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Comments of Public Citizen's Critical Mass Energy Project
on the Department Of Energy s Programmatic Environmental Impact Statement for Accomplishing Expanded Civilian Nuclear Energy Research and Development and Isotope Production Missions in the United States, Including the Role of the Fast Flux Test Facility (DOE/EIS-0310)
October 27, 1999
Thank you for the opportunity to testify regarding the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) intent to prepare a programmatic environmental impact statement (PEIS) on resuming operation of the Fast Flux Test Facility (FFTF) at the Hanford Nuclear Reservation. I am Wenonah Hauter, Director of Public Citizen's Critical Mass Energy Project, a non-profit research, lobbying, and advocacy organization founded by Ralph Nader in 1971.
Conducting a PEIS on the production of isotopes in the FFTF, a 400 megawatt sodium-cooled fast breeder reactor that has been shut down since 1993, is unnecessary and a waste of taxpayer money. Instead of seeking new missions for the reactor, the DOE should use its resources to permanently decommission the plant, which if restarted will pose a threat to the public s health and safety. Decommissioning would cost approximately $70 million, while restarting it would cost over $284 million and an additional $100 million per year to operate at full power.
The FFTF was built in 1980 to advance breeder reactor technology by providing a fuel and material irradiation test facility, including a test environment for the Clinch River Breeder Reactor Plant, another taxpayer boondoggle that was eventually canceled. The FFTF was closed in 1983 because new missions could not be identified. On October 17, 1993, an independent review team reported that no combination of missions would be financially viable over the next ten years. Decommissioning began in December 1993.
While there are many reasons that the FFTF should not be reopened, including the production of radioactive waste and the lack of the need for a facility for producing medical isotopes, I will focus my testimony on the purported necessity of producing isotopes for food irradiation, the danger of creating more sealed sources of radiation, and the hazard to the public and the environment of restarting the reactor.
First, just because the U.S. regulatory agencies have legalized irradiation does not mean consumers will buy irradiated food. Nothing is more important to most Americans than the health and safety of their families. Consumers are increasingly concerned about protecting their health. No long term studies have been done on the effects of food irradiation, and there is ample evidence that the process destroys vitamins and produces carcinogenic chemical compounds in food.
There is overwhelming evidence that Americans are skeptical of food irradiation. A 1997 poll conducted by CBS News found that 73 percent of the public opposes irradiation, and 77 percent of the public would not eat irradiated food. While the food and nuclear industries are telling the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to stop requiring irradiated foods to be labeled, it is unlikely that they will be successful.
The FDA has received thousands of cards and letters demanding that it continue to require the labeling of irradiated food. A 1999 poll, jointly sponsored by the American Association of Retired Persons (AARP) and the Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI), found that 86 percent of Americans want irradiated food to be labeled.
However, even the economic interests that are promoting food irradiation do not necessarily believe that the use of radioactive isotopes Cesium 137 and Cobalt 60 is the best way to irradiate food. A large percentage of the industry intends to use the and electron beam (also known as the e-beam) for irradiating food. The e-beam produces the same dangerous products in food as do radioactive isotopes, but it does not require the transport and use of radioactive material. The e-beam process utilizes an electronic machine called an electron accelerator to produce a stream of electrons moving at an extremely high speed. The beam disrupts the DNA structure of micro-organisms, rendering them sterile, and it also creates chemical products ranging from formaldehyde and benzene to unnamed chemical combinations.
Tyson Food will begin marketing irradiated chicken products in the spring of 2000. The company has selected the Titan e-beam system because irradiated food is extremely controversial, and using radioactive isotopes makes it even more difficult to obtain public acceptance.
A Wall Street Journal article (May 5, 1999) entitled, "Titan Adapts Defense Technology to Food Irradiation," says that the company has exclusive contracts with two giant meatpackers to irradiate ground beef. Titan has won additional agreements covering producers of about 75 percent of the ground beef sold in the U.S. The article goes on to say:
Titan's electron-beam technology doesn't involve such dangerous materials, so processors don t need clearance from nuclear regulatory authorities to use it. Even so, the meat industry remains skittish about irradiation. "The food industry perceives the consumer to be reluctant," says Spencer Stevens, president of APA, Inc. of Omaha, Neb., a consultant to Titan.
