WP,pg1: Nuclear Energy Plan Would Use Spent Fuel (break w/ U.S. policy)

[DeepModem Mom]

Nuclear Energy Plan Would Use Spent Fuel
By Peter Baker and Dafna Linzer
Washington Post Staff Writers
Thursday, January 26, 2006; Page A01


The Bush administration is preparing a plan to expand civilian nuclear energy at home and abroad while taking spent fuel from foreign countries and reprocessing it, in a break with decades of U.S. policy, according to U.S. and foreign officials briefed on the initiative.

The United States has adamantly opposed reprocessing spent fuel from civilian reactors since the 1970s because it would produce material that could be used in nuclear weapons. But the Bush program, envisioned as a multi-decade effort dubbed the Global Nuclear Energy Partnership, would invest research money to develop technologies intended to avoid any such risk, the officials said.

The program has been the subject of intense debate within the administration, and although a consensus has been reached about the direction, a senior official said it will not be ready for Bush to announce in his State of the Union address Tuesday. Even the discussion has stirred concerns among nuclear specialists and some members of Congress who consider it an expensive venture that relies on unproven concepts and could increase the danger of proliferation.

The notion of accepting other countries' spent fuel at a time when the United States has had trouble disposing of its own nuclear waste could also prove highly controversial.

But a small initial investment of money has been programmed into the administration's federal budget plan to be sent to Capitol Hill in two weeks. Senate Energy Committee Chairman Pete V. Domenici (R-N.M.) said yesterday that he expects the White House to send accompanying legislation in February....


http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/01/25/AR2006012502229.html?sub=AR

[rfranklin]

1. Guaranteed this is a sweetheart deal for a Bush Pioneer...

For $100,000 they get concessions that end up costing us billions.

[DeepModem Mom]

2. Is anyone here knowledgeable about this issue? nt

[bananas]

27. it's been crossposted to E/E

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=115x39992
jpak Donating Member (1000+ posts) Thu Jan-26-06 11:17 AM
ChimpCo to reprocess foreign spent fuel (crosspost from LBN)
Thought this might stimulate more discussion in E&E....

[papau]

3. Nuclear Energy Plan Would Use Spent Fuel (world send spent fuel to US plan

The Bush Administration will soon introduce a plan to take in spent nuclear fuel from foreign countries for reprocessing domestically, reports the Washington Post. The program, which the Post says could "prove highly controversial" and represents a "break with decades of U.S. policy," will not be ready to be introduced at the State of the Union.


http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/01/25/AR2006012502229_pf.html

Nuclear Energy Plan Would Use Spent Fuel

By Peter Baker and Dafna Linzer

Washington Post Staff Writers Thursday, January 26, 2006; A01

The Bush administration is preparing a plan to expand civilian nuclear energy at home and abroad while taking spent fuel from foreign countries and reprocessing it, in a break with decades of U.S. policy, according to U.S. and foreign officials briefed on the initiative.
The United States has adamantly opposed reprocessing spent fuel from civilian reactors since the 1970s because it would produce material that could be used in nuclear weapons. But the Bush program, envisioned as a multi-decade effort dubbed the Global Nuclear Energy Partnership, would invest research money to develop technologies intended to avoid any such risk, the officials said.

The program has been the subject of intense debate within the administration, and although a consensus has been reached about the direction, a senior official said it will not be ready for Bush to announce in his State of the Union address Tuesday. Even the discussion has stirred concerns among nuclear specialists and some members of Congress who consider it an expensive venture that relies on unproven concepts and could increase the danger of proliferation.

The notion of accepting other countries' spent fuel at a time when the United States has had trouble disposing of its own nuclear waste could also prove highly controversial.
But a small initial investment of money has been programmed into the administration's federal budget plan to be sent to Capitol Hill in two weeks. Senate Energy Committee Chairman Pete V. Domenici (R-N.M.) said yesterday that he expects the White House to send accompanying legislation in February.

