NEW YORK - January 27 - A group of arms control, consumer, environmental and public health organizations, deeply concerned about US efforts to break a 30 year taboo on the reprocessing of irradiated fuel from civilian nuclear reactors, in order to produce bomb-grade plutonium for use in producing nuclear fuel, has sent the letter below to every member of Congress.

We hope you will write about this story as we believe it will have a significant impact on efforts to control nuclear proliferation and the further spread of nuclear weapons.

Alice Slater, President of the GRACE Public Fund, who participated in the joint effort, made this statement:

"As the United States is urgently pressing the IAEA to refer Iran to the Security Council for its announced program to enrich uranium, escalating the nuclear crisis, and forestalling the orderly inspection of Iran's facilities by the IAEA, it plans to break a thirty year taboo in this country on the reprocessing of nuclear waste to refine nuclear waste into bomb grade plutonium for use in nuclear reactors. The material will then be shipped by truck, rail, and ship all over the planet--an easy target for terrorists--while we're sending exactly the wrong message to the rest of the world. By engaging in reprocessing, we will be losing our moral authority to demand that other countries, such as Iran and North Korea, forego uranium enrichment to make materials for "peaceful" nuclear technology.

"The Non-Proliferation Treaty provides nations who agree to forego nuclear weapons an "inalienable right" to peaceful nuclear technology. This Faustian bargain upon which the NPT regime is based has led to disastrous consequences. The 'inalienable right' to nuclear energy has been the cover for the acquisition of nuclear weapons capabilities through civilian nuclear programs. A US reprocessing program, after years of precluding such a program will only accelerate other nations to move in the same direction.

"We must move toward reliance on clean, safe, renewable forms of energy production that do not provide the materials for weapons of mass destruction and do not poison the environment for tens of thousands of years. As the energy needs of the 21st century become a crucial issue on every corner of the planet, our nation should be moving beyond this failed energy paradigm and working towards an economy based on clean, safe energy. Instead of reprocessing, we should be supporting the creation of an International Sustainable Energy Fund to stimulate and support the transition to a sustainable energy economy that would address the need to tackle global climate change and end the nuclear threat.

A model statute to establish this Fund can be seen at http://www.gracelinks.org/energy/docs/ISEF-Statute-final.pdf

Instead of the current Administration's Vision 2020, to build 50 new nuclear power plants in the US, it's time to support a protocol to the NPT calling for the establishment of an International Sustainable Energy Agency, as we phase out nuclear power and begin to develop the abundant energy of our earth from the sun, wind, tides, and geothermal sources. The provision of the NPT providing for an "inalienable right" to "peaceful" nuclear energy, upon which Iran and North Korea rely, would become obsolete, just as another provision in the treaty which provided for peaceful nuclear explosions has been rendered inoperative by the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty which forbids nuclear explosions of any kind. America should be leading by example. Reprocessing will only accelerate the nuclear danger."

Letter to Congress:

January 26, 2006

Re: Reprocessing Irradiated Commercial Nuclear Fuel is Expensive and a Proliferation Risk

Dear Member of Congress:

Representing arms control, consumer, environmental, and public health organizations, we are writing to express our deep concern that the United States is moving toward reviving domestic reprocessing of commercial irradiated nuclear fuel. Recent press reports indicate that a new international reprocessing initiative, called the Global Nuclear Energy Partnership, will be announced in February. While this initiative is being couched as a "non-proliferation" program and a radioactive waste "recycling" program, reprocessing will perilously undermine U.S. nonproliferation efforts and will only exacerbate our nuclear waste problems.

Reprocessing poses a serious risk to the global non-proliferation regime. Over $100 billion has been spent globally in an attempt to commercialize plutonium, resulting in 250 metric tons of separated plutonium that remains vulnerable to theft-equivalent to more than 30,000 nuclear bombs. In addition to its proliferation risks, the reprocessing technology and plutonium fuel that France currently uses will not significantly reduce the radioactivity of the waste, and thereby will not ultimately solve the waste dilemma. Meanwhile, the much touted technologies for "proliferation-resistant" reprocessing, as well as for transmutation, are not yet in sight and remain decades away, at best, from commercialization. Significantly, the "proliferationresistant" reprocessing technologies currently being researched by U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) are not sufficient to prevent theft by terrorists, while the plutonium mix that results from these technologies could be used to make a nuclear weapon.

