Nuclear waste reprocessing
Updated 9/29/06

President Bush’s budget requests calls for $250 million to develop reprocessing of radioactive waste from commercial reactors in the United States. The request is part of the Administration’s proposed Global Nuclear Energy Partnership (GNEP), a program to revive reprocessing in the U.S. and other countries.

At the end of May the House expressed serious concerns about the proposed program and reduced the funding by over half, to $120 million. In fact, the House committee concluded 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." This issue may come up before the Senate Appropriations Committee as early as next week.

Reprocessing is the separation of uranium and plutonium from radioactive waste, an extremely expensive and polluting process. It also increases the risk of nuclear weapons proliferation. The Bush administration claims that GNEP, will solve the nuclear waste problem. In fact, reprocessing will:

- Make more waste streams that pollute the environment
- Cost taxpayers hundreds of billions of dollars
- Increase nuclear weapons proliferation risks

For more information