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Feb. 13 2008 - News Update
Snowy Salutations!
We hope this finds you all warm and well! It has been awhile since our last message, so we'd like to take this opportunity to update you on some of the recent news pertinent to what is happening surrounding issues involving the Piketon, Ohio Department of Energy site. There have been several recent publications of interest which are included at the end of this message. (Unfortunately, our website is not currently updated, but hopefully it soon will be and we can direct you to links to these sorts of things instead of sending such lengthy messages.)
The first article warrants some background information to avoid confusion for those that are not following the local issues closely. The article addresses issues surrounding the formation of a citizens group to facilitate public involvement in decisions made regarding clean-up and future use of the Gaseous Diffusion Plant.
Of all the major DOE sites across the nation that are under order for an environmental cleanup of toxic hazards, Piketon (Portsmouth Gaseous Diffusion Plant) is the only site that has never had a Citizens Advisory Board (CAB). Finally, this issue is being addressed, however DOE is pressuring the Piketon community to abandon its right to an official Federal Advisory Committee Act (FACA)-chartered CAB, and to accept instead an informal Stakeholders Advisory Committee.
At least two environmental laws applicable at the site mandate that there be a citizens advisory committee in place at Piketon [1][1]. However, the DOE has ignored or maneuvered around these two laws and now nearly 19 years after a cleanup was ordered by the EPA and nearly 7 years after the shut-down of the uranium enrichment plant, Piketon is still without a Citizens Advisory Board. While it is true that Citizens Advisory Boards do not have to be chartered under the FACA law, it is clear that in the case of Piketon, it will only be with the protections of FACA that the community will have so much as a fighting chance to get an authentic cleanup of the radiological and chemical contaminants and to have some say-so over what happens next at the site. And even under FACA, it will be a battle that the community may never win, but at least there could be a fighting chance.
DOE manager Bill Murphie has publicly stated that Piketon doesn't need a FACA-chartered CAB; Bill Murphie says that a simple informal committee that works with him and isn't hampered by all the rules and regulations of FACA should do just fine for Piketon. What Bill Murphie does not disclose is that behind closed doors the DOE and its brainchild, private development corporation, SODI, have already put together their own version of a "Stakeholder Advisory Committee" hand-picked to include only DOE and nuclear industry-friendly members; a committee that can be counted upon to rubberstamp whatever the DOE and its contractors have already planned for Piketon. Of course, their "Stakeholder Advisory Committee" is of the "informal" variety (not chartered under FACA and not requiring open meetings, or restrictions against conflicts of interests, or public disclosure of records or any of the other protections needed by the community). In comments to the media SODI claims to have the full support of the community for its proposed, informal, stakeholder committee. But, except for the specially-invited guests to SODI's private meetings, the community has not even seen the SODI proposal nor has the DOE met with the public to explain itself.
[1] CERCLA (Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act) commonly known as Superfund is especially applied to the cleanup of contaminated sites at Federal facilities like Piketon. This law triggers the call for a Citizens Advisory Board.
RCRA (Resource Conservation and Recovery Act) directs the EPA to protect our health and environment by regulating hazardous wastes from the point where the hazardous waste is created to the point of final disposal. This law requires public input at Piketon.
The other two articles include the story of three Oak Ridge, TN workers that were exposed to low-level radioactive materials from a mislabeled, leaking container that originated at the Piketon site, and a recent press release from Sherrod Brown's office, objecting to cuts in funding for cleanup the Portsmouth, Ohio, Paducah, Kentucky, and Oak Ridge, Tennessee Gaseous Diffusion Plants proposed in the Bush Administration's Fiscal Year 2009 budget.
We will be in touch again soon regarding several upcoming events being planned that we would like to encourage you to attend, as well as some simple actions we would be grateful for your help with. Thanks so much for your continued support!
Best regards,
The Southern Ohio Neighbors' Group
Citizens Advisory Board faces uphill climb – published in The Pike County News Watchman, 1-30-2008
The process by which community members, groups and local officials can officially provide input through a Citizens Advisory Board (CAB) to the Department of Energy concerning environmental issues at the Piketon plant just got a little farther down the road.
A proposal prepared by the Southern Ohio Diversification Initiative (SODI) to form a stakeholders advisory board, was recently evaluated by The Perspectives Group, a consulting firm in Cincinnati, and declared the "DOE is operating in a situation of extremely low trust with many local stakeholders." The consulting company met with residents of Bristol Village, members of the chamber of commerce, DOE senior management, Ohio EPA, LATA Parallax staff, members of the Portsmouth/Piketon Residents for Environmental Safety and Security (PRESS), members of SODI and members of the Southern Ohio Neighbors Group (SONG).The SODI proposal was prepared in relation to an offer from DOE at an open meeting in the summer to state what kind of CAB was wanted and needed.
As different as the views of those involved are, they all agree on one thing - a Citizens Advisory Board would be beneficial for all. But that is where the similarities end.
SODI Executive Director Greg Simonton said the proposal incorporated all of the key figures in the local area to make the board effective. The SODI proposal called for the seating of 25 members, including county commissioners from Pike, Ross, Scioto and Jackson counties, a designee from SONG, a designee from PRESS, a representative from the economic development communities for Pike, Ross, Scioto and Jackson counties, a labor organization representative for the DOE site workers, a designee from the Shawnee Labor Council, a SODI board member, two individuals who reside with two miles of the site, two selected designees from Scioto and Seal townships, designees from Piketon, Waverly and Beaver, and a designee from Portsmouth's Episcopal Church's Site Study Group. There would also be six ex officio (non-voting) members, including the governor, congress persons, state senators and the Executive Director of SODI.
"I think there are some things that are right and some things that are way off-base," said Simonton. "(The consulting group) was done too quickly and met with too few groups to make a thorough analysis. We had support and representation from a broad-based constituency that was very open and accessible. I thought some of their opinions were biased, frankly."
When asked where the proposal goes from here, Simonton said: "There will be (a CAB), but as to what form it takes I don't know. We came together to present a proposal - but whatever happens, we need to make sure that the site remains as a valuable resource for our community, our state and our country. DOE hasn't made a ruling on the consultants' recommendation yet. They have a choice to make. Ultimately, clean-ups are locally defined, and the site will someday be given back to the community. So it is going to be up to us to determine what that site will look like."
On the opposite side, the inclusion of SODI's influence drove the Bristol Residents for Peace and SONG to oppose the proposal.
"As rightfully put (in the finding of the consultants), there is significant distrust in SODI and DOE and their intentions," said Otto Zingg, co-chair of the Bristol Residents for Peace. "It is important to have people on the board who don't have a business interest there."
SONG's Geoffrey Sea said the proposal from SODI was actually a Stakeholders Advisory Board, not a Citizens Advisory Board (CAB), which provides conflict-of interest provisions, that make the company ineligible to vote in the meetings. The findings of the consultants also mentioned that fact, stating: "The SODI effort to convene and environmental advisory group will not meet DOE's needs. SODI has done a lot of research and is approaching the formation of the board in the right ways, however it is not in the position of community-wide trust and creditability necessary for this effort to succeed and be useful to DOE Their strong involvement with the GNEP proposal makes it difficult for them to provide the independent leadership needed for such an effort to succeed."
"It is now up to the community itself to form a CAB for Piketon and force the government representatives to put it into effect," said Sea.
Three workers exposed in spill: Low-level radioactive waste came from Piketon plant – published in The Pike County News Watchman, 2-3-2008
Three workers in an Oak Ridge, Tenn. plant have been exposed to low-level radioactive waste after a container they were unpacking was discovered to have breached an internal container. The workers were attempting to repack the powdered product out of a five gallon container, so it could be shipped to a disposal site in Barnwell, S.C.
