Press Mention Chattanooga Times Free Press January 17, 2002
SACE Quoted
TVA readies Sequoyah to make bomb material
In this mention
The Tennessee Valley Authority plans to pay its nuclear fuel contractor $3.25 million to prepare Sequoyah Nuclear Power Plant for tritium production for nuclear weapons. Steve Smith, executive director of the Southern Alliance for Clean Energy, criticizes the expenditure as wasteful given arms control agreements and reduced need for tritium production.
For TVA and the Department of Energy to continue to go forward at this point and spend millions of dollars on this plan is a waste of taxpayers' dollars and is simply a matter of bureaucratic momentum
Stephen A. Smith
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Full transcript
TV A readies Sequoyah to make bomb material
BY DAVE FLESSNER
BUSINESS EDITOR
The Tennessee Valley Authority will consider a plan next week to pay its nuclear fuel supply contractor another $3.25 million to prepare the Sequoyah Nuclear Power Plant to produce a key material for America's nuclear arsenal.
But critics of the proposal said Thursday the contract is a waste of money because the bomb material — a radioactive isotope known as tritium — is not needed any time soon.
"For TVA and the Department of Energy to continue to go forward at this point and spend millions of dollars on this plan is a waste of taxpayers' dollars and is simply a matter of bureaucratic momentum," said Steve Smith, executive director of the Southern Alliance for Clean Energy, an environmental group opposed to tritium production. "With the arms control agreements reached between the United States and Russia and the commitments made for further reductions by President Bush, we won't need any more tritium for at least a couple of decades."
But the U.S. Department of Energy, which is responsible for building nuclear bombs for the military, insists that it still needs to have TVA ready to make tritium. DOE contracted with TVA two years ago to produce tritium at Watts Bar or Sequoyah plants.
TVA expects to pay Framatome, its nuclear fuel supplier, and Westinghouse, the design firm for the nuclear plants, $14 million to gain NRC approval for tritium production, TVA spokesman Gil Francis said.