Oooopppsss, the Forschungszentrum Jülich (FZJ) research center in Germany has driven a nail into the coffin of the proposal to export commercial nuclear reactor spent fuel to the Savannah River Site in South Carolina. In a stunning admission that pulls the rug out from under special interests pushing the dumping of AVR spent fuel at the Savannah River Site, FZJ states:
“In its current form, the nuclear fuel in the spent AVR fuel elements is not weapons-grade.”
While the US Department of Energy has claimed that there are proliferation risks with the AVR spent fuel stored at Jülich, the operators of the site disagree. In a Q&A by FZJ, in German and English, it is clearly stated that the spent fuel contains no weapon-usable uranium:
“Die Strahlung, die von den Kugeln ausgeht, ist sehr hoch und damit sehr gefährlich. Die Kugeln müssen daher besonders verpackt und gelagert werden, um den Schutz von Mensch und Umwelt zu gewährleisten. In seiner gegenwärtigen Form ist der Kernbrennstoff in den abgebrannten AVR-Brennelementen nicht waffentauglich.”
“The intensity of the radiation emitted by the fuel spheres is very high, which makes the spheres very dangerous. This is why they must be packaged and stored in a special way in order to protect humans and the environment. In its current form, the nuclear fuel in the spent AVR fuel elements is not weapons-grade.”
DOE has presented that the spent fuel contains 900 kg of highly enriched uranium, or 1 g of HEU/graphite spent fuel ball but has presented no documentation to support this claim. But this amount of HEU appears to be what may have been in the AVR and THTR-300 fresh fuel about 30 years ago, before the fuel was irradiated in the experimental gas-cooled power reactors. When will DOE correct its misrepresentation of the amount of HEU involved? While the spent fuel in question may in the long term pose the risk of use in a radiological dispersal device, so does all spent fuel in Germany and elsewhere. The solution to that problem is not to dump the spent fuel at SRS but to safely manage it in Germany.
SRS is not a spent fuel dump for Germany! SRS ist kein Atommüllkippe!