vast volume of radioactive materials into the commercial marketplace for refabrication into consumer products.  DOT has finalized a rule  to “harmonize” at this dose level, transportation regulations for radioactive materials in trans-boundary, international trade. The NRC is, in late 2001, in the process of rulemaking in regard to waste that it regards as very weakly radioactive and has hired the National Academy of Sciences to provide recommendations on streamlining the release of  these radioactive materials from regulatory control.[xlvi]    Furthermore, DOE is drawing up a Programmatic Environmental Impact Statement on the Disposition of Scrap Metals.  The industry is particularly eager to establish standards that allow release of contaminated materials, because of the enormous quantities of so-called “slightly radioactive” material that will need to be disposed of as nuclear facilities are cleaned up and dismantled. 

            Around 700,000 metric tons of depleted uranium hexafluoride stored in cylinders at the gaseous diffusion plants are among the wastes that will be impacted by the new rule-making on release.  Depleted uranium hexafluoride is hazardous.  If it escapes into the atmosphere, it reacts with moisture in the air to form hydrogen fluoride, a corrosive gas, and uranyl fluoride, a soluble compound, toxic from both a chemical and a radiological point of view.  In 1998 Congress enacted PL 105-204, mandating construction of two facilities to convert the UF6 into a more stable solid.  DOE is, in 2001, in the process of selecting a contractor to build and operate the plants and is compiling an environmental impact statement on conversion.  Whether the depleted uranium, after conversion, is to be buried as waste, made into containers for use within the nuclear industry, or incorporated into items to be used outside the industry is still an open question. 

Contaminated metal also poses a special problem because of its volume.  DOE expects to generate a million tons of scrap metal in its complex as a whole within the next twenty years as a result of decommissioning and dismantling facilities.  Much of this waste will come from facilities that played a predominantly military role.   However, the gaseous diffusion enrichment plants, because of their size, are a major source of scrap.  At the present time the Paducah plant stores 54,000 tons of contaminated scrap metal, more than any other facility in the DOE complex.[xlvii]  DOE contracted with British Nuclear Fuels Limited (BNFL) for the decontamination and dismantling of the three process buildings at Oak Ridge’s K-25 enrichment plant, a plant which had played a commercial as well as a military role. The contract gave BNFL the right to “recycle” some 126,000 tons of contaminated metal from the plant.  In 2000, then-secretary of energy Bill Richardson first suspended release of certain volumetrically contaminated metal, notably nickel that BNFL was disseminating, and then the release of any possibly contaminated scrap from the entire DOE complex.  Richardson’s decision caused a subsidiary of BNFL, Manufacturing Sciences Corp., to get out of the business of recycling scrap.[xlviii]

            When it comes to low-level waste, nuclear reactors are in a class by themselves.  Dismantling the reactors will result in waste that can be released if a one-millirem-per year dose standard goes into effect.  However, it will also result in steel and concrete that is more radioactive. No commercial-size reactor anywhere in the world has been completely decontaminated and dismantled.  

Andra, the French agency in charge of radioactive waste, has estimated  the volume and radioactivity of the waste that will be produced by the complete dismantling of the first pressurized water reactor constructed in France, Chooz A.  Chooz A has undergone the initial stage of decommissioning and dismantling and is now mothballed.  The reactor had a capacity of only 305 MWe, roughly one third the capacity of a typical reactor operating in the United States today.  Today it contains what the French accurately call highly radioactive waste (control bars, adapters, and test assemblies), also diverse moderately active and “weakly” active waste (resin, solvents, etc.)  destined for an above-ground disposal site.  In addition there are 5650 tons of contaminated or activated metal (0.54EBq, contaminated with cobalt 60, iron 55, and nickel 63), 2000 200-liter drums of technological waste, and 1000 tons of activated concrete.  The volumetric contamination of the most contaminated concrete is 1.35 TBq/m3.  The activity of the steel components of the reactor vessel is 0.17 EBq.[xlix]  

