FFTF is a pork project

by Paige Knight

Comments read by Paige at the January 14, 1998 meeting.

Let me premise the safety issues and common sense concerns I enumerate below with the belief of our members that this country does not need to produce tritium until well into the next century, nor can it afford the cost in dollars or the cost in the change of mission at Hanford from it’s current mission of cleanup.

We are facing the close of the century in which War has reigned supreme. We have not experienced the peace dividend that was promised us with the advent of the nuclear age by the sponsors of the Manhattan Project. What is more, the nuclear age has put at risk the health and safety of our environment and people, from Hanford communities; to the residents of St.George, Utah who were showered with massive doses of radioactive fallout; to those around the Fernald site in Ohio who found massive levels of nuclear contamination in their drinking water wells; to those near the Savannah River site who have suffered the poor health of downwinders all over the world. The Manhattan project of the US Government has turned out to be a war against its own people.

This hearing tonight is the beginning of a larger debate that this region and our country needs to have to bring a more far-sighted and truly humanitarian vision to the realm of science--in this case to nuclear science. This is one of the first in a series of battles that are at the forefront in the Northwest to stop a whole new generation of nuclear production that feeds the corporate pockets and shortchanges, harms the ordinary citizen.

Tritium

If FFTF should be chosen for a tritium mission (and remember there is no medical isotope production without tritium production), it will bring us transportation of plutonium from around the country to be used as fuel; it will call into production mode the start up of the Fuels Fabrication and Examination Facility (FMEF) at Handford; and it could eventually lead to the government subsidized refurbishing of the WPPS nuclear power plant at Hanford. A perfect scenario for the revival of the nuclear industry at Hanford.

The will of Congress to affect and fund true cleanup is already diminishing; this could be the death knell for cleanup. You will be called upon to attend other hearings over the next year or two, all equally important as this. I urge you to listen, learn form one another, and speak out tonight and usher forth a new course of stewardship for our human and natural resources as we near the beginning of a new century, a new era.

With that said I will address the following concerns--others have and will speak more eloquently to issues I have only alluded to.

Safety

The Jason panel raised very serious questions about the safety of starting the FFTF. If the Dept. of Energy, as they have stated, have found no new concerns beyond what the Jason report has identified, does this mean they are dismissive of the concerns or that they aren’t looking very hard?

FFTF sits in an area of higher earthquake risk than was believed when it was designed. Do we insist that these Washington legal standards be met or will the federal government continue to argue that they only have to comply with nationally accepted standards and not with local and state standards?

FFTF has archaic control systems for which spare parts are no longer available; these should all be replaced.

The FFTF cannot safely produce more than 1.5 Kg/yr of tritium. Will the DOE push that limit to its desired goal of 2 kg/yr at the expense of the safety of workers and the region? High production levels may reduce the controllability of the reactor. Safety risks increase almost linearly with tritium production rates.

Where will the DOE dispose of (legally and safely) the spent fuel with very rich weapons grade plutonium and what proliferation safeguards will it put in place, to what expense?

In the last two years of operation of the FFTF the reactor top block shield, which was made of depleted or natural uranium, had to be removed because of severe corrosion.

Common Sense

We have been accused by the Tri-City people of having the "wrong" facts, of being too emotional over this issue. The same can certainly be said of them. We are both operating on emotions and opinions. Anyone can find the science to validate these on either side of the issue. The analysis of the feasibility of resurrecting the FFTF should be reviewed by neutral technical experts who are critics, rather than by proponents of the project. You can’t see flaws you don’t want to see.

The real question is whether we should be promoting a weapons industry renewal at Hanford when we have not cleaned up the mess at Hanford. The ground water under Hanford is threatened, endangering the Columbia River which sustains salmon, recreation, agriculture and transport, all economic issues as well as quality of life issues. Can we afford to not cleanup 50 plus years of weapons production poisoning and continue to create more?

We have an obligation to our children, to future generations to prevent the causes of cancers rather than to create more in the process of trying to find a cure from medical isotopes. Competing technologies for treating and preventing cancers are available. We are not decrying the need for cures, we are calling for prevention on a grander scale.

The plain fact is that medical isotope production is not financially feasible without 10 to 20 years of tritium (weapons) production first. If isotopes are such a great venture it would be of interest to know why Battelle Laboratory is looking for a buyer of some of their isotopes (as referred to in a recent Tri-City Herald article).

According to some of the FFTF documents, a 20 year span of producing tritium would cost in a perfect scenario $2 billion dollars. I can only dream of what it would mean for the cleanup of Hanford if that money were given to cleanup instead. That is the only right direction for Congress, the President and the US Department of Energy to go. The restart of the FFTF regardless of the guise of the mission is purely and simply a pork project.