The administration and some congressional lawmakers are pushing to dust off nuclear reprocessing, a proposition that would be dangerous and expensive for generations of taxpayers to come.  Reprocessing is no safer or less expensive than it was when the U.S. program was abandoned 30 years ago.  Instead, proponents have simply repackaged the idea as the Global Nuclear Energy Partnership (GNEP) and hope to plunk down $250 million for starter money toward what will likely be a $100 billion total price tag.

GNEP is a large-scale initiative to reprocess nuclear waste.  While proponents argue reprocessing is designed to deal with the problem of nuclear waste, the complex process of separating uranium and plutonium from spent nuclear fuel actually creates more high-level radioactive waste.  The bottom line is, taxpayers will be stuck paying for a prohibitively expensive program that won’t make our nation any safer.
The nation’s only commercial reprocessing plant, located in West Valley, NY, was closed in 1973.  This plant was riddled with regulatory problems and sky-rocketing operation costs.  After six years of operation, only one year’s worth of nuclear waste was reprocessed.  To add insult to injury, more than three decades later the waste this plant produced as the result of reprocessing is still being dealt with.  Department of Energy (DOE) estimates that cleaning up the mess from this reprocessing plant will cost more than $5 billion when all is said and done.

According to critics of reprocessing, this technology may never work, will not alleviate our nuclear waste problems, and would never be commercially viable.  Despite these conclusions, DOE officials are on a mission to fast-track the first $250 million installment for GNEP through Congress this appropriation season.  With little facts and figures about the program and no long-term cost estimates, many in both political parties are skeptical and taxpayers should be too.

The decision to push GNEP forward was made by a few in the Administration that don’t appear concerned about costs and won’t consider what experts from outside their select group think.  It seems like they were playing a game of political jeopardy. Once the answer was to go with GNEP, then very select questions were asked in the effort to sell this modern scheme to Congress.

Nuclear reprocessing is the equivalent of Fool’s Gold—at first glance it looks like the jackpot, but eventually you realize it’s worthless.  GNEP is supposed to solve our nuclear headaches, increase our security, and reduce the threat of nuclear materials falling into the wrong hands. Instead, it will force the government to build new nuclear infrastructure, create new stores of nuclear waste, and doesn’t reduce the risk of proliferation.

If the nuclear power industry wants to invest in reprocessing, they are certainly free to do so.  Taxpayers, however, should not be forced to invest as much money in the questionable GNEP program as it will cost to fight the war in Iraq this year.  There shouldn’t be a rush to judgment, given the outrageous costs and dangerous by-products of reprocessing.   The administration could, as a start, be more forthcoming with cost and details of the multi-year endeavor it proposes.  Until taxpayers have the full costs of this program and an idea of how Congress plans to pay for GNEP while dealing with massive deficits, this program should be put back on the shelf.