I.H. Academic infrastructure

             A further indication of the lack of a viable domestic uranium industry is  the crumbling of the academic infrastructure needed to maintain the nuclear industry.  An opinion piece by a friend of the industry in the Wall Street Journal makes the point:  “Across the country, university programs in nuclear science and engineering are seeing their funding cut, their faculty dispersed, their laboratories padlocked.  There are already too few qualified nuclear engineers to meet current demand.”  “There are roughly three positions for each recent graduate.”  If current trends continue, the situation will worsen.  “Most experts in the field, who entered the discipline in the heroic early days of nuclear research, are now approaching retirement, including three-quarters of the workforce in the national laboratory system.”[l]  The Bush administration’s national energy bill, HR 4, reports statistics:  “Since 1980, the number of nuclear engineering university programs has declined nearly 40 percent, and over two-thirds of the faculty in these programs are 45 years of age or older.”  

Teaching reactors are closing. Twenty-eight university reactors were functioning as of mid-2001, fewer than half the reactors that were operating in the United States in the late sixties.[li]  Cornell University decided in May of 2001 to close its nuclear teaching reactor.  At Columbia’s Ward Center for the Nuclear Sciences, the installation is the last research reactor in New York state and the last in the Ivy League. It will cease operating in 2001.  The University of Michigan made a decision in the fall of 2000 to shut down its reactor.[lii]  The University of California at Irvine is considering closing its reactor, although it is the only reactor on a University of California campus in southern California..[liii]  The reactor operated only 98 hours during the fiscal year that ended June 30, 2001.  HR 4 notes that many of the existing reactors were built in the late 1950s and 1960s, and “many will require relicensing in the next several years.”

II.  WHAT WOULD IT TAKE TO REVIVE THE URANIUM INDUSTRY?   

      We can gain an idea of the initial payment needed to strengthen the domestic industry, from legislation pending in Congress and from additional steps under consideration by the Bush administration.  They include the following, arranged by industry sector:

II.A. Uranium mining

            S 472, the Nuclear Energy Electricity Supply Assurance Act of 2001, and HR 4, the Bush administration’s energy bill, would authorize expenditure of $10 million a year for three years to domestic corporations to assist them in improving mining of uranium by in situ leaching.  (Lobbying against this provision by Navajo residents of an area that was targeted for in situ mining has reportedly caused Senator Pete Domenici and Representative Heather Wilson, who introduced the mining provision, to withdraw their support for it.[liv])

Limitations on the sale by DOE of uranium from its inventory are proposed.  S 472 would, with certain exceptions, prevent sale until 2006; HR 4, until 2009. (DOE’s uranium competes with newly mined uranium.). 

II.B. Conversion 

S 472 would grant DOE up to $8 million a year for FY 2002, 2003, and 2004 to be used to compensate ConverDyn for losses incurred in providing conversion services, based on the difference between ConverDyn’s costs and the price at which it can sell its services. (The difference has recently narrowed.  See the section on Conversion in the first part of this report.)

HR 4 would grant DOE $800,000 “for contracting with the Nation’s sole remaining uranium converter for the purpose of performing research and development to improve the environmental and economic performance” of US conversion operations.

II.C.  Enrichment

For the Portsmouth Gaseous Diffusion Plant, S 472 would authorize $36 million for FY 2002 and “such sums as are necessary for FY 2003, 2004, and 2005” to keep the plant in cold standby for five years.  (March 1 the Bush administration announced that the government would provide $125.7 million for cold standby and worker transition--$59.2 million for FY 2001 and $66.5 million for FY 2002.  The fate of the plant after September 30, 2002 was to be decided by task forces.  In April the administration agreed to an extra $5 million for deposit remediation.  It should be noted that much of the money for cold standby will go to heating the three major process buildings and thirty-two other buildings.  Electric heaters were to be installed in the process buildings.)[lv]                

As to the Paducah Gaseous Diffusion Plant, the administration is reportedly considering subsidizing operations to keep the plant functioning if USEC cannot afford to do so.

DOE may also be considering contributing financially to the development of centrifuge enrichment technology.   (Congressman Ted Strickland tried to attach to HR4 in committee, authorization for funding for this purpose; but was defeated by the Bush administration, which was not ready to make a decision on the subject.)

