FFTF reactor - temporary life given

["Sandy Perle" <sandyfl@ix.netcom.com>]

The following article was received from Reuters News Service.
--------------------------
  WASHINGTON  - The Energy Department said Wednesday  
it will keep open a 1970s-era experimental reactor slated to be 
closed, saying it could be a cheap backup producer of tritium 
gas used in nuclear weapons. 
  Energy Secretary Hazel O'Leary said her plan to keep the  
reactor on ``hot standby'' will not detract from the 
contamination clean-up at the Hanford Site in Washington state, 
a department weapons facility where the Fast Flux Test Facility 
(FFTF) reactor is housed. 
  O'Leary said the FFTF would be kept on standby for about two  
years while the department has more time to evaluate how much 
tritium it will need to maintain the nuclear arsenal, and to see if
its first choices for tritium production pan out. 
  In a telephone news conference, O'Leary said the department  
intended to go forward with its first two choices for producing 
tritium -- building a new accelerator or producing it at 
commercial nuclear power plants. It is expected to select one of those
options in December 1998. 
  But if the need for tritium -- a radioactive gas used to  
enhance the destructive power of nuclear weapons -- is lowered 
through successful arms control negotiations, she said the FFTF 
could become the main source for it. 
  A number of disarmament and environmental activists oppose  
keeping the FFTF open, and the plan also has strong opposition 
in the Northwest, particularly in neighboring Oregon which is 
concerned about environmental risks from Hanford nuclear 
contamination. 
  The United States stopped making tritium in 1988, but the  
Energy Department has said it will need a new source of the 
relatively short-lived gas by 2005. 

Sandy Perle
Technical Director
ICN Dosimetry Division
Office: (800) 548-5100 Ext. 2306 
Fax: (714) 668-3149

E-Mail: sandyfl@ix.netcom.com    

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