Need help saving lives and $

[sfc_darrel]

There are literally days until grave damage will be done to the Fast Flux Test Facility (FFTF) under the current decommissioning schedule.

We need your help immediately, or this national treasure will be destroyed by those who seek political benefit. Tens of thousands of Cancer patients will suffer and die because of the lack of healing medical isotopes that could have been produced in the FFTF!

We have 20 days left to send as many email messages possible to the DOE to protest the FFTF shutdown. Please help us by clicking the 'Help Us NOW' link below.
http://www.3rdwave.com/fftf/

[sfc_darrel]

You know how strongly I've pushed to get our federal agencies to do the right
thing for all of us and to restart the Fast Flux Test Facility.

Our amazing, beautifully performing advanced reactor is badly needed to produce isotopes for patients with cancer or other deadly diseases, for advanced educational opportunities, and for space applications. We've won several battles, but are losing the war. A quick recap:

. The Department of Energy said ten years ago that there was no "mission"
for FFTF, and they would shut it down.

. Local companies devised a plan to operate the reactor. DOE agreed to
keep it in stanby and investigate, but ultimately rejected the plan.

. Arguments to DOE made the point that shutdown was not permissible without an Environmental Impact Statement reviewing the national need for isotopes.

. EIS findings showed that the Facility was needed to meet any growth in
demand (which was already occurring), but a Record of Decision was issued for
shutdown. Again.

. Virtually all technical experts agree that another facility will have to be built in the US almost immediately to do what, at this time, only FFTF can do. The cost to taxpayers will be between 2 and 9 BILLION dollars, depending on what type of facility is built and which congressional district "wins the lottery".

. Our local County, City, and Port district put together a consortium to ask DOE for rights to operate this "unneeded" property. This includes major international corporations, but would also require the agreement of the federal government. And time.

. DOE has now transferred the money and the administration of FFTF from
their Nuclear Energy division to their Environmental Management (cleanup)
division, has sent in their wrecking managers and publicly announced that
they have started the destruction of the plant.

All this makes FFTF a subject for the Tri-Party Agreement (TPA) [DOE, EPA and the Washington State Department of Ecology] which oversees all cleanujp
activities.

The TPA was formed to keep tabs on how quickly radioactivity from old defense reactors would be cleaned up. Now FFTF is being lumped in with the lot. To do so requires a change in the Tri-Party Agreement, and that in turn requires public hearing and comment. We have until October 14 to either attend one of the hearings or write to protest this "TPA change package" which expedites the destruction of the reactor at the same time a highly viable plan to use it for benefit of humanity is still being developed.

This doesn't take long. Please go to
www.fftf.info and click on the "do this first" flashing button. If you need or want more information, or are willing to do more, let me know. This is our last chance to save the plant.....the expedited schedule would have the new management draining sodium within the next six weeks. Then the
contractor gets a bonus at the end of the fiscal year. Great.

The ONLY thing wrong with FFTF is that it's at Hanford.

Thanks for helping.

[sfc_darrel]

I went to the meeting last night.

My question for the evening was...

Since it is clear that we need a reactor with the capabilities that this one has and
political clout, not technical problems, has gotten this one shut down
then
Who has the political clout to get a new one, that we obviously need, BUILT?

Answers to the issues and concerns brought up at these meeings will come a month after the liquid sodium is drained making the restart impossible.

It cost 1 billion dollars to build FFTF.
It will cost 1 billion dollars or more to tear it down. The local city and county governments would like to take it over and use it for the tasks for which it was built and put aside 1 billion dollars for decommissioning when its life span is over.


There was a doctor's meeting downstairs and all the nuclear medicine doctors from Yakima are pro FFTF and the rest got information that they hadn't known so left with the goal of letting other doctors know that we are depending on Canada and Russia for our nuclear medicine in this country.''

[sfc_darrel]

Yakima doctors urge FFTF perpetuity

This story was published Wed, Sep 25, 2002

By Annette Cary
Herald staff writer

YAKIMA -- Any business that depends on one supplier is foolhardy, but that's what's happening in his business, Yakima Dr. James Dodge said at a Tuesday hearing on how soon the Department of Energy must dismantle Hanford's Fast Flux Test Facility.

Most of the medical isotopes used in the 20 to 40 procedures his practice performs daily are imported from a single reactor in Canada, he said. But just those isotopes already used primarily for diagnostic procedures could be produced at FFTF in high enough volume to help pay the cost of operating the reactor, he said.

"We're talking about the future of our region, the future of our nation," he said. "I didn't expect to be put in the position of trying to save such an obvious national resource."

About 43 Yakima doctors feel the same, he said, presenting Tri-Party Agreement officials a letter with their signatures asking that the reactor be saved.

About 50 people attended the Yakima hearing, the first of four to discuss deadlines for permanent shutdown being considered for the legal pact that governs Hanford cleanup. Most of those who spoke asked that the reactor be saved.

"I don't understand speeding up the process for destruction of this facility," said George Brown of Yakima. "It's a tremendous resource the taxpayers invested millions of dollars in."

The federal government should give those working to save the reactor more time, he said.

A coalition of Mid-Columbia governments is asking that the reactor be declared surplus and used commercially to make isotopes for medicine, including promising new cancer treatments. As more treatments move from clinical trials to mainstream medicine, treating some largely incurable cancers and others with fewer side effects than conventional treatments, supporters of the reactor expect demand for the isotopes to explode.

"I would like to sue DOE for depraved indifference to the people," said Laurel Piippo of Richland.

DOE has concluded that it has no mission for the reactor and has dismissed some proposals to restart it as too financially risky.

The Tri-Party Agreement hearings only address deadlines for dismantling the reactor, including steps such as draining the sodium. Once that's done, the reactor cannot be safely restarted.

But work already has started toward a permanent shutdown.

Irreparable damage to the reactor may occur before the hearings are completed next month, said John Boland of Kennewick.

"These are merely milestones" that give the latest date work may be done, said Al Farabee of DOE. "By hell or high water, we are going to do it earlier."

The milestones call for work to drain the sodium to begin no later than June 2003.

"If the decision to be shut down has already been made, then let's get on with it," said Gene Rupel of Yakima.

But government studies of restarting the reactor have found there is a need for it, said many supporters. The decision to shut it down permanently was based on politics, they said.


"Who has the money and the political clout to generate the money again for this kind of reactor?" asked Joyce Miller of Yakima, who said her fantasy had been to work at FFTF.

Part of the reason to shut it down is financial, countered representatives of Heart of America Northwest.

"It costs a lot to run," said Dave Johnson of Enumclaw, a former FFTF worker representing Heart of America. "DOE has always known it has to have another mission to support isotope (production)."

If the proposed changes to the Tri-Party Agreement are not approved by a negotiating deadline, previous deadlines suspended while new uses for the reactor were considered will take effect, said Gerry Pollet of Heart of America.

If those deadlines had not been suspended, the reactor would have been mothballed a year ago, he said. If suspended deadlines are reinstated now, sodium would still have to be completely drained by 2005, the same as in proposed changes being considered, he said.

His concern is that the new proposal stretches out the final phase of shutdown from 2007 to 2011, adding millions to the cost.

Additional hearings are planned Thursday in Seattle, Oct. 9 in Portland and at 7 p.m. Oct. 10 at the Hanford House in Richland. The proposed changes are available at www.hanford.gov/tpa/changelist.htm on the Internet.