How
many troubled plants are there?
Fukushima,
San Onofre, Palisades, Wolf Creek, Fort Calhoun, Indian Point,
Vermont Yankee and now Paducah.... How many?
Countdown
to Nuclear Ruin at Paducah
Neighbors
for an Ohio Valley Alternative
By
Geoffrey Sea
22
May, 2013
Disaster
is about to strike in western Kentucky, a full-blown nuclear
catastrophe involving hundreds of tons of enriched uranium tainted
with plutonium, technetium, arsenic, beryllium and a toxic chemical
brew. But this nuke calamity will be no fluke. It’s been foreseen,
planned, even programmed, the result of an atomic extortion game
played out between the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) and the most
failed American experiment in privatization, the company that has run
the Paducah plant into the poisoned ground, USEC
Inc.
As
now scheduled, main power to the gargantuan gaseous diffusion uranium
plant at Paducah, Kentucky, will be cut at midnight on May 31, just
nine days from now—cut because USEC has terminated its power
contract with TVA as of that time [“USEC Ceases Buying Power,”
Paducah Sun,
April 19, page 1] and because DOE can’t pick up the bill.
DOE
is five months away from the start of 2014 spending authority, needed
to fund clean power-down at Paducah. Meanwhile, USEC’s total market
capitalization has declined to about $45 million, not enough to meet
minimum listing requirements for the New York Stock Exchange, pay off
the company’s staggering debts or retain its operating licenses
under financial capacity requirements of the Nuclear Regulatory
Commission.
The
Paducah plant cannot legally stay open, and it can’t safely be shut
down—a lovely metaphor for the end of the Atomic Age and a perfect
nightmare for the people of Kentucky.
Dirty
Power-Down
If
the main power to the diffusion cascade is cut as now may be
unavoidable, the uranium hexafluoride gas inside thousands of miles
of piping and process equipment will crystallize, creating a very
costly gigantic hunk of junk as a bequest to future generations,
delaying site cleanup for many decades and risking nuclear
criticality problems that remain unstudied. Unlike gaseous uranium
that can be flushed from pipes with relative ease, crystallized
uranium may need to be chiseled out manually, adding greatly to
occupational hazards.
The
gaseous diffusion plant at Oak Ridge, TN, was powered-down dirty in
1985, in a safer situation because the Oak Ridge plant did not have
near the level of transuranic contaminants found at Paducah. The Oak
Ridge catastrophe left a poisonous site that still awaits cleanup a
quarter-century later, and an echo chamber of political promises that
such a stupid move would never be made again. But that was before the
privatization of USEC.
Could
a dirty power-down at Paducah—where recycled and reprocessed
uranium contaminated with plutonium and other transuranic elements
was added in massive quantities—result in “slow-cooker”
critical mass formations inside the process equipment?
No
one really knows.
Everybody
does know that the Paducah plant is about
to close.
Its technology is Jurassic, requiring about ten times the energy of
competing uranium enrichment methods around the world. The Paducah
plant has been the largest single-meter consumer of electric power on
the planet, requiring two TVA coal plants just to keep it operating,
and it’s the largest single-source emitter of the very worst
atmospheric gasses—chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs).
The
plant narrowly escaped the selection process that shuttered its
sister plants in Tennessee and Ohio long ago. A 2012 apocalypse for
Paducah workers was averted only by a last-second, five-party raid on
the U.S. Treasury involving four federal entities pitching together
to bail out USEC financially, a deal so arcane that knowledge of
Mayan astrological codices would be required to grasp its basic
principles. The plot would make for a great super-crime Hollywood
movie in which Kentucky’s own George Clooney and Ashley Judd could
star, if only the crafting lawyers and bureaucrats had made the Code
of Federal Regulations as easy to decipher as bible code, or half as
interesting.
“The
deal” that saved Paducah operations for a year, past one crucial
election non-coincidentally, probably consumed more net energy than
it produced by stupidly paying USEC to run depleted uranium waste
back through the inefficient Paducah plant—like a massive
government program paying citizens to drink their own pee as a way to
cut sewerage costs and keep medics employed prior to a Presidential
contest. The deal never would have passed muster if it had been
subjected to environmental or economic reviews of any kind, but it
wasn’t. The “jobs” mantra was chanted, and all applicable laws
from local noise-control ordinances to the Geneva Conventions were
waived.
But
the deal expires on May 31, in nine days. USEC and DOE have both said
that discussions for a new extension deal continue, but rumors of a
new deal were dashed on May 7, sending USEC stock into a flip-flop,
when in an investor
conference call,
the company announced that no extension had been agreed, with very
pessimistic notes about even a “short-term” postponement. That
accompanied news that USEC had suffered a $2 million loss in the
first quarter of 2013, largely attributable to the power bill at
Paducah, which USEC says it’s under no obligation to keep paying.