Renewal of the Price Anderson Act (see below), which would be authorized through the passage of any of several pieces of legislation, would subsidize USEC, since USEC enjoys Price Anderson protection. This protection saves it from having to try to buy liability insurance and from the liability itself.  In the words of USEC just after  privatization, “DOE is required to indemnify USEC against claims for public liability (1) arising out of or in connection with activities under the Lease Agreement, including transportation and 2) arising out of or resulting from a nuclear incident or precautionary evacuation.  DOE’s obligations are capped at the $8.96 billion statutory limit set forth in the Price-Anderson Act for each incident.”[lvi]

II.D. Electricity production

S 472 would move the restriction on foreign ownership of nuclear reactors imposed by the Atomic Energy Act.  (Foreign corporations may be more willing than US corporations to invest in new nuclear plants.)  It also states, as one of the Findings of Congress, that the process of licensing nuclear plants should be streamlined.  A Nuclear Generation Report that the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) is to submit to Congress within 180 days of passage of the act is to include suggestions for improvements in the licensing process.

In addition S 472 would authorize $50 million for FY 2002 and as much as necessary for FY 2003 through FY 2006 for research relating to nuclear energy; $15 million for FY 2002 and as much as necessary for FY 2003 through 2006 for a Nuclear Energy Plant Optimization Program (a joint cost-sharing program with industry); $15 million each for FY 2002 and FY 2003 for fees incurred by licensees in obtaining NRC approval for permanent increases in rated electricity capacity; $3 million for FY 2002 for a study of the feasibility of completing unfinished nuclear plants; $15 million for both FY 2002 and FY 2003 for an early site permit demonstration program; $50 million for FY 2002 and as much as needed for FY 2003 through 2006 for a report on a new generation of nuclear reactors (Generation IV); and $25 million for FY 2002 and as much as needed for subsequent years for research on the regulatory process in relation to new types of reactors.

Several bills that include reauthorization of the Price Anderson Act are pending in Congress.  The Act was first passed in 1957 as a means of subsidizing the then-fledgling nuclear industry by lowering its insurance costs and reducing its liability.  It is due to expire in August of 2002.   Price-Anderson requires that operators/owners of commercial reactors obtain $200 million in insurance liability coverage per reactor from private insurers.  If an accident that exceeds $200 million in damages occurs, all commercial reactor operators in the United States must pay up to $88.095 million per reactor towards the damages.  Potential payments by the entire commercial nuclear industry would be capped at around $10 billion.  (This sum would likely prove far from adequate. In 1982 Sandia National Laboratory calculated the financial cost of a severe accident, on behalf of the NRC.  The laboratory estimated that damages could run as high as $314 billion--more than $560 billion in current dollars.)[lvii]

HR 4, as passed in the House, would ensure that all companies that own nuclear power plants can deduct from their federal taxes the money that they set aside to cover the cost of decommissioning.  At present the tax break is assured only for companies with regulated rates.  The tax break is not automatically transferred when a plant is purchased by a company without regulated rates.  The Internal Revenue Service has been granting the break on a case by case basis as plants are bought.  The Congressional Joint Committee on Taxation estimates that the proposed change, which would make the transfer automatic, along with other changes related to decommissioning, would cost the federal government $1.93 billion in revenue between 2002 and 2011.[lviii]

II.E. Waste management

S 472 would create an Office of Spent Nuclear Fuel Research to study “treatment, recycling and disposal” of irradiated fuel and other high-level waste.  The office will study advanced reprocessing, in particular.  For FY 2002, $10 million is to be allotted to development of  “advanced fuel recycling technology,” with money as needed in FY 2003 through 2006.  HR 4 authorizes funding for FY 2002 and for FY 2003 and FY 2004 on the same subject.

II.F. Academic infrastructure

S 472 would authorize $34.2 million for fiscal year (FY) 2002 and such sums as are necessary in future years to upgrade university research reactors and to provide grants, fellowships, and scholarships to students, faculty and staff associated with nuclear engineering programs and related specialties. HR 4 would authorize $32.2 million for FY 2000 and increasingly larger sums for each of the next four fiscal years to strengthen educational programs in nuclear engineering and nuclear science through such means as research grants for faculty, and fuel and instrumentation upgrades for reactors.

