YES: Nuclear recycling will reduce risk of stockpiled fuel.
By Nolan E. Hertel
By now there should be no doubt that something ought to be done to remove the ever-increasing amount of spent fuel at nuclear power plants across the United States. If the need to resolve the nuclear waste problem wasn’t evident before, then the threat of release of spent fuel radiation from Japan’s disabled nuclear plant has made it imperative now.
The solution lies with the U.S. Department of Energy. It needs to move the spent fuel from nuclear power plants to a central location for interim storage, as Congress has directed it to do. But in the meantime, the government needs to lift a decades-old ban on the use of reprocessing technology to recycle spent fuel.
France, which gets 80 percent of its electricity from nuclear power, recycles its used fuel. More than a dozen other countries, including Great Britain, Russia and Japan, also utilize it. In the mid-1970s, then-President Jimmy Carter banned U.S. use of the technology on grounds that it would contribute to nuclear proliferation.
Now we’re seeing the results of that ill-advised ban. There is 2,410 metric tons of spent fuel stored at the Hatch and Vogtle nuclear plants in Georgia — and the amount is rising each year. Altogether, more than 62,500 tons is kept at nuclear plant sites across the U.S. Spent fuel is not waste. If not for the ban on recycling, valuable uranium and plutonium could be extracted and chemically reprocessed to make a mixed-oxide fuel for use in reactors to generate additional electricity.
Reprocessing is safe and reliable. Despite concerns that separated plutonium from recycling could wind up in the hands of rogue governments or terrorist groups, tight safeguards have prevented any diversion of the nuclear material for weapons production.
A blue-ribbon commission of nuclear experts on nuclear-waste management, which was created earlier this year after President Barack Obama terminated the Yucca Mountain project, is considering the revival of recycling. The commission is expected to mobilize our national laboratories for a research effort to develop advanced technologies that increase the value of recycling.
Though an abundance of global uranium resources has reduced the commercial appeal of recycling in the near term, the need for it is expected to grow in the years ahead as construction moves along on dozens of nuclear power plants around the world.
Therefore, now is the time to establish a national policy in support of nuclear recycling, so that we can obtain the full benefits of spent fuel and not continue to store such valuable material as if it’s nuclear waste.
Those who insist that spent fuel can be stored safely at nuclear plant sites — and claim there’s no need to move it to a central location — ignore that nuclear plants were designed to generate electricity, not serve as waste repositories.
Who would benefit if nothing is done? Certainly not the consumer. The sheer magnitude of the increased production of spent fuel would dictate an increased cost for nuclear waste management. This would tend to increase the cost of electricity, would not increase energy production, would not improve the environment, but probably would hamper nuclear power’s growth. Transporting the spent fuel to a national site for eventual reprocessing, on the other hand, could make a big difference.
Nolan E. Hertel is professor of nuclear and radiological engineering at the Georgia Institute of Technology.
NO: Consider possibility of dirty bombs, chance for terrorists.
By Matthew R. Auer
The Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear crisis in Japan is formidable in scale and complexity. Multiple problems within each reactor pose technical challenges for plant managers and life-or-death choices for extraordinarily brave disaster containment crews.
Among the risks are spent fuel rods lying in containment pools above each of the complex’s six reactors. There are indicators that spent fuel rods may be damaged in at least one of the containment pools, and keeping the spent fuel from overheating remains a nail-biting, round-the-clock responsibility.
Nuclear energy advocates look forward to a day when such risks are nullified by the development of “closed fuel cycle” fast reactors that fully recycle radioactive materials in spent fuel.
The trouble is, closed fuel cycle systems are fraught with technological, cost and political problems. For the foreseeable future, nuclear waste cannot be completely reprocessed or fully recycled and reused.
Nuclear waste reprocessing worries many in the nuclear nonproliferation community. Reprocessing involves separating uranium and plutonium in spent fuel. Following separation, reprocessed plutonium, could, in principle, be used to develop nuclear weapons. Compared to futuristic fast reactors, there are fewer risks of nuclear proliferation with present-day “once-through” reactors because plutonium in the once-through system is bound-up in spent fuel rods that are heavy and radioactively hot to handle.
Laboratory-scale tests demonstrate that plutonium can be separated from spent fuel in a concentrated powdered form. This product is not especially radioactive, is fairly easy to handle, and hence, is susceptible to theft. Closed fuel cycle advocates insist that the powdered form can be mixed with other radioactive materials so that the blended mixture keeps thieves at bay.
Were the U.S. to pursue reprocessing tests at a grander scale (a move that would strain the nonproliferation alliance), America would have more difficulty than it already has pressuring Iran and North Korea to quit their own nuclear programs.
Thievery of weapons-grade plutonium and prospects for rogue state-sponsored plutonium and uranium reprocessing programs are legitimate concerns.
But there are other proliferation risks to consider. It takes less than 20 pounds of plutonium to fabricate a simple nuclear weapon, but it takes a whole lot less organization and skill to create a few dirty bombs laden with low-level radioactive wastes.
Imagine terrorists packing one or more trucks with conventional explosives and 100 or so pounds of spent fuel rod claddings or ion exchange resins from a nuclear reactor. One or two dirty bombs could turn a city’s urban evacuation routes into impassable gridlock, make parts of the city uninhabitable for weeks or months, and trigger financial panic worldwide.
It’s time to start thinking about nuclear weapons in all their many possible forms, including bombs containing nastier varieties of low-level radioactive waste.
Fast reactors create more such waste than do conventional reactors. Full steam ahead with fast reactors is not my idea of sound nuclear nonproliferation policy.
Matthew R. Auer is a professor in the School of Public and Environmental Affairs and dean of Hutton Honors College at Indiana University.
