Alliance Teach-In On Areva, Saturday, November 21st

Areva Action Item

A Risky Uranium Plan

Areva, the largest nuclear supplier in the world, wants to build a $4 billion gas centrifuge uranium enrichment plant in eastern Idaho big enough to fuel 50 nuclear reactors. Areva’s profits would go to its home base in France. Areva’s product would go all over the world, though not to Idaho. Areva’s waste could remain above Idaho’s Snake River Aquifer for decades. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission should not license the Areva uranium factory.

No Need
Nuclear power impedes carbon reduction, since the substantial public and private capital that might go into nuclear power could no longer go toward faster, cheaper, less risky clean energy production, efficiency, and conservation.

The World Nuclear Association projects that operational and planned world enrichment capacity is more than adequate to meet current and near-term projected requirements without the uranium plant proposed for Idaho.

The much ballyhooed “nuclear renaissance” never got much steam, and longer-term requirements for fresh reactor fuel may not be substantially larger than today’s.
According to the 2009 World Nuclear Energy Status Report, there were 9 more reactors operating in 2002 than there are today. o In 2008, for the first time since commercial use of nuclear energy began, no new nuclear reactor was connected to the global grid.
The International Atomic Energy Agency reports that there were more than twice as many nuclear reactors under construction in 1987 than there are today.

Radioactive Risk to Idaho
Areva proposes to build its uranium factory on the upstream end of the Snake River Aquifer a few miles east of the Idaho National Laboratory. INL’s nuclear activities have already contaminated the aquifer and have left substantial waste behind. Addressing these environmental challenges has already cost billions of taxpayer dollars and will continue for years. Areva doesn’t want to put down the legally required up-front money needed to ensure its waste would be properly managed and disposed of after its plant has ceased production.

On average, producing 1 ton of uranium enriched enough for use in a nuclear power reactor creates 7 tons of depleted uranium waste. The Department of Energy already stores more than three quarters of a million metric tons of depleted uranium.
Areva’s plant would produce 350,000 metric tons of depleted uranium over its operating life.
Areva plans to build an outdoor concrete storage plan large enough to hold all of its waste.
Depleted uranium has to be treated before it can be disposed of. The US government is building two treatment plants; both are over budget and behind schedule. When they open, they have decades’ worth of already stored waste to treat.
No country that enriches uranium has figured out how to dispose of it. Even after the waste has been treated, disposal is both difficult and uncertain.
The difficulty rests in the fact that, unlike other nuclear waste, depleted uranium becomes more radioactive over the course of 1,000,000 years.
The uncertainty lies in the fact that the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission has only recently begun to study whether near-surface disposal of significant quantities of depleted uranium could be safe or whether it should be disposed of in a deep geologic repository, a path favored by a number of independent experts.
The only deep geologic repository on earth is reserved for plutonium-contaminated waste from US nuclear weapons production.
All four current and pending shallow nuclear waste dumps in the US are only designed to contain the waste for a few hundred years, and the NRC has acknowledged that a whole new regulatory scheme has to be developed to guide disposal of waste that is dangerous for as long as depleted uranium is.

Financial Risk to US Taxpayers
Every project has an “opportunity cost,” which means that resources spent on it can’t be spent on anything else.

Areva is owned by the French government. Though its 2006 world-wide sales topped $14 billion, it is financially over-extended. It is building a new-design reactor in Finland that is significantly over budget and behind schedule. It’s dramatically expanding uranium mining in Niger. Areva is deep into construction of a uranium enrichment factory in France. So to build its uranium factory in Idaho, it has applied for a $2 billion loan guarantee from the US Department of Energy. The Government Accountability Office estimates that the average risk of default for Department of Energy loan guarantees is about 50 percent. If US taxpayers don’t cosign the loan, Areva has already said it will simply expand what it is already building in France.
Areva wants out of the required financial assurances to cover all the costs of managing and disposing of its waste, costs which kick in long after the profit from this project has been sent to France.
US taxpayers would get far more for our $2 billion by investing in faster, cheaper, less risky clean energy production, efficiency, and conservation than in nuclear power. The most recent analysis by Idaho Power shows nuclear power would cost significantly more per megawatt hour than most forms of renewables, including wind, geothermal, and biomass. Just as important, while nuclear power could reduce carbon emissions by replacing coal plants, that couldn’t happen for decades, while carbon-free renewables and energy efficiency can begin replacing coal plants today.

Global proliferation risk
The Federation of American Scientists calls gas centrifuge uranium enrichment “an open road to a nuclear weapon.” That’s why the international community is so worried about Iran’s uranium enrichment plants even though indications so far are that Iran is not enriching uranium all the way to bomb grade. Any enrichment plant provides “breakout” capacity.

