Plutonium Program May Be Dangerous

["Sandy Perle" <sandyfl@earthlink.net>]

Friday January 22 1:59 AM ET 

Plutonium Program May Be Dangerous

WASHINGTON (AP) - A plan to use civilian reactors to get rid of 
plutonium from old nuclear weapons has been controversial from 
the start. Now critics are rallying around a report suggesting 
thousands of additional deaths could result if a major reactor 
accident occurred using such fuel.  

A private nuclear watchdog group, the Nuclear Control Institute, 
produced a study Thursday saying the Energy Department severely 
underestimates the safety risks of using civilian power reactors to 
dispose of plutonium that the government no longer needs because 
of post-Cold War arms reductions.  

The department, which contends the plan would not compromise 
safety, is expected to issue a contract next month to a consortium 
to dispose of more than 36 tons of plutonium over several decades. 
 

The group comprises two Southern electric utilities, Duke Power 
Co. and Virginia Power Co., and the French nuclear fuel 
manufacturer Cogema. The utilities would burn the fuel at six 
reactors in South Carolina, North Carolina and Virginia.  

Energy Department officials and spokesmen for the utilities said 
they remain convinced the so-called MOX fuel poses no additional 
safety risk compared with the low-enriched uranium normally used 
in commercial reactors, even if a severe radiation release should 
occur.  

A DOE spokesman said the department would review the report, 
but so far officials only have seen a summary. ``We do take issue 
with many of the basic assumptions,'' spokesman Matthew 
Donoghue said.  

Joe Maher, a spokesman for Duke Power, said the National 
Academy of Sciences has endorsed such disposal of plutonium.

Richard Zuercher, a spokesman for Virginia Power, said the utility 
has been assured that using MOX fuel would ``pose no added risk 
to the employees or the public. That's a safe thing to do.''  

The $2.3 billion plan, which surfaced in 1997, has been criticized 
by advocacy groups worried about worldwide nuclear proliferation. 
These groups, including the Nuclear Control Institute, argue that 
the government should maintain its traditional separation of military 
and civilian nuclear programs.  

But the institute's new analysis raises questions for the first time 
about direct safety risks to areas near reactors burning such fuel.  

Edwin Lyman, an energy physicist and the study's author, used 
the government's own calculations and risk-modeling techniques. 
He concluded twice as many cancer deaths could occur from a 
severe accident using MOX fuel than if conventional uranium were 
in use.  

He said the fuel, processed from plutonium, would release a much 
larger burst of highly radioactive and toxic materials known as 
actinides - including plutonium, americium, cesium and curium.  

As a result, ``the number of latent cancer fatalities after a severe 
reactor accident will be significantly greater,'' he said. The report 
estimated from 1,430 to 6,165 additional cancer deaths depending 
on the type of severe accident that occurred and the amount of 
MOX fuel in use.  

The report conflicts sharply with the findings of the Energy 
Department. In a draft environmental impact analysis, the agency 
concluded that even such a severe accident would cause at most 8 
percent more - and possibly fewer - cancer deaths. That compares 
with the 27 percent to 96 percent increase calculated by Lyman.  

Lyman said the DOE study assumed an unrealistically low release 
of actinides and use of an advanced-design reactor not yet built 
instead of reactors that actually would be used. ``They didn't ask 
the hard questions,'' he said.  

Paul Leventhal, the institute's president, acknowledged that 
Lyman's findings assume the severest of nuclear accidents - one in 
which the reactor's steel and concrete containment dome is 
breached and allows radiation to stream into the environment.  

Such an accident, he said, would be ``highly improbable,'' but must 
be taken seriously by federal regulators weighing public risk.

In America's worst nuclear accident, at Pennsylvania's Three Mile 
Island power plant in 1979, the containment vessel remained intact. 
The world's worst civilian nuclear accident at Chernobyl involved a 
reactor without a containment dome.  

If the DOE contract is issued next month as expected, Cogema 
would build and run a MOX processing plant at the Savannah River 
weapons complex near Aiken, S.C., and the utilities would provide 
the six reactor to burn the fuel.  

Duke Power has said it would use two reactors at the McGuire 
plant south of Charlotte, N.C., and two reactors at Catawba plant 
near Rock Hill, S.C. Virginia Power plans to use its two reactors at 
the North Anna plant near Mineral, Va.  

The first MOX fuel shipments likely would not be produ

------------------------
Sandy Perle
E-Mail: sandyfl@earthlink.net
Personal Website: http://www.geocities.com/capecanaveral/1205

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