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The US Department of Energy announced last week that the High Flux Beam Reactor at Brookhaven National Laboratory on Long Island, New York, is to close for good. The 34-year-old research reactor is the main source of cold neutrons for researchers in the United States
In announcing the reactor's closure, energy secretary Bill Richardson explained in a statement that “we need to focus our limited resources on productive research, rather than keeping the reactor in standby mode for an unknown length of time”.
But Brookhaven researchers reacted furiously to the sudden decision, which appeared to bypass a lengthy process that had been under way to assess the environmental impact of reopening the reactor. It has been closed since early 1997, when a small leak of tritium from the pool that stores its spent fuel was detected in the ground beneath it (see Nature 386, 3–4; 1997).
And although the eventual decision to close the reactor had been widely expected, neutron scientists were shocked that it was taken before the review process had been completed. “This has just become a circus,” says Denis McWhan, associate director for basic energy sciences at Brookhaven. “We all thought that we'd bought into a formal process, but the secretary just short-circuited it.”
Bob Birgeneau, dean of science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, said he was “deeply dismayed”. He predicted it would make US researchers “second- if not third-class citizens compared to Western Europe and Japan”.
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Some researchers at Brookhaven linked the decision to a recent meeting between Richardson and two celebrated residents of Long Island, actor Alec Baldwin and ‘supermodel’ Christie Brinkley, who were representing a group opposing the reactor.
Richardson was in Turkey last week and unavailable for comment. But Ernie Moniz, the energy undersecretary, confirmed that such a meeting had taken place. “I believe he did meet with them. He got input from many different perspectives,” he said.
According to Moniz, however, Richardson's decision was based on the advice of programme managers, who included Patricia Dehmer, senior staff official in charge of basic energy sciences, and Martha Krebs, head of the energy department's Office of Science. They recommended against continuing to spend $20 million a year to keep the facility on standby.
“He got the recommendation of a termination, and on that day he made the decision,” says Moniz. He points out that Brookhaven will remain one of very few laboratories housing two major scientific facilities, the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider and the National Synchrotron Light Source.
Environmental groups have been pressuring the Department of Energy to close the reactor since the leak was discovered, even though the total amount of tritium discharged is less than that contained in an emergency exit sign in a cinema.
Opponents of the reactor were able to build on powerful anti-nuclear sentiment on Long Island. Construction of a nuclear power plant there was aborted after residents argued that the densely populated island could not be evacuated in an emergency.
The Department of Energy responded to the leak by firing the consortium of universities that had operated the laboratory. The new contractor had been making some progress in improving its relations with the laboratory's critics in the community (see Nature 400, 303; 1999).
But Michael Forbes, the local congressman, who recently switched from Republican to Democrat, has opposed the restarting of the reactor and has inserted language in appropriations bills for three years in a row expressly prohibiting it. Whatever Brinkley and Baldwin told Richardson, the energy secretary must have concluded that the department could no longer afford to spend an annual $20 million maintaining an ageing facility that local politicians would not allow to reopen.
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Macilwain, C. Brookhaven leak reactor to close. Nature 402, 333–334 (1999). https://doi.org/10.1038/46361
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/46361