A plant enriching uranium for a power reactor can be easily converted to enrich it for bombs.
If the feedstock for an enrichment plant has already been enriched enough to use in a power reactor, more than half the work toward a bomb has already been done.
Gas centrifuge plants are much harder to detect than plutonium reprocessors or older gaseous diffusion enrichment plants, the other two kinds of plants that make nuclear bomb ingredients. They don’t have to be massive, hard to hide facilities, nor do they use inordinate amounts of electricity or water that might alert the international community.

Help us STOP AREVA
One of the best ways you can help us stop Areva is to inform other Idahoans of the risks associated with uranium enrichment through letter to the editor of the state's major paper. Please use the information above and the sample letters below and submit a letter of your own to one or all of the following papers:

The Idaho Statesman
Letters to the Editor
P.O. Box 40
Boise, ID 83707
Via Fax:
208-377-6449
Via E-mail:
editorial@idahostatesman.com
On-Line:
https://forms.idahostatesman.com/lettertoeditor/

Post Register
PO Box 1800
Idaho Falls, Idaho 83403
Via E-mail:
letters@postregister.com

Times News
132 Fairfield St. West
James G. Wright
Editor's Column
letters@magicvalley.com

Idaho Mountain Express

letters@mtexpress.com

Idaho State Journal
Ian H. Fennell, Editor
305 S. Arthur
Pocatello, ID 83204
editor@journalnet.com

Tips for LTE writing

Make your point quickly.
Include your name, address and daytime phone number. Letters without this information are not accepted.
Expect a call to confirm that you are the author of the letter.

Thank you for your time and effort. Please do let us know if you write a letter by emailing: lwoodruff@snakeriveralliance.org

Sample letters to the editor

1) A giant company owned by the French government wants to build a centrifuge uranium enrichment plant near Idaho Falls, and the State of Idaho has already given Areva substantial tax breaks. Idaho taxpayers are unwittingly backing an increased threat of nuclear weapons proliferation.

Consider: The Federation of American Scientists calls enriching uranium with gas centrifuges “an open road to a nuclear weapon.” That’s because a plant enriching uranium to 4% for a power reactor can be easily converted to enrich it to 20% or more for bombs. Furthermore, if the plant starts with power reactor uranium, more than half the work toward a bomb has already been done.

We shouldn’t be encouraging a foreign company to compromise our own nuclear security.

2) Does our country really need Areva’s uranium enrichment plant?

One of the most successful agreements between the United States and Russia to reduce the threat of nuclear weapons is called the Megatons to Megawatts program. So far, the 1993 agreement has led to the downblending of 367 metric tons of Russian highly enriched uranium (HEU;, bomb grade) to low enriched uranium (LEU, reactor grade). That’s enough to fuel a single reactor for 425 years. The United States Enrichment Corporation sells the LEU to US reactor operators, and it’s claimed that in the past several years, 10% of US electricity has come from retired USSR nuclear bombs.

The original Megatons to Megawatts agreement covers 500 metric tons of Russian bomb grade uranium. Experts estimate Russia may have an additional 350 metric tons of bomb grade uranium. And how about the US? Shouldn’t we be getting rid of our bomb grade enriched uranium before we give giant subsidies to a foreign company to enrich more uranium?

3) Barack Obama recently addressed the United Nations to outline a course toward a nuclear weapons free world. But Mr. Obama doesn’t have to go to the UN to make a real dent in the nuclear peril. Right now, a significant fraction of our bomb grade uranium that’s been declared excess is still in assembled weapons. Mr. Obama should insist that our own government make real progress toward “blending down” bomb grade enriched uranium to reactor grade. The reactor grade enriched uranium can be used to fuel current nuclear reactors and, more important, we get rid of a weapons ingredient.

4) Even though Iran claims it’s enriching uranium for nuclear power, the international community is justifiably concerned. A plant for reactor uranium can be converted in a matter of months to one for nuclear bomb uranium. On September 9 Glyn Davies, US Ambassador to the International Atomic Energy Agency, voiced that concern by saying Iran has “possible breakout capacity” if it chooses to enrich its uranium stockpile.

Here at home, Areva, a nuclear company owned by the French government, has already gotten tax breaks from the State of Idaho and may soon get a sweetheart $2 billion loan guarantee from the federal government. I don’t feel good that we might be underwriting a plant that can do exactly what we don’t want other countries to do. Let’s do as we say.

5) I don’t support nuclear power. Its price tag and lead time make it a radically inefficient way to respond to the threat of global warming by reducing carbon emissions. And I’m also worried about the ongoing threat of nuclear weapons proliferation. That’s why I oppose giving French-owned Areva permission to build a uranium enrichment plant in Idaho.