The Department of Energy is moving too fast on research and development for the Global Nuclear Energy Partnership, a program that might bring major new processing facilities to Hanford, said a National Academy of Science report released Monday.

The report was ordered by the Bush administration and prepared by a committee of the Academies' National Research Council to look at DOE nuclear energy programs, including GNEP's plans to reprocess used fuel from commercial nuclear power plants.

"All committee members agree that the GNEP program should not go forward and that it should be replaced by a less aggressive research program," the report said.

Now GNEP is diverting attention and money from more immediately promising programs that are working to revive and advance nuclear power generation, it said.

DOE disagreed, with a senior official saying the committee's concerns were based on a misconception of GNEP plans.

A comprehensive program to reprocess all used commercial nuclear fuel will take decades to fully develop, and DOE's current plans are consistent with the pace and process the committee is recommending, Dennis Spurgeon, DOE assistant secretary for nuclear energy, said in a conference call with news media.

Hanford is one of 11 sites proposed for reprocessing used nuclear power plant fuel and then consuming its plutonium and radioactive waste in an advanced burner reactor. The complex would create about 8,000 jobs.

But the technologies required for large commercial reprocessing programs are too early in development to justify DOE's accelerated schedule for construction of commercial facilities that would use these technologies, the report said.

"DOE claims that the program will save time and money if pursued on the commercial scale, but the committee believes that the opposite will likely be true and found no economic justification," according to a news release on the committee's report.

At best, the technology is at a stage that would justify beginning to work at an engineering scale, the report said.

Although DOE believes commercial-scale reprocessing could reduce the need for a second geological repository to supplement Yucca Mountain, Nev., the near-term need "is far from clear," the report said.

It also pointed out that DOE has acknowledged the cost of GNEP is not commercially competitive under current circumstances.

"There is no economic justification to go forward with this program at anything approaching commercial scale," the committee said.

"DOE claims that the GNEP is being implemented to save the United States nearly a decade in time and a substantial amount of money. In view of the technical challenges involved, the committee believes that the opposite will likely be true," it said.

It called for a delay in a 2008 decision on GNEP by the energy secretary, which would follow completion of an environmental impact study.

It would be irresponsible not to make a recommendation on the path forward for GNEP before the current presidential administration ends, Spurgeon countered.

The environmental study will look generically at closing the fuel cycle by reprocessing spent fuel and will not address details such as sites for new facilities or their size, he said.

Instead of moving so quickly on GNEP, DOE should be putting more resources into the startup of new commercial nuclear power plants, the report said. Startups are falling behind schedule for lack of money for federal support, it said.

Nuclear energy programs should not be competing against each other for money, but working on getting more money overall to support a 50 percent jump in demand for electrical energy between now and 2030, Spurgeon said.

The Tri-City Development Council does not expect significant progress on GNEP, such as site selection, until the next presidential administration, said Gary Petersen, TRIDEC vice president for Hanford research.

That's in part because TRIDEC doubts there will be money for GNEP in the federal fiscal year that began Oct. 1. DOE is operating under a continuing resolution until Nov. 16 because Congress failed to pass a fiscal year 2008 budget. When that expires there is a possibility that Congress may pass an omnibus bill for the rest of the year for DOE rather than developing a detailed budget for the year, Petersen said.