"There was no exposure to the environment, but there was some exposure to the workers, who have turned out to be OK," said USEC Spokesperson Elizabeth Stuckle.
The container was shipped from the Piketon USEC site to the Oak Ridge site, where the breach occurred. The container was mislabeled, according to Stuckle.
"There are still some questions yet to be answered as to the labeling and why the internal container was breached," said Stuckle. "We will continue to work with Energy Solutions to investigate the details related to this event. We will know a lot more after we investigate." According to Stuckle, the material inside was inherited by USEC in 1993, when they took over for the Department of Energy.
Lung tests on the three exposed workers have come back negative, but samples were taken to determine if the workers were contaminated internally.
According to the website for Energy Solutions, the company provides disposal services for contaminated metal and debris cleanup projects, operational and decommissioning waste, and remediation efforts involving low-level radioactive waste.
The DOE Environmental Management Waste Management Facility in Oak Ridge is described by prime contractor Bechtel Jacobs as the "cornerstone of the Oak Ridge cleanup program."
Energy Solutions designed, constructed, and has operated the site for the DOE since 2002.
OFFICE OF U.S. SENATOR SHERROD BROWN
For Immediate Release
Tuesday, February 5, 2008
Contact: Bethany Lesser
(202) 224-3978
BROWN LAMBASTES ADMINISTRATION FOR CUTTING CRITICAL FUNDS FOR PIKETON CLEANUP
Washington, DC – The Bush Administration's Fiscal Year 2009 budget, released yesterday, calls for deep cuts in the funding needed to cleanup the Portsmouth, Ohio, Paducah, Kentucky, and Oak Ridge, Tennessee Gaseous Diffusion Plants. The budget proposal cuts funding by $147 million, from $627 million last year to $480 million this year. U.S. Senator Sherrod Brown (D-OH) today blasted the administration's decision, calling the practice of cutting vital cleanup funds indefensible. The Decontamination and Decommissioning (D&D) account funds projects to decontaminate, decommission, and remediate the facilities at U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) sites.
"The people of southern Ohio have been neglected for too long," Brown said. "This cut is just another blow to DOE legacy communities like Piketon. It's proof positive that we need to reauthorize the D&D fund. This administration cannot simply sweep nuclear waste under a rug. These waste sites need to be cleaned up. It's a matter of public health, public safety, and government accountability."
In 1992, Congress created the D&D fund. The program was to clean up the old gaseous diffusion enrichment plants in Tennessee, Kentucky, and Ohio. The fund was designed as a partnership between the nuclear industry and the federal government. The commercial nuclear power industry has long benefited from its partnership with the federal government. The government transferred domestic nuclear technology it had invented to private companies for domestic electricity production. As part of this partnership, the nuclear industry has and continues to purchase enriched uranium from the old enrichment plants.
The administration's cuts come at a particularly crucial time for the Piketon site that will soon transition from cold storage to full D & D activities.
In October, Brown introduced the D&D Reauthorization Bill (S.2203), which would extend the fund for ten years and raise the cap on the maximum amount of money the fund can collect in a year. Brown's legislation would also require DOE to study the best way to handle the remaining depleted uranium currently located at the Piketon and Paducah sites. The Senate Energy Committee held a hearing on Brown's legislation in November. Estimates for cleanup of the sites currently range from $12 billion to $24 billion.
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Feb. 28 2008 - Piketon Revelations
Piketon Revelations:
Continuing Lack of Citizen Oversight and Reasons Why
Dear Friends of SONG,
It's been a period of rather startling news:
1. In early February, the Bush Administration released its proposed 2009 budget, which included radical CUTS in the cleanup budget for the Piketon site. (There is confusion on this point -- DOE claims the budget is increased, but when funding for the long overdue DUF6 deconversion plant -- a part of cleanup -- is subtracted, the rest of site cleanup is severely stripped of funds, hurting near-term jobs at the site.) Senator Sherrod Brown issued a press release protesting the cuts at Senator Sherrod Brown | Senator for Ohio: Press Releases - Brown Lambastes Administration For Cutting Critical Funds For Pike..
2. On February 7, a subcontractor for the National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health issued a report on worker dosimetry issues at Piketon. http://www.cdc.gov/niosh/ocas/pdfs/abrwh/scarpts/sprportsm.pdf
This report includes the first-time revelation that numerous "slow cookers" -- deposits of uranium inside the machinery that approach nuclear criticality -- have occurred at Piketon "since start up [in 1954]." The section that begins on page 76 details evidence for the systematic falsification of worker dose records at Piketon, continuing through the current operating contractor, USEC. No explanation for why this evidence was withheld from the public until 2008 is given.
3. In mid-February, DOE released its Five-Year Review of efforts to remediate the landfills at Piketon, where huge quantities of TCE, PCBs, nickel carbonyl and classified wastes were dumped over decades. SONG has obtained a hard copy of the document, which runs to a few hundred pages and reveals that most remediation efforts were effectively terminated in the 1990s.
4.. Last week, an article in Weapons Complex Monitor detailed DOE plans for D&D (Decontamination and Decommissioning) of the old gaseous diffusion at Piketon, including a plan to demolish all process buildings and dispose of the rubble in on-site waste pits. DOE had assured Senator Brown that no such decisions would be made until a Citizens Advisory Board is in place.
5. On Friday, February 22, Senator Brown issued a press release protesting the move by DOE in the absence of a CAB. Senator Sherrod Brown | Senator for Ohio: Press Releases - Brown Blasts Energy Department About Piketon Cleanup Announcement ..
6. Also on Friday, the Portsmouth Daily Times published a story based on an interview with Governor Ted Strickland, in which Strickland acknowledges that the USEC centrifuge project at Piketon is failing, and calls for USEC to be removed from the site, in favor of an enrichment plant to be built by AREVA, the nuclear company of France. (More on this in a follow-up e-mail.)
7. On Sunday, February 24, the Pike County News Watchman printed a letter from our neighbors at the Bristol Village retirement community in Waverly, laying out the case for a CAB at Piketon, and for the exclusion of SODI -- one of the GNEP contractors -- from that effort.
8. Yesterday, February 27, seven U.S. Senators including four Republicans and three Democrats, led by Sherrod Brown and Energy Committee Chair Jeff Bingamin, sent a letter to the Senate Budget Committee demanding that funds for Environmental Management at DOE sites be restored to last year's levels.
9. Also yesterday, the Chillicothe Gazette reported that the projected price for the project formerly known as the "American Centrifuge Plant" (Strickland wants to make it the French Centrifuge Plant) has more than doubled, to $3.5 billion. The ever-receding feasibility of this project is merely an indicator that USEC had intended to go into the waste storage business, and never really intended to deploy the centrifuges it claimed to have but is two years behind schedule in demonstrating.
10. After canceling promised public meetings in January and February, the Department of Energy has announced a "tentative date" of March 18 for an environmental review meeting in Piketon. A Citizens Advisory Board is, theoretically, on the agenda for this meeting. Mark your calendar, but don't hold your breath. We will keep you informed.
As you can see, OUR activism has had a profound effect. Rather than discussing ways to move more waste onto the federal site at Piketon, the debate is now about how to clean the place up. DOE was caught RAD-handed. Because a new waste dump would not require cleanup, DOE had abandoned comprehensive cleanup efforts and meaningful public involvement. Now, Ohio neighbors along with conscientious public officials are forcing that situation to change.
