OHMIGOD! The ultimate idiocy of the current administration now can be “workshopped” for all to attend, in 11 cities, suddenly convened starting this week of Feb 12, where you can help stop the atrocious attempt to start-up reprocessing centers to intake nuclear waste. Accepting nuclear waste from OUTSIDE the USA is one big bone-headed part of the careless plan.

Very smart! We want to stop terrorism, yet we will take nuclear waste shipped by boat, and perhaps airplane, and perchance truck and rail [if from this hemisphere] to feed our disgustingly subsidied nuclear industry. Here is the alert from the Nuclear Information Resource & Information Service [NIRS], plus some information on the canceration and contamination this most polluting of all stages of the nuclear cycle has wrought….Cities and dates of these workshops is included. Also, we are providing another alert that you CAN EASILY do something about, re the heinous energy budget doinked on America February 5th, further increasing nuclear subsidies while CUTTING windpower and energy conservation funding…you can call your congressperson. Numbers are provided! Plus, a succinct several paragraphs follows alert number one concerning the cancer and pollution dangers of reprocessing nuclear waste, especially for those communities and waters that will take the brunt of the siting of the reprocessing factories…

The Alert:

ALERT >>STOP Global Mobile Chernobyl << [meaning shipping pirateable, transported heaps and slags of nuclear waste, each requiring unfailable security measures and logistics, CSM] ATTEND Public meetings! (schedule below) MAKE Comments** by 4/4/07 to GNEP-PEIS@nuclear.energy.gov
[Global Nuclear Energy Partnership or GNEP, unmedia-ly foisted on the American populace, and those creatures of the rest of this Earthly world]

to stop revival of centralizing the high-level waste, reprocessing, and nuclear power:

George Bush’s Department of Energy [DOE] is attempting to put together an over-the-top nuclear theme park plan, the centerpiece of which would relieve US nuclear reactor owners of the burden of their high-level radioactive waste, even though we have together fought off the plan to take the waste to the Goshute Reservation in Utah, and have forestalled Yucca Mountain [with its 33 earthquake faults] nearly indefinitely…

Now the plan is to move the high-level waste to one (or more) of the communities named below, and to also bring radioactive waste from all over the world to the same site(s) for eventual reprocessing. For more information on these programs, please visit the links at the end of this ALERT. Please do not for a moment forget that the #1 reason that these corporations want to move this waste is so that they can make more moolah >> Wall St. has said that moving the nuclear waste is a priority if there is going to be more private investment in new nuclear power reactors. Most of the new reactors are slated as additions to existing reactor sites.

What is needed is ACTION >> the Department of Energy is planning 11 public meetings THIS MONTH (see the table below). Because the DOE is handing out money to these communities, the local press is covering these meetings. WE NEED TO BE THERE! Bring everyone >> it is a great place for children and elders >> boring for them, but a good reminder for the DOE!

Sorry for the short notice. We need to show up and be heard. Comments will be “on the record,” though it seems that the style of the meeting will be a little different >>instead of long presentations theater-style they are doing “workshops” where people will engage in small groups with DOE staff. If you are comfortable with making your opposition VISIBLE (T-shirt or arm band), this will help others attending to know they are not alone. The DOE nearly always offers table space for groups to bring handouts. We recommend you contact them (info below) and do that.

If you have questions feel free to contact NIRS staff >> Kevin Kamps (kevin@nirs.org or 301-270-6477, ex 14) or Mary Olson in the NIRS Southeast Office (nirs@main.nc.us or 828-675-1792). Please help spread the word!

