Attend Hearing in NM on Dangerous New Nuclear Plan

From the Union of Concerned Scientists:
The Bush administration’s controversial Global Nuclear Energy Partnership (GNEP) would resume U.S. commercial reprocessing—the extraction of weapon-usable plutonium from commercial spent fuel from nuclear reactors—for the first time in over 30 years. The resumption would make it easier for terrorists to obtain the material needed to make a nuclear bomb, and would seriously undermine nuclear non-proliferation efforts by encouraging other countries to begin reprocessing programs that would produce weapon-usable plutonium.

I am writing to encourage you to attend an upcoming Department of Energy (DOE) hearing on the proposed GNEP. Your community is near a potential site for a new GNEP reprocessing facility and an experimental nuclear reactor known as an “advanced burner reactor” that will use plutonium fuel. The plan would entail bringing nuclear waste from nuclear reactors all over the country to your community for processing and long-term storage, exposing you and your neighbors to serious environmental and health risks. A safer and more secure approach is to store spent fuel at each reactor site in robust casks that are protected from terrorist attack.

There are several upcoming meetings in New Mexico, including:

Monday, February 26, 2007, 6 - 9:30 PM
Lea County Event Center, 5101 N Lovington-Hobbs Hwy, Hobbs, NM

Tuesday, February 27, 2007, 9 AM - 12:30 PM
Pecos River Village Conf. Center (Carousel House), 711 Muscatel Avenue, Carlsbad, NM

Tuesday, February 27, 2007, 6 - 9:30 PM
Best Western Sally Port Inn & Suites (Ballroom), 2000 N Main Street, Roswell, NM

Thursday, March 1, 2007, 6 - 9:30 PM
Hilltop House Best Western (La Vista Room), 400 Trinity Drive (at Central), Los Alamos, NM

By law, the DOE has to conduct a Programmatic Environmental Impact Assessment (PEIS) of the GNEP proposal. The hearing is part of this PEIS process, providing the public with an opportunity to present comments or concerns, ask questions, and raise a range of issues including the overall purpose and need for the GNEP program, the risks of nuclear terrorism, potential environmental risks/ implications, and economic considerations.

I encourage you to go to the hearing and ask the DOE why it is pursuing a plan that will make it easier for terrorists to obtain the material needed to make nuclear weapons. Ask them to consider the security advantages of the “no action alternative” of storing waste securely at nuclear reactor sites until the U.S. government builds a permanent repository for direct disposal of spent nuclear fuel. 

Click Here for UCS Briefing Paper on GNEP 

Click here for DOE GNEP web site

You may also submit comments on the GNEP proposal (by April 4, 2007):

Mail to Mr. Timothy A. Frazier, GNEP PEIS Document Manager, Office of Nuclear Energy, U.S. Department of Energy, 1000 Independence Avenue, SW, Washington, DC 20585-0119;
Via telephone: 866-645-7803;
Via fax: 866-645-7807; or
By e-mail at GNEP-PEIS@nuclear.energy.gov.
Please mark your letters, faxes, or emails “GNEP PEIS Comments.”

If you are planning to attend the hearing and need assistance or have questions, please do not hesitate to call or email me at smeyer@ucsusa.org or 617-301-8065. Also, if you do attend, please let me know and call or email me with any feedback or information that may come out of the hearing and could be relevant to our work on the issue.

Sincerely,
Sean Meyer
National Field Coordinator
Global Security Program

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