Our new slogan: TAKE PIKETON BACK!
SONG now needs YOUR involvement as we enter a period where southern Ohio residents must participate in the complex job of government oversight, while keeping up the activist pressure. We seek volunteer time, financial donations, and creative ideas.
Given the flurry of events, we are postponing the March 8 event listed in our last schedule, but we will announce a new date soon. Don't wait to get involved. (Please use our contact information below to reach us.)
Thank you for your neighborly help,
Your friends at SONG
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Mar 14 2008 - DOE Meeting March 18
Dear Friends of SONG,
Last March, more than 300 of you responded to our appeal to turn out for a crucial public hearing held by the U.S. Department of Energy to protest a plan to turn Piketon into a massive storage dump for high-level nuclear waste.
We need your attendance again at a vital public meeting this Tuesday, March 18, at Piketon, at the same location. (Details below.)
Because of YOUR turnout last year and other activism, the GNEP plan was stalled. Congress radically cut GNEP funding, DOE has indefinitely delayed any siting decisions, and the Programmatic Environmental Impact Statement due last summer is still not issued. Once a new administration takes office, GNEP likely will be dead. Thank you for helping us show that ordinary citizens do still have some power in America!
However, the demise of GNEP creates other problems at Piketon. Because DOE had planned to pack the old process buildings with spent fuel, they did not plan for cleanup of the site, and did not charter a Citizens Advisory Board to oversee that cleanup. Ted Strickland has just announced that he would like to bring a NEW uranium enrichment plant to Piketon, owned by AREVA, the national nuclear company of France.
The 3700-acre federal reservation near Piketon is public land.
It belongs to the people of the United States.
Yet Piketon is the only major federal cleanup project in the country
for which the Department of Energy has chartered
no Citizens Advisory Board.
The site lies alongside one of the most important
ancient geometric earthwork complexes in North America.
Yet preservation laws have never been applied at Piketon.
Scioto and Pike rank 2nd and 4th among Ohio's 88 counties in poverty rate. Yet the President's Directive on Environmental Justice
has never been applied at Piketon.
Now it's time to
TAKE PIKETON BACK!
Come to Learn and Speak Out!
Tuesday, March 18, 2008
OSU Endeavor Center on Shyville Road in Piketon
4 pm to 6 pm: Community Meeting with refreshments hosted by Southern Ohio Neighbors Group (west building)
6 pm to 8 pm: Public Meeting on site cleanup and public participation sponsored by the U.S. Department of Energy (east building)
Afterwards: Community Meeting room will remain open for further community discussion hosted by Southern Ohio Neighbors Group (west building)
Please come. Bring your family and friends. Make your voices heard!
Join SONG: Southern Ohio Neighbors Group
P.O. Box 161, Piketon, OH 45661
email: SHIPPSONG@aol.com or reply to this message
website: www.OhioNeighbors.net (soon to be updated!)
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Mar 16 2008 - Op-Ed Letter: How Piketon Became a Potemkin Village
Dear Friends,
The following Op-Ed piece by Geoffrey Sea may help explain some of the recent news and complexities of developments at Piketon. Please disseminate it widely, and encourage readers to attend the SONG community meeting at 4 pm, and the DOE public meeting at 6 pm, on Tuesday, March 18, at the OSU Endeavor Center in Piketon.
A truncated version of this piece appears in the Sunday, March 16, Pike County News Watchman. We hope other papers will also carry it. You are free to reprint or post it, but please let us know if you do.
Hope to see you Tuesday!
Your neighbors at SONG
How Piketon Became a Potemkin Village
By Geoffrey Sea
When the Russian czarina toured war-ravaged Crimea in 1797, she viewed hundreds of hollow buildings and false fronts, momentarily populated by jovial village actors. Her minister, Grigori Potemkin, had engineered the grand theatrical production to boost his own political career. Hence the term Potemkin village – the mock display of a boomtown that is really bust.
Politicians now tour the ravaged lower Scioto Valley in election years, to announce grand new atomic projects, secured by none other than themselves, that will bring "many thousands" of new jobs.
In 2004, it was USEC's "American Centrifuge Plant," stewarded by a company acknowledged to have run a technology scam once before, convincing gullible investors that USEC had developed "atomic vapor lasers" it really hadn't. The hollow buildings to house USEC's newest boondoggle, were and are already standing – built in the 1980s to house the DOE's Gas Centrifuge Enrichment Plant, another bit of stagecraft that never acquired innards.
Spin, gas, and vaporware, but no jobs.
By election time in 2006, USEC was already a year overdue in demonstrating the commercial viability of its gargantuan centrifuges. To distract attention, politicians of both parties (area Democrats teamed with congressional Republicans) signed off on "the American Recycling Facility," never defined as to exactly what it was.
Two or four or six thousand jobs would supposedly come from the nebulous nothing – those numbers pulled from the nether regions of Cleveland politician and "entrepreneur" Dan Moore. Moore received $674,000 in federal "study money," half of which went to AREVA, the national nuclear company of France. "Volume 1, Number 1" of a project newsletter appeared, containing a rather bad "typo" mixing up uranium and plutonium. There has been no newsletter number 2.
Ohio Congressman David Hobson asked the Department of Energy for additional money for Moore, on the argument that only one "community" has "offered to host" centralized storage of spent nuclear fuel without a production plant, meaning this one. Certainly no jobs from that. Wisely, Mr. Hobson is now retiring.
Ted Strickland, who had campaigned against waste storage or reprocessing at Piketon, promptly reversed his position once in office as Governor, and also appealed to the Energy Secretary on Moore's behalf. Strickland had received at least $10,000 for his gubernatorial campaign from Dan Moore, but was unable to identify Moore's occupation on contribution reporting forms, which the Cleveland Plain Dealer found rather odd.
Congress ended 2007 by slashing funds for any new reprocessing project and canceling any deployment or siting plans. However, Congress also instructed DOE to pursue centralized waste storage on the basis of "hosting" offers already received. Because of the application submitted by Mr. Moore, the number of identified host sites stands at one, and that one is Piketon.
With the 2008 election year, facades have started to fall. Despite deceptive press releases, USEC is thirty months past deadline on demonstration with none in sight; cost estimates have doubled; and USEC stock is down 83% from its high last May, losing almost 10% of value on Friday.
But have no fear. Strickland, on the stump with Bill Clinton in Portsmouth, said he wants the USEC lease terminated, acknowledging the project is a flop. (Since Clinton is the culprit who privatized USEC in 1998, with disastrous results, the occasion of the announcement was appropriate.)
However, Strickland wants the Piketon site handed over to AREVA, so AREVA can build a new uranium enrichment plant instead.
So let's review. No American Centrifuge Plant and no American Recycling Facility – "domestic" projects advertised as patriotic. But we will get a French Centrifuge Plant, on U.S. government land, offered in covert negotiations by the Governor of Ohio. The operator will be the same French company that already ran away with half the U.S. funds provided for the "study" of the Piketon site by Strickland's big campaign contributor.
Okay, whatever. Maybe it's true that the Department of Justice has closed shop.
And oh, by the way, AREVA is more interested in a site in Idaho.
Back in Potemkin, Ohio, the village actors are looking less jovial. Given the fake promises, DOE had jumped to the conclusion that it didn't really have to clean up the site. Near-term jobs and long-term industry depend on cleanup
Hoping to make Piketon a waste dump, DOE decided it didn't need a real Citizens Advisory Board representing residents, workers and American Indian tribes, as required by law. So Piketon, alone among the major DOE sites in the country, has never had a C.A.B. Grigori Potemkin himself could not have engineered a finer act of public deception.