"I expect a draft bill from the administration next month on spent nuclear fuel," he said. "I will introduce that bill on behalf of the president, hold a hearing on it and mark it up in committee this spring. I hope it will include a nuclear fuel recycling component. If it doesn't, well, I have been a career-long proponent of nuclear fuel recycling and I intend to pursue it aggressively."<snip>

[mom cat]

4. The assholes now want MORE depleted uranium...guess where

that goes...not into reactors, but into bullets. Someone stop the madness PLEASE!

[Igel]

8. I'm unsure this would produce any DU whatsoever.

It would, however, provide more usable refined uranium for reactors, reducing the need to mine and process more ore (*that* is where DU comes from, the mass of uranium that isn't unstable enough to be used in reactors); if done right would also reduce the mass of material that needs to be stored.

What's left would be high in plutonium and a wide variety of other unstable isotopes. Then again, we've developed a bit of a need for plutonium, it seems. I've fairly sure I read that we've started to reprocess some decommissioned warheads to replenish the national plutonium reserves.

[jpak]

17. DU is produced during uranium enrichment

The current US inventory of depleted (corrosive and toxic) uranium hexafluoride is ~750,000 metric tonnes.

Taxpayers are going to spend ~$4 billion dollars to convert this material to uranium oxide which will be dumped at the Nevada Test site.

How much will the nuclear industry contribute to this program?????

zippo...

on edit:

Reprocessed uranium is unusable - it contains 233U (a gamma emitter) and 236U (a fission poison). It's highly radioactive and needs to be further enriched to boost its 235U content.

Nobody uses reprocessed uranium - not the French or the Brits or the Russians...

[jpak]

21. K&R

n/t

[Igel]

28. I stand partially corrected.

Rummaging in google brings up all kinds of contradictory info, and I think what I thought was at best partially correct and now mostly outdated.

Apparently some 30 reactors in Europe use MOX, derived from reprocessing, but reprocessed uranium is uneconomical because it's cheaper to produce new.

Do you happen to know if the New Horizons' reactor uses all Pu or MOX?

[jpak]

19. The US MOX fuel program is a cash cow for GOP-connected contractors

The DOE is spending billions to build a MOX fuel fabrication plant in SC.

It will use blended-down weapons-grade Pu.

The DOE has to PAY Duke Power (big time GOP contributor) to modify one of its reactors to use the MOX fuel it produces.

Another (VA) nuclear plant operator pulled out of this program because it "wasn't in its best interest" - in this case, the DOE could not even PAY them to use this stuff.

...and there will still be significant quantities of Pu remaining in the spent MOX fuel - that someone (taxpayers) will have to deal with.

It would have been far cheaper and faster and safer to blend-down the Pu, incorporate it into a ceramic matrix and bury it.

But who would profit from that???????

[Botany]

5. We still don't have a place to put our wastes

and now we are getting more?

[papau]

6. We are to get more - but for some reason this will not be in the SOTU

:-(

[NickB79]

10. Reprocessing reduces the amount of waste

The reprocessed waste is burned in reactors over and over until most of the radioactive material is used up. By volume, there will be less waste after several cycles through.

[jpak]

12. Not so

To extract plutonium, fuel rods are crushed and the uranium pellets dissolved in concentrated nitric acid.

Plutonium is then extracted from this solution with an organic solvent.

This process produces enormous volumes of high-level liquid wastes (aqueous and organic) as well as spent fuel debris.

After burn-up, MOX fuel would contain enormous quantities of fission products and large quantities of un-fissioned Pu and U - billions of curies in a large MOX fuel program.

This scam will NOT reduce the quantity of radioactive material - it most certainly will produce MORE hazardous and radioactive waste.

And where is this stuff supposed to go when all is said and done?????

[Nebraska_Liberal]

13. agreed.

The future of American energy independence is in nuclear power. It is the cleanest safest way to produce large amounts of energy. And if you read up on the amount of waste it produces, it is completely manageable, not to mention contained, unlike coal, natural gas, and the like.

[jpak]

16. The US currently imports most of its uranium

The US uranium mining industry has collapsed. Yellowcake production in 1980 was 48 million pounds - today it's only ~2 million pounds.

