nuclear-news

Steven Chu Blames Government Contractors For Ongoing Nuclear Waste Debacle,  https://www.forbes.com/sites/jeffmcmahon/2021/02/28/steven-chu-blames-government-contractors-for-ongoing-nuclear-waste-debacle/?sh=4ec11b8131eb
Jeff McMahonSenior ContributorThe United States continues to struggle with legacy military nuclear waste, former Energy Secretary Steven Chu said, because the contractors making billions from it have opposed a better solution.

“If you had a small R&D program that could find a much better, cost-effective way of doing it wouldn’t it be worth it?” Chu asked during a Stanford University webinar last month. “Okay, $6 billion—What’s a good R&D program? Ten percent? Five percent?

“It was being nibbled down to $100,000,” he said of his effort to fund R&D during his tenure as Obama’s first energy secretary. “It’s like in the third or fourth decimal place because the contractors who had these huge grants didn’t want better ways, and they just wanted the billion per year coming to the State of Washington, going into Tennessee, going to South Carolina, literally, because it greased the economy.”

Chu doesn’t identify the contractors by name, but major contractors in those states include Bechtel, managing the Hanford Nuclear Site in Washington; UCOR, managing cleanup at the Oak Ridge Reservation in Tennessee; and Areva, which absorbed the company that during Chu’s tenure pursued the Mixed Oxide Fuel Fabrication Facility (MFFF) designed to process waste in South Carolina.