A comprehensive and chartered C.A.B. would empower the community to demand and disseminate real information about what is happening under the hollow shells.
It is federal land. It belongs to us, the American people. The proprietary rights are ours and do not belong to companies from Cleveland or governments in France or self-selecting local "leaders" or any of the politicians they employ.
When a chartered C.A.B. is established, federal law bars any individual with a clear conflict of interest from serving on it. That applies especially to Gregory Simonton and associates. Simonton directs SODI, the "Southern Ohio Diversification Initiative," which by partnering with Moore, subjected our area to the possibility of becoming a nuclear waste storage dump.
SODI has now pushed two different plans to avoid and subvert the establishment of a genuine community advisory board. Despite the obstruction, there will be a comprehensive and chartered C.A.B., and then the region will need a new development authority, subject to Sunshine laws, to work cooperatively with it.
Southern Ohio Neighbors Group will host a community meeting on these issues on Tuesday, March 18, 4 to 6 pm, at the OSU Endeavor Center West on Shyville Road in Piketon. The Department of Energy will sponsor a public meeting on cleanup and "public participation" immediately following, 6 to 8 pm at the Endeavor Center East.
Bring your torches and pitchforks (figuratively speaking). A little revolt by the real villagers is long overdue.
__________________________________________
Geoffrey Sea is a writer who lives on the fence line of the Piketon federal reservation and is a co-founder of Southern Ohio Neighbors Group. Contact: SargentsPigeon@aol.com
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Mar 21 2008 - News Release: Piketon to Get Limited CAB
News Release
For immediate release: March 19, 2008
Contact: Kathleen Boutis at 937-767-0272 or Geoffrey Sea at 740-289-2473 or 740-835-1508
Piketon to Get Limited Citizens Advisory Board
Department of Energy officials announced to a packed public meeting room on Tuesday night that a Site-Specific Advisory Board is being established for the Piketon federal site. Nine such boards have operated at other major DOE sites across the country for many years. Officials did not explain why it has taken so long at Piketon, where production ceased in 2001. Senator Sherrod Brown has criticized the Department for proceeding with cleanup procurement decisions before an advisory board is in place.
The establishment of a federally-chartered board is a victory for the southern Ohio community. Over five thousand residents had demanded such a board through a petition organized by SONG: the Southern Ohio Neighbors Group.
It also represents a defeat for SODI: the Southern Ohio Diversification Initiative, a private development corporation, funded by DOE. SODI had lobbied heavily for an "informal" non-chartered advisory committee of its own design, which would not be subject to the conflict-of-interest prohibitions of a chartered SSAB.
The Federal Advisory Committee Act bars membership on chartered boards for individuals with a proprietary development stake in the subject site. SODI is a partner in the consortium that has proposed opening the Piketon site to imported high-level nuclear waste for storage or reprocessing. SODI has also led efforts to open the site for a new uranium enrichment plant built by AREVA, the national nuclear company of France. The AREVA project has been pursued in closed negotiations, without community disclosure or participation.
At Tuesday's meeting, Melissa Nielsen of DOE's Office of Public and Intergovernmental Accountability said decisions about the Piketon site would now be made out in the open, in consultation with community members: "no more smoke-filled rooms or behind-closed-doors decisions."
Under questioning from local residents, however, Ms. Nielson acknowledged that the new board would only have jurisdiction over proposed cleanup at the old Gaseous Diffusion Plant site, which comprises only one of five sections of the reservation. It will not have jurisdiction over end-use decisions about the site, including SODI's nuclear waste storage proposals, nor any siting decisions for new facilities, such as the current negotiations with AREVA. Nor will it have jurisdiction over the part of the site leased by USEC for its "American Centrifuge" project, which is in the process of implosion for technical and financial reasons.
The clear implication was that all those decisions at the federal site will continue to be made behind closed doors in smoke-filled rooms.
SONG will appeal to the Secretary of Energy to broaden the jurisdiction of the advisory board to include the entire site as well as all leasing, siting and end-use policies.
Any area resident, worker or citizen with expertise or interests at the site can apply for volunteer membership on the Site-Specific Advisory Board. Applications can be downloaded from www.LPPORTS.com and sent to:
Citizens Advisory Board
PO Box 700
Piketon, OH 45661
DOE hopes to have the SSAB up and running by the summer and has set an application deadline of April 11.
Prior to the DOE public meeting, SONG announced a "Piketon Pledge," a platform of remedial actions needed to correct pressing problems at the federal reservation. The seven main points are:
1. NO NUCLEAR WASTE imported to southern Ohio for storage or processing.
2. Fund the COMPLETE CLEANUP AND RESTORATION of the site.
3. Open the restored site for MIXED INDUSTRIAL, ENVIRONMENTAL AND CULTURAL USE.
4. Establish a comprehensive chartered CITIZENS ADVISORY BOARD with jurisdiction over all DOE activities and end uses, and a new COMMUNITY REUSE ORGANIZATION.
5. Recognize that the Piketon site is subject to the President's Directive on ENVIRONMENTAL JUSTICE.
6. TERMINATE THE USEC LEASES.
7. INVESTIGATE the impacts of the site on human and environmental health and create a MEDICAL MONITORING FUND for local residents.
SONG: Southern Ohio Neighbors Group
P.O. Box 161, Piketon, OH 45661
e-mail: Southern.Ohio.Neighbors.Group@gmail.com
or reply to this message
www.OhioNeighbors.net
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April 6 2008 – SONG Action Alert 2 (Nielson Letter)
Friends of SONG,
As mentioned in our last e-mail, DOE officials have not responded to some critical questions we've asked following the March 18 meeting. Apparently, they want the April 11 application deadline to pass before responding to these questions, if they ever do.
It's crucial that the agency go on record answering these questions, if the "dialogue" with the community that DOE has now offered is to be genuine.
Therefore, we ask each of you to copy and paste the letter below into an e-mail that you send to Melissa Nielson at melissa.nielson@em.doe.gov. Of course, personalize the letter however you wish. At least this way, we can challenge the agency to get straight answers, without them saying we asked too late. Try to get your e-mail in before April 11, ASAP.
We also ask that you copy each letter to the following list:
schilders@lpports.com, william.murphie@lex.doe.gov, David.Kozlowski@lex.doe.gov, james.rispoli@em.doe.gov, maria.galanti@epa.state.oh.us, ken.dewey@epa.state.oh.us, dsnyder@ohiohistory.org, fruffini@ohiohistory.org,
melissa.nielson@em.doe.gov, skip.gosling@hq.doe.gov, steven.morello@hq.doe.gov, doug_babcock@brown.senate.gov, southern.ohio.neighbors.group@gmail.com
This block includes all the relevant officials at DOE, Ohio Historic Preservation Office, Ohio EPA, Senator Brown's staff plus SONG.
Maybe getting a few hundred e-mails will make them more responsive to our initial inquiries in the future.
Please don't let this stop you from applying for the CAB. We have to get our applications in while we await DOE responses to our questions.
Pass this on and ask others to submit the questions as well.
Thanks so much,
Your neighbors at SONG
Melissa Nielson, Department of Public and Intergovernmental Affairs
U.S. Department of Energy
Dear Ms. Nielson,
As a resident of southern Ohio, I want to thank you for coming to Piketon on March 18 and explaining the SSAB process, and also for offering a process of open dialogue. "No more smoke-filled rooms, behind closed doors," you said. For that to become true, a number of questions must be answered for this community, so that we can understand the Site Specific Advisory Board you are creating and ensure its success. Those questions are:
1. When was the national SSAB charter drafted and why was Piketon not included as one of the first sites to get an SSAB? We would like your personal answer since you are in charge of "Public Affairs" for DOE.