In 2003, only ~23 million pounds of the ~62 million pounds of yellowcake used by the US nuclear power industry came from domestic sources - and almost all of that was drawn from existing inventories.

When existing inventories are exhausted, the US will have to import virtually all its uranium.

Uranium Overview 1949-2004

http://www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/aer/nuclear.html

The nuclear industry expects global uranium demand to significantly outstrip global supply in the near future...

http://business.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,9069-17351...

Uranium shortage poses threat
By Angela Jameson, Industrial Correspondent

A GLOBAL shortage of uranium could jeopardise plans to build a new generation of nuclear power stations in Britain.

The dearth of uranium will be discussed at the World Nuclear Association’s symposium in London next month and could prove to be a major stumbling block in the nuclear industry’s attempt to have old nuclear power stations replaced with modern reactors.

<snip>

In 2001 the European Commission said that at the current level of uranium consumption, known uranium resources would last 42 years. With military and secondary sources, this life span could be stretched to 72 years. Yet this rate of usage assumes that nuclear power continues to provide only a fraction of the world’s energy supply. If capacity were increased six-fold, then the 72-year supply would last just 12 years.

<end snip>

If the US had to rely solely on domestic uranium supplies, they would be depleted in 25 years.

Nuclear power is an enormously expensive dangerous dead-end technology.

[sandnsea]

23. Radiation groundwater leak in Chicago

Are you sure it's the safest???

[struggle4progress]

24. The industry itself admits it doesn't

What about reprocessing?
John Murawski, Staff Writer

... "From the perspective of waste reduction, it doesn't really give us any benefit," said Felix Killar, senior director of nuclear insurance and fuel supply for the Nuclear Energy Institute, an industry trade group in Washington ...

http://www.newsobserver.com/102/story/388784.html

[jpak]

25. If you want to see how well reprocessing "reduces" the volume

of nuclear waste - just go to Hanford Reservation or Savannah River Site and check out the (leaking) tank farms there.

http://www.ieer.org/reports/cleanup/index.html

http://www.ieer.org/latest/cln-prs2.html

The DOE estimates that it will cost taxpayers $550 billion to clean that mess up - and now they want to make more of this stuff?????

Breathtaking stupdity....

[jpak]

26. Westinghouse is the top contractor at Savannah River Site

and currently oversees the military reprocessing and MOX fuel facilities there.

Westinghouse was also a major participant in Dick Cheney's Energy Task Force scam.

This is the payoff.

[jpak]

7. Commercial reprocessing was a commercial failure in the US

The Nuclear Fuel Services reprocessing plant in West Valley NY produced ~1900 kg of plutonium from 640 metric tonnes of spent reactor fuel. This material was purchased by the AEC for ~$20 million.

It also produced ~600,000 gallons of high level liquid waste that is presently stored in leaking underground tanks.

After the company went under in 1972, custody of the plant (and waste) went to the State of NY and then to the DOE.

It will cost taxpayers an estimated $8 billion dollars to decommission and clean up this facility - making the true cost of the plutonium recovered somewhat more than $4 million per kg.

such a deal

...and who will profit from ChimpCo's new reprocessing scam?????

Can you say Dick Cheney's Energy Task Force?????

[phantom power]

9. If we don't want it, there are many other interested parties...

[daleo]

11. I am guessing the U.S. wants to control this spent fuel

So that no other country can use it for nuclear weapons development.

[ColonelTom]

14. That's my guess too

And my gut reaction is that it's a good idea IF they can come up with a safe storage area for the stuff. That's a mighty big if, though.

[tatertop]

15. I am thinking jpak nailed the true reason in post #4

Follow the money

[DoYouEverWonder]

18. I'd rather legalize industrial hemp first

before we take these ridiculous risks to feed our addictions.

[Massacure]

22. You would need 2000 x 666 miles of hemp to replace oil.

2000 x 2000 for switch grass and hemp is about three times more efficient if I recall.

On top of that, oil supplies less than 2% of electricity in this country. Hemp/algae/corn/whatever would only run cars. Nuclear doesn't run cars, it runs 25% of the electricity grid.

[enough]

20. k&r