- Sierra Club

The Front End of Nuclear Power —
Beyond Mining and Milling
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Conversion
Enrichment
Downblending
Fuel Fabrication
Deconversion
Reprocessing and MOX Fuel
PLUS: Shipping and Cleanup
CONVERSION:
Making uranium hexafluoride (UF6)
Uranium oxides + fluorine = UF6
UF6, heated, becomes a gas, enabling enrichment
• Honeywell’s Metropolis Works Plant in
Metropolis, IL is the only converter in U.S.
(crossover between weapons and power)
(perceived need to keep operating at all costs)
• Latest accident with release was 10/26/14.
• A good deal of UF6 is exported.
ENRICHMENT:
Concentrating fissionable U-235. (All 3 types below use UF6)
• Gaseous diffusion (All now closed.)
Separates U-235 (1%) from U-238 by weight, through membranes.
Major plants at Oak Ridge, TN; Portsmouth, OH and Paducah, KY.
• Gaseous centrifuge
Separates by weight, through spinning.
Urenco USA facility near Eunice, NM is only one operating.
Failed USEC, Inc. American Centrifuge Plant at Portsmouth.
• STOP Laser Enrichment!
GE/Hitachi’s Global Laser Enrichment (GLE) is proposing a plant at
Paducah.
No market for enriched uranium, so the proposal is on hold.
DOE wants a “domestic source.” Anxious to give land, $$ to GLE.
EXTREME WEAPONS PROLIFERATION RISK
The Portsmouth Nuclear Reservation covers 3,714 acres.
Gaseous diffusion buildings cover 93 acres.
DOWNBLENDING:
Diluting high-enriched uranium from weapons
• Nuclear Fuel Services (NFS) Blended Low-Enriched Uranium
(BLEU) project at Erwin, Tennessee
NFS fined for violations
Site declared public health hazard by ATSDR.
Only nuclear facility to be subject of congressional hearings.
• BWXT in Lynchburg, Virginia
• Done historically at DOE sites in Oak Ridge, Tennessee and
Savannah River, S. Carolina nuclear reservations.
FUEL FABRICATION:
3 major steps
1) Uranium oxide is pressed and sintered at over
3000°F into ceramic pellets. (1 cm long)
2) Columns of pellets are encased (clad) in
zirconium alloy metal tubes, creating fuel rods.
In air, zirconium is flammable
In water, Zr can produce hydrogen bubbles at high temperatures.
Witness Three Mile Island and 3 reactors at Fukushima.
The peak fuel cladding temperature set by the NRC is 2,200° F.
3) Multiple rods are put together into fuel
assemblies.
Fuel Fabrication , continued
• Major facilities
Erwin, Tennessee
Columbia, S. Carolina
Wilmington, N. Carolina
Richland, Washington
Lynchburg, Virginia
• Nuclear Fuel Services in Erwin, Tenn., also fabricates
high-enriched fuel for nuclear submarines which
deploy nuclear warheads –
-- highlighting the nexus of power and weapons.
LEU for power = 3-4% U-235; HEU = 20% or more U-235
DECONVERSION:
Removes fluorine from DUF6 (necessary due to DUF6 reactivity)
• Enrichment leaves 99% of uranium hexafluoride
(UF6) as waste or “depleted” uranium hexafluoride
(DUF6).
Highly corrosive
• Babcock & Wilcox Conversion Service is operating
DUF6 deconversion plants at the Portsmouth, OH,
and Paducah, KY, Nuclear Reservations.
* 700,000 metric tons of DUF6 is stored in about 63,000 steel
cylinders on the 2 sites.
* Many are over 60 years old and rusting.
* If the Portsmouth plant works around the clock, it will take 18
years to deconvert all the DUF6 on the site.
Depleted Uranium (DU)
• While the fluorine can be sold, there is little civilian use for
the depleted uranium, which contains all the radioactivity
of the DUF6.
• DU is used as protective armor in tanks and vehicles, and in
armor-piercing shells and bunker buster bombs. Hundreds
of tons have been detonated in Iraq, Afghanistan, in the
Balkans, in other possible locations and also at DU testing
sites (Jefferson Proving Ground at Madison, Indiana.)
• Serious health risks occur when this material is ingested or
inhaled by people in war zones or test areas.
• Cleanup of contaminated areas remains to be
accomplished.
A DUF6 cylinder is transported to Portsmouth, OH,
in an open-bed truck and in the rain.
Coming from Oak Ridge, Tennessee, for deconversion.
REPROCESSING AND MOX FUEL:
• Reprocessing of irradiated (used) nuclear fuel – high-level waste – was
initially performed to extract plutonium for nuclear weapons.
• Mixed oxides of plutonium and uranium (MOX) can be used as fuel in
some types of commercial nuclear reactors.
• Nuclear Fuel Services reprocessed irradiated fuel from both military and
commercial reactors at West Valley, NY from 1966 to 1972. Serious
contamination and inability of NFS to meet standards led to closure.
Cleanup, estimated to be $5 billion, now resting with New York and federal
taxpayers.
• The Shaw Areva MOX Facility at Savannah River, SC, 60% complete, was
granted 10 extra years for completion, until 2025. Cost estimates have
zoomed from $4.9 B to $30 B.
• The aging H-Canyon facility at Savannah River reprocesses for military and
other uses. They import high-level waste from other nations. Liquid highlevel waste from post-H-Canyon reprocessing is stored in tanks onsite—
about 300,000 gallons per year.
MOX facility at Savannah River Site
SHIPPING and SAFETY P LANNING:
• Cities, towns, and rural areas have been
contaminated with radioactivity through
shipping accidents.
• Safety planning is critical, but is costing local
and federal taxpayers millions of dollars.
(Not needed at solar and wind facilities!)
CLEANUP OF FRONT END FACILITIES:
• The U.S. has spent billions but has scarcely
begun to deal with “cleanup,” as if that were
really possible, of the front end facilities.
• Future generations will be saddled with these
tasks, costs and immense energy
requirements far into the future.