Date: February 13, 2007
Oak Ridge, Tennessee
Double Tree Hotel
215 South Illinois Avenue
Time: 6:00-9:30pm

Date: March 1, 2007
Los Alamos, New Mexico
Hilltop House Best Western
400 Trinity Drive (at Central)
Time: 6 00?9:3Opm

Date: February 15, 2007
North Augusta, South Carolina
North Augusta Community Center
495 Brookside Avenue
Time: 6:00-9:30pm

Date: March 6,2007
Paducah, Kentucky
Executive Inn Riverfront
One Executive Boulevard
Time: 6:0O-9:3Opm

Date: February 22, 2007
Joliet, Illinois
Barber Ober-Wortmann Horticultural Center
227 North Gougar Street
Time: 6:00-9:30pm

Date: March 8, 2007
Piketon, Ohio
Ohio State University Endeavor Center/Rm. 160
1862 Shyville Road
Time: 6:0O-9:3Opm

Date: February 26, 2007
Hobbs, New Mexico
Lea County Event Center
5101 N Lovington-Hobbs Hwy
Time: 6:00-9:3Opm

Date: March 13, 2007
Pasco, Washington
Red Lion Hotel
2525 N. 20th Avenue
Time: 6:0O-9:3Opm

Date: February 27, 2007
Carlsbad, New Mexico
Pecos River Village Conf. Center
Carousel House
711 Muscatel Avenue
Time: 9:00am-12:30pm

Date: March 15, 2007
Idaho Falls, Idaho
Red Lion Hotel on the Falls
475 River Parkway
Time: 6:0O-9:3Opm

Date: February 27, 2007
Roswell, New Mexico
Best Western Sally Port Inn & Sts
2000 N. Main Street
Time: 6:00-9:30pm

Date: March 19, 2007
Washington. D.C.
Hotel Washington
15th & Pennsylvania Ave. NW
Time: 1:00-5:00pm

** COMMENT BY APRIL 4, 2007 to

Mr. Timothy A. Frazier GNEP PEIS Document Manager, Office of Nuclear Energy, U.S. Department of Energy, 1000 Independence Avenue, SW, Washington, DC 20585-0119, or via telephone: 866-645-7803, Fax: 866-645-7807, or by e-mail at GNEP-PEIS@nuclear.energy.gov. Additional information on GNEP may be found at www.gnep.energy.gov.

Same contact for additional information on meetings and the PEIS process and project.

For More Information on GNEP please visit the official site above, and check out:

http://www.princeton.edu/~globsec/publications/pdf/HouseBriefing10March06rev2.pdf

Reprocessing: http://www.nirs.org/factsheets/reprocessisnotsolution.pdf

And http://www.nirs.org/radwaste/reprocessing/reprocesshome.htm

GNEP Grant Awards 2007

Contact Philip Lord at plord@aikenstandard.com

List of award winners:

1. Atomic City, Idaho, EnergySolutions, LLC $915,448

2. Barnwell, EnergySolutions, LLC $963,151

3. Hanford Site, Wash., Tri-City Industrial Development Council/Columbia

Basin Consulting Group $1,020,000

4. Hobbs, N.M., Eddy Lead Energy Alliance $1,590,016

5. Idaho National Laboratory, Idaho, Regional Development Alliance, Inc

$648,745

6. Morris, Ill., General Electric Company $1,484,875

7. Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Tenn., Community Reuse Organization of

East Tennessee $894,704

8. Paducah Gaseous Diffusion Plant, Ky., Paducah Uranium Plant Asset

Utilization, Inc. $664,600

9. Portsmouth Gaseous Diffusion Plant, Ohio, Piketon Initiative for Nuclear

Independence, LLC $673,761

10. Roswell, N.M., EnergySolutions, LLC $1,134,522

11. Savannah River National Laboratory, Economic Development Partnership of

Aiken and Edgefield Counties $468,420

TOTAL: $10,458,242

n Mary Olson, Nuclear Information and Resource Service, www.nirs.org

—————————————————————————-

What is so bad about reprocessing our nuclear waste, and the nuclear waste of others?????

