Posted on 01/26/2006 10:59:55 PM PST by neverdem
ASSOCIATED PRESS
WASHINGTON -- The Bush administration is making plans to revive nuclear fuel reprocessing, including a long-term proposal to provide reactor fuel to foreign countries if they return it to the United States to be recycled.
President Bush will include a request for $250 million in his budget to be released next week as a first step toward reversing a decades long U.S. policy against nuclear reprocessing, congressional and administration officials said Thursday.
The plan is part of an effort to take a fresh look at how to deal with the thousands of tons of used reactor fuel piling up at U.S. commercial power plants, while also gaining control over future nuclear materials in developing countries where the demand for nuclear energy is expected to grow.
The United States halted all reprocessing in the late 1970s because it produces pure plutonium that could be used in a nuclear weapon if obtained by terrorists or rogue states.
The Bush plan, expected to be unveiled as part of the Energy Department's budget, calls for stepped up research into a "more proliferation resistant" type of reprocessing that proponents say will reduce dramatically the likelihood of theft or diversion.
The process would not produce pure plutonium, but a mixture of plutonium and neptunium that would make the separated elements more difficult to handle and, therefore, more secure.
But nonproliferation advocates contend the new process represents little more than - as one described it - a "fig leaf" over the reprocessing the U.S. has rejected since 1979 when President Carter banned reprocessing because of proliferation worries.
"The tweaking of this process would only provide a minor additional deterrent," said Edwin Lyman, a nuclear specialist at the Union of Concerned Scientists. It would not prevent a suicidal terrorist from handling the material, he said.
The Bush proposal, called the Global Nuclear Energy Partnership, envisions that U.S. companies eventually will sell reactors and fuel to developing countries with the stipulation that the fuel would be returned to the United States for reprocessing.
Nuclear scientists who have been working on the reprocessing technology for the Energy Department say that up to 90 percent of spent fuel can be recycled for reuse, reducing dramatically the need for geological disposal.
The initial $250 million is expected to go to stepped up research and initial work on a reprocessing facility, probably at the Savannah River nuclear complex in South Carolina, according to private and government sources familiar with the discussions.
The sources spoke on condition of anonymity because the plan has yet to be announced.
President Bush has been briefed on the plan, and Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman hinted at the broad outline of the reprocessing initiative and its potential global aspects in a November speech at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
Countries around the world will demand use of nuclear energy in the coming decades, Bodman said, and "the challenge that confronts us" is providing nuclear fuel and addressing reactor waste globally without increasing proliferation risks.
He said the U.S. might be one of the countries that could offer "cradle to grave fuel cycle services, leasing fuel for power reactors and then taking it back for reprocessing and disposition."
Bodman said the administration remained committed to completing the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste site in Nevada. But experts say it will not be able to hold all of the country's reactor waste if nuclear energy expands with new reactors.
"Reprocessing could help avoid or delay the need for a second repository," Marvin Fertel, a senior vice president of the Nuclear Energy Institute, the industry's lobbying group, told a congressional hearing last March.
But Fertel emphasized that the nuclear industry views fuel reprocessing as a technology that is still decades away from being economical - and won't be as long as fresh uranium is plentiful and relatively cheap.
On the Net:
Energy Department: http://www.doe.gov
Mr. Joe'
I sadly left Slob due to family issues that required me to leave LA move back to IN.
Loved the Offshore rigs. Sigh.
'Bout d@mn time. Just I begin losing hope for Pres. Bush he pulls another good one out of the hat!
"Which is OK in today's climate."
Yes ...
"A couple of thousand years from now, if the roof leaks, so to speak, and the area gets significant rainfall, those hot containers might corrode away. I wouldn't want to be drinking from a well near that..."
and
"Some of those isotopes are nasty stuff, though."
This is true, but people make 2+2 = 5 when they put together "radiation that lasts for thousands of years" with
"some of this is highly radioactive".
Reality check: The longer the half-life, the lower the level of radiation. Then you have to consider the decay path; is it something nasty (high energy particle that can penetrate human body) or low energy. The radiation level in these casks is not constant; it goes down drastically year by year for a few hundred years to a level of very low radioactivity, radiation level that is many orders of magnitude smaller than the level of when it left a nuclear power plant.
All of the "hot" radoactive decay elements in nuclear waste have half-lives measured in days, years, or tens of years. After about 100 years, the radiation level is much much lower. The main source of radiation then is the transuranics (uranium, plutonium). Stuff like strontium and other elements would have decayed away.
Correspondingly, the very long half-life material has low level of radiation. (For example the human body has a half-life measured in billions of years - does that mean we are 'unsafe' for a billion years?)
So, if you wait 10,000 years for geology to change and Yucca to actually get rainfall, etc. you'll find in the interim that the level of radiation danger is much reduced. They'll still have plutonium etc. and radiation, but the containers will be not that "hot" at all.
IMHO, the Yucca solution is vastly overengineered and well within what is safe, and the prospective claimed risks to it are not reasonably based on the facts.
"Waste disposal remains one of the key problems for nuclear power's engineers to overcome. When I was in grad school, no one in the world had a viable long-term solution. Yucca may be, then again, it may not."
Er, what Bush is announcing *is* in fact a reasonable solution to this issue.
--- this is a very WISE point. The issue with Iran today is that publicly they declare they want nuclear energy. Privately we know they want weapons. We need to give the world access to energy without the technology of weapons, and the way to do that is for nuclear powers like the U.S. be the 'nuclear fuel cycle' handler. France is already doing this for e.g. Japan. This is the path to proliferation-proof nuclear energy worldwide. It also helps us address any global environmental and terrorist risk issues. Far better for the U.S. to be tracking this than for other countries to be 'owning' it on their own.
In addition to that, it is a highly reactive and toxic heavy metal, even without radioactivity as part of the equation.
The problem is not the small amounts, but a concentration far beyond what would normally occur in nature. It may not take 10,000 years, either, the ice sheets were pretty much gone here in just a couple of thousand.
I agree with the concept that processing spent fuel to get more fuel does address the waste problem--it is the equivalent of recycling.
As I said, I am not against nuclear power. Processing 'spent' fuel currently in questionable storage areas is a good idea--more fuel, less waste to inter. In the short term this is a solution, but it is a remedy, and not a cure.
These are problems which need to be addressed, especially if we are going to expand our capability.
"Plutonium is slower to decay, and thus less active per microgram, but if enough is assembled, it is remains dangerous longer."
But we were talking about them being embedded with other material in well-sealed canisters in Yucca. It's not highly concentrated and in a stable environment. I dont see a scenario of the canisters being compromise as credible. These are huge thick-walled sealed things that are immune to huge pressure and temperature impacts, let alone what can happen inside a cold, dry mountain.
Go "Nucular" W!
;o)
It was rhetorical. They'd kill Bambi before they give Dubya credit for something.
Study shows Israeli elderberry extract effective against avian flu
FReepmail me if you want on or off my health and science ping list.
Do you mean you let us dispense all that wisdom for nothing? :-)
With so many nations fight for nuclear power, maybe we should just go with it and try to corner the market.
"And talking about the great religon that is Islam, I'm still waiting for my Achmed computer, or a "Mohamed Inside" chip. "
Funny!
Does that computer come equipped with a sharp knife to slice off someone's head if they type the wrong thing.
Or technology to make sure women wear a veil to operate it?
Wisdom spent is never for naught. Even a discussion where all parties agree can be envigorating and enlightening. ;)
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