2. Cleanup activities at Piketon began in 1985, with cleanup of the Gas Centrifuge Enrichment Plant site. Why was no SSAB established with jurisdiction over that cleanup or at any time since?
3. On March 18, you were asked whether DOE considers the Piketon site subject to the 1993 President's Directive on Environmental Justice, which assures certain protections for low-income and minority communities. No one from DOE answered that question. Is Piketon subject to the 1993 EJ Directive or not?Scioto and Pike counties rank second and fourth in poverty rate among Ohio's 88 counties, according to the most recent statistics. Neighboring Gallia County ranks third. The area also suffers from a pronounced shortage of health care professionals, according to USEPA statistics.
4. Assuming that you recognize that Piketon qualifies under USEPA criteria as an Environmental Justice community, why was Piketon not specially identified as needing an SSAB before now? Why was Piketon the very last of the major DOE sites to get an SSAB?
5. What special outreach or tailoring of the SSAB have you done in this community in consideration of it being an Environmental Justice community? Has the agency considered that many segments of the local community lack access to computers and that the area has a markedly high rate of illiteracy? Has the agency done outreach to any of the area's minority communities or even identified them? If not, how can you expect those communities to participate in the SSAB by an April deadline? What charter alterations are you willing to consider in light of the special needs of an Environmental Justice community?
6. When was the decision made to establish an SSAB at Piketon? Why were no community or environmental groups contacted or informed when that decision was made, since DOE had already received the SONG petition containing 4,232 signatures, demanding a Citizens Advisory Board, in June of 2007? Why did we have to learn of the decision at a public meeting, weeks after public officials were told?
7. In August of 2007, Bill Murphie engaged a small number of community groups in a process supposedly aimed at establishing a CAB. At that time, Murphie pushed the concept of an "informal" non-chartered "advisory committee." If the option of joining the national SSAB was available, why was it not offered at that time?
8. In August of 2007, SONG submitted a letter to DOE outlining Southern Ohio Neighbors Group's general positions on a CAB, including categories of membership to be included. No response to that letter was received. Did you receive a copy of that letter? Did you receive copies of the SONG petition? In addition to categories of membership that you include, SONG also identified the following categories: 1. owners of historic properties, 2. health care professionals, 3. local churches and religious organizations, 4. area retirement communities. Why were these categories not included on your application forms? Were they even considered? If not, why was the conversation even initiated last August?
9. Following the August meetings, Perspectives Group was retained to discuss the CAB formation process with select individuals of Mr. Murphie's choosing. PG then submitted a report in October that substantially agreed with the points of view expressed by the community groups, especially in regard to the need for a chartered CAB, the need for continuing dialogue to overcome high distrust of DOE, the need to resolve conflicts of interest especially regarding SODI, and the need for CAB jurisdiction over all DOE activities and the whole site, especially GNEP. That report appears to have gone to the Twilight Zone. You did not mention it on Tuesday, and did not reply to questions about it. Did you receive that report? Did you consider all of its recommendations? Why were all of its recommendations not followed? Specifically, why did the dialogue established with community groups end after August of 2007, specifically counter to the recommendation of the PG report?
10. Why was PG not retained for the purpose of further identifying and communicating with stakeholders at Piketon in preparation for a CAB, as the process worked so well at Fernald?
11. How has DOE identified stakeholders at the Piketon site? How has DOE done outreach for the SSAB to stakeholders beyond the immediate local community, for example statewide environmental groups, or communities downwind, downstream or down-aquifer from the site?
12. About two weeks prior to the March 18 meeting, DOE conducted a conference call with area public officials to explain the SSAB process and receive their input. Why were such calls not conducted with community groups, environmental groups, American Indian tribes, church organizations or women's and minority groups? Please share with us the list of individuals and organizations included on that conference call, and any minutes or tape recordings of that call, so that we all can be let in on what was discussed prior to the public meeting. How many SODI board members were on that call and did they identify themselves as such?
13. The site sits atop and alongside one of the most important prehistoric earthwork complexes in North America. A 100-yard long geometric earthwork lies alongside the main highway entrance ramp to the DOE reservation. A huge prehistoric burial mound on the reservation fence line was destroyed (illegally) by DOE contractors in 1979. What steps have you taken to assure that the involved Indian tribes and cultural resource experts are included on the Piketon SSAB, and that the CAB process at Piketon accords with the needs of these tribes and professionals? Have you communicated with any of them? Have you communicated with any owners of historic properties in the area? Have you communicated with the Ohio Historic Preservation Office and asked for a list of consulting parties for the Piketon site? Was the DOE Federal Preservation Officer or the DOE Office of Indian Affairs or the National Park Service or the Advisory Committee on Historic Preservation? What about the National Trust for Historic Preservation or the National Congress of American Indians or the National Association of Tribal Historic Preservation Officers? Anyone at all from the preservation community?
14. Ohio has no federally registered Indian tribes. The tribes that descend from the builders of the earthworks at Piketon are now located in Oklahoma, Iowa, Minnesota, Michigan, Canada and elsewhere. They could not attend the March 18 meeting, especially since the meeting date was announced as "tentative," and you did not announce in advance that an SSAB would be formed, and you did not contact them. How do you plan to notify and include those tribes?
15. Piketon is two hours away or more from most of the academic institutions with medical, public health, geology, archaeology and cultural resource programs. Those academics could not attend the March 18 meeting for the same reason as the foregoing. How do you plan to notify and include these professionals?
16. Why did you name the SSAB "Portsmouth" instead of Piketon? Do you not understand that the site is in the historic town of Sargents Station near Piketon, twenty miles away from Portsmouth? The Gaseous Diffusion site was designated "Portsmouth Area" in 1952 to fool the Russians. But since you said that the SSAB has jurisdiction over the entire federal reservation, why do you adopt the name for only one part of the reservation? Especially since there is no operating plant here, by using "Portsmouth" you fool local people, who now may not be able to figure out which "Portsmouth site" you mean.
17. Your description of the SSAB jurisdiction as including "end uses related to EM" but not general end-use decisions was unclear and very confusing. Let's try to clarify. A proposal has been made by the private consortium SONIC, of which SODI is a partner, to store waste in the gaseous diffusion process buildings rather than tear them down. Bill Murphie has said that this plan is still under consideration and would alter the cleanup standards imposed for the buildings so used. How can the SSAB consider "cleanup end-uses" separate from the waste-storage end uses, if in fact the matters are integrally connected?
18. Is the Piketon site now in the same category as Rocky Flats, Fernald, or Miamisburg were in, in terms of cleanup leading to legacy management, followed by DOE's departure from the site? If not, why not? Please be precise as DOE currently has no active proposed future nuclear use at the Piketon site. Congress has halted all siting activities for a reprocessing plant; every politician in Ohio has ruled out nuclear waste storage; AREVA is looking at private land as the federal site is inadequate for them; and the USEC centrifuge project is collapsing. What are we missing? Why is the site not now scheduled for long-term cleanup and return to the community? This question is essential to answer before any CAB is established, so we all are operating on a common ground of understanding.
19. You referred to the Office of Nuclear Energy planning to hold a meeting in Piketon somehow related to CAB formation. Please give details on what you referred to. That office does not appear to have any Piketon meeting planned, and as GNEP is of obvious concern to many in this community, we need to know how the GNEP issue is going to be handled by DOE BEFORE you proceed to establish an SSAB that excludes jurisdiction over GNEP.
