Skip to main content

Recycling Gets a Hearing

hanford Annette Carey does a good job in the TriCity Herald of covering a  public meeting that occurred there covering the possibility of recycling used nuclear fuel. Sponsored by the Global Nuclear Energy Partnership (GNEP) in Pasco, Washington - the tri-cities also include Kennewick and Richland - the meeting directly addressed the elephant in the room: the Hanford site. Hanford might seem a big bullseye for controversy, yet the attendees seemed quite sanguine about its potential as a recycling center.

Hanford still would be an ideal site for reprocessing used commercial reactor fuel for reuse, said several speakers at Monday's hearing.

The Tri-City Development Council has consistently said cleanup of the Hanford nuclear reservation is its top priority, said Gary Petersen, TRIDEC vice president of Hanford programs. But reprocessing fuel could not only be good for economic development, but also help clean up Hanford by recycling the spent fuel sitting at Energy Northwest, he said.

So there you have the economic argument and an acceptance of Hanford as an functional element in the community.

The nation would do better to focus on cleanup and conservation, [Tom] Carpenter [of Hanford Challenge, which watchdogs the site] said. Much work on solar and wind power could be done in Eastern Washington with a far quicker payoff than developing proposed plans for nuclear fuel reprocessing, he said.

And there you have the environmental argument. We suppose you could do both - solar and wind are obviously different kinds of projects than recycling and both look to benefit from an Obama administration. We're not really all that sure these - especially solar - are logical power generators for that part of the country, but they know better than us. (And we admit to the suspicion that solar and wind are convenient go-tos when one wants to promote "benign" energy.)

We should note that GNEP wasn't proposing putting a recycling center at Hanford at this gathering, though that might be percolating somewhere in their planning - the goal here was to discuss recycling as an issue in itself.

"People don't seem to understand the difference between civil nuclear power and the Department of Defense," said Chris Orton, a third-generation Hanford worker, who said he represented the up and coming engineers and scientists.

We second that. "Up and coming" - young, we guess he means, perhaps edgy and hip? An edgy engineer should never be let out at night - a hip one never.

We could go on, but read the whole thing. It's an interesting conversation, covering a spectrum of opinions, and Cary covers it well. It's great to see GNEP engage with communities in this way.

Bonus: Here's a video produced by Hanford Challenge. Tom Carpenter introduces it.

A view from Hanford.

Comments

Ray Lightning said…
Is it in the best interests of USA to proceed with obsolete technology ?

Pyroprocessing is a better manner of reprocessing than the PUREX process.
Luke said…
I'm not entirely sure what to make of the Hanford Challenge group, based on that video.

What exactly do they want?

To see that the Hanford site is cleaned up, that it continues to be cleaned up, as far as is reasonably possible? OK, sure, that makes sense.

Hopefully they're not cut from the same cloth as the usual Green movement who don't know the difference between nuclear power and what was done at the Hanford site, and hold up the Hanford site as an example of the terrible legacy of unmanageable radioactive waste that supposedly comes from nuclear power.

Popular posts from this blog

An Ohio School Board Is Working to Save Nuclear Plants

Ohio faces a decision soon about its two nuclear reactors, Davis-Besse and Perry, and on Wednesday, neighbors of one of those plants issued a cry for help. The reactors’ problem is that the price of electricity they sell on the high-voltage grid is depressed, mostly because of a surplus of natural gas. And the reactors do not get any revenue for the other benefits they provide. Some of those benefits are regional – emissions-free electricity, reliability with months of fuel on-site, and diversity in case of problems or price spikes with gas or coal, state and federal payroll taxes, and national economic stimulus as the plants buy fuel, supplies and services. Some of the benefits are highly localized, including employment and property taxes. One locality is already feeling the pinch: Oak Harbor on Lake Erie, home to Davis-Besse. The town has a middle school in a building that is 106 years old, and an elementary school from the 1950s, and on May 2 was scheduled to have a referendu

Why Ex-Im Bank Board Nominations Will Turn the Page on a Dysfunctional Chapter in Washington

In our present era of political discord, could Washington agree to support an agency that creates thousands of American jobs by enabling U.S. companies of all sizes to compete in foreign markets? What if that agency generated nearly billions of dollars more in revenue than the cost of its operations and returned that money – $7 billion over the past two decades – to U.S. taxpayers? In fact, that agency, the Export-Import Bank of the United States (Ex-Im Bank), was reauthorized by a large majority of Congress in 2015. To be sure, the matter was not without controversy. A bipartisan House coalition resorted to a rarely-used parliamentary maneuver in order to force a vote. But when Congress voted, Ex-Im Bank won a supermajority in the House and a large majority in the Senate. For almost two years, however, Ex-Im Bank has been unable to function fully because a single Senate committee chairman prevented the confirmation of nominees to its Board of Directors. Without a quorum

NEI Praises Connecticut Action in Support of Nuclear Energy

Earlier this week, Connecticut Gov. Dannel P. Malloy signed SB-1501 into law, legislation that puts nuclear energy on an equal footing with other non-emitting sources of energy in the state’s electricity marketplace. “Gov. Malloy and the state legislature deserve praise for their decision to support Dominion’s Millstone Power Station and the 1,500 Connecticut residents who work there," said NEI President and CEO Maria Korsnick. "By opening the door to Millstone having equal access to auctions open to other non-emitting sources of electricity, the state will help preserve $1.5 billion in economic activity, grid resiliency and reliability, and clean air that all residents of the state can enjoy," Korsnick said. Millstone Power Station Korsnick continued, "Connecticut is the third state to re-balance its electricity marketplace, joining New York and Illinois, which took their own legislative paths to preserving nuclear power plants in 2016. Now attention should