This is from last week.
It's official: DOE has scrapped its GNEP plan6/30/2009 12:36 AM
By MIKE GELLATLY
Staff writer
It was officially announced Monday by the U.S. Department of Energy that a plan that could have brought a nuclear reprocessing facility to the area has been scrapped.
Months after the end of the plan was first reported, the Department of Energy has officially announced via the Federal Register that the Global Nuclear Energy Partnership is no more.
"The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE or Department) has decided to cancel the preparation of the Global Nuclear Energy Partnership Programmatic Environmental Impact Statement," the entry reads. "Via this notice, DOE announces that it has decided to cancel the GNEP PEIS because it is no longer pursuing domestic commercial reprocessing, which was the primary focus of the prior administration's domestic GNEP program."
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"This decision to halt the reprocessing EIS is celebrated by those who know the technical absurdity, proliferation risks and high costs involved with pursuit of commercial reprocessing of radioactive spent nuclear fuel in the U.S. We thank Secretary (Steven) Chu for taking this important step," said Tom Clements of Friends of the Earth. "The decision to cancel ... is a clear victory for the environment of South Carolina and taxpayers but a big setback to narrow special interests who had hoped to profit from a commercial reprocessing facility being built at the Savannah River Site."
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Published online 2 July 2009 | Nature | doi:10.1038/news.2009.619
US nuclear recycling faces the axeDepartment of Energy cancels reprocessing project.
Geoff Brumfiel
Earlier this week, the administration of President Barack Obama quietly cancelled plans for a large-scale facility to recycle nuclear fuel. The move may prove a fatal blow to the Global Nuclear Energy Partnership (GNEP) set up by previous president George W. Bush. Nature News looks at the decision, what it means for US nuclear policy, and where a long-hoped-for nuclear renaissance may be headed.
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Lastly comes the price tag. The DoE has stated that a new reprocessing facility in the United States could cost in excess of US$15 billion — no small sum in the current financial climate. Indeed, a similar facility in Rokkasho, Japan is thought to have cost around $20 billion, says Tom Clements, a nuclear campaigner for Friends of the Earth, a non-profit group that opposes nuclear power.
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The Bush administration had started to draft a "programmatic environmental impact statement" for GNEP, a process that would effectively open the door for the possible future construction of reprocessing plants in the United States. On 29 June, the Obama administration announced that it was cancelling that document. The cancellation means that "the effort to start a commercial reprocessing plant in the United States has totally fizzled out", according to Clements.
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