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Letter to the United States Department of Energy (D.O.E.)
concerning GNEP proposal

Jack Dresser, Ph.D.

I was a U.S. Army psychologist during the Vietnam War and am a co-founder of Veterans for Peace in Eugene, Oregon.  I attended the recent USDOE public hearings on the GNEP proposal at Pasco, WA on March 12, 2007 and Hood River, OR on March 26, 2007.  The precise purpose of these hearings was not entirely clear, but they were ostensibly intended to assess public reaction to the plan and contribute to the preparation of a mandatory environmental impact statement.  The hearings were under-publicized and the vital issues were trimmed clean, pasteurized, purified, and spray-painted glossy white in the perfunctory written and videotaped materials provided by the USDOE representatives.  I testified at both events, but would like to further amplify my statements in writing.  My comments fall into three categories.
 

1. Unacceptability and illegality of the GNEP plan

 Already the most contaminated nuclear site in the Western Hemisphere, Hanford would receive, and store for possibly 50-100 years, 63,000 metric tons of nuclear waste, while your mandate to clean up 53 million gallons of high level nuclear waste remains unfulfilled, $6.5 billion over budget and 8 years behind schedule.  The envisioned vitrification facility will remain uncompleted until 2019, if ready then, while ground and water contamination proceeds with potentially disastrous consequences for the agriculture, food supply and public health of the Northwest.

Leakage has been occurring in over one-third of 177 buried tanks, which has already contaminated ground water near the Columbia River including salmon spawning grounds, and the leak sources remain unidentified.  Twenty years after closure of the last DOE reactor, a DOE ground water geologist was quoted in the Tri-City Herald on March 8, 2007, “We know we’re at least close to one major source. If we can find the source, we can clean it up.”

In addition to the underground tank farm, some 450 billion gallons of contaminated wastes have been dumped since the Manhattan Project into unlined soil trenches along the 50-mile “Hanford reach” adjoining the Columbia River that are not yet cleaned up.

Your pitch to the public disingenuously describes nuclear energy as “clean” because it produces no hydrocarbon air pollution, likening the reprocessing of nuclear fuel to recycling our newspapers – a friendly, familiar, responsible act.  You discretely fail to mention highly toxic, carcinogenic, DNA-altering soil and water pollution.  Solar, wind, geothermal and tidal energy sources generate no such worries.

Your pitch to the public promises “proliferation-resistant” (not proliferation-secure) technologies, and safeguards that make diversion of nuclear materials “nearly impossible” (not impossible).  That’s not good enough.  Solar, wind, geothermal and tidal energy sources generate no such worries.

The DOE proposes to develop reprocessing technology at which it has previously failed, with the waste remaining meanwhile at Hanford, likely for decades. I understand that 1.6 billion taxpayer dollars have already wasted by the DOE on an R&D reprocessing effort before it was abandoned as unfeasible.

The Federal Superfund Law and the State Model Toxics Control Act require that cleanup must be completed before any further nuclear waste can be added.  In 2004 the citizens of Washington state overwhelmingly voted in Initiative 297 to hold the DOE to that legal standard, which the DOE is currently contesting on jurisdictional grounds.  Jurisdiction be damned.  The DOE has a profound and urgent moral obligation to meet, and must not hide behind legal stalling tactics.
 

2. Oregon’s rightful interests

On March 26, despite minimal public notification of the hearing and its inconspicuous location away from Oregon’s major population centers, the meeting room was filled with Oregonians who delivered an overwhelming and resounding thumbs down to the GNEP plan.

The DOE proposes to transport thousands of truckloads of radioactive material to Hanford, much of which would be transported across Oregon via I-5, I-205, I-84 and 395 despite the reasonable foreseeability of occasional accidents and exposure as potential terrorist targets. At least one truck accident has already occurred, spilling radioactive “yellowcake” uranium onto a Midwestern interstate.

We share the Columbia River, its salmon and other resources with Washington, and demand that the DOE fully, securely, permanently and expeditiously clean up and contain all radioactive and other toxic waste it has created at Hanford that endangers human and environmental welfare, and that no further nuclear waste be added to endanger our fishery, our food supplies and our water.

The citizens of Oregon voted 20 years ago to produce no further nuclear material in Oregon until the waste problem was solved, and some 15 years ago our Trojan reactor was closed.  Accordingly, we do not intend to permit the transport of nuclear waste across the state of Oregon.

