(National Academy of Sciences) Panel Urges End to Nuke Waste Proposal

[jpak]

http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5iSLlBw3kZpoIP0Hqr4-ZZ4BTbsygD8SJ3V0O3

WASHINGTON (AP) — A panel of the National Academy of Sciences urged President Bush on Monday to abandon an ambitious plan to resume nuclear waste reprocessing that is the heart of the administration's push to expand the civilian use of nuclear power.

A 17-member panel of the Academy's National Research Council said the proposed Global Nuclear Energy Partnership, or GNEP, has not been adequately peer reviewed and is banking on reprocessing technology that hasn't been proven, or isn't expected to be ready in the time the administration envisions.

The report, released Monday, said GNEP research is taking money and focus away from other nuclear research programs and efforts to speed the construction of new nuclear power plants.

"All committee members agree that the GNEP program should not go forward and that it should be replaced by a less aggressive research program," said the panel. It said if the administration proceeds as planned there will be "significant technical and financial risks."

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[bananas]

1. FAS came to the same conclusion

This is going to be an expensive boondoggle:
"I have argued that the goals of GNEP, while scientifically possible and perhaps someday economically justifiable, are decades premature."
"DOE may be trying to create facts on the ground, quite literally by pouring concrete, before the end of the Bush administration"

http://www.fas.org/blog/ssp/2007/10/national_academy_of_science_report_calls_for_putting_the_brakes_on_the_global_nuclear_energy_partnership_gnep_program.php

National Academy of Science Report Calls for Putting the Brakes on the Global Nuclear Energy Partnership (GNEP) Program.

This afternoon, a committee of the National Research Council, a research arm of the National Academy of Science, issued a report that is extremely critical of the Global Nuclear Energy Partnership, or GNEP, an administration plan to restart separating plutonium from used commercial nuclear reactor fuel, something the United States has not done for three decades. I have argued that the goals of GNEP, while scientifically possible and perhaps someday economically justifiable, are decades premature. I am relieved to discover that the committee report comes to essentially the same conclusion.

What has been most remarkable about the GNEP program is not simply the ambitious technical goals it sets, rather it is the extraordinary urgency with which the program is promoted. Currently, the GNEP program is planning on moving basically from lab-bench scale experiments to essentially commercial scale operation without intermediate pilot programs and engineering development. Sort of the missile defense approach to plutonium reprocessing. But the press office summary of the report states that “…the technologies required for achieving GNEP's goals are too early in development to justify DOE's accelerated schedule for construction of commercial facilities that would use these technologies…” Except for the political calendar—DOE may be trying to create facts on the ground, quite literally by pouring concrete, before the end of the Bush administration—I cannot figure out what motivates the big rush.

<snip>

And this is not a group of anti-nuclear tree-huggers. The report goes on to review the DOE’s nuclear reactor research program and, while it notes pluses and minuses in various programs, the committee strongly and clearly supports a robust research and development effort in nuclear power. Even a group generally sympathetic to nuclear power isn’t sold on GNEP.

<snip>

Posted by Ivan Oelrich on October 29, 2007 03:49 PM | Permalink

[NNadir]

2. The National Research Council Published a Comprehensive Report

some years ago, called "Nuclear Wastes, Technologies for Separations and Transmutation" (Nationl Academy Press, 1996) that reviewed fuel reprocessing technologies, including many pyrochemical methods. I have the full report in print, and have been through it many times. It recommends modest funding for transmutation and separation research, but basically says that it isn't a big priority.

One can, of course, especially if one is a mindless anti-nuke, misconstrue what these things say. In any case, the anti-nuke religion cannnot produce a single person injured by spent nuclear fuel. Right now the South African coal industry is thanking the anti-nuke industry for its wonderful sales pitch to Germany, noting that the Germans couldn't care less about dangerous fossil fuel treatment, which consists of dumping dangerous fossil fuel waste directly into the atmosphere.

There is NOT ONE anti-nuke who has a realistic strategy for stopping dangerous fossil fuel waste dumping, which actually kills millions around the year each year. They couldn't care less.

All of the difficulties with nuclear energy need not be solved immediately for it to be vastly better than everything else. It merely need better than everything else, which it is. It is, by far, the world's largest form of greenhouse gas free energy there is, and the little anti-nuke religion opposes it.