III.                WOULD REVIVING THE INDUSTRY BE WORTHWHILE?   

III.A.  A domestic industry is not needed as a source of fissile material for weapons, as a source of energy, or even as an answer to global warming

DOE currently has an inventory of approximately 73 million pounds of uranium.  This inventory is made up of 15 million pounds contained in 33 tons of HEU that DOE has committed to the Tennessee Valley Authority for downblending into fuel and 58 million pounds that are to be stockpiled until 2009 as part of an agreement relating to the Russian HEU agreement.  The stockpiled uranium includes 5.9 million pounds contained in 10 tons of HEU that DOE holds under IAEA safeguards.[lix] DOE will obtain additional HEU through the dismantling of nuclear weapons, as President Bush plans to reduce greatly the size of the US strategic arsenal.  The United States is therefore not dependent for new weapons or naval fuel on enriching natural uranium. 

Nuclear power plants furnished 19.8% of US electricity in 2000; but less than 9% of the total energy we consume.  The energy from these plants could be replaced.

In developing a Clean Energy Blueprint, the Union of Concerned Scientists found that the United States can meet at least twenty percent of its electricity needs through renewable energy sources—wind, biomass, geothermal, and solar-by 2020.[lx]

Nuclear power can also be replaced by energy efficiency.  Amory B. Lovins and L. Hunter Lovins of the Rocky Mountain Institute report that electricity efficiency alone “can save four times’ nuclear power’s output.”[lxi]  Gains in energy efficiency would not require complex technology, the Lovinses say, simply good basic engineering.  The energy spent on pumping, for instance, the main application of motors, could be decreased by reducing friction through increasing the diameter, shortening the length, and eliminating the bends in piping.  Energy managers would need to think in terms of meeting peoples’ specific needs rather than in terms of delivering a certain number of kilowatts.  Thus a need for cooling could be met, at least in part, by planting trees and shrubbery and installing light-colored roofing and sidewalks rather than by powering air conditioners. 

Conservation can also help; but to many people conservation implies deprivation, and, if sufficient energy efficiency measures are implemented, deprivation will not be necessary.  Bill Prindle, Director of Buildings and Utilities Programs at The Alliance to Save Energy, explains the difference between energy efficiency and conservation with a series of graphic examples, the first of which is:  “Conservation means sitting in the dark.  Efficiency means installing lights that use one-fourth the energy, and letting an automatic sensor turn them off when you leave.  If each household in the U.S. replaced four 100-watt bulbs with compact fluorescents, we would save the energy output of thirty 300-MW power plants,”[lxii] or about ten average size US nuclear power plants.

That energy efficiency and conservation can bring about dramatic changes in consumption is illustrated by California.  California, before its deregulation crisis, was the nation’s second most efficient state in the use of energy.  Because of the crisis, the state reduced its consumption of energy by an additional 15%, which helped it avoid the large-scale power cuts predicted for the past summer.[lxiii]

Energy gains through renewables and energy efficiency cost less than gains through construction of new nuclear power plants.  To quote the Lovinses:

Enthusiasts claim hypothetical new reactors might deliver a kilowatt-hour for 6 cents vs. 10+cents for post-1980 plants.  (Nearly 3 cents pays for delivery to customers.)  But super-efficient gas plants or wind farms cost 5-6 cents; co-generation of heat and power often 1-5 cents  The cost of saving  a kilowatt-hour through efficient lights, motors and other electricity-saving devices is under 2 cents;  and they’re all getting cheaper.  So are the next winners:  fuel cells and solar cells. . . .[lxiv]

An editorial in British newspaper The Guardian, November 10 notes:

The main argument against nuclear power is not safety.  It is cost. . . The latest Cabinet Office figures suggest that by 2020 onshore wind farms will generate energy at 1.5p to 2.5p per kilowatt hour, offshore wind at 2p to 4p while nuclear will be 3p to 4.5p without including the costs of terrorism or the unsolved problem of waste disposal. . . . If 60% of the . . .  cost of building six nuclear stations was spent instead on alternatives like wind, wave, solar, fuel cell, photovoltaics and massive conservation measures, it is highly unlikely, there would be any need for a nuclear option.

