Urge Your Senators to Oppose Funding For Reprocessing Nuclear Waste!  President Bush’s budget requests calls for $250 million to develop reprocessing of radioactive waste from commercial reactors in the United States. The request is part of the Administration’s proposed Global Nuclear Energy Partnership (GNEP), a program to revive reprocessing in the U.S. and other countries. Reprocessing is an extremely expensive and polluting process that increases the risk of nuclear weapons proliferation. Thanks to your letters and phone calls, at the end of May, the House expressed serious concerns about the proposed program and reduced the funding by over half, to $120 million. In fact, the House committee concluded that, "The Department of Energy has failed to provide sufficient detailed information to enable Congress to understand fully all aspects of this initiative, including cost, schedule, technology development plan, and waste streams from GNEP." This issue will come up in Congress during the lame duck session, which starts on November 13. The Bush administration claims that reprocessing, the separation of uranium and plutonium from radioactive waste, will solve the nuclear waste problem. In fact, reprocessing will: Make more waste streams that pollute the environment Cost taxpayers hundreds of billions of dollars Increase nuclear weapons proliferation risks Tell your elected officials to oppose funding for reprocessing radioactive waste! Send a letter below! Tell your Senator to oppose funding for reprocessing radioactive waste! Send a letter below!  Click here for more information on reprocessing. Click here for more information on the alternatives to reprocessing and nuclear power.

November 21, 2009 Subject: As your constituent, I am writing to urge you to oppose any funding for reprocessing nuclear waste under the Advanced Fuel Cycle Initiative in the FY2007 Energy and Water Appropriations bill. Reprocessing, the separation of uranium and plutonium from irradiated fuel, is an extremely expensive and polluting process that won’t solve our nuclear waste problem. Moreover, it would undermine U.S. nonproliferation efforts. The $250 million budget request for reprocessing is a part of the proposed Global Nuclear Energy Partnership (GNEP), a large, expensive program to promote reprocessing in the United States and in other countries. The House, expressing serious concerns about the proposed GNEP program, cut the budget by more than half to $120 million in its recently passed Energy and Water Appropriations bill. The House report concluded that “the Department of Energy has failed to provide sufficient detailed information to enable Congress to understand fully all aspects of this initiative, including cost, schedule, technology development plan, and waste streams from GNEP.” Without this information, Congress cannot determine whether this program is fiscally sound and in the best interests of U.S. national and energy security. Commercial reprocessing, in fact, is not a new idea. In fact, more than $40 billion has been spent globally on reprocessing technologies that have never become commercially successful. A 1996 report by the National Academy of Sciences concluded that the costs of reprocessing and transmutation of irradiated fuel from waste produced by existing U.S. reactors alone “easily could be more than $100 billion,” in addition to the cost of a geologic repository. Reprocessing will not solve our country’s nuclear waste problem, because it will make more waste streams that must be managed and cannot eliminate the need for a geologic repository. The U.S. has not cleaned up the mess from past reprocessing. The only private commercial reprocessing facility in the United States, West Valley in New York, resulted in radioactive waste that is still threatening Lake Erie more than 30 years later and will cost $5.2 billion to clean up. U.S. taxpayers are also on the hook for more than $100 billion to clean up the reprocessing waste at the U.S. nuclear weapons sites that reprocessed to get plutonium for nuclear weapons, as well as reprocessed naval fuel. Reprocessing would also undermine global nonproliferation efforts. Lack of sufficient fissile material is the primary obstacle keeping non-weapons states and terrorist organizations from creating and using nuclear weapons. Implementing reprocessing would increase the risk that terrorists could obtain plutonium. I urge you to oppose the Global Nuclear Energy Partnership funding for reprocessing nuclear waste in the FY2007 Energy and Water Appropriations bill. Sincerely, We will add your signature from the information you provide.		First Name* Last Name* Email* Street* Street 2 Street 3 City* State/Province* Select a state Alabama Alaska American Samoa Arizona Arkansas California Colorado Connecticut Delaware D.C. Florida Georgia Guam Hawaii Idaho Illinois Indiana Iowa Kansas Kentucky Louisiana Maine Maryland Massachusetts Michigan Minnesota Mississippi Missouri Montana Nebraska Nevada New Hampshire New Jersey New Mexico New York North Carolina North Dakota Northern Mariana Islands Ohio Oklahoma Oregon Pennsylvania Puerto Rico Rhode Island South Carolina South Dakota Tennessee Texas Utah Vermont Virgin Islands Virginia Washington West Virginia Wisconsin Wyoming Armed Forces (the) Americas Armed Forces Europe Armed Forces Pacific Alberta British Columbia Manitoba Newfoundland New Brunswick Nova Scotia Northwest Territories Nunavut Ontario Prince Edward Island Quebec Saskatchewan Yukon Territory Other Zip/Postal Code* Add me to the following list(s): Energy Program Take action on issues that can affect your wallet, your health and your future. Receive alerts on energy, big oil and more.