Reply #12: Union of Concerned Scientists postion on Reprocessing of Plutonium

[JohnWxy]

http://www.ucsusa.org/global_security/nuclear_terrorism/extracting-plutonium-from-nuclear-reactor-spent-fuel.html

They make a number of points, one being security concerns, but here is an extract re the cost issue:

Reprocessing would be very expensive.

Reprocessing and the use of plutonium as reactor fuel is also far more expensive than using uranium fuel and disposing of the spent fuel directly—even if the fuel is only reprocessed once. In the United States, some 55,000 tons of nuclear waste have already been produced, and existing reactors add some 2,000 tons of spent fuel annually. Based on the experience of other countries, a commercial scale reprocessing facility with an annual throughput of about 1,000 tons of spent fuel would cost anywhere from $5 billion to $20 billion to build. A facility with twice that capacity would be needed to process the new spent fuel produced; taking into account economies of scale, it would cost from $7.5 to $30 billion, excluding operating costs. A second facility would be needed to also reprocess the existing spent fuel over a period of some 30 years.