Nuclear Waste Reprocessing Endangers Human Life and Health – Take Action through June 4th

Statement from Physicians for Social Responsibility

The Department of Energy has proposed a program called the Global Nuclear Energy Partnership to resume nuclear waste reprocessing. This program promotes new nuclear power plants with the misleading claim that nuclear waste reprocessing is like “recycling” and will reduce the dangers of nuclear waste. Nuclear waste reprocessing is a dirty, dangerous and expensive process that creates some new (and much more dangerous) nuclear fuel and new radioactive waste by the chemical extraction of plutonium from the spent fuel from a nuclear reactor.

Physicians for Social Responsibility opposes the Global Nuclear Energy Partnership as a grave danger to human life and health. It would: massively increase the transportation of nuclear waste around the country, turning thousands of waste shipments into potential “dirty bombs on wheels;” subsidize a resurgence in the dirtiest kind of nuclear power employing plutonium that could be stolen by terrorists to make a nuclear bomb; and would “recycle” the disastrous idea of nuclear waste reprocessing, which the last time it was tried in the U.S. resulted in environmental contamination that the Department of Energy estimates will cost $5 billion and take 40 years to clean up.

The Department of Energy is taking public comments on a draft Programmatic Environmental Impact Statement for the Global Nuclear Energy Partnership through June 4. Tell the Department of Energy that the potential health and environmental impact of GNEP is disastrous.

Fact sheet on dirty, dangerous and expensive nuclear power

Sending your comment to Mr. Timothy A. Frazier, GNEP PEIS Document Manager, Office of Nuclear Energy, U.S. Department of Energy at GNEP-PEIS@nuclear.energy.gov.

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