Month: July 2019

On July 8, 2018, Allison Macfarlane and Sharon Squassoni published the joint op-ed “Recycle everything, America — except your nuclear waste.” In this piece, Macfarlane and Squassoni critically examine the promises of new, “advanced” reactors, many of which would require the reprocessing of spent nuclear fuel for safety reasons.  They conclude that recycling spent fuel is “expensive, dirty, and ultimately dangerous, ” and therefore “advanced” reactors are not the solution to the nuclear waste problem.

Read the full article with the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists.

On Tuesday, June 25, 2019, the House Subcommittee on Energy and Mineral Resources held a legislative hearing titled “Uranium Mining: Contamination and Criticality.”

The hearing was called in response to the Department of Interior’s decision to include uranium on its 2019 Critical Minerals List. Sharon Squassoni testified that “uranium is a strategic resource but does not belong on the Critical Minerals List.” Further, she stated that “some of the policy prescriptions that would apply to uranium as a critical mineral could have unintended adverse impacts” to the nuclear industry and U.S. nonproliferation leadership.

See the Natural Resources Committee’s record of the hearing for footage and Squassoni’s full testimony.