------------------------------------------------------------------------------
NewsBank, inc. - The Seattle Times - 1997 - Article with Citation
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
 Headline: U.S. TO KEEP HANFORD PLUTONIUM PLANT

 Date:     January 17, 1997          Section:    NEWS
 Page:     A8                        Edition:    FINAL
 Dateline: WASHINGTON                Word Count: 683

 Author:   THOMAS W. LIPPMAN   WASHINGTON POST

 Text:
 WASHINGTON - Outgoing Energy Secretary Hazel O'Leary on Wednesday
 rescued from the scrap heap a plutonium-fueled nuclear reactor in
 Washington state, saying it might be needed some day to produce a key
 component of nuclear weapons.
 
 
    O'Leary directed that the Fast Flux Test Facility, an experimental
 reactor that has been considered a white elephant for years, be
 maintained in "hot standby" instead of decommissioned.
 
    She said it was a "low-cost option" that should be kept available as
 the department decides over the next two years how to resume production
 of tritium, a radioactive isotope of hydrogen that enhances the
 explosive force of nuclear warheads.
 
    Her decision drew strong criticism from environmental groups, nuclear
 non-proliferation activists and some members of Congress.
 They said keeping the reactor viable would waste money, divert funds
 needed for the environmental cleanup of the Hanford nuclear-weapons site
 and send the wrong signal about the future of nuclear weapons in the
 post-Cold War era.
 
    "I'm against taking millions that is supposed to go to cleanup and
 putting back into the Cold War mission of bomb-making," said Sen. Ron
 Wyden, D-Ore. "We find this baffling. I'm on the Energy Committee and
 I'll oppose this strongly."
 
     Most of Oregon's congressional delegation wants the Hanford site,
 including the reactor, shut down and cleaned up, not returned to
 production. But members of the Washington delegation, seeing current and
 future jobs, supported O'Leary's decision.
 
    "This is one of the most modern and safest reactors we have," said
 Rep. Norman D. Dicks, D-Wash. "It would be a terrible mistake not to
 preserve it."
 
     If operated to produce tritium for a few years, the reactor might
 then be put to use in civilian industry to produce radioactive isotopes
 for medical use, Dicks said.
 
    But the prospect of developing a viable isotope industry to replace
 the plutonium production that long powered the economy of the region
 around Richland is a chimera, according the anti-nuclear group
 Physicians for Social Responsibility.
 
    "The benefits are being greatly exaggerated," said Darryl Kimball of
 the group. "It's not needed for medical isotope production." He called
 O'Leary's decision "a very serious political mistake."
 
     O'Leary has been dogged through much of her tenure by the question
 of the nation's tritium supply. For most of the nuclear age tritium was
 produced by the bombardment of lithium targets with neutrons generated
 by nuclear reactors at the Energy Department's Savannah River, S.C.,
 weapons plant. But those reactors were shut down for safety reasons in
 the 1980s and the nation has no active source of tritium.
 
    With the nuclear-weapons stockpile dwindling rapidly after the
 collapse of the Soviet Union, the U.S. government has abandoned the
 business of making most bomb components, recycling what is needed from
 dismantled weapons.
 
    But because tritium decays by about 5.5 percent annually, the
 stockpile must be replenished periodically if the United States is going
 to remain a nuclear-weapons power. Current supplies would be exhausted
 in 10 to 15 years.
 
    Under orders from Congress to develop a new source, the Energy
 Department committed itself to decide by the end of 1998 whether to
 build a huge particle accelerator for the purpose, or to buy an existing
 commercial power-plant reactor and convert it to tritium production.
 
    O'Leary said Wednesday, however, that she is not confident either of
 those options will ever be a reality.
 
    "I don't have any confidence the two options we're betting on will
 necessarily play out," she said in a telephone interview.
 "Capitol Hill is already muttering that the accelerator is too big and
 too costly. And some communities (that have commercial reactors) are
 saying they don't want reactors licensed for the production of tritium.
 We're trying to buy an insurance policy."

 Copyright 1997 The Seattle Times

 Record Number: 2519235
------------------------------------------------------------------------------