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United States: NRC Approves Second Tritium Production Facility The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission last week approved a second energy plant — the Sequoyah Nuclear Power Plant near Chattanooga, Tenn. — for production of tritium, a component of nuclear bombs (see GSN, Sept. 25). Up to 2,256 irradiated rods can be produced at the Sequoyah facility under the permit. The rods would then be shipped to South Carolina where tritium would be extracted at the Energy Department’s Savannah River facility (see GSN, June 28). Critics said the decision is hypocritical. “We tell other countries not to use commercial reactors for weapons of mass destruction, so why are we?” asked Stephen Smith, executive director of the Southern Alliance for Clean Energy (see GSN, Oct. 3, 2001). The Tennessee Valley Authority runs both the Sequoyah facility and the Watts Bar Nuclear Plant near Spring City, Tenn., which the commission also recently approved for tritium production (see GSN, Jan. 29; Andy Drury, Chattanooga Times, Oct. 2).
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