20. Why did you wait 56 years before establishing a Citizens Advisory Board at Piketon, and then make a surprise announcement including a 3-week deadline for applications? What guidelines for public participation are you following? Are you aware that no process for identifying stakeholders at Piketon has yet been undertaken except for the aborted one begun last August?
21. What alternative process can you suggest to having applications for membership screened by Bill Murphie?
22. Why was the application deadline set as April 11?
23. References have been made to having multiple CABs at Piketon, as at the Hanford site. Hanford has three nearby cities with Indian reservations on the boundary of the DOE site. How could such a plan possibly work at Piketon where it has taken 56 years to get even one CAB and many members will have to travel long distances?
24. On March 18, DOE site manager David Kozlowski explained that key decisions about cleanup, such as whether to tear down the GDP process buildings, and whether to dispose of waste on-site, will not be made until years from now. That appears to be incorrect, as those decisions have been structured into the procurement process for site contractors, now underway. Why did DOE proceed with the procurement process, with built-in decisions about these key matters, before a CAB was in place?
Since you set the SSAB application deadline as April 11, without explanation, please have the courtesy to respond before that date. The community needs to understand the process before we can make informed decisions about the CAB.
Thank you.
Sincerely,
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April 6 2008 – SONG Action Alert (CAB application)
Dear Friends of SONG,
The Department of Energy has set an April 11 deadline for applications for the Citizens Advisory Board. We do not understand this deadline and have asked DOE to explain it, without response. But there it is. DOE has also not explained why there is no on-line application procedure, or why the agency has not contacted various important segments of the community like Indian Tribes with historic ties to the Piketon site.
Given the situation, we urge all of you to apply for membership. We fear an attempt to stack the CAB with representatives of development interests. Therefore, the more citizens without conflicts of interest apply, the less defense the agency will have for placing individuals on the board who do have a conflict of interest.
Ask family members to apply. Ask friends to apply. Even if you live far away and have questions about service, apply. However we decide to challenge the CAB process in the future, your application is important.
Applications can be downloaded from www.LPPORTS.com. They must then be mailed to:
Citizens Advisory Board
PO Box 700
Piketon, OH 45661
They must arrive by April 11.
Yes we will try to get the deadline extended, but DOE is now not responding to correspondence. So do not count on any extension.
Do please tell us at Southern.Ohio.Neighbors.Group@gmail.com if you are filing an application, or mail us a copy of your application at:
SONG
P.O. Box 161
Piketon OH 45661
The membership application asks you to list organizations you belong to. If you have signed the SONG petition, you may list Southern Ohio Neighbors Group. We suggest you list as many other organizations as possible, since diversity is a criterion of membership. Include:
environmental groups
preservation groups
religious organizations
community service groups
ethnic and women's organizations
Good luck, and please understand that we are as befuddled by this non-transparent public process as you are. Be aware that once established, DOE is likely to regard the CAB as the sole means for community input and oversight at Piketon. So this is important!
Thanks!
Your neighbors at SONG
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April 16 2008 – News Release: Hobson Honored & Lambasted
For immediate release: Monday, April 14, 2008
Contact: Kathleen Boutis (937)767-0272, Kathleen@rockingkb.org
Hobson Honored in DC, Lambasted at Home
With only nine months to go before retirement, David Hobson, Republican of Springfield, is drawing decidedly mixed reviews for his congressional work on nuclear issues. The Alliance for Nuclear Accountability, based in New Mexico, is honoring Hobson, along with five others, at a reception on Capitol Hill on Tuesday, April 15. Meanwhile, back home, SONG, the Southern Ohio Neighbors Group, is lambasting Hobson for his signal role in trying to turn the federal reservation at Piketon, Ohio, into the world's largest nuclear waste dump.
Between 2003 and 2007, Hobson served as chairman of the powerful Energy and Water Appropriations Subcommittee, which has budgetary authority over the Department of Energy. In 2004, Hobson used his chairmanship to radically cut funding for new nuclear weapons programs requested by the Bush Administration, earning accolades from anti-nuclear activists in Washington. The cut programs would have brought few jobs or contracts to Ohio.
Meanwhile, under his chairmanship, the Piketon site, where production stopped in 2001, became a chief target for nuclear waste shipments from around the world. Hundreds of cylinders of uranium hexafluoride waste were shipped from Oak Ridge, Tennessee, to Piketon. Waste from the Fernald, Ohio, site was moved to Piketon to speed Fernald cleanup, and other waste shipments from Paducah, Kentucky, and Hanford, Washington, were moved to Piketon for storage, over opposition from the Pike County Development Office. When Libya disclosed its uranium enrichment program in 2004, the surrendered uranium was brought to Piketon.
The objective behind these shipments became clear in 2006, when a private consortium called the Southern Ohio Nuclear Integration Cooperative (SONIC) submitted two proposals to the Department of Energy -- one for the creation of a centralized storage center for spent nuclear fuel at Piketon, and another for a "siting study" under the Global Nuclear Energy Partnership program.* The "siting study," completed in May 2007 and available at www.safesonic.net, does not specify what is being sited.
Following Bush's State of the Union Speech in 2006, at which GNEP was announced as part of the "Advanced Energy Initiative," Congressman Hobson and Congresswoman Jean Schmidt, whose OH-02 district includes Piketon, were available together to tell reporters that Piketon would be the "ideal site" for a facility they did not specify. SONIC then submitted its proposals. Aides from Hobson's office participated in closed meetings arranged by SONIC to rally political support for the waste plan.** Bob Clark, of Hobson's staff, appeared at the March 8, 2007, public scoping hearing at Piketon, at which over 300 angry residents expressed opposition to the plan, never detailed for the public.
A Programmatic Environmental Impact Statement for the project, slated for the summer of 2007, has still not been released. Piketon remains on the "candidate list" for GNEP facilities, though Congress has radically slashed GNEP funding and postponed any production facility siting indefinitely. It is widely expected that GNEP will die with the Bush Administration.
SONIC's partners have tried to conceal the plan by claiming the "storage" offered was intended to accompany a reprocessing plant at Piketon, rather than a centralized "interim" facility to park waste while long-term solutions are developed. But in a hearing of the Energy and Water Appropriations Subcommittee on March 28, 2007***, it was Congressman Hobson who clarified the difference: In a question to GNEP head Dennis Spurgeon, Hobson asked: "How many sites volunteer to provide interim storage [of spent nuclear fuel] in excess of just process storage, and what was the amount of storage offered?"
Unsure of how much to reveal, Spurgeon claimed not to know if the number was public information, but made reference to "Ohio State" as consulting on the issue. Nuclear engineers from Ohio State University" have supported the Piketon waste plan.
Seeking more funding for SONIC, Hobson then asked: "I want to understand how DOE treated the offers it received to provide interim storage, but when the various GNEP proposals were evaluated, did the site offering additional interim storage receive any extra credit compared to sites that did not offer interim storage?"
Spurgeon gave no clear answer. By asking the question and referring to a single site, Hobson revealed that of the eleven original GNEP "candidate sites," only one consortium had offered centralized interim spent fuel storage, and that one was his own pet project at Piketon. The plan has gone no place, because over 5,000 Ohio residents have signed the SONG petition in protest.
Hobson was reelected handily in 2006, outspending his Democratic opponent by more than a hundred to one. But with loss of the Republican majority, Hobson lost his chairmanship. In the first term of the 110th Congress, Hobson rated only a 20% voting record on environmental issues according to the non-partisan League of Conservation Voters. That places him in a three-way tie for twelfth place among twenty ranked members of the Ohio congressional delegation, which overall has one of the lowest scores of any state delegation. For comparison, Ohio scores range from 0% for Congressman John Boehner, to 87% for Senator Sherrod Brown. Jean Schmidt ranks between Hobson and Boehner at 10%.