Furthermore, as a Department of Energy working group has made clear, we do not need nuclear energy in order to cut back on greenhouse gas emissions.  The Interlaboratory Working Group on Energy-Efficient and Clean-Energy Technologies demonstrates in Scenarios for a Clean Energy Future that use of renewable energy and energy efficiency options could, by 2020, reduce fossil fuel use by 21 percent and cut climate-changing emissions by 31 percent while shrinking the United States’ total energy bill by 18 percent.[lxv] 

According to Amory Lovins, a dollar invested in energy efficiency produces roughly double the reduction in greenhouse gases than a dollar invested in the nuclear industry does.  Since a dollar can be spent only once, investments in nuclear energy thus actually impede reduction of the greenhouse effect.[lxvi]

III.B.  The industry detracts from the nation’s security

            The nuclear industry has a negative impact on the nation in varied ways, from the effects of uranium mining on health and the environment, to the example that our industry sets to developing countries.  Here we look briefly at three aspects of the impact, related too the possibility of nuclear terrorism.    

       Nuclear power plants and their stocks of irradiated fuel are a liability due to their potential for releasing massive amounts of radioactivity. During operation of a reactor, fission products and transuranics, including plutonium, build up in the reactor fuel.  As a result, the fuel becomes highly radioactive and also literally hot. The melting of a reactor core releases radiation into the air, with the amount of radiation varying with the length of time that the fuel has been in the reactor. Sandia National Laboratory examined for the NRC the consequences of a severe nuclear accident at each US plant.  Their statistics include fatalities that occur within one year.  Salem 1 and 2, south of Wilmington, Delaware, had the greatest estimated number--100,000 fatalities.[lxvii]

       A release could be triggered by an accident, as at Chernobyl.  It could also be triggered by terrorists. Since September 11, David Kyd, spokesperson for the International Atomic Energy Agency has admitted that “The West’s reliance on electricity, much of it from nuclear sources, is such that a nuclear plant would be a potential weak point for terrorists to pick out.”[lxviii] Both the IAEA and the NRC, responding to questions from the public, have stated that plant containment structures were not built to withstand attacks by airliners such as Boeing 757s or 767s.[lxix]  The media have relayed reports of al-Qaida’s interest in nuclear terrorism; and the actions of governments at various levels have underlined the fact that the terrorist threat is real.  Security measures for US plants, though insufficient, have included patrols by the National Guard and the Coast Guard, the closing of roads, and a moratorium on flights by general aviation near specified nuclear sites.

       In regard to terrorism, an even greater danger than the reactor itself may be the pools of  water in which utilities store irradiated fuel that they have removed from their reactors.  The pools at US plants are always in buildings that are outside the reactor’s containment structure.  The buildings are designed to resist earthquakes but not to withstand explosions or impacts from airplanes. Furthermore, they contain many times as much radioactivity as the reactor core.[lxx]  The water in storage pools must be continuously cooled.  If cooling stops, the water in the pool heats up and boils. If the water boils or if it simply drains away, the irradiated fuel assemblies will overheat and either melt or catch fire, with catastrophic consequences.  

       When fuel storage pools become full, utilities store fuel in dry casks.  The casks are generally a more secure means of storing fuel than pools, because they rely on passive cooling by radiation and air convection rather than on active cooling by water and pumps.[lxxi]  However, at some plants the dry casks are “line-of-sight visible” from open areas or inside unguarded chain link fences. According to the Union of Concerned Scientists, explosives or weapons that are available on the black market or, in some cases, available legally inside the United States could “cause the casks to be penetrated resulting in the release of large amounts of radiation.”[lxxii]  The Energy Information Administration has removed from its Web site the quantities of irradiated fuel at each nuclear plant, tacit admission that the stored fuel poses a problem. 

