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Why Is There A Nuclear Waste Crisis?

National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA convinced State Department negotiators that it had a way of converting nuclear bombs into reactor fuel…………

Even if it had worked – converting nuclear weapons into reactor fuel – these efforts would have produced massive amounts of additional toxic high-level nuclear waste 

Breaking Bad: A Nuclear Waste Disaster By Joseph Trento, DC Bureau,  June 5th, 2014  “……..The WIPP accident is symptomatic of a much bigger problem at DOE and that is the scale of nuclear waste that decades of weapons production, nuclear research, and civilian and university reactors have produced. In addition, U.S. foreign policy and the fall of the Soviet Union made DOE the agency with the responsibility of converting old nuclear weapons into supposedly safer materials. That job is done by a little known but very powerful government agency, inside the Department of Energy, called the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA). To government policymakers and politicians, NNSA, despite its poor record, is indispensible in managing excess nuclear weapons materials from around the world. When the president makes a deal to accept another nation’s nuclear material, NNSA is the government agency that is tasked with getting the nuclear material out of the other nation’s inventory and transporting it to the United States. These actions have added greatly to the amount of high-level nuclear waste with which the Untied States must contend.

NNSA is in Charge of the Nuclear Waste Stream

Congress created the NNSA in 1999.  It was structured as a semi-autonomous agency within the Department of Energy (DOE) after DOE labs suffered a series of spy scandals. The NNSA was charged with the maintenance and modernization of the nuclear warhead stockpile, the operation of research laboratories, and nuclear and non-nuclear weapons production sites, and the management of nuclear non-proliferation activities and naval reactors.

NNSA was created with the full support of the Pentagon. The military no longer wanted to be technically responsible for “special” or nuclear weapons. Revelations involving a secret multi-billion dollar slush fund to resume atmospheric nuclear testing called SAFEGUARD C and a tragic 1991 nuclear exercise called MIDNIGHT TRAIL were part of the reason the military decided to offload the nuclear weapons portfolio and wind down its own nuclear weapons administrative operations.

During the MIDNIGHT TRAIL exercise, a live nuclear weapon was actually lost for a time and a 19-year-old Air Force guard name Laurie Lucas was killed during the fake “surprise” exercise. The Guam incident and intense nuclear negotiations over limiting U.S. and post-Soviet nuclear stockpiles convinced the Clinton administration that nuclear weapons activities should be under an agency independent of the military. By the beginning of the George W. Bush administration, that policy evolved into the NNSA.

The Department of Energy was created in 1997 during the Carter administration with the mandate to make the United States energy independent. Because of its nuclear weapons responsibilities, the NNSA gets the bulk of the DOE budget. As a result, the NNSA – in charge of the nation’s nuclear weapons development and nuclear nonproliferation programs – is much more powerful than its umbrella department. The military, however, still controls the nuclear weapons budget. Greg Mello says that is why NNSA follows the Pentagon’s instructions that the productions of nuclear weapons and delivery systems come before “everything else like cleanup and waste mitigation at DOE.”

Early in the Obama administration, massive amounts of stimulus funds went to DOE to cleanup the Cold War legacy waste. Those monies were almost completely squandered by DOE contractors. In response, the NNSA was allowed to take over effective control of what was once the independent environmental side of DOE.

Give Us Your Nuclear Weapons

NNSA officials successfully convinced Congress, the State Department and the arms control community that it had the technical ability to safely convert nuclear weapons into safe and usable reactor fuel. So in the post Cold War world, U.S. policymakers encouraged some of the former Soviet Republics, South Africa and other countries to give the NNSA its nuclear warheads and other nuclear waste in exchange for providing civilian nuclear reactor fuel.

In the meantime, from the Ukraine to Japan, deadly materials are brought back to the United States and processed into reactor fuel or simply stored on American soil. NNSA assurances that it could provide these services are the basis of promises and treaty obligations our government has made.

NNSA convinced State Department negotiators that it had a way of converting nuclear bombs into reactor fuel…………

Even if it had worked – converting nuclear weapons into reactor fuel – these efforts would have produced massive amounts of additional toxic high-level nuclear waste .http://www.dcbureau.org/201406059835/natural-resources-news-service/breaking-bad-nuclear-waste-disaster.html

June 7, 2014 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | Uncategorized