[jpak]

3. Here the conclusions from the Executive Summary of the 1996 report

OVERALL CONCLUSIONS

The committee found no evidence that applications of advanced S&T have sufficient benefit for the U.S. HLW program to delay the development of the first permanent repository for commercial spent fuel. The committee believes that the thermal neutron flux of a LWR and the fast flux of an ALMR could be used to transmute the TRU isotopes in spent reactor fuel. If the proposed ATW could operate with the currently proposed characteristics, its thermal flux would also be effective in the transmutation of the TRUs. The fission products 99Tc and 129I could also be transmuted by either the LWR or the ATW. The high thermal flux of the ATW would be an advantage in this process. Although a significant fraction (90 to 99%) of many of the most troublesome isotopes could be transmuted, this reduction of key isotopes is not complete enough to eliminate all the process streams containing HLW, so the need for a HLW repository is not eliminated. However, the total HLW storage capacity required would be reduced. Transmutation, thus, would have little effect on the need for the first repository.

In view of the above, the committee concluded that the once-through LWR fuel cycle should not be abandoned. Further, this has the advantage of preserving the option to retrieve energy resources from the wastes for an extended period of time. This can be achieved by adopting a strategy that will not eliminate access to the nuclear fuel component of the waste for a reasonable period of time, say about 100 years, or by preserving easy access to the repository for a prescribed period of time, or by extending the operating period of the repository.

A reason for supporting continued use of the once-through fuel cycle is that it is more economical under current conditions. Some analysts predict that future demand for uranium—and as a consequence its price—may increase to a point where recycling becomes economically competitive. Should this happen, the choice of once-through fuel cycle would have to be reexamined (see Appendix F).

The committee concludes that over the next decade the United States should undertake a sustained but modest and carefully focused research and development program on selected S&T technologies, with emphasis on improved separations processes for separating LWR and transmuter fuels beyond the existing plutonium and uranium extraction (PUREX) process and for fuels containing more actinide elements and selected fission products. These conclusions apply for either the continuing or phase out modes of the S&T systems.

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Just so no one "misconstrues" things...

[NNadir]

4. Yeah so?

Apparently the National Research Council found that things should proceed as they have proceeded.

They hardly sound like the religious retards at Greenpeace. For instance, where would find a retard at Greenpeace making this statement:

In view of the above, the committee concluded that the once-through LWR fuel cycle should not be abandoned. Further, this has the advantage of preserving the option to retrieve energy resources from the wastes for an extended period of time. This can be achieved by adopting a strategy that will not eliminate access to the nuclear fuel component of the waste for a reasonable period of time, say about 100 years, or by preserving easy access to the repository for a prescribed period of time, or by extending the operating period of the repository.

A reason for supporting continued use of the once-through fuel cycle is that it is more economical under current conditions.

But, this is just a report. The primary consideration of the report is economics specifically short term economics, the kind of short term thinking that makes obscene statements about the year 2050 - when most people here will be dead - about some bullshit renewable energy program that didn't happen in the last 50 years, when bullshiters like the Rio Tinto fraud Amory Lovins started talking about wind energy storage with compressed air, for instance.

Five hundred billion tons of dangerous fossil fuel later, most of Amory Lovins concerns amount to reeling in payoffs from corporate giants who want to delude the preternaturally gullible about how "green" they are.

In fact, I am secure enough in my ideas that I don't do "appeal to authority arguments." I couldn't care less what Amory Lovins has to say, or Robert F. "let's put gas terminals off the SoCal coast while opposing wind off the Nantucket coast" Kennedy says.

I have my own ideas.

I believe there is sufficient and necessary justification for a serious investment in nuclear fuel recycling. I believe that nuclear energy is the only for of climate change gas free energy that can get to 100 exajoules in the next 20 years, but that such a program demands fuel recycling. The main reason that I reject the NRC conclusions is that I do not elevate the immediate short term consumerist bullshit over the rights of future generations. I believe it is our moral responsibility to leave the next generation as much uranium and thorium as is possible. They will need it every bit as much as we do.

In short, I argue that the NRC report is wrong because the philosophical assumptions are wrong. It is not always about being cheap, although nuclear energy is, by far, the cheapest form of climate change gas free energy there is.

The entire 1996 NRC council report is, of course, available on line, like most NRC reports, and can be read by anyone with a decent scientific education - automatically excluding the entire anti-nuke religion/industry.

http://www.nap.edu/catalog.php?record_id=4912#toc

I have found it convenient to have a paper copy of this work, which gives a pretty good overview of available technologies, even if the conclusions are dubious.