(571.5426) NIRS/WISE Amsterdam - One of the candidate sites under scrutiny by LES is a site in Unicoi County, not far from the Nuclear Fuel Services (NFS) plant at Erwin. Originally it seems they wanted to build the new plant on the same site, but NFS was apparently not prepared to give up any of its land for the plant (1). Undaunted, Unicoi County officials, with whom LES have been in secret talks for the last three or four months, proposed another site about eight miles away. When aldermen from the Town of Unicoi found out about the plans, they were far from happy. Yet in an outrageous effort to stifle dissent, threats were made to wipe the town off the map of local government if they opposed the project.
Johnny Lynch, one of the aldermen, revealed this at a public meeting against the LES plans. "I've had, I guess, a threat, if you will, that if we didn't stop trying to stop this industry from coming in, that they were going to do away with the Town of Unicoi and start a move to unincorporate." In other words, he explained, "they would do away with our planning commission and our Board of Mayor and Aldermen, which is one of the obstacles in front of these folks as they try to move into this county." (2)
LES is expected to announce its choice of site in the next few weeks - the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) has said it needs to know before September in order to meet LES' proposed 18-month licensing schedule.
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STEALING THE FIRE As well as Saddam Hussein in Iraq, Pakistan obtained the uranium enrichment technology by espionage, from Urenco Netherlands. Following September 11, the UK announced plans for harsh jail sentences for disclosing information relating to uranium enrichment (see WISE News Communique 559.5347, "Full steam ahead for UK's nuclear industry 'Titanic' ", which was reprinted in last December's Nuclear Monitor). |
What is the attraction of Unicoi for LES? One reason, according to trade journal NuclearFuel, is that LES could take advantage of information in an NRC environmental impact assessment for a project to blend down high-enriched uranium at the NFS plant at Erwin. The NRC study found "no significant impact" even when the effects of a nearby facility operated by Studsvik Inc. for processing radioactive wastes were included (3). Bizarrely, the NRC issued its "no significant impact" ruling not long after issuing two Notices of Violation to NFS - one for keeping high-enriched uranium in unlocked containers and one for failing to test its criticality detection and evacuation alarm system in March (4).
But then, the NRC's behavior should not come as a surprise to many readers. After all, the NRC has only once turned down an application for a new nuclear plant without it being approved on appeal. Significantly, that one case was the previous attempt by LES to build a uranium enrichment plant in Homer, Louisiana.
Environmental racism
The site chosen by LES for its previous attempt to build a uranium enrichment plant was a poor community near Homer, Louisiana with a predominately African American population. This led to accusations of environmental racism, and a study showed that the assessors' scientific methods compounded the problem by causing de facto discrimination (5).
NIRS, together with local group Citizens Against Nuclear Trash, Earthjustice and private attorney Diane Curran, fought the project for over eight years, and with success. In the spring of 1996, a Louisiana state court threw out the environmental permits (6). Later in the year, the NRC's Atomic Safety and Licensing Board (ASLB) ruled that LES was not financially qualified to build the plant (7). The real victory came after a landmark ASLB ruling denying a license on environmental justice grounds. Although the NRC Commissioners reversed the financial qualifications ruling, they upheld the environmental justice claims, and LES eventually gave up (8).
USEC opposes plans
One difference with the previous LES attempt is that this time the U.S. Enrichment Corporation (USEC) is opposing the plans. USEC has written to the NRC suggesting that construction of an LES enrichment plant might not be in the national interest (9).
Last year, USEC closed one of its two uranium enrichment facilities: the Portsmouth enrichment plant in Piketon, Ohio (10). USEC has recently renewed its "Megatons to Megawatts" agreement for downblending of Russian ex-weapons uranium, and has agreed to build a centrifuge plant of its own (11).
The LES consortium
LES includes US utilities Exelon, Duke Energy, Louisiana Light and Power, and also Fluor Daniel, but it is led by the European uranium enrichment corporation Urenco. Urenco's major owners are the British and Dutch governments, with the German corporations RWE Nukem and E.On also holding a significant stake (12).
Urenco operates uranium enrichment facilities in Almelo (the Netherlands), Capenhurst (UK) and Gronau (Germany). The plants have a controversial history. 40,000 people demonstrated in Almelo in 1978 against their plans to supply enriched uranium to Brazil while it was under a military regime (13). The Dutch Minister of Economic Affairs, Van Aardenne, was forced in 1985 to admit that he had misled Parliament in 1983 about the use of reprocessed uranium at Almelo (14). The Dutch memorial demonstration for Chernobyl was held in Almelo in 2001.
The demonstrations go on, particularly in Germany, where Urenco also is expanding. A demonstration in Gronau on 1 September 2002 will mark the start of two weeks of decentralized actions against uranium, in which anti-nuclear and peace activists will get together, focusing not just on the nuclear industry but also on weapons containing depleted uranium, a by-product of uranium enrichment (15).
References:
- NuclearFuel, 8 July 2002
- The Elizabethton Star, 10 July 2002
- NuclearFuel, 8 July 2002
- The Elizabethton Star, 7 July 2002
- "Environmental Racism and Biased Methods of Risk Assessment", Risk 7.55, 1996.
- NIRS Nuclear Monitor, May 1996
- WISE News Communique 463.4595, "CANT wins ASLB decision; LES project probably finished"
- WISE News Communique 491.4872, "Victory! Louisiana energy services gives up!"
- NuclearFuel, 8 July 2002
- WISE News Communique 549, "In Brief"
- WISE/NIRS Nuclear Monitor 570, "In Brief"
- See web site www.wise-uranium.org/ecure.html
- WISE News Communique 407.4028, "License Urenco Almelo destroyed for 2nd time"
- Gerson, N, and Jurg, W. Geen reden tot ongerustheid, Van Gennep, 2000
- See web site www.aku-gronau.de
Contacts: For more information about the L.E.S. plans, contact Michael Mariotte at NIRS (nirsnet@nirs.org) or Mary Olson at NIRS Southeast (nirs.se@mindspring.com).
For more information about Urenco in the Netherlands, contact WISE Amsterdam (wiseamster@antenna.nl).
For more information about Urenco Germany and the September action, contact: AKU Gronau, c/o Siedlerweg 7, 48599 Gronau, Germany Tel: +49 2562 23215
E-mail info@aku-gronau.de
Web www.aku-gronau.de
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