US News and World Report -- FFTF

["Randy & Michele" <mr.rb@WORLDNET.ATT.NET>]

After 2 days of onsite briefings in the Tri-Cities, including extensive

discussions with the Citizens for Medical Isotopes and cancer fighters, the

reporter chose to write the following one-sided (predictable?) article

regarding the current review of FFTF restart.

Randy Brich

Richland, WA

USA

++++++++++++++++

 Business & Technology 8/6/01



Make up your mind already



Pricey life support for a nuclear reactor





By Samantha Levine





RICHLAND, WASH.-From a distance, the white dome floats in a sea of

cheatgrass and sagebrush, with only Rattlesnake Mountain providing visual

relief. Few vehicles roam the narrow road leading to the fenced-in complex.

The inactivity, oddly, is apt. This is the location of the nation's largest

and latest nuclear test reactor, a multibillion-dollar venture that for a

decade has been a monument to inertia.





The 20-year-old Fast Flux Test Facility isn't running so much as it's

idling. Since 1993, it has been in standby mode, at a cost to taxpayers of

$40 million a year, a textbook case of how the federal government can spend

millions to avoid making a decision.





The dogged persistence of local politicians, nuclear research companies, and

local interest groups has led to a series of reviews that have sustained the

project, which has now outlasted four presidents and cost taxpayers $474

million. Environmentalists, politicians, and antinuclear groups-who think

enough is enough-are pressing for it to be shut down for good. "People don't

realize how much money has been chewed up," says Sen. Ron Wyden, an Oregon

Democrat who has long fought against the facility. "There is no case for the

FFTF. They have been out there for years looking under every possible rock

trying to find anything that would pass the smell test."





There was a case, once. The U.S. energy crisis of the mid-1970s was a boom

time for the nascent nuclear industry. Fast breeder reactors, which produce

plutonium to be used as nuclear fuel and can serve as a long-term energy

source, were seen as the best answer to the problems of a nation wedded to

oil for its energy needs. The FFTF was the prototype for the breeder program

and, in the end, was the only model ever built. President Carter deferred

the breeder initiative in 1977, citing fears that plutonium production would

fuel nuclear weapons proliferation. But the FFTF went online anyway in 1982,

as other missions were found for it. For years it produced medical isotopes,

tested materials used to build other U.S. reactors, and served as a national

nuclear research study center.





But relying on a state-of-the-art nuclear reactor proved an extravagant, and

inefficient, way to accomplish tasks that could be done elsewhere. So in

1990, the Department of Energy decided to start shutting it down. Local

politicians and corporations such as Westinghouse, which built the reactor,

moved to find new missions for the facility and marketed it to overseas

research programs. In 1993, the reactor was placed on standby, running at

half staff with 230 workers and just enough juice to live in limbo. Some

think it's time to move on. Says A. David Rossin, who served as DOE's

assistant secretary for nuclear energy from 1986 to 1987: "We have gotten

along for 10 years without [the reactor], and we could continue to do so."





The end nearly came last year. Then Energy Secretary Bill Richardson decided

that the test reactor should be permanently shuttered. But before he could

carry out the execution, he was out of office. The Bush administration wants

nuclear power to play a substantial role in its national energy strategy.

Spencer Abraham, the new Energy boss, kept FFTF alive by ordering a 90-day

review at the request of Rep. Doc Hastings, a Republican who represents the

reactor's home district. "The story of FFTF is a prime example of local

interests showing their power in Washington," says the Public Education

Center, a nonprofit information clearinghouse. Has- tings's rationale? "It's

the most advanced nuclear reactor in the U.S. arsenal," he says. "If we are

going to have a nuclear policy, it seems to me that an FFTF should be part

of that."





Once and for all. A final verdict will still be hard to reach. Once the

core's liquid sodium coolant is drained, the plant can never again be

restarted. "There will be no resurgence in nuclear energy research in this

country" if the FFTF is shut down, says Walter Apley, associate lab director

of the Environmental Technology Division at Pacific Northwest National

Laboratory.





Restarting the reactor isn't the cleanest answer, either. Aside from the

cost, a big problem facing the FFTF is its location on the Hanford Nuclear

Reservation. The site was home to the Manhattan Project during World War II

and is now one of the world's largest environmental cleanup challenges.

There are nearly 54 million gallons of highly radioactive waste buried in

hundreds of leaky underground tanks at the 560-square-mile site along the

Columbia River in south-central Washington. Firing up a waste-making

reactor, when the only mission at Hanford is cleanup, is "asinine," says

Hyun Lee, an attorney with Heart of America Northwest, the environmental

health group helping to lead the fight against FFTF.





Abraham's turn to decide comes in the next few weeks. Will inertia prevail,

again?







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