“While
we continue to pursue options for a short-term extension of
enrichment at Paducah beyond May 31, we also continue to prepare
to cease enrichment in early June.”
Meanwhile,
the Kentucky DOE field office in charge, managed by William A.
Murphie, has advertised a host of companies “expressing interest”
in future use of the Paducah site, with no explanation of how the
existing edifice of egregiousness will be made to disappear. “Off
the record,” the Kentucky field office has floated dates like 2060
for the completion of Paducah cleanup.
That’s
two generations from now and kind of a long time for the skilled
workforce and other interested parties to hang around. Even the 2060
date assumes that costs can be minimized by evacuating the diffusion
cells before power-down—the scenario that seems certain not to
happen because no one has the funding for it.
Flushing the cells of
uranium hexafluoride gas is the only sensible way to power-down, but
it’s costly and time-consuming. At the Piketon, Ohio, plant a
semi-clean power-down has cost billions of dollars and has taken
twelve years and counting to accomplish. (Murphie will have to
explain why he paid USEC so much money for the extended power-down at
Piketon, while simultaneously asserting that a Paducah power-down can
be accomplished swiftly and cheaply). Clean power-down also requires
that workers and supplies be available on demand, and in the Paducah
case, there simply isn’t time.
According
to reliable sources, contracts are being prepared for the work of
placing the plant into what Murphie calls “cold storage”—a term
of his invention. But those contracts won’t take effect until
October when fiscal 2014 funds are available. “Cold storage” at
that point means closing the doors, posting guards outside, and
otherwise walking away.
Can
there yet be an extension deal to hold over the plant until 2014
funds are available? Probably not, because USEC may not last that
long, the equipment in the plant has been run to decrepitude with no
attention to maintenance, there isn’t sufficient time to make the
arrangements, and a second end-run around environmental compliance
would likely generate lawsuits.
Captains
Log: A Heck of a Long Time
As
to when the site might be cleaned up for “future use” under a
“cold storage” scenario, nothing has even been rumored. I think
we are talking Star Trek dates. Or consider the half-life of natural
uranium, which is about four and a half billion years.
Until
such time, the Paducah plant will either sit like a massive metallic
boil on the planet, or be demolished and scavenged for semi-precious
metals like the Oak Ridge facility. But the plutonium, americium and
neptunium at Paducah may nix the latter possibility. The dirty
power-down arranged by Murphie would make it impossible to prevent
transuranic atmospheric release during demolition.
I
propose a bronze encasement for the whole fandango, with a plaque
that reads:
WRECK OF THE U.S. USEC
GREATEST
FAILURE OF GOVERNMENT PRIVATIZATION
IN WORLD HISTORY -
IN
MEMORIUM
At
least that would help Murphie comply with the National Historic
Preservation Act. Call it a learning experience.
Interested
observers are still awaiting some rabbit to be pulled from Murphie’s
hat, as he produced one year ago in 2012. To gauge that possibility I
sent Murphie an e-mail on May 10, asking him where he was going to
get the money to pay for clean power-down with the cut-off date only
weeks away as reported by USEC. Specifically, I wrote: “What’s up
with that?”
And,
within hours I received a reply, probably because I had copied Mitch
McConnel’s chief of staff on my correspondence. Murphie wrote:
“As
you are likely aware, the Paducah procurement process has begun
involving the USEC facilities. I suggest you look at the DOE CBC home
page regarding the proposed IDIQ business opportunities and keep an
eye on it for updates. As for the funding question, the DOE did
submit a request to Congress that includes language regarding the
potential USEC facilities return [a fiscal year 2014 request].”
That’s
a very interesting reply because, aside from the vacuous PR about
fantastic “business opportunities” at a site of nuclear
catastrophe (maybe a lollipop factory!), it confirms that DOE does
not have some secret stash of funds to evacuate the diffusion cells
at Paducah, at least until fiscal year 2014, at least five months too
late.
Murphie
is still calling the certain closure of the Paducah monstrosity
“potential,” meaning he can’t yet pay for it. I asked Murphie
to resolve that dilemma in a follow-up e-mail, but alas I had used up
my entitlement to one response per five years and so got none.
I
admit that some pretty cool proposals for Paducah “future use”
have been cooked up by Murphie and his PR people. In mid-2012,
Kentucky state legislators sought an exemption from the state’s
moratorium on nuclear power (a giveaway to coal interests), so that
Paducah could become a research center exploring the use of nuclear
explosives in fracking
for oil and gas. Hot diggity!
