Opposition to German Shipments Continues, Greenpeace Questions Legality
Kenneth Fletcher
WC Monitor
1/30/2015
The Department of Energy and Belgium’s National Institute for Radioelements have signed a statement of intent on potentially processing in the United States highly enriched uranium targets that are residue from the production of molybdenum-99 for medical use, the National Nuclear Security Administration confirmed late last week. DOE has explored whether the material could be processed in the Savannah River Site’s H Canyon Facility, officials have said. “The Department of Energy (DOE) is in discussions with the Institute for Radioelements (IRE) in Belgium, on the possible acceptance and disposition of U.S. Origin highly enriched uranium contained in solid target material from the production of medical isotopes,” NNSA spokeswoman Shelley Laver said in a statement. “The acceptance of this target material was addressed in existing NEPA documentation and its potential disposition of processing and down-blending to low enriched uranium covered in the Amended Record of Decision issued on March 2013. No decisions of acceptance of the target material have been made at this time by either DOE or IRE.”
DOE amended the ROD for Savannah River spent fuel in 2013 to expand H-Canyon operations and open up the possibility of processing international material at the facility. But the potential shipments come amid opposition in South Carolina and abroad to other international proposals for H-Canyon. The IRE material includes a total of 100 kilograms of HEU that is 90 percent U.S.-origin residing in 560 containers stored at IRE in Fleurus, Belgium, and 62 containers stored at the U.K.’s Dounreay site, Jay Rhoderick, at the time in DOE’s Office of Environmental Management, said in September. The material is stored in stainless steel canisters containing fiberglass filters, which would pose a challenge if it were to be processed in H-Canyon, Rhoderick said. “So either they need to find a process to repackage or we need to find a process in which we can destroy the fiberglass filters prior to the material going into H-Canyon. That’s one of the issues we are working through with the Belgians now,” Rhoderick said. NNSA this week declined to provide a copy of the statement of intent. Belgium’s IRE referred request for comment to DOE.
Greenpeace Germany Opposes German Shipments to Savannah River
Meanwhile, opposition continues against a separate proposal in the works with the German government. Greenpeace Germany is claiming that the proposed shipment of German highly enriched uranium to the Savannah River Site for processing would be illegal, the advocacy group said in a legal opinion released earlier this week. In question are the 900 kilograms of HEU in the form of graphite spheres from the pebble bed AVR gas-cooled research reactor at Germany’s Juelich Research Center. “Greenpeace Germany views the proposed export with the utmost seriousness in terms of its clear non-compliance with both domestic German and European law. The German state, committed to a phase out of nuclear, is legally responsible for managing its own nuclear waste,” Greenpeace Germany Executive Director Brigitte Behrens said in a Jan. 26 letter to the Department of Energy’s Office of Environmental Management.
The German material has proved difficult to process in the past. Initial investigations on potentially processing it in H-Canyon began at Savannah River National Laboratory in 2013 under a $1.5 million grant from Germany and was furthered by an $8.5 million work for others agreement in 2014. SRNL has concluded that processing the HEU at the site would be feasible, but DOE has said no decision will be made on accepting the fuel until a final environmental assessment is issued this summer. Behrens of Greenpeace said the proposal raises numerous issues. “As an international organization, we are deeply concerned about the ongoing environmental hazards at the Savannah River Site; and that this export will be used to further justify ongoing reprocessing operations at the site with the inevitable environmental and nonproliferation consequences,” she said in the letter.
DOE has asked the German government for a legal analysis on the export of the material, according to Greenpeace Germany. But that group has released its own legal opinion on the matter claiming that the AVR reactor is not a research reactor and that the proposal violates numerous laws. For example, it states that German law stipulates that spent fuel can’t be transferred for reprocessing purposes and that high-level waste from German facilities must be transferred to a national storage facility. “We urge you to take our lawyer’s opinion into account and to cancel plans for the export of nuclear waste spent fuel from the AVR Juelich to the United States,” the letter states.
DOE Emphasizes Decision Would be In Line With ‘U.S. Legal Requirements’
When asked for comment this week on the Greenpeace statement, a DOE official sent the following statement: “DOE has not made a decision whether to accept graphite-based fuel that contains US-Origin HEU and that was irradiated for research and development purposes in Germany, for processing and disposition at the Savannah River Site. If a decision is made to accept the fuel, DOE’s acceptance of the fuel will be in compliance with all applicable U.S. legal requirements. With respect to the opinion released by Greenpeace, we believe this is a matter for consideration by the German government, and not an appropriate matter for DOE comment.” DOE did not respond to questions on whether it had requested a legal analysis from the German government.