The uncertainties surrounding food irradiation, including competition between irradiation and e-beam technology, make the restarting of the FFTF for the purpose of creating Cesium 137 or Cobalt 60 completely unnecessary. Food irradiation should not be used as a justification for moving ahead with the PEIS.
Second, the idea of creating more sealed sources of radiation is ludicrous, given the amount of money that the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is spending on locating "orphaned" radiation sources. EPA s Orphaned Source Initiative (OSI) is completing a nationwide survey to identify the location of lost radiation sources in the US, and is planning a one-year pilot "cesium source round-up" to remove radiation sources from the public domain. Unfortunately, while sealed radiation sources are licensed, their final disposition is not tracked. These orphaned radiation sources gain entrance into metal recycling facilities and cause catastrophic contamination of recycled metals.
The fact that DOE is attempting to engage in producing large numbers of sealed radiation sources for medical and industrial purposes is contrary to EPA s effort at rounding-up all radiation sources. Why is no coordination taking place between these two agencies?
Third, I would like to address the impact on human health and the environment of restarting the FFTF. At the Hanford nuclear reservation in Washington state, there are over 300 tanks boiling cesium and burping hydrogen while leaking radioactive wastes into the Columbia river. It seems absolutely ludicrous that the DOE would attempt to re-start this controversial, accident prone nuclear reactor, which would likely compound the waste problems at Hanford.
According to the public-interest organization Columbia River United, Hanford has spewed over 444 billion gallons of radioactive and chemical waste into the soil of the Hanford site. Hundreds of billions of gallons of wastewater were discharged directly into the Columbia River. Soil and groundwater contamination has resulted in massive underground plumes of deadly materials moving toward and in some cases already reaching the Columbia River. The largest plumes contain nitrate and tritium. Other large plumes include uranium, strontium 90, and chromium. Contaminants include carbon tetrachloride, sodium dichromate, technitium-99, and ferro-cyanide. The groundwater in the area is unusable.
Furthermore, while all nuclear reactors are inherently dangerous, some reactors are more dangerous than others. The reactor that the DOE proposes to restart is a sodium cooled "fast-breeder." Fast Breeder reactors are even more dangerous than the 103 light water reactors that are currently operating in the U.S. for several reasons:
- The FFTF uses sodium rather than water to cool the reactor. Sodium burns when exposed to air and explodes upon contact with water.
- Rapid increases in power, like the power excursion that blew apart the Chernobyl reactor, occur much more rapidly in fast breeder reactors than they do in conventional light water reactors.
- "Fast breeder" reactors are particularly susceptible to power instability due to the fact that they operate at higher power density.
The U.S. experience with "fast breeder" reactors argues against restarting the Fast Flux Test Facility. In November 1955, the first U.S. "power reactor" ever to produce electricity, the EBR-1, (experimental breeder reactor) melted down during testing. Rather than scramming the reactor, the operator mistakenly hit the button for slow shut down, and in the few seconds it took to press the correct button, approximately half of the reactor core melted down. The public was not made aware of this meltdown until Lewis Strauss, head of the Atomic Energy Commission, and the man who claimed nuclear power would be "too cheap to meter," was confronted by the Wall Street Journal and had to admit his ignorance of the accident.
Not to be dissuaded by the meltdown of the EBR-1, The Power Reactor Development Corporation, a consortium of 35 utilities headed by Detroit Edison forged ahead with the first commercial fast breeder reactor. The Fermi reactor was to be a scaled up version of the EBR-1 with a small dense core made up of 14,700 uranium fuel pins. On October 6, 1966 the Fermi reactor also melted down.
The U.S. is not the only country to experience accidents with fast breeder reactors.
- France's Superphenix was permanently shut down in 1987 after leaking 20 tons of sodium. The $10 billion dollar reactor only operated for 278 days in its 11-year history.
- The Japanese Monju fast breeder reactor was shutdown in 1995 after three tons of sodium leaked, causing the reactor to over heat and burn holes in cooling pipes. In the aftermath of the accident, the plant manager was so distraught that he committed suicide.
Both the British and the Germans have terminated their breeder reactor programs
The DOE's misguided attempt to re-start this dangerous nuclear reactor is little more than a welfare program for the nuclear establishment. Restarting the FFTF will create a new nuclear waste stream at the Hanford reservation at a time when the DOE s efforts should be focused on the dangerous mess they've already created.
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