Time to End US-Germany Cooperation Aimed at Importing, Dumping Highly Radioactive German Spent Fuel at DOE’s Savannah River Site, According to SRS Watch; Storage at Jülich Only Viable Option
SRS-JEN Work for Others Agreement Modification 6 and Attachments, Obtained Under FOIA Request:
https://srswatch.org/savannah-river-site-watch-document-library/savannah-river-site-watch-doe-documents/
Columbia, South Carolina – Cooperation between the U.S. Department of Energy’s Savannah River Site (SRS) and a German nuclear waste management company to import, reprocess and dump highly radioactive German spent fuel at SRS must be terminated, according to a a letter by SRS watch to Secretary of Energy Dan Brouillette: letter to DOE terminate SRS JEN agreement Feb 20 2020.
The proposal to ship highly radioactive spent fuel from two long-closed experimental gas-cooled reactors in Germany to SRS, a 310-square mile facility located near Aiken, South Carolina, has been dragging on since 2012. The two reactors in question, AVR and THTR-300, were fueled with graphite spheres impregnated with uranium. The 900,000+ irradiated spheres in question, some with highly enriched uranium and some with low-enriched uranium, are stored in 457 casks at sites in Jülich and Ahaus, Germany, both located in the state of North Rhine-Westphalia (NRW).
The materials would be shipped by sea via port facilities Charleston, South Carolina to SRS, where the graphite spheres would be reprocessed and removed uranium disposed of as waste and high-level waste possibly dumped into the SRS waste tanks, increasing the waste burden at the site. The research work into technical aspects of the proposal is being conducted by the Savannah River National Laboratory, which is managed by private contractor Savannah River Nuclear Solutions.
“The scheme to dump highly radioactive German spent fuel at SRS would needlessly increase the amount of hard-to-manage nuclear waste at the site and must be terminated,” said Tom Clements, director of the public interest watchdog group Savannah River Site Watch (SRS Watch). “It’s clear that there is no need for this dumping-for-profit project to be dragged out any longer and it’s time to implement new options for the safe, secure management of the spent fuel in question at the site in Germany where it’s now stored.”
More here – full SRS Watch news release on SRS Watch website: SRSW news end SRS JEN spent fuel work Feb 21 2020
News release on EIN Newswire, Feb. 20: https://www.einnews.com/pr_news/510197456/end-us-germany-cooperation-aimed-at-importing-dumping-highly-radioactive-german-spent-fuel-at-doe-s-savannah-river-site