Dear Mary

 

Please help us say no to a risky and expensive Department of Energy proposal to reprocess spent nuclear fuel.  Paducah, Kentucky is one of eleven sites competing for this facility.

 

 

The proposal is known as the Global Nuclear Energy Partnership (GNEP). GNEP commits the USA to research, construct, operate and sell new styles of nuclear reactors both here and abroad, provide and transport new fuel to reactors around the globe, and take back the highly radioactive reactor waste for safekeeping, reprocessing, and disposal.

 

The waste would, at great expense, be reprocessed at Paducah (or one of the other competing sites). The reprocessing will not improve the nuclear waste problem much, if at all, and will risk diversion of bomb-grade material and weapons proliferation.

 

By reprocessing, plutonium, which is only about 1% of the waste, is removed. This plutonium can then be used to power another reactor or processed a little more to make bombs.

 

By expanding the number of reactors worldwide, the GNEP actually makes the waste problem worse by increasing the total volume of radioactive waste, and does nothing to reduce the waste disposal problems.  The reprocessed waste is still thermally and radioactively hot and requires high level storage.

 

There is currently no good reason to reprocess spent fuel.

 

 

 

We need lots of letters.  Email, fax or write to the Department of Energy. A Sample Letter is provided - edit and use as you wish. Comments should be submitted by Dec.1st.

 

Thanks for helping make the world a safer place.

 

Sincerely,

Ray Barry, Chair