            Nuclear power plants are a liability also in terms of the nation’s energy supply, as they are major components of centralized systems of electricity production and distribution.   One nuclear power plant’s being off line can affect the electricity supply of a large area.  In fact, the unavailability of the San Onofre-3 reactor after a fire February 3  was a factor in the California energy crisis.[lxxiii] 

Furthermore, the sabotage of key transmission lines could prevent the electricity from nuclear plants that are operating from reaching consumers.  As journalist has summarized, “thousands of miles of high-voltage lines crisscross America. Attacks on key lines could trigger vast power outages because grids are widely interconnected.”[lxxiv]

Severe weather, which is becoming increasingly common as global warming proceeds, can also wreck havoc on transmission systems. The ice storm in Quebec and the northeastern United States in 1998 and the wind storm in France in late 2000 strikingly illustrate the problem.  In France some areas were without electricity service for more than a month.

            The problem of nuclear waste also makes the nuclear industry a liability.  Here we discuss irradiated fuel. At the same time that the Bush administration is supporting construction of a deep underground repository at Yucca Mountain, a location that is highly questionable from the standpoint of geology, it is advocating recycling. Legislation in Congress would create an Office of Spent Nuclear Fuel Research, to study this subject in particular.  In reference to irradiated fuel, recycling involves what is called reprocessing, treating irradiated fuel to separate the constituents.  Plutonium is one of the constituents that is separated out.  Thus reprocessing increases the risk of nuclear proliferation. The United States currently has more than 40,000 metric tons of irradiated heavy metal, stored in pools at reactor sites.[lxxv]  Had this fuel been reprocessed, the US would have produced some 400 tons of separated plutonium. 

Industrial facilities today use the wet, Purex method of reprocessing, in which chopped up fuel is dissolved in nitric acid. France and the United Kingdom, which operate the La Hague and Sellafield reprocessing plants respectively, are both edging away from reprocessing.  France has admitted that it does not intend to reprocess all the irradiated fuel that its electricity utility EDF discharges.  The French Atomic Energy Commission has, in fact, begun research on centralized above-ground or near-surface facilities for long-term storage of irradiated fuel.[lxxvi]    Furthermore, by stationing anti-aircraft batteries to protect the La Hague reprocessing site, the French government has admitted that terrorists could cause a catastrophic release of radioactivity from the site.  In the United Kingdom, the electricity utility British Energy has announced that for economic reasons it does not want to reprocess its fuel any longer. Irish political leaders, afraid of the contamination spread by the plant during its normal operation and of the results of a terrorist attack have called for the plant to be shut down. 

The Bush administration’s energy policy proposes that the United States develop and deploy a dry process known as “pyroprocessing.”  The fuel is chopped up and dipped in baskets into molten salt through which an electric current is passing.  Most of the components of the fuel dissolve.  Some remain in the salt; uranium and plutonium collect on different cathodes and are removed.  Proponents of the process say that it is proliferation proof, because the plutonium that is retrieved is contaminated with some uranium, other transuranic elements, and some fission products; but the contamination is not such as to prevent terrorists from using the plutonium in a nuclear device; and the process can be altered to separate out pure plutonium.[lxxvii]

The Bush energy policy also talks about combining pyroprocessing with what is called Accelerator Transmutation of Waste.  The aim of transmutation is to transform specific isotopes, removed from the waste by one or more separation techniques, into isotopes that are stable or short-lived.  The transmutation occurs when neutrons bombard the target isotope(s).  Bombardment takes place in a reactor, preferably a breeder or a subcritical reactor, the latter combined with an accelerator-driven spallation neutron source to form a hybrid system.  Some long-lived radionuclides cannot be so transformed.  Among them are carbon 14, strontium 90, uranium 238 and cesium 135.  Certain radionuclides that can be transmuted must pass through a reactor several times and be subject to several bouts of advanced reprocessing between each passage. Scenarios involving transmutation on a major scale require parks of nuclear reactors, and specialized installations to manufacture reactor fuel and to reprocess irradiated fuel.    They also demand long periods of time.[lxxviii]  A 1999 DOE report to Congress, “A Roadmap for Developing ATW Technology” described the transmutation of the US irradiated fuel inventory over 118 years at a cost of $279 billion.[lxxix]  This method, like the other reprocessing methods, gives rise to wastes that require disposal deep underground.  Thus reprocessing does not do away with the need for an underground repository.