“Discussions”
between DOE and USEC about extension may indeed be ongoing. But I
imagine they are like the proverbial separation negotiations between
the gold-miner and the gold-digger. The gold-digger demands
maintenance for the lifestyle to which she’s become accustomed, or
she’ll walk. The gold-miner looks at the lump of iron pyrite he’s
been left with and says: “You already got everything I had.”
DOE’s
William Muphie and Daniel Poneman (second and third from left) with
USEC employees at the Piketon site. Photo credit: U.S. Department of
Energy
Murphie’s
Law
So
how did it come to this? Since the plant was originally scheduled to
cease operations on May 31, 2012, why didn’t USEC and DOE have
plenty of time to plan for orderly and funded clean power-down, which
was precisely what the sleazy one-year extension deal was supposed to
give time to accomplish.
The
answer is that the entire uranium enrichment enterprise of the U.S.
has become a sham operation, a sham designed to funnel U.S. Treasury
funds to private companies including USEC and its partners, a sham
designed to convert any problem or scandal into additional contractor
award fees, a sham designed to keep the fig-leaf of a privatized USEC
Inc. from blowing away and exposing all the naughty bits.
Those
became the goals of the operation, not enriching uranium, developing
new technology or achieving safe operations or cleanup of the sites.
Murphie’s Law is that if anything can go wrong, it will boost
contractor award fees, for a select group of companies hand-picked by
Murphie himself. Thus, the principal “cleanup” contractors at
Piketon are Fluor and Babcock & Wilcox (B&W), both of which
are suppliers to USEC’s fake “American Centrifuge Project,” and
B&W is a strategic partner of USEC with a large share of USEC
preferred stock, poised to take over USEC’s operations if the
latter goes under.
And
USEC is going under, by design, leaving its bondholders, pensioners
and U.S. taxpayers holding one very empty bag. USEC stock has now
lost 99% of value since its bubble peak in 2007. USEC’s auditors
issued a “going concern” letter in March of this year, warning
that the company appears to have no viable business plan moving
forward. The New York Stock Exchange issued a delisting warning to
USEC in May of 2012, and a second warning on a separate deficiency in
May of 2013.
If
USEC is delisted, about half a billion dollars of debt to bondholders
becomes due immediately, and at least $100 million in pension
obligations are owed in Ohio and Kentucky each. But the entire
company is only worth about a twentieth of its debts, or about 1
percent of the cost of the new commercial plant it pretends it will
build. USEC’s 2013 shareholders meeting, at which the crisis might
come to a precipitous conclusion, was postponed from April to June,
presumably to give the company a chance to depart from Paducah
without adding a nuclear crisis to its public liabilities. USEC is
now an empty shell about to be shucked: the company’s dissolution
and the Paducah plant’s decommissioning have been timed to
coincide.
Once
USEC has departed Paducah, it will no longer be in the uranium
enrichment business, as it will operate no enrichment facilities. The
company, which was created by statute for the sole purposes of
enriching uranium and developing new technology, will be doing
neither. It will only be an international uranium broker, ironically
a front for Russian uranium interests. Imagine if the U.S. Postal
Service decided to hoard its U.S. government subsidies, exit the mail
delivery business and become only a marketing agent for Russian
stamps. That analogy precisely applies to what USEC is doing, in
stark violation of the USEC Privatization Act.
But
USEC has had two quite powerful politicians in its service, from the
states in which it has operated, men who control the Republican
caucuses in both chambers of Congress—John Boehner of southern Ohio
and Mitch McConnell of Kentucky. If Congress had appropriated the
funds to pay for Paducah power-down in a timely fashion, for fiscal
year 2013, then the USEC house of cards would have come down one year
earlier. There could not have been rumors of federally-financed
extension deals, or stock speculation runs premised on talk of a USEC
buyout, or shipments of “spare parts” from Piketon to Paducah
just to make it look like USEC is a going concern.
In
short, if Bill Muphie’s office had secured the funds and let the
contracts to do a clean power-down of Paducah starting June 1, then
the jig would have been up for USEC months ago, the company might
already be in liquidation, and hundreds of millions of dollars in
continuing federal subsidies to USEC might not have been wasted. For
its part, USEC has even now failed to announce a date certain for
Paducah closure, although cancellation of its power contract was an
effective extortion tactic for wheedling additional dollars from
federal coffers.
So
Murphie didn’t secure the funds and didn’t issue the contracts,
and kept right on doing federally-paid PR work to falsely suggest
there could be a smooth economic conversion at Paducah. Boehner and
McConnell ate it all up while chanting the “jobs” mantra, for it
reinforced their narrative that USEC Inc. is the best thing since
sliced atoms. To keep a large campaign contributor out of bankruptcy
court for a few more months, the Paducah plant was permitted to reach
the current crisis state. And the people of Kentucky were sent
straight to nuclear hell.
Nine
days.
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