I and every Oregon resident I know supports the development of safe, clean alternative energy sources, which the entire earth shares and needs to learn to utilize.  The Northwest could and should provide national leadership in furthering these emerging technologies:

•  Oregon’s coast has been identified as the most suitable in America for tidal energy generation, and Oregon State University scientists have developed a low-cost technology for doing so, a project now under development near Coos Bay.

•  Eastern Oregon and Washington can provide vast wind and solar farms, and in fact the world’s largest solar farm is now under development in Oregon.

•  Oregon and Washington share a volcanic mountain range, providing enormous potential for development of geothermal energy.

Your pitch to the public stated that nuclear power is the only “currently available” non-hydrocarbon based technology capable of producing large volumes of power.  That’s because you haven’t invested the dollars needed to develop the above-named sources.  Divert the billions earmarked for nuclear into these alternatives and nuclear will fade into the irrelevance it richly deserves.
 

3. An immoral industry: use of “depleted” uranium (DU) in weapons

My concern is not only GNEP, not only Hanford, not only Oregon’s self-interests.  The entire nuclear industry must be confronted on profound moral grounds.  As a veteran appalled by the horrors of war that my country is inflicting upon Islamic peoples today, I regard the use of DU weapons as monstrous.

After fissionable U-235 is extracted from uranium, over 99% remains as U-238 or “depleted” uranium, a highly misleading euphemism.  I understand that DU radioactivity is about 60% that of natural uranium, and that the U.S. currently has about 1.5 billion pounds of DU made freely available to weapons manufacturers, valued by them for its exceptional density.

Although the DoD knew in 1990 of the extreme toxicity of DU, of its terrible health and genetic effects, 375 tons were nevertheless used in the Gulf War to harden shells, bombs and bullets for maximal penetration of hardened targets. For example, one air-launched DU shell penetrated a bomb shelter and killed 800 women & children. Radiation levels near DU-destroyed equipment has been measured at 1,000-2,000 times normal background levels. The rates of cancer death recorded at Basra Hospital in Iraq increased 1,250% from 1988 before the Gulf War to 1998, seven years after the war.  Basra Hospital today reportedly records one or two severe birth deformities daily, attributable to DU exposure which is known to cause genetic mutations.

DU has inflicted environmental as well as public health disasters in Iraq, destroying the genetic health of crops including wheat that grew no more than 4 inches high, as reported by independent journalists.

Our troops were unknowingly exposed as well. In addition to contaminated battlefield wreckage, DU was used for protective A1M1 tank armor, thereby exposing their crews continuously to DU for months at a time. Gulf War veterans suffer from the same immune system deficiencies as those identified among troops exposed during the early Nevada test site experiments.  Of 700,000 Gulf War veterans, 436,000 were exposed to DU and 184,000 –  42% of those exposed –  are disabled.  In this normally healthy young adult demographic, some 10,000 had died by the year 2000.

Massive increases have also been found among the children of Iraq War and Gulf War veterans in (1) infectious diseases and AIDS-like syndromes resulting from immune system deficiencies, (2) a hitherto unknown syndrome from kidney and liver dysfunctions, (3) leukemia, aplastic anemia and malignant neoplasms, and (4) congenital deformities.  One survey of 251 Gulf War veterans in Mississippi found that two-thirds of their children were born with severe eye defects or no eyes and ears, as well as suffering from blood infections and respiratory problems.

Despite these horrendous, documented consequences, at least 2,200 tons of DU were used in the Iraq War and some thousand tons in Afghanistan.  This is insane and utterly criminal national behavior.

DU remains radioactive for over 4 billion years, and the DNA changes it produces are transmissible to future generations.  Consequently, DU was declared an illegal weapon in 1996 by the United Nations Commission on Human Rights.  The United States has violated international law and inflicted an eternity of genocide upon the peoples of Iraq and Afghanistan.

These are flagrant war crimes and flagrant crimes against humanity.  All individuals, corporations and government agencies involved in the nuclear industry are, knowingly or unknowingly, complicit in these crimes.  USDOE officials will no doubt escape indictment for war crimes, but must accept and attempt to remedy these burdens of conscience or become pariahs from the community of mankind.

The nuclear age has been yet another tragic chapter in the long, sad history of our strange, destructive species.  It must be brought to an immediate close.  The Department of Energy is not the Department of Nuclear Energy.  You must divert the funds intended for GNEP into the clean, safe energy technologies the world really needs to eliminate both hydrocarbon AND radioactive devastation of our planet.

Additional relevant articles:

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

Jack Dresser's statement after the Pasco, Washington 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