A push for reprocessing would also further undermine global efforts, including proposals from President Bush and International Atomic Energy Agency Director Mohamed ElBaradei, to restrict the spread of uranium enrichment and plutonium separation technologies which can be used to produce nuclear bomb material. Such a proposal would promote an ineffective "Do as we say not as we do" approach, undermining US credibility on non-proliferation. It would also reverse thirty years of non-US reprocessing practice that helped keep many countries including South Korea and Taiwan from reprocessing. Finally, a US or international reprocessing partnership relies on the assumption that states that wish to acquire bomb-grade material will be willing to forgo acquiring plutonium separating technology.

Reprocessing is extremely expensive. According to a 1996 report by the National Academy of Sciences, costs of reprocessing and transmutation of irradiated fuel that has already been discharged by existing U.S. reactors "easily could be more than $100 billion" (1996 dollars).1 Additional waste from license extensions and any new reactors will add to the total bill, which will fall to the federal government given that the U.S. nuclear industry has no interest in paying for domestic reprocessing. Since FY 2001, more than $416 million have been appropriated to the DOE for reprocessing research and development, a mere drop in the bucket when considering the total cost of developing reprocessing technology. In addition, the FY 2006 Energy and Water Appropriations conference report included $50 million for DOE to develop a plan for reprocessing commercial irradiated fuel and to begin the siting process for one or more reprocessing facilities in June 2006, with FY2007 as the target for site and technology selection. Clearly, without a proposed technology that is economically viable and truly proliferationresistant, the plan to begin siting a facility this summer is putting the cart well before the horse.

The only private commercial reprocessing facility in the United States, West Valley in New York State, was an economic and environmental disaster, resulting in radioactive waste that is still threatening the groundwater and the Great Lakes watershed more than 30 years later. A 1996 estimate on the cost for cleaning up the part of the site that did reprocessing is $5.2 billion. It has been reported that the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) has initially approved a request of $250 million in FY2007 for the new global nuclear energy initiative that includes reprocessing. An additional $150 million may also be allocated for research and development of reprocessing and transmutation technologies. These proposed expenditures, especially at a time of significant budget constraints, are a misguided diversion of federal resources and risk seriously undermining U.S. national security.

The attached fact sheets provide additional information about the proliferation, cost, and environmental problems resulting from reprocessing, and address the reasons why it will not solve our nuclear waste problem. The contents of the fact sheets are solely the responsibility of the organization that produced them. Please contact any of the organizations if you need further information.

Sincerely,

Susan Gordon, Executive Director
Alliance for Nuclear Accountability

Daryl G. Kimball, Executive Director
Arms Control Association

Bobbie Paul, Director
Atlanta WAND (Women's Action for New Directions)

John Isaacs, Executive Director
Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation

Peggy Maze Johnson, Executive Director
Citizen Alert

Joni Arends, Executive Director
Concerned Citizens for Nuclear Safety
Lisa Crawford, President
Fernald Residents for Environmental Safety & Health, Inc.

Glenn Carroll, Coordinator
GANE - Georgians Against Nuclear Energy

Alice Slater, President
GRACE Public Fund

Jim Riccio, Nuclear Policy Analyst
Greenpeace USA

Kathleen Gwynn, President and CEO
Steven and Michele Kirsch Foundation

Karen Wayland, Legislative Director
Natural Resources Defense Council

Carah Ong, Washington DC Office Director
Nuclear Age Peace Foundation

Michael Mariotte, Executive Director
Nuclear Information and Resource Service

Jay Coghlan, Director
Nuclear Watch of New Mexico

John LaForge, Co-director
Nukewatch, Wisconsin

Kevin M. Martin, Executive Director
Peace Action and the Peace Action Education Fund

Mavis Belisle, Director
Peace Farm, Texas

Robert K. Musil, Executive Director and CEO
Physicians for Social Responsibility

Alfred Meyer, Executive Director
Physicians for Social Responsibility - Wisconsin

Michele Boyd, Legislative Director
Public Citizen

Anna Aurilio, Legislative Director
U.S. Public Interest Research Group

Jeremy Maxand, Executive Director
Snake River Alliance

Sara Barczak, Safe Energy Director
Southern Alliance for Clean Energy (SACE)

Don Hancock, Director,
Nuclear Waste Safety Program, Southwest Research and Information Center

Stephen Young, Senior Analyst
Union of Concerned Scientists

Susan Shaer, Executive Director
Women's Actions for New Directions

Tamara James and Chris Morin, Co-presidents
Women's International League for Peace and Freedom, US Section

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