Groups Request Nonproliferation Assessment on Savannah River German Fuel Processing

Calling for the Department of Energy to conduct a nuclear nonproliferation impact assessment on a new processing method at Savannah River proposed for German spent fuel, a coalition of 22 representatives from advocacy groups sent a letter to DOE yesterday. The 900 kilograms of U.S.-origin highly enriched uranium are in the form of graphite spheres from the pebble bed AVR gas-cooled research reactor at Germany’s Juelich Research Center, and DOE is currently preparing a draft environmental assessment on the proposal expected to be released this spring. But the groups call for a deeper assessment on the “international proliferation implications of this new reprocessing technique.” Because the environmental assessment “is not a decisional document on the overall matter of the reprocessing and disposal of the German spent fuel, a nuclear nonproliferation impact assessment must be prepared to help in the decision-making process,” states the letter, led by Tom Clements of Savannah River Site Watch and signed by representatives from 21 other groups in locations around the country.

 

The technique developed at Savannah River National Laboratory for addressing the fuel, which has proved difficult to process in the past, would take place at the site’s H-Canyon facility. “Given the proliferation implications associated with any reprocessing method, defined as removal of uranium and/or plutonium from spent fuel, it is imperative that DOE immediately prepare a publicly available nuclear nonproliferation impact assessment on the reprocessing of the German graphite spent fuel and that the public be allowed to have input into the preparation of that document,” the letter states.