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Reprocessing dies?

Dealing with nuclear waste has proved to be the Achilles heal of the nuclear fuel cycle. Although there are plans, no one has yet established a full-scale long-term repository for high-level waste. However, enthusiasts for reprocessing spent nuclear fuel have claimed that, as well as producing more fuel, this is a way to reduce the amount of high level wastes.

That’s true up to a point, in that reprocessing basically is about extracting the plutonium and also left over uranium- so what’s left is lower or medium grade waste. But that doesn’t change the total amount of radioactive material. Indeed the chemical separation process used for plants like THORP at Sellafied leads to a lot of secondary activated materials- more low and medium grade wastes to deal with. And the separation process is complex, expensive and a major source of radiation exposure risk problems for both workers and the public e.g. most of the accidental leaks and also allowed emissions from the nuclear cycle have come for reprocessing plants. It’s been estimated that nearly 80% of the collective occupational radiation dose associated with the complete nuclear fuel cycle comes from reprocessing activities, measured on the basis of the dose per kWh of power finally generated.

The UK government has decided that fuel from any new reactors built here should not be reprocessed. It is cheaper and easier to dry store the spent fuel. Quite apart from the cost, that’s not a surprising decision given that THORP has been out of action since an internal leak in 2005- it’s not clear if it will ever reopen fully before it’s due for final decommissioning. Moreover, we don’t now need plutonium for weapons (we have enough) or to fuel Fast breeder reactors- the UK Fast Breeder programme at Dounreay was closed a decade or so ago. Some of the existing stock of plutonium has been turned into a new fuel, mixed with uranium oxide, called MOX, but the plant for making this has also had problems and may soon be abandoned.

The UK and France have been the only countries with major reprocesssing plants- they have reprocessed fuel for other countries. The US backed away from reprocessing in the 1970’s- there were worries about the cost and about the risk of illegal diversion of plutonium. But President (W) Bush reinstated the idea- as part of a major US led global nuclear push, the Global Nuclear Energy Partnership (GNEP). One version of the idea was that the USA would supply small sealed nuclear plants (e.g. mini nukes of the sort being developed for remote sites) to client states around the world, focussing on developing countries, the spent fuel from which would be brought back to the US for reprocessing- to extract the plutonium and uranium. This material could then be used in a new fleet of US nuclear plants, including possibly fast breeder reactors. The claim was that this would be a closed fuel cycle, controlled by the US, with no (or less) risk of proliferation/diversion.

Enthusiasts talked up the role that could be played by the proposed Integral Fast Reactor (IFR) linked in with on-site pyroprocessing to recycle spent fuel. That approach is claimed to produce much less secondary waste than conventional chemical PUREX reprocessing. And it was claimed that some wastes could actually be burnt up in the reactor itself.

See: http://www.nationalcenter.org/NPA378.html and http://bravenewclimate.com/integral-fast-reactor-ifr-nuclear-power.

However, President Obama seems much less enamoured of the nuclear option. While not opposed to it, his pre-election New Agenda web site said ‘Before an expansion of nuclear power is considered, key issues must be addressed including: security of nuclear fuel and waste, waste storage, and proliferation’.

And in office he withdrew $50billion in loan guarantees for new nuclear plants that had been expected to be included in the US Economic Stimulus funding, and also halted work on the proposed nuclear waste repository at Yukka Mountain in Nevada. It was expected to cost $96.2 bn. About $13.5 bn has already been spent on it. Other sites may now be looked at.

Most recently the US Dept of Energy cut its assessment work on the US part of the Global Nuclear Energy Partnership programme, since, as the World Nuclear News services put it, the US ’ is no longer pursuing domestic commercial reprocessing, which was the primary focus of the prior administration’s domestic GNEP program’. It added that ‘As yet, DoE has no specific proposed actions for the international component of the GNEP program’.

25 countries had joined the GNEP, but the US was the leader, so it’s unclear what will happen to it - and to reprocessing. Japan has been trying to develop its own reprocessing capacity, but at $20 billion, it’s proved to about three times more expensive than originally budgeted. And as the world’s only non-nuclear weapons state operating such a facility, the project attracted substantial national and international opposition. Overall, while it’s certainly not yet abandoned everywhere, it does seem clear that reprocessing is increasingly falling out of favour around the world- except perhaps in countries seeking a way to make bombs!

Posted by Dave Elliott on July 19, 2009 11:48 AM | Permalink