In considering how to manage irradiated fuel, transportation is a major issue.  Trains and trucks loaded with fuel, whether on their way to a repository or to a reprocessing plant, are a highly dangerous proposition, from the point of view of both terrorism and of accidents.[lxxx]   However, storing  the fuel at the scattered sites where it now rests is not without risk.  With irradiated fuel, we are between a rock and a hard place.  One thing we can be sure of:  we do not need more of it.  

III.C.  Congress could make better use of taxpayers’ dollars than to invest them in the uranium industry

III.C.1.  Initiatives that do not merit support

On the basis that the uranium industry as a whole is not necessary and endangers the nation’s security, we recommend that Congress and the administration not adopt any of the measures under consideration to support the industry.  In other words, in situ mining and ConverDyn should not be the recipients of federal largesse; the government should not operate the Paducah enrichment plant if USEC cannot afford to do so; the Portsmouth enrichment plant should be closed down; the federal government should not subsidize the development of centrifuges; the Price Anderson Act should be left to expire in August of 2002 . . . We also recommend that regulations not be changed to make possible the ownership and licensing of US plants by foreign entities or to facilitate the construction and licensing of new plants in general.  If the domestic industry cannot survive without federal subsidies, foreign capital, and a reduction in public oversight, it should not survive. 

In addition we recommend substantially modifying the Megatons to Megawatts program, under which Russia sends downblended weapons uranium to the United States for use in US civilian reactors.  This program in its entirety would be worthwhile only if the United States benefits by continuing to obtain electricity from US nuclear reactors.   For the reasons stated above, we do not believe that nuclear-generated electricity is an asset.  Discontinuing the program while ending federal subsidies to the industry would, in a sense, level the playing field.  The various entities that make up the fuel chain would be left to compete in the free market.

           Securing the stocks of Russian HEU is too serious a matter to be left to the vicissitudes of the commercial nuclear industry, as events of the last few years illustrate. In late 1999, for example, USEC requested a government subsidy of $200 million to compensate for a discrepancy between its cost of production and the price it paid for Russian SWU, and it threatened to resign if the subsidy was not forthcoming.  Now USEC is trying to secure Russian weapons and commercial HEU at prices lower than its current marginal production cost; and needs the imported uranium to stay afloat financially.  The company is lobbying to remain the sole US executive of the Russian HEU agreement.  Meanwhile, a group of utilities is planning to try to license a new enrichment plant and asking the administration to consider appointing a group known as Nuclear & Energy Security Partnerships as a second agent.[lxxxi]   Non-proliferation policy should not be the pawn of  competition among members of the nuclear industry.  

          The program gets rid of one fissile material only to create another.  The Bush administration, to bypass the commercial enrichment industry, could appoint a newly formed or existing government entity as executive agent and then proceed with the current program.  However, to do so would not alter the fact that the irradiation of uranium fuel in a reactor creates plutonium, the stuff of nuclear weapons. We cannot further non-proliferation and at the same time create plutonium.  The United States does not now separate out plutonium from commercial irradiated fuel, but the fuel is a tempting source of the fissile material and the Bush administration has proposed carrying out the separation.

          The Megatons to Megawatts agreement is not the bargain that it is often described as being.  USEC pays for the Russian SWU; but the government is now considering subsidizing ConverDyn and the plants that USEC leases.  Furthermore, the government will have to deal with the irradiated fuel unloaded from US reactors as a result of the program. Protecting the irradiated fuel from terrorists and disposing of it will be costly.

          The original terms of the Russian HEU agreement are not being carried out.  The US was to buy outright the low-enriched uranium that resulted from the downblending of Russian HEU.  However, because of protests from the mining and conversion industries, the agreement was watered down.  Now USEC buys the SWU, the work of enriching the uranium.  It turns over to Tenex natural uranium equivalent to the natural uranium and conversion service (to convert the U3O8 to UF6 for enrichment) that was incorporated in the downblended  HEU.  This situation is financially disadvantageous to Russia, because Russia cannot easily sell the natural uranium that is returned to it.  Twenty-six million pounds have already gone back to Russia where they form part of a stockpile.[lxxxii]

           The program cannot possibly cover all the Russian HEU that should be downblended at the pace that it needs to be dealt with.  The Russian Federation is believed to have more than one thousand tons of HEU.  About half of the HEU is in weapons; about half is divided among three buildings at fifty sites.[lxxxiii]  USEC has thus far purchased only 125 tons of HEU and is scheduled to purchase 375 tons more by 2015.  Importation of the 125 tons has made America increasingly dependent on Russia for uranium for nuclear fuel.[lxxxiv]  A report issued in March by the Center for Strategic and International Studies states that “the time has come to buy more HEU, and faster” and that Russia should be enabled to downblend all its excess HEU within the next few years.[lxxxv]  Selling the uranium on the market at the rate that it needs to be downblended would overwhelm the uranium and conversion markets.  