The wastes moved to Piketon under Hobson's tenure as chairman now must all be removed, adding to the multi-billion dollar price tag of Piketon cleanup.
"The decision to honor Hobson on Capitol Hill was made without consultation of the man's constituents," said Kathleen Boutis of Yellow Springs, a resident in Hobson's 7th Congressional District and president of Southern Ohio Neighbors Group. "This was a major screw-up. Hobson is no hero for southern Ohio communities. DC groups ought to check with the grassroots before bestowing honors on public officials who have betrayed their home communities."
Perhaps it's no coincidence that all four US communities that shipped their waste to Piketon -- Oak Ridge, Paducah, Fernald and Hanford -- have been represented in the Alliance for Nuclear Accountability, the organization honoring David Hobson.
* On page 1 of the SONIC GNEP application it states: "Separate from this proposal, though integral to it, SONIC has proposed a spent nuclear fuel (SNF) storage facility at Portsmouth [Piketon]." Note that the word "SONIC" has been deleted from the copy posted on the SONIC website, without explanation. The unredacted sentence appears in the draft application, provided to SONG by a whistleblower. Later in the application it states: "In addition to the GNEP facilities, SONIC also proposes and has secured state and local community support to host interim storage of SNF at the Portsmouth site."
** According to the draft SONIC GNEP application: "In early 2006, SODI organized a meeting...to explore what was needed to position the community for continued investment in advanced nuclear technology." SODI is a partner in SONIC. Two such meetings were conducted at the government office center in Waverly.
*** Hearing of the Energy and Water Development Subcommittee of the House Appropriations Committee, March 28, 2007, page 39. A pdf is available from SONG.
Southern Ohio Neighbors Group (SONG)
P.O. Box 161, Piketon, OH 45661
www.OhioNeighbors.net SHIPPSONG@aol.com
SONG is a project of the Greene Environmental Coalition, a tax-exempt non-profit organization
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June 7 2008 – NRC Meeting June 10 and other news
Dear Friends of SONG,
We'd like to update you on a number of ongoing Piketon issues:
1. THIS COMING TUESDAY, June 10, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) will hold a public meeting to discuss recertification of USEC's operation of the old gaseous diffusion plant at Piketon. The meeting will take place at OSU Endeavor Center, 1862 Shyville Road, in Piketon, about 1 mile east of Rt. 23 just off Rt. 32, from 6:30 to 8:45 pm. An informal chance to talk with NRC staff will start at 5:30 pm, and we suggest you arrive then if possible, as this may be the only chance to depart from the formal agenda.
This facility is currently in shutdown status and USEC's operating lease expires in October. Nonetheless USEC seeks a five-year recertification from NRC for this "operation." We cannot explain why -- good question to ask on Tuesday.
We apologize for the late notice but NRC did not notify SONG about this meeting. NRC also did not send notification to petitioners in the USEC American Centrifuge Plant case, as that involves another facility. Since we don't read the Federal Register religiously (shame on us), we just found out about this meeting ourselves. Why NRC does not engage in any consistent stakeholder involvement process -- that would be another good question to ask on Tuesday.
Here are some other questions to ask NRC on Tuesday:
a. What is the status of financing for USEC's American Centrifuge Project (ACP), since Governor Strickland announced publicly in February that USEC cannot finance the plant and should leave the site?
b. Why did NRC just (on May 21) grant USEC approval to withhold from public disclosure its financing plan for ACP? How can the community figure out if the project is proceeding if financial information about it is undisclosed?
c. Now that three other uranium enrichment projects are all proceeding (LES in New Mexico, AREVA in Idaho, and GE in North Carolina), aren't all the arguments about market need for the USEC ACP project rendered moot?
Please come on Tuesday and help show NRC that the community in southern Ohio has substantial interest in what happens at the Piketon site!
2. The United States and Russia have signed an agreement on peaceful uses of nuclear energy. It awaits congressional approval, and has encountered substantial congressional skepticism regarding its provisions on Russian-Iranian nuclear cooperation. However, if the treaty does take effect, even if modified, it would completely alter the arrangement by which USEC derives the lion's share of its revenue. Currently, USEC retains monopoly rights over the sale of Russian uranium downblended from Russian nuclear warheads, deriving from a treaty signed in 1993.
The Russians pressed for the new treaty so they could cut USEC out as middleman, freeing the Russians to sell downblended uranium and newly enriched uranium directly to US utilities. When problems in the new treaty are resolved, USEC will be out both customers and uranium supply. It appears that both NRC and DOE are engaging in an election-year ruse to suggest to the southern Ohio community that USEC will be a going concern past 2009, when all signs suggest that news of USEC's demise might quickly follow the November election.
3. In case you missed the news, AREVA announced in mid-May that they will build their new uranium enrichment plant in Idaho. The Piketon site had been one of five under active consideration by AREVA, though our site was the only one of the five that was being considered secretly, without public disclosure. Public statements from AREVA suggested that Ohio was excluded because of feared public opposition, but sheesh, our communities were never given the opportunity to weigh in for or against. It was Governor Strickland who disclosed in February that he had been conducting closed-door negotiations with AREVA since the spring of 2007. We suppose that explains why the Governor turned down SONG's invitation for a town meeting on Piketon issues last fall -- he would have had to disclose the AREVA dealings. But now he'll have to explain why his secrecy resulted in driving AREVA to Idaho.
4. Some of you heard on the news about a "ribbon cutting ceremony" at the "Piketon Plant" on Tuesday, June 3, implying this had something to do with USEC's enrichment plant.
In fact the ceremony was to open the UDS uranium deconversion facility. This plant will take the depleted uranium legacy waste on site and convert it from uranium hexafluoride gas to metal for disposal off-site. This is something we support as an essential part of site cleanup.
It's taken more than twenty years for DOE to get this plant up and running, which is inexcusable. The construction schedule called for opening more than a year ago. It is long delayed and over-budget -- we're shocked, shocked to find that this kind of mismanagement is happening at Piketon.
Expect that this is only the first case of fake "GREAT NEWS!" at Piketon that you will hear between now and, guess when?, you got it, November.
Look for more real news from SONG soon. Hope to see you on Tuesday!
Your neighbors at SONG
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July 29 2008: Southern Ohio Neighbors Win – GNEP Siting Plan is Dead!
Dear friends of SONG,
When neighbors came together to form SONG in the summer and fall of 2006, one strong argument was leveled against us from within the community: The Department of Energy was going to do what it wanted to do at Piketon, and nothing could stop it. If Washington wanted to make Piketon into a nuclear waste dump, that’s exactly what would happen, and it was no use fighting. No residents had ever battled the feds at Piketon and won. After all, it is their land.
But we said: It is our land. And then you joined us. And now we are winning.
In 2006, whistleblowers came to us to report that DOE was prepared to start moving spent nuclear fuel (SNF) into the Piketon site immediately. Area politicians and Chambers of Commerce had signed off on the plan with the understanding that they had no choice. It was a done deal.
And now, as we approach our second anniversary, the deal has been UNDONE.
Thanks to the five thousand Ohioans who signed the SONG petition, thanks to three hundred area residents who came in protest to the March 2007 GNEP field hearing, thanks to all of YOU who wrote letters, and spoke out, and took a stand, the Department of Energy has now CANCELLED its GNEP siting plan! (See the Chicago Tribune article below.)
