An environmental impact study should be conducted on restarting the Fast Flux Text Facility, a Hanford report recommends.

The same report also concluded it is technically and economically feasible to revive the dormant FFTF to produce tritium and medical isotopes.

"There are no technical, environmental or safety show stoppers. ... to preclude a restart," said Walt Apley, director of the FFTF Standby Project Office, a joint operation of Pacific Northwest National Laboratory and Fluor Daniel Hanford.

The estimated cost to revive the FFTF to produce tritium is $371 million through mid-2002, with another $64 million to start producing medical isotopes by the same date, the report concluded.

Energy Secretary Federico Pena ordered the FFTF feasibility study as he prepares to decide sometime in 1998 how the nation will rebuild its tritium supply. That report was sent Tuesday from Hanford to DOE's headquarters in Washington, D.C.

Pena's decision on a national tritium source will determine if the FFTF's stalled shutdown will resume, or if an environmental impact study will be done on restarting the FFTF.

An environmental impact study would likely take about one year to complete, said Apley and Ernie Hughes, DOE's FFTF project manager. That study would include formal public input.

That would give proponents and opponents of reviving FFTF a chance to make their cases in public, Apley noted.

The FFTF's supporters - including Tri-Cities interests, Gov. Gary Locke and Washington's congressional members - back reviving the reactor for a permanent mission of producing medical isotopes that also would create several hundred jobs at Hanford.

The FFTF's opponents - including environmental groups and Oregon's political leaders - charge reviving the reactor would return Hanford to its secretive "bomb factory" days while slowing cleanup.

Tritium boosts the explosive power of nuclear bombs. In the next decade, tritium's 12-year half-life will cause the nation's stockpile to shrink below the level believed to be needed for national defense.

The FFTF Standby Project's report notes that a tritium-only mission would politically sink the reactor. And earlier reports noted the FFTF needs the tritium mission to financially get on its feet to produce medical isotopes in financially viable amounts later.

Consequently, the FFTF needs the dual tritium-and-isotope mission to get off the ground.

The idea is the tritium mission would eventually phase out while the isotope mission gradually increases - which makes the concept palatable to Washington's political leaders.

Critics charge the isotope mission is a political smoke screen to boost the tritium mission.

The FFTF Standby Project's study concludes the reactor can produce about one kilogram of tritium annually for its first two years, easily kicking up to 1.5 kilograms a year after that.

It is unknown how much of that would meet the nation's need for tritium.

But the FFTF has not been proposed as the primary tritium source. Rather it is proposed as a backup or interim source as DOE either converts a commercial reactor or builds an accelerator in the South to be the primary source.

The FFTF could go on line as a tritium producer a few years faster than the other two.

Meanwhile, isotope production could begin immediately and simultaneously with the tritium mission, said Apley and Hughes.

Initially, the isotopes would be produced in small research-level amounts. As markets develop for mass-production levels of medical isotopes, the reactor would increase its output, they said.

Meanwhile, tritium production would shrink as the nation's needs decrease. But this depends on future nuclear arms reductions by the United States and Russia and how fast tritium production cranks up in the South.

Tritium and medical isotopes are produced in similar ways. Neutrons bombard targets in long tubelike assembles within the reactor. Operators would insert different assemblies into the reactor to create the desired product -tritium or medical isotopes.

The $371 million needed to get the reactor ready for producing tritium would likely come from DOE's defense program budget and not from the environmental cleanup budget, Apley and Hughes said. The $64 million to produce medical isotopes would likely come from DOE's Office of Nuclear Energy.