III.C.2. Initiatives that merit implementation

We recommend that the United States buy outright all the HEU that Russia is willing to sell, enable the Russians to downblend it rapidly, and store it in Russia.  Russia has reportedly hinted for several years that it would be willing to sell the United States its excess HEU and plutonium.[lxxxvi]  The idea of storing downblended HEU in Russia is not new.  The House Appropriations Committee, for instance, in the report that accompanied its FY 2002 energy and water development appropriations bill, urged the United States to increase purchases of HEU from Russia and to look into down-blending the extra material and leaving it in Russia until it can be sold without harming the uranium market.[lxxxvii]

We recommend that the federal government give high priority to securing nuclear materials and protecting nuclear power plants and their irradiated fuel from attack within our own country.

We recommend that the federal government encourage the implementation of energy efficiency measures and the development and application of renewable energy technologies.

We also recommend that the government give workers who are displaced as nuclear plants close, opportunities to be employed in the shift to a viable energy system. 

          The workers most likely to be affected in the immediate future by the shrinking of the uranium industry are employees of USEC at Portsmouth and Piketon. The Portsmouth and Paducah Gaseous Diffusion Plants were constructed and operated to help this country win the Cold War.  Workers at the plants and other residents of the areas where they were located made immense personal sacrifices to achieve this goal.  They have suffered, in recent years, from the privatization of USEC, which has resulted in the loss of many jobs and in years of uncertainty for those who are still employed.[lxxxviii] The federal government should see to it that all displaced Paducah and Portsmouth workers and all who have been made ill by these facilities receive financial compensation.[lxxxix]  Just as importantly it should help provide employment opportunities in fields that will be viable in the twenty-first century.  Kentucky is on the right track with its plans to turn the Paducah Information Age Park into an energy/environment research facility, provided that the park’s research is focused on nuclear cleanup and renewable and energy-efficient technologies. 

                The outlook for the nuclear industry is unsure at best. The future of the energy industry lies in decentralized production.  A decentralized system is more resilient than a centralized system.  It also saves the money and the energy that would be lost in the transmission lines of a centralized system.  Most energy-efficient technologies for the generation of power are modular and thus lend themselves to being located near the point of use. The trend to smaller plants has already begun. The average size of new utility power stations in the United States fell from 600 megawatts in the mid 80s to 21 megawatts in 1998 (a typical nuclear plant is 1000 megawatts).[xc] Business Week in a special August 1999 issue put local, “personal” power plants at the head of a list of “21 ideas for 21^st century.”

     Finding ways to help Piketon’s and Paducah’s workers become involved in the new modular, energy-efficient technologies will require of DOE more creativity than developing at one or the other plant the centrifuge enrichment technology that DOE worked on and rejected years ago.   However, the communities and the nation deserve that effort.

Acknowledgements

We are grateful to the John Merck Fund for making this report possible. We should also like to thank the numerous people who responded to our questions including Peter Diehl, Judith Jonsrud, Lisa Helms, Pat Ortmeyer, Stan Planton, Susi Snyder, and the staff of the Southwest Research and Information Center and of DOE's Energy Information Administration.

A. Production of fuel and disposal of waste


B. Generation of electricity

Mary Byrd Davis is director of the Uranium Enrichment Project, compiler of  Uranium Enrichment New, and author of La France nucléaire: matières et sites, 2002 (WISE-Paris, 2001) and (in collaboration with Bruno Barrillot) Les déchets nucléaires militaires français (CDRPC, 1994), among other publications.

Copyright ©   2001  by  Yggdrasil Institute

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