[ RadSafe ] Washington Post Article: Nuclear Energy Plan Would Use Spent Fuel

[John Jacobus]

The original can be found at
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/01/25/AR2006012502229.html

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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."

Advocates use the word "recycling" to describe an
advanced form of reprocessing that, instead of
separating plutonium that can be used in bombs from
spent fuel, would produce a mixed-oxide fuel too
radioactive for terrorists to handle. Such fuel,
called MOX, could be used in special reactors that
exist in France but not in the United States.

Edwin Lyman, a senior scientist with the Union of
Concerned Scientists, a nonprofit think tank that
studies environmental and security issues, said U.N.
nuclear inspectors would not make a distinction
between that material or the kind of separated
plutonium the world is worried Iran might get.

"We think they are putting a fig leaf on it by calling
it proliferation-resistant and saying that it's not
really reprocessing, so concerns about proliferation
risks won't be valid," he said. "But if we develop
something that we call proliferation-resistant and it
really isn't, then other countries are going to claim
rights to this technology. If it's really
proliferation-resistant, would we let Iran have it?"

The fuel proposal is part of a broader push by the
president for domestic and global nuclear energy. With
worldwide energy demands on the rise and U.S. reliance
on foreign oil increasing, Bush has held out nuclear
power as a solution that will not affect global
warming. "We ought to have more nuclear power in the
United States of America," Bush said in a speech last
week in Loudoun County. "It's clean, it's renewable,
it's safer than it ever was in the past."

In a modern version of the Atoms for Peace program
during President Dwight D. Eisenhower's
administration, officials said the administration
envisions helping developing countries build small
nuclear reactors that would produce about 5 to 10
percent of the energy generated by a typical reactor
now on line in the United States. Some in Congress
believe a global nuclear energy program is aimed at
aiding the U.S. effort to build an alliance with
India, which is eager for U.S. civilian nuclear
technology.

Two senior U.S. officials traveled last week to
several countries, including Japan and Russia, to
brief them about the initiative. At one session,
according to a source who was present, the
administration officials said the United States has
finally moved on from the Three Mile Island nuclear
incident in 1979 that paralyzed the industry for
years.

Bush has been briefed on the plan but has not given
his final approval while diplomats consult with other
nations, a senior administration official said. Energy
Secretary Samuel W. Bodman hinted at the initiative in
a November speech at the Carnegie Endowment for
International Peace.

"The world will need much more energy in coming
decades," he said, citing projections showing global
demand increasing as much as 50 percent by 2025. "How
do we meet this demand? How do we do it in a way that
leaves all the nations of the earth safer and more
secure? The search for answers to these questions
increasingly points in one direction: nuclear energy."

Rather than just provide nuclear fuel to other
countries that want to have their own reactors, Bodman
suggested, the United States would also take back the
fuel once it has been spent. "In the longer term, we
see fuel-cycle states offering cradle-to-grave
fuel-cycle services, leasing fuel for power reactors
and then taking it back for reprocessing and ultimate
disposition."

The main purpose for reprocessing spent fuel is to
extract the radioactive plutonium within it and use
that to fuel a reactor. But the process is considered
dangerous, and many countries gave up civilian
reprocessing years ago.

Officials briefed on the Bush plan said $250 million
-- less than requested by the Energy Department --
will be included in the fiscal 2007 budget in a down
payment on what they expect to be billions of dollars
of spending. Among other things, it would pay for a
pilot plant, possibly at the department's Savannah
River facility in South Carolina, to test chemical
reprocessing. If the program goes forward as planned,
the domestic nuclear industry stands to reap hundreds
of millions of dollars.

U.S. officials said they are interested in developing
reactors that would not produce spent fuel that could
be accessed by recipient countries. One model is a
self-contained reactor that cannot be opened, is never
refueled and is removed when it runs out of energy.
Another, known as a pebble-bed reactor, has been under
development in Germany and South Africa and likewise
would not have fuel that could be used for weapons.

Staff writer Justin Blum contributed to this report.

© 2006 The Washington Post Company

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"Never write when you can talk. Never talk when you can nod. And never put anything in an email."  - Eliot Spitzer, New York state attorney general

-- John
John Jacobus, MS
Certified Health Physicist
e-mail:  crispy_bird at yahoo.com

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