Global Nuclear Energy Partnership (GNEP)
Updated 3/7/07

GNEP would encourage expansion of domestic and international nuclear energy production.

Domestically, GNEP includes project-specific proposals to construct and operate three facilities. The proposed nuclear fuel recycling center would separate the SNF into its reusable components and waste components and manufacture new nuclear fuel using reusable components that still have the potential for use in nuclear power generation. The proposed advanced recycling reactor would destroy long-lived radioactive elements in the fuel while generating electricity. The advanced fuel cycle research facility would perform research into SNF recycling processes and other aspects of advanced nuclear fuel cycles. The GNEP PEIS will consider 13 sites as possible locations for one or more of these facilities, as well as alternative technologies to be used in these facilities.

Internationally, GNEP involves two programmatic initiatives. First, the United States would cooperate with countries that have advanced nuclear programs to supply nuclear fuel services to countries that refrain from pursuing enrichment or recycling facilities to make their own nuclear fuel. Such countries would have no need to
develop the technology and infrastructure to enrich uranium or separate plutonium,
both of which have application in the production of nuclear weapons.

The Department of Energy is requesting public comments on their Programmatic Environmental Impact Statement for the Global Nuclear Energy Partnership. The deadline for comments are April 4th, 2007

Tell the Energy Department that you oppose reprocessing radioactive waste!

Below is a sample letter created by Public Citizen

Dear Mr. Frazier,

The Department of Energy’s proposed Global Nuclear Energy Partnership (GNEP), a program to restart nuclear waste reprocessing in the United States, poses a threat to local communities and to global security. Instead of pursuing the dangerous and expensive GNEP program, DOE should store nuclear waste at reactor sites and safeguard it from terrorist attack.

DOE’s proposed scope and environmental issues of its Programmatic Environmental Impact Statement (PEIS) is woefully inadequate. A PEIS analysis requires that DOE consider the full GNEP proposal, which includes importing foreign fuel to the United States, not just the three facilities that DOE is proposing to build now.

In particular, DOE must describe how it is to going to manage and protect the public and workers from the many radioactive and hazardous waste streams that result from reprocessing. Just some of these waste streams include strontium, cesium, radioactive lanthanides, technetium, uranium, and krypton gas. DOE must also consider all of the environmental, safety, and security impacts from the transportation and indefinite storage of U.S. and foreign spent nuclear fuel and reprocessing waste at all of the possible reprocessing plants and fast reactors required to implement the full GNEP program.

DOE must analyze the total lifecycle cost of GNEP, including all of the reprocessing facilities, fast reactors and fuel fabrication facilities required to fully implement GNEP. This analysis must include clean-up of the reprocessing facilities, as well as decommissioning of fast reactors and fuel fabrication facilities.

DOE must also analyze the impacts of GNEP on U.S. and global security. Reprocessing will increase the amount of bomb-usable material that could be stolen by terrorists or diverted by nations for nuclear weapons. Reprocessed plutonium is much easier to steal compared to plutonium that is kept in highly radioactive spent fuel. In addition, the dissemination of technical experts and specialized equipment could lead to the spread of weapons programs in countries that currently do not have nuclear weapons.

Reprocessing is polluting and expensive, and a threat to U.S. national security. DOE should abandon the dangerous GNEP proposal and focus instead on safeguarding nuclear waste at reactor sites.

Sincerely,

1/31/07 DoE awards over $10m for GNEP siting studies

106 organizations urge Congress to oppose GNEP (Global Nuclear Energy Partnership) program and specifically GNEP activities in Piketon, Ohio