The Global Nuclear Energy Partnership has always been a nebulous thing. Conceptually, it describes a set of technologies that do not exist – hypothetical technologies that would eliminate the problem of nuclear reactor waste and nuclear weapons proliferation. GNEP as a research project may live on, at sites yet to be chosen. (Piketon has never been a candidate for this research.)
Materially, GNEP included two other components: A central storage facility at Piketon where spent nuclear fuel could be moved pending the completion of other components (no other site was under active consideration for this facility); and a production site, where a reprocessing plant and “advanced burner reactors” would be located. (The latter facilities were destined for Savannah River, South Carolina, where reprocessing has already been under development. Piketon was never a serious candidate for reprocessing.)
Siting of the production facilities is now dead. Aside from DOE canceling the “candidate list,” the House Appropriations Subcommittee for Energy and Water provided “no funding for the Administration’s counterproductive, poorly designed, and poorly executed Global Nuclear Energy Partnership (GNEP)” in its markup of the 2009 budget in June.
That Programmatic Environmental Impact Statement promised for delivery in 2007? Now pushed back till after the 2008 election (surprise, surprise). And DOE may never release the 14,000 comments it received from around the country, a big chunk of that from Ohio – including a carton of testimony and petitions from SONG.
Those 6,000 jobs that were promised for southern Ohio from GNEP? Look for them to materialize with the Bush Administration’s Mission to Mars.
No coincidence that the bogus “candidate site list” was abandoned in the run-up to the 2008 election.. The issue played hugely in the 2006 Ohio Second congressional race, raised by Victoria Wulsin, who is again challenging Schmidt. Schmidt was so afraid of the issue rearing its ugly head again, she introduced a bill called “The Nuclear Waste Storage Prohibition Act.”
Sounds great, doesn’t it? Almost like it was inspired by SONG? The only problem is that the two paragraphs of text say nothing about prohibiting nuclear waste storage. The act, which never even made it to committee, only shift the way that nuclear waste storage at Piketon would be funded.
And there’s the rub. Though no one can claim that GNEP will be bringing any jobs bonanza to Piketon in this lifetime, the proposal to store high-level nuclear waste at Piketon lives on with new labels.
In fact, in the 2008 Omnibus Bill, Congress instructed DOE to investigate the siting of a centralized SNF storage facility at a DOE site that had “offered to host” such storage as part of the GNEP siting process. That can only mean Piketon, and how that mandate is pursued will be up to the new Administration. (John McCain started to accuse Barack Obama of being “against the storage of spent nuclear fuel” the day after McCain’s town hall meeting in Portsmouth…hmmmm.)
In other words, they are ditching the GNEP label, but the waste storage component lives on at least through this election, and the lame duck congressional session will be the most dangerous period.
So pat yourself on the back. We’ve won a great victory. But collectively, we need to keep up the work. These other developments are also happening at Piketon:
At the same time that DOE has canceled the GNEP siting scheme, just before Congress leaves on August recess, USEC has submitted its application for up to $2 billion in federal loan guarantees to support construction of its hypothetical uranium enrichment plant at Piketon. We’ll be informing you more about the USEC loan guarantee application shortly.
In response to the SONG petition, DOE has named twenty members of a Site-Specific Advisory Board at Piketon. The named board includes Dan Minter, vice-president of SODI, the Piketon GNEP consortium partner. The board includes no nearby resident of the Piketon site, no American Indian or tribal representative (necessary because the site sits atop a prehistoric archaeological site), and no candidate endorsed by a major church denomination. The board will have advisory jurisdiction over cleanup but not over end-use at the site. SONG will support the work of the board, however we do NOT recognize the board as fulfilling DOE’s commitment for a Citizen’s Advisory Board with broad jurisdiction and that includes broad participation of the affected community. We continue our demand for a broad and inclusive CAB at Piketon, free of conflicts of interest.
There’s never been a greater need for citizen oversight at Piketon.
As ever, your support of SONG is greatly appreciated. And now, for our continuing work, we need to ask for your financial support. SONG has operated for two years on sheer enthusiasm, love and dedication. In those two years, we have not asked anyone for money.
But now we enter a new phase. To challenge the Department of Energy on the complex issues of site cleanup, economic development, and environmental justice, we will need to formalize and expand our organization.
And SONG would like to replicate our model, becoming an effective voice for citizen activism and public education on many issues that threaten our neighborhoods in Southern Ohio.
So please, help us cement this victory, with a tax-deductible contribution to Southern Ohio Neighbors Group. Any amount would be appreciated. Checks should be made out to “Greene Environmental Coalition” with “SONG” written in the memo section, and mailed to P.O. Box 161, Piketon, OH 45661..
In gratitude,
Your friends and neighbors at Southern Ohio Neighbors Group
http://www.chicagotribune.com/features/lifestyle/green/chi-argonne-nuke-recycling_both_26jul26,0,5911009,print.story
List of sites for possible nuclear waste recycling facilities scrapped
Department of Energy still examining feasibility of process
By Ted Gregory
Chicago Tribune reporter
7:29 PM CDT, July 25, 2008
In February of 2007, the U.S. Department of Energy stirred controversy by announcing it was considering recycling nuclear waste and building facilities at Argonne National Laboratory and on a site near Morris to aid in the effort.
Now, the Department of Energy is stepping back, announcing it is not considering any sites for the facilities. The department still is examining the feasibility of reprocessing nuclear waste.
"One way of looking at this," department spokesman Brian Quirke said Friday, "is that Argonne used to be on the list. Now the list doesn't exist."
Called the Global Nuclear Energy Partnership, the program was proposed by President George W. Bush in January 2006. The idea, Bush and supporters said, was to expand the use of nuclear reactors to generate electricity all over the world. Advocates contend the program would offset rising oil and natural gas prices while lowering emissions.
But critics said the program, known as GNEP, would require more storage and shipping of radioactive material, increasing the potential for nuclear mishaps. GNEP also would make it easier for terrorists to acquire nuclear weapons materials, detractors said.
Locally, opponents also were upset that GNEP could place two more nuclear facilities in what some consider "The Nuke Belt," a swath from Braidwood to LaSalle that includes three reactors and more than 770 tons of spent fuel on a General Electric Co. site near Morris. Illinois already has more commercial nuclear reactors and more spent nuclear fuel than any other state in the nation.
Under GNEP, Argonne, near Lemont, was being considered for a nuclear reprocessing research laboratory. The General Electric site had been under consideration for a plant to reprocess radioactive waste into usable fuel.
In an open letter released Friday, Argonne Director Robert Rosner said the Department of Energy received "some 14,000 comments" on the plans. Some of those alerted department officials to highly-sophisticated computer technology that can model nuclear reprocessing, Quirke said.
He dismissed the notion that the energy department's change deals a significant blow to GNEP.
"This is a refinement of the federal government's process to allow us to focus on the most important issue," Quirke said.
Strong concerns remain over nuclear recycling, said Ed Lyman, senior staff scientist at the Union of Concerned Scientists, an environmental group. The administration's change of course more likely is the consequence of Congress refusing to fund construction of labs and reprocessing facilities until the Department of Energy has a thorough understanding of impact of recycling spent nuclear fuel, he said.
"This will give the federal government the opportunity to step back, think more clearly and chart a more reasonable path forward," Lyman said, "instead of being driven by ideology."
One complicating factor is the November presidential election.
Quirke said he expects the department to release a report this fall on the environmental impact of reprocessing nuclear waste, and make a formal decision on its feasibility this winter.
tgregory@tribune.com
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