Astronuc said:
That little matter of waste storage - LLW, HLW and spent fuel.
Astronuc,
Very timely program / article.
Quoting from the article:
ADAM LEVINE: There's an opportunity to use more than 90 percent of the weight in new fuel.
Recycling / reprocessing reduces the amount of nuclear waste by a large amount. Just
recently we had a poster claiming that recycling / reprocessing creates more waste which
just isn't true. When one can remove 90%+ of the material from the waste stream, there's
no way that "adds" to the waste, regardless of whether your metric is mass or volume.
The anti-nukes persist at trying to propagate that myth.
Then there's the input from the representative of the Natural Resources Defense Council:
PAINE: All the calculations show that recycled fuel is more costly than the most
pessimistic predictions for the future of conventional nuclear fuel.
PAINE: This is the process that was used to separate material for U.S. nuclear weapons.
The USA doesn't need any more Plutonium for nuclear weapons. The USA shutdown
its production reactors decades ago. The USA ceased production of weapons-grade
Plutonium decades ago. The USA has all the Plutonium it needs for weapons. The
experience of the last couple decade of the Cold War was that as new weapons designs
came out; they needed less Plutonium than the current generation. So the USA could
always scavenge any needed Plutonium for new weapons from old weapons that the
new ones would replace. The short of it is that you don't need to be concerned about
the USA making more weapons Plutonium. It doesn't need it; and it doesn't want it.
So why should the USA forgo recycling / reprocessing nuclear waste? The Plutonium
in commercial reactor waste isn't weapons grade; so why would the USA want it for
weapons when the USA has all the weapons Plutonium it wants / needs?
The USA isn't a "proliferation risk" when it comes to reprocessing spent fuel. There's a
concern about OTHER nations reprocessing; but "that ship sailed" back in the the days
of the Carter Administration. The USA decided not to reprocess in order to convince
other nations like Great Britain, France, and Japan not to reprocess. It didn't work.
I wouldn't want reprocessing technology spread to non-nuclear weapons states; where it
could be used by a nascent proliferator. However, just because this technology can be
used for nuclear weapons is no reason that a country like the USA which already has all
the weapons material it needs; should be prevented from using it.
As to Mr. Paine's point about reprocessed fuel being more expensive than virgin fuel;
yes. However, don't we tell people that it's good environmental policy to buy products
that have a high percentage of recycled content, even if it is a bit more expensive?
Don't we tell people that the beneficial environmental effects are WORTH the extra $$$
to have a product that uses recycled material? Mr Paine's group the NRDC makes that
point for consumer products; why does he take issue with it for the nuclear utility industry?
In the long run; I believe the nuclear utility industry would probably be willing to expend
more $$$ for reprocessed fuel because they would take the view that the reduced volume
of waste would be worth the extra $$$ in the long term.
Of course the NRDC is anti-nuclear; and they don't want to see any reduction in the
amount of nuclear waste, or any solution to the nuclear waste problem. Their whole
strategy has been to promote policies to MAXIMIZE the nuclear waste problem in hopes
of using the backlog of waste to shutdown nuclear power in the USA.
Dr. Gregory Greenman
Physicist
