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Visiting the Belly of the Beast - GNEP Review

Jack Dresser, Ph.D.

Last Tuesday was a pleasant Spring day in the clean, quiet little city of Pasco, Washington.  Fruit trees were blooming and all, on the surface, seemed well.  Alerted to expect a caravan of anti-nuclear protesters from Eugene for the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) hearing that evening, the local press and a county commissioner greeted the arrival of our blue-and-white Veterans for Peace bus at the Red Lion Inn.  The commissioner shook hands all around and disingenuously declared, "Glad you could be here."

The young people staffing Pasco's cafes and fast food outlets were exceptionally well-mannered, accommodating representatives of their town.  But interviewed on the street by our media crew, away from their parents and employers, they were less than sanguine about their community.  They said they couldn't swim in the river or eat the fish they caught.

"Low level" nuclear waste from the nine reactors along the 50-mile "Hanford reach" of the Columbia River, dumped for decades in unlined pits, has been leaching in underground "plumes" toward the river, eventually contaminating the salmon spawning grounds.  Local residents with whom we spoke consistently recited a delusional belief that the contamination would be washed away by the river and the sea and pose no threat to us downstream consumers.  They were far more conversant with nuclear technology than with DNA.  In fact, their testimony at the hearing made clear that nuclear science was the only science worthy of the name.

Despite years of cleanup research and billions of dollars spent, the sources of ground water contamination still haven't been identified.  "We know we're at least close to one major source," a DOE ground water geologist stated in this Thursday's Tri-Cities Herald. "If we can find the source, we can clean it up."

A Herald story the following day reported that "Hanford workers have moved enough radioactive waste through two- and three-inch underground pipes in recent months at the tank farms to fill six Olympic-size swimming pools."  These "fields of underground tanks," the story continued, "hold 53 million gallons of some of Hanford's worst waste contaminated with high-level radiation and hazardous chemicals."

But everything in the Tri-Cities looked fine at ground level.  And the DOE snuck this hearing in so quietly that very few anti-nuclear voices were in attendance.  Without our contingent of nine Oregon imports, they would have been hopelessly outnumbered.

The hearing began with a DOE presentation of their proposed Global Nuclear Energy Partnership (GNEP) wherein nuclear fuel would be produced in the U.S. and other advanced nuclear nations through a reprocessing technology and swapped along with reactors to developing countries for their nuclear energy development, receiving in return their waste for further reprocessing, an international recycling system that would keep the big boys in control of weapons-grade nuclear material production.  We believe the hidden agenda is plutonium production (a Hanford specialty) for replenishing our nuclear inventory and developing smaller "in theater" weapons.

The DOE furnished handouts with brief and carefully worded descriptions, touting nuclear as an energy source that doesn't pollute the air (they didn't mention the earth or its water, of course).  Their proposed system will allegedly be "proliferation-resistant" (not proliferation-secure), making nuclear materials "nearly impossible" (not impossible) to divert without detection.  They were clearly hedging their pledges, and it wasn't reassuring.

Hanford is one of 11 U.S. nuclear installations in the running for two or three selected sites, and its citizenry was bidding hard for the very lucrative contracts.  They testified about their expertise, experienced personnel, established facilities, and distinguished history of nuclear productivity.  One woman declared her pride that the plutonium bomb that incinerated 70,000 people at Nagasaki "won the war," apparently unaware that Japan had been negotiating surrender all summer in 1945 and the Hanford bomb was used not to defeat Japan but to intimidate and deny bargaining position to Russia which had entered the war the day before.

Our testimony reminded them that others around the country including Oregon were concerned with this decision.  We expressed our distrust of nuclear energy production and our preference for solar, wind, tidal and geothermal sources that produce no hazardous waste or byproducts to increase the U.S. arsenal of WMDs.

Depleted uranium had remained discretely unmentioned until our two veterans broached the indelicate issue of its genocidal use in Iraq in armor-piercing shells that shatter into DNA-altering microscopic particles producing vastly increased rates of cancer and birth defects, adding that 99.3% of nuclear material is the "depleted" U238 after fissionable U235 is extracted, and this is provided freely to weapons manufacturers.  DU was declared an illegal weapon in 1996 by the United Nations Human Rights Commission, making its use a war crime and crime against humanity with which, we suggested, those in the nuclear industry are unwittingly complicit.

Our bus had been parked that afternoon near the Museum of History, Science and Technology in Richland.  While some of us toured the museum, others stayed with the bus which visually broadcast our presence.  Two visitors came by and climbed aboard.  Both men had testified to the DOE in a closed meeting earlier that day.

One man is Program Manager of Environmental Restoration and Waste Management for the Yakama Nation.  He explained that the entire Hanford reservation violates an 1855 treaty, reaffirmed in 1974, that guaranteed use of this land to his people for hunting and fishing.

His companion was a hydrogeologist who explained that the nuclear reprocessing technology proposed for development by the DOE was undeveloped, with uncoordinated and questionably functional components, and had been attempted unsuccessfully before at a cost to U.S. taxpayers of $1.6 billion before it was given up.

If Hanford is selected as a reprocessing site, much of the projected 63 million metric tons of nuclear waste, radioactive for 10-20,000 years, would be imported by trucks and boxcars through Oregon. Yet we nine were the only Oregonians represented at this underpublicized hearing.  A hastily arranged Oregon follow-up hearing has been scheduled for 6 pm on March 26 at the Best Western in Hood River.

Oregonians decided 15 years ago to close Trojan and no longer produce nuclear material in our state.  We doubt our citizens will be any friendlier to the prospect of its transport across Oregon on I-5, I-84 and our rail lines.  We hope you will pack the Hood River hearing and make your Oregonian views known.  We'll be there in our big blue-and-white bus, hopefully loaded to capacity.  Y'all come too!

Additional relevant articles:

Statement by Senator (D-OR) Ron Wyden, Hood River GNEP hearing

Summary from Gordon Sturrock after the Hood River GNEP hearing

Jack Dresser's formal letter to D.O.E. concerning the GNEP proposal