Quoting from the NIRS [Nuclear Information
& Resource Service] Nuclear Monitor #643:

“according to a 2001 report published by the European
Parliament’s Scientific and Technological Options Assessment, 80 percent of the collective radiation dose of the entire French nuclear power industry, and 90 percent
of the radioactive emissions and discharges from
the British nuclear power program, come from
commercial waste reprocessing. The collective radiation
dose from 70 years of “routine” (that is, [if] accident-free) operations of the French and British reprocessing plants would be equivalent to the collective radiation dose from the Chernobyl nuclear catastrophe. Toxic chemicals used in these reprocessing facilities, in addition to
the radioactive discharges, are also potentially harmful to human health. (30)
The British reprocessing center at Sellafield has discharged
over 1,000 pounds of plutonium – known to be carcinogenic in microscopic quantities if inhaled or ingested [one MILLIONTH of a gram is the lung cancer causing dose] [454 grams make up one pound] [theoretically just 20 POUNDS of plutonium could kill everyone on Earth, albeit over a 30 year period, via causing lung cancer] – into
the sea, which has been detected in children’s teeth throughout the British Isles. The plutonium concentration in children’s teeth decreases with
distance from Sellafield, an indication that releases from
the reprocessing facility is to blame. (31) Radioactive contamination of the seafood supply has caused downstream governments from Ireland to Scandinavia to protest at the large-scale radioactive discharges into the ocean. (32) Sellafield’s workforce has been the most highly exposed to radioactivity when compared to the rest of Western Europe and North America. A study has found a significant, positive association
between a father’s preconception ionizing radiation exposure and the stillbirth of his child. Yet another study has found that male Sellafield workers’ exposures increase their children’s risk of leukemia and non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma. (33)

A large accidental leak of highly radioactive liquids containing 20 tons of uranium and enough plutonium to make 20 nuclear warheads that occurred on April 19, 2005 threatens to permanently close Britain’s US$3.8 billion reprocessing facility. (34)

The La Hague reprocessing facility located on the Normandy coast [of northern France] is owned and operated by the French government. The seafloor sediments beneath the pipeline dumping radioactive liquid wastes
from La Hague into the English Channel are so
contaminated that, under British law, they would be classified as “intermediate level wastes,” requiring special handling and deep geologic disposal. (35) A study of the population around La Hague has found an increase in childhood leukemia. However, this increase was
associated with the radioactive pollution of the environment around the facility, not paternal radiation exposure of workers as at Sellafield. Consumption
of local fish and shellfish, as well as mothers and children visiting the local beaches, have been associated with increased risk of contracting leukemia. A subsequent study verified an increase of leukemia among children under the age of ten within ten kilometers (6.6 miles)
of the facility, especially lymphoblastic leukemia. (36)
Although increases of childhood diseases and stillbirths have been found in populations around both Sellafield and La Hague, some researchers question whether the maladies have come from plant workers suffering
radiation-induced gene mutations that later damage their offspring, or whether parents’ and children’s direct exposure to radiation in the environment
is the culprit. Regardless of the pathway by which the radiation has traveled to cause this health damage, elevated levels of certain childhood diseases
and stillbirths are present around these currently operating reprocessing facilities in Europe. Incredibly, the supposed reason for reprocessing commercial wastes in the first place – “recycling” the fissile plutonium and uranium – has largely fallen apart, as shown by the failure of France’s “Superphenix” plutonium breeder reactor. Thus, both
France and Britain have mounting stockpiles of separated, weapons-usable plutonium with nowhere to go.
Commercial reprocessing in Britain, France, and the U.S. sets an example for other countries to follow. Those countries might then choose to channel their separated plutonium into nuclear weaponry.
India secretly reprocessed the wastes from its “Atoms for Peace” reactors, and then used the separated plutonium to explode its first nuclear weapon in 1974. In fact, India’s nuclear detonation is what led President Ford to ban
commercial waste reprocessing in the U.S. as a non-proliferation safeguard. Reviving reprocessing in the U.S. invites nuclear weapons proliferation around the world. Military reprocessing to extract plutonium
from irradiated fuel generated in DOE [Dept. of Energy] reactors for nuclear weapons purposes in the U.S. has likewise caused severe radioactive contamination and the build up of troublesome liquid high-level radioactive wastes at such sites as the Hanford Nuclear Reservation in Washington State, the Idaho National Lab (INEL),
and the Savannah River Site (SRS) in South Carolina. Many hundreds of gigantic belowground storage tanks hold huge volumes of intensely radioactive liquids and sludges at these three sites. A significant number of these tanks have already leaked their contents into the ground, threatening local groundwater, such major rivers as the Columbia
and Savannah, and such major aquifers as the Snake and Tuscaloosa. In addition, the DOE plan to permanently abandon high-level radioactive sludges in
the tanks at INEL and SRS by pouring concrete grout on top of them, sponsored in the U.S. Senate by Lindsay Graham (Republican-South Carolina), threatens to severely contaminate the Snake River Aquifer, Savannah River,
and Tuscaloosa Aquifer as the metallic tanks corrode, the concrete grout deteriorates, and the radioactive sludges flow into the waterways over time. If just a fraction of the radioactive strontium (one of hundreds
of radioactive poisons present) leaks into the Savannah River from SRS’s reprocessing sludges, the river water will violate the Safe Drinking Water Act. (37)
DOE’s sludge abandonment policy seriously threatens public health and the environment downstream from INEL and SRS.
Attempts to vitrify the high-level liquid wastes at these reprocessing facilities have encountered many difficulties.” For more on this, go to:

http://www.nirs.org/ Go to Nuclear Monitor #643, where you will also
find the references noted as numbers in the [30?s] in the above quoted section, pages 6-7.

Do as WE say, Do Not DARE To Do As We Do. Subvert the NPT [Non-Proliferation Treaty], unless
we want to twist yer logic up in Pyongyang or Tehran!!

I hope you learned a little bit about reprocessing. Something we certainly should not do. But it will help us garner more plutonium. And make more
of a mess than we have made already, with George B ready to amplify our foolishness geometrically, probably for the benefit of all nuclear corporations.

OK. OK. One more paragraph to just describe it for you >> how it works:

Also from same issue of the Nuclear Monitor, page 6:

“Reprocessing involves the physical chopping up of irradiated nuclear fuel assemblies, which are then dissolved in hot, concentrated nitric acid in order to extract still-fissile uranium and plutonium, supposedly for re-use as nuclear reactor fuel.
Reprocessing inevitably results in the creation of extremely large volumes of liquid high-level radioactive waste, which is
significantly more difficult to prevent from leaking into the
environment than is solid irradiated nuclear fuel, which is
troublesome enough in its own right. Even if reprocessing
goes according to plan, it results in significant “routine” liquid and gaseous releases of radioactivity into the environment, as well as high worker and public radiation doses.”

Edification is a good thing. Especially when it comes to
things nuclear, that you never would hear about properly
on your TV.

******************************************

Now the other Alert that you can more easily do something about via whatever apparatus you call a telephone or an email making machine re the Bush Energy Budget proposed and released on February 5, 2007:

This Valentine’s Day, February 14….

Before you go away to that romantic rendezvous….

Before you snuggle with your sweetie….

Before you even have another routine lunch at your desk….

This Valentine’s Day: CALL YOUR CONGRESSMEMBERS!

And tell them:

NO SWEETHEART DEALS FOR THE NUCLEAR POWER INDUSTRY!

MONEY FOR RENEWABLES, NOT FOR NEW NUKES!

IN THE NAME OF LOVE, STOP THE BUSH ENERGY BUDGET!

The FY 2008 federal budget released by George Bush February 5 includes whopping increases for nuclear power, and cuts for renewable energy and energy efficiency programs needed to address the climate crisis. A Public Citizen statement providing more details is below.

Show your love for the planet, and join thousands of people in calling both of your senators and your representative with a simple message: It’s time to stop wasting more of our tax dollars on ineffective, dangerous and unnecessary nuclear power programs. We need to redirect those funds where they will help most: for solar power, energy efficiency, wind power, geothermal, and so on. We have a good chance for success with the new Congress, but it won’t happen unless they hear from you.

Phone Numbers: The main U.S. Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121 or 202-225-3121. You can reach every member of Congress from those numbers. There are also toll-free numbers you can use. These are: 1-800-828-0498, 1-800-459-1887, 1-800-614-2803, 1-866-340-9281, 1-866-220-0044.

Please forward this Alert widely! Put up on your blogs, myspace and similar pages! Spread the word!

