© Sabine Hilding
1999
Inside Fast Flux Test Facility
Arguments against FFTF restart
By Lynn Porter
Hanford Watch is opposed to the restart of Hanford's Fast Flux Test Facility reactor because:
• Over 35 years, FFTF will generate 15 tons of spent fuel, dangerous to human life for over 10,000 years. We have no way to safely dispose of this nuclear waste.
• FFTF will divert attention and money from cleaning up the incredible mess at Hanford, the largest nuclear waste dump in the Western Hemisphere. Leaking tank wastes have reached groundwater and threaten the Columbia River.
• After six years FFTF will have to import MOX (mixed-oxide, plutonium + uranium) fuel from Germany. Terrorists could hijack the shipments and extract plutonium to make bombs.
• FFTF's liquid sodium coolant, if it leaked, would burn on contact with air.
• Experts in the field of nuclear medicine disagree on whether there will be a need for more medical isotopes in the future. If there is a need, they could be produced in an accelerator without generating spent fuel.