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Reprocessing nuclear waste – not a solution to the intractable waste problem

Nuclear waste- no place to go? Environment Reseach by Dave Elliott on February 19, 2011 Reprocessing nuclear waste provides little short-term benefit because the process costs too much and uranium supplies remain plentiful, according to a new study of US nuclear waste management options by MIT, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The US doesn’t reprocess nuclear waste, but interest in that option has increased, not least since President Obama has blocked the development of a high level nuclear waste repository at Yucca mountain. A special Commission has been set up to explore options- which the MIT study aims to feed in to. http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2010/nuclear-report-0916Reprocessing (MIT call it ‘recycling’) primarily aims to extract reusable plutonium and uranium from spent fuel, and assuming there is some use for the extracted materials, that reduces the amount of high level waste that has to be deal with- although it also generates a lot more low and intermediate waste. The extracted Plutonium and Uranium can be used as fuel for breeder reactors. Bush was keen on that idea as part of the Global Nuclear Energy Partnership arrangement- which would have seen spent fuel from reactors overseas brought to the US for reprocessing to extract its Plutonium. Obama was evidently not keen on GNEP and, with the US effectively out of it, the GNEP has now been downgraded/renamed.

The other option is to convert the Pu and Uranium into MOX- Mixed Oxide Fuel- for use in (some) conventional reactors, which is what the UK does with some of its extracted Pu, selling MOX chiefly to Japan, in return for reprocessing some of their spent fuel. But MOX is pricey and there is evidently not seen to be much incentive to go that way yet in the USA…….

The US is already looking at new nuclear technology, including fast neutron reactors running on plutonium and uranium extracted from spent fuel. That would imply spent fuel reprocessing. However, it’s claimed that the new plants might be able to burn up some of the resultant wastes- and might also be able to use thorium as a new fuel, so avoiding uranium scarcity.

In terms of new reactor technology, the UK, Finland and France are just staying with upgraded version the standard US/French Pressurised Water Reactors, while in terms of waste, the European Commission recently produced a Nuclear Waste Directive and adopted IAEA safety standards, with geological disposal being seen as the way ahead. Two or more Member States can agree to share a final repository in one of them, but the EU is not allowed to export nuclear waste to countries outside the EU for final disposal (It seems that there had been offers from Russia to take it). So we’re stuck with it- and for some time.

And it’s not just us. China is expanding it’s nuclear programme (aiming to move from 2% of electricity now to about 4% by 2020), and although it has recently indicated that it might have to slow down a little and reduce it targets, since it was having problems replicating imported US technology (the Westinghouse AP1000), it is also looking for somewhere to put the wastes and is considering reprocessing some of its spent fuel.

Nuclear waste- no place to go? (environmentalresearchweb blog) – environmentalresearchweb

February 22, 2011 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | reprocessing, USA, wastes