—————————————————————————————————

Feb. 5, 2007

Bush Administration Budget Proposes to Squander More Than a Billion Dollars on Unsafe and Polluting Nuclear Power and Nuclear Waste Programs in FY 2008

Statement of Michele Boyd, Legislative Director, Public Citizen?s Energy Program

Just how much taxpayer money does the federal government have to squander before it realizes that it is chasing a nuclear power mirage? Apparently, more than a billion dollars in Fiscal Year 2008 alone. The Bush administration’s budget request for the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) proposes to waste another $1.3 billion for nuclear power programs in pursuit of dangerous policies to revive the nuclear industry, restart nuclear waste reprocessing in the United States, and resuscitate the failing Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository project.

Among the many subsidies for the 50-year-old nuclear industry in the Bush administration’s budget:

$4 billion in proposed loan guarantees for nuclear and coal plants in FY 2008, compared to a $5 billion cap for biofuels, electricity transmission and the vast array of renewable energies. The DOE set these amounts, but according to the budget request, has yet to evaluate the financial risks for U.S. taxpayers. A 2003 estimate by the Congressional Budget Office concluded the risk of loan default for a new nuclear plant would be “well above 50 percent.”

$802 million for nuclear power research and development, a 38 percent increase from the FY 2007 request (the pending FY 2007 Continuing Resolution does not provide full funding). More than $1.4 billion has been spent on nuclear power research and development since FY 2001. Yet it is unlikely that we will see any new reactors before 2017 >> if ever. Meanwhile, significant efficiency measures and renewable energies could be implemented in the next few years if federal policies supported them.
$114 million for the Nuclear Power 2010 program, which pays the wealthy nuclear industry for half the cost of applying for new reactors and licensing new designs. More than $251 million has been appropriated for this program since FY 2001. The DOE has granted $260 million to a consortium of utilities and manufacturing companies, called NuStart, for only one construction and operation license application.

$36.1 million for developing designs for the “next generation” of nuclear reactors. More than $200 million has been spent on the program since FY 2001. According to the DOE, these designs will cost between $610 million and $1 billion. None of these designs is part of any of the new reactor proposals.

New reactors would also mean more radioactive waste, but the Bush administration budget has no solutions:

$405 million in FY 2008 for the Global Nuclear Energy Partnership (GNEP), a program to promote reprocessing that the Bush administration first announced last year. This represents a $285 million increase from the pending FY 2007 Continuing Resolution for the ill-defined program. Reprocessing is expensive and the most polluting part of the nuclear cycle. It also would threaten U.S. national security by producing highly radioactive plutonium that is vulnerable to theft. More than $586 million has been appropriated for reprocessing research since FY 2001. But according to the National Academy of Sciences, a full-scale reprocessing and plutonium fuel program for the waste that we have today would cost at least $100 billion (1997 dollars). There is significant skepticism in Congress about the partnership. The report of the House FY 2007 Energy and Water Appropriations bill found that “the Department of Energy has failed to provide sufficient detailed information to enable Congress to understand fully all aspects of this initiative, including cost, schedule, technology development plan, and waste streams from GNEP.”

$494.5 million for the proposed high-level waste repository at Yucca Mountain in Nevada, a $49 million increase for the program. Despite claims by the DOE that its priority is to submit a “high quality” license application to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission in June 2008, the DOE is in the conceptual stage of redesigning the site facilities and operations once again. The Government Accountability Office released a report last week concluding that more than $25 million will be spent to find falsified data and replace key modeling programs for the site. Approximately $9 billion has been wasted on this program already. Retiring Nuclear Regulatory Commissioner Edward McGaffigan recently stated that the project “has been beset by bad law, bad regulatory policy, bad science policy, bad personnel policy, bad budget policy throughout its history.”

In comparison to lavish funding for the mature nuclear industry, the administration proposes to keep solar funding flat, to cut wind and weatherization budgets and to eliminate geothermal funding. As with past Bush administration budgets, the real solutions for combating climate change and meeting energy needs while renewables and efficiency certainly get the very, very short end of the budget stick.