Nuclear Fuel Reprocessing Strikes Out

November 25, 2008

http://chronicle.augusta.com/stories/2008/11/25/op__501548.shtml

By Robert Alvarez | Guest Columnist

The push for new nuclear reactors became a top-tier issue in the presidential race. Yet one aspect of the debate has received little attention, though it provides an interesting insight into competing visions for America's energy future: reprocessing spent nuclear fuel.

As Dennis Spurgeon pointed out in his Nov. 20 column here in the Chronicle ("Give input now on energy future"), this issue is especially relevant to northeast Georgia and southwest South Carolina, where the U.S. Department of Energy has considered locating a reprocessing facility as part of the proposed Global Nuclear Energy Partnership.

The idea behind reprocessing is to recycle the uranium and plutonium used in nuclear reactors. Spent fuel has to be treated to chemically separate these elements from other highly radioactive byproducts. Proponents say that reprocessing used reactor fuel is vital to the growth of nuclear power because it would reduce waste that needs to be disposed deep underground. Sen. John McCain, a prominent supporter of nuclear reprocessing, pointed to France, where he said that reprocessing has been going on "for many, many years without any accidents or difficulties or problems."

Yet, behind the glittering rhetoric are several stark facts:

- A reprocessing facility would become a dump for the largest, most lethal source of high-heat radioactivity in the United States and possibly the world.

- Reprocessing does not significantly reduce the amount of radioactive waste that has to be buried.

- The cost of nuclear recycling rivals the recent bailout of Wall Street investment banks.

The first major problem with reprocessing is that it doesn't come close to solving the real challenge of nuclear waste. In fact, as a reprocessing facility chops and dissolves used fuel rods, it releases thousands of times more radioactivity into the environment than nuclear power reactors, and generates several dangerous waste streams.

Denmark, Norway, and Ireland have all sought to close French and English reprocessing facilities because of radioactive waste washing up on their shores. If placed in a crowded area, a few grams of waste would deliver lethal radiation doses in a matter of seconds.

WE KNOW FOR a fact reprocessing doesn't end the waste problem -- because for three decades we've been trying to clean up the results of Cold War-era reprocessing. Tens of millions of gallons of high-level radioactive wastes from the recycling of plutonium and uranium for nuclear weapons remain in gigantic, aging, leaky tanks at the Savannah River Site and other DOE sites in Washington and Idaho.

SRS currently stores the single largest radioactive concentration of high-level wastes in the United States. Unfortunately, after more than 20 years, and billions of dollars spent, DOE has processed about 3 percent of radioactivity in SRS wastes for disposal.

Even the Nuclear Energy Institute (NEI), agrees ending the waste issue is a red herring. "Nuclear power plants will always create long-lived waste byproducts that require long-term management," NEI President Frank L. Bowman said in 2006.

The second major problem with reprocessing is that it actually makes the proliferation challenge worse. While the plutonium in spent nuclear fuel has potential energy value, it is also a powerful nuclear explosive, requiring extraordinary safeguards and security to prevent theft and diversion.

It took a little over 13 pounds to fuel the atomic bomb that devastated Nagasaki in 1945. Unlike plutonium bound up in highly radioactive spent nuclear fuel, separated plutonium does not have a significant radiation barrier to prevent theft and bomb making.

OVER THE PAST 50 years, there have been several unsuccessful efforts to use plutonium as a fuel, including two reactor meltdowns in the United States. Of the 370 metric tons of plutonium extracted from power reactor spent fuel over the past several decades, about one-third has been used. Currently, about 250 tons of plutonium sits at reprocessing facilities around the world -- enough to fuel more than 40,000 nuclear weapons.

Finally, the third major problem with reprocessing is that the price tag is enormous. In 1996, the National Academy of Sciences completed an extensive study on the feasibility of recycling nuclear fuel and found it would cost up to $700 billion in 2008 dollars. Just two years ago, the Academy reiterated its findings, saying "there is no economic justification for going forward with this program at anything approaching a commercial scale."

As for France, the French government has yet to establish a disposal site for the large amount radioactive detritus piling up at its reprocessing facility in La Hague -- something that threatens to unravel public support. Like spent reactor fuel, La Hague's wastes require much greater disposal space because they give off high heat -- something which can negatively impact wastes containers and the stability of a geological disposal site itself.

Waste, proliferation and cost -- three strikes, and reprocessing is out. We are better off investing in renewable energy and conservation, rather than pouring billions of dollars into this costly and very risky endeavor.

(The writer is senior scholar at the Institute for Policy Studies and a former senior policy advisor to the secretary of the U.S. Department of Energy.)

From the Tuesday, November 25, 2008 edition of the Augusta Chronicle