So, is reprocessing in America's future?

["JOHN JACOBUS" <JENDAY1@EMAIL.MSN.COM>]

This appeared in today's Washington Post, and thought I would pass it along.

Personnel, I never knew there was such a difference in cost processing new

ore and spent fuel.

-- John



John Jacobus, MS

Certified Health Physicist

3050 Traymore Lane

Bowie, MD 20715-2024

jenday1@email.msn.com (H)



Nuclear Reprocessing Sets Off Alarms Again

Comment in Bush Plan Re-Energizes Old Debate



By Guy Gugliotta

Washington Post Staff Writer

Monday, July 2, 2001; Page A03



Deep in the Bush administration's energy plan is a reference to an

alternative approach to disposing of radioactive waste from nuclear power

plants. "Reprocessing," the plan asserts, could help alleviate one of the

major drawbacks to nuclear energy.



This statement has set off alarm bells among those concerned about nuclear

proliferation. That's because reprocessing reactor waste can create

plutonium, the raw material for nuclear weapons.



"We're not sure what mischief the new administration is up to here, and

who's pushing it," said Paul Levanthal, president of the anti-reprocessing

Nuclear Control Institute. "Whatever the U.S. does on something like this

really resonates throughout the rest of the world."



If the United States embraces the reprocessing of nuclear waste -- something

it has refused to do for the last 24 years -- it could lead to the

proliferation of technologies that produce plutonium, and boost the amount

of plutonium available around the world. That, critics say, could make it

much more likely that weapons-grade plutonium could fall into the hands of

terrorists or rogue nations.



Administration officials argue that they are sensitive to concerns about

nuclear weapons proliferation, and have no immediate plans to change

long-standing U.S. policies. Their intentions, they say, are merely to solve

the problem of nuclear waste, which is accumulating across the country.



The energy plan said that the administration "will continue to discourage

the accumulation of separated plutonium worldwide," and administration sourc

es said that meant the United States would maintain a national moratorium on

traditional reprocessing, which extracts plutonium from spent fuel.



But at the same time, the plan encouraged research into another kind of

reprocessing, which makes fuel that must be burned in "fast reactors"

potentially capable of creating, or "breeding," more plutonium than they

use. That's what has critics most concerned.



"It sets off a lot of alarm bells," said David Albright, president of the

Institute for Science and International Security, a Washington think tank

specializing in strategies to halt the spread of nuclear weapons.



"The very strange thing is that the question seems to have been opened very

casually by the Cheney plan," added Arjun Makhijani, president of the

Institute for Energy and Environmental Research, another reprocessing

opponent. "The true consequences of this have to be debated, even if you

like nuclear power."



An administration source, who asked not to be quoted by name, said, "Not too

much should be drawn from this," because the Cheney report "in and of itself

is not a change in policy.



"We did not say we wanted to proceed with construction of this [fast]

reactor," the source continued. "We want this research to go forward, but

that's a far cry from saying it will reach fruition. It would be a long way

away."



No government agency or business has ever recycled nuclear waste for

commercial use on U.S. soil, a policy begun when President Jimmy Carter

renounced reprocessing and plutonium breeder research in a secret 1977

executive order.



The order, Presidential Directive 8, was declassified in 1994 and survives

today as President Bill Clinton's Presidential Decision Directive 13. For

reprocessing research to resume, the directive would have to be either

rescinded or reinterpreted. The Bush administration has not yet decided how

to proceed.



Currently only France, the United Kingdom and Russia reprocess spent fuel,

and only France, Belgium, Switzerland and Germany burn the resulting

finished plutonium oxide in nuclear plants.



The limited market is due in part to proliferation concerns. Germany, whose

coalition government includes the Greens party, formally agreed early this

month to phase out nuclear power altogether, and reprocessing has only

limited public support in several other nations.



But the main reason is expense.



Makhijani estimated that France, the world leader in recycling, could

produce a kilogram (2.2 pounds) of recycled fuel for about $6,000, while a

kilo of enriched uranium fuel like that used in U.S. reactors costs about

$1,200.



The chief consequence of reprocessing's poor economics is that over the

years the world has accumulated about 210 tons of commercial -- and

weapons-usable -- plutonium that does not have a market.



"You can't give it away," said Thomas Cochran, who heads the nuclear program

at the Natural Resources Defense Council, a reprocessing opponent. "And if

that's the case, how economic is it to reprocess?"



In traditional reprocessing, spent fuel is dissolved in acid, separating the

uranium, plutonium and other fission products. The uranium can be

re-enriched and recycled. The fission products are encased in glass and

stored. The plutonium is recombined with uranium 238, made into rods and put

into reactors. The fuel is called "mixed oxide," or "mox," and essentially

substitutes plutonium 239 for the fissile uranium 235 in first-generation

fuel.



Clinton's Presidential Decision Directive 13 continues the 24-year

moratorium on a domestic mox reprocessing cycle because of the proliferation

risks associated with isolating plutonium 239. Administration sources said

the Cheney plan endorses this view.



Independently of the energy plan, however, the Bush administration intends

to move forward on a Clinton initiative to enlist Russia in a joint program

to each convert 34 tons of surplus plutonium from nuclear weapons into mox.



If the deal is closed, the United States would make its mox at an Energy

Department facility in South Carolina, and Duke Power, a commercial utility,

would burn it in two reactors in the Charlotte, N.C., area. The Energy

Department will reimburse Duke for plant modifications and sell them mox at

a subsidized price below what Duke would have to pay for enriched uranium

fuel.



Although "this program is not intended to create a plutonium economy," an

Energy Department official said, it remains somewhat controversial because

it requires the United States and its allies to build Russia its first mox

plant, and puts Russia in the plutonium recycling business.



"The mox plant is the very first piece of infrastructure that both U.S. and

Russia are missing for a plutonium economy," Makhijani said. "It is a pretty

big camel's nose issue."



Still, burning weapons-grade plutonium is a policy with many advocates:

"What is the philosophical question here?" asked James Lake, immediate past

president of the American Nuclear Society, which supports reprocessing

research. "My feeling is that burning up weapons is a good thing to do for

world peace."



The search for a proliferation-resistant alternative to mox has led several

nations to consider a recycling technique called "pyroprocessing," mentioned

favorably in the Cheney plan as a way to "reduce waste streams and enhance

proliferation resistance."



In pyroprocessing, spent fuel is recovered as a metal, dissolved in a

metallic salt and passed through an electric current. Lightweight fission

products remain in solution, while the uranium goes to one electrode and

plutonium and heavy metal byproducts go to another, where they are formed

subsequently into fuel rods.



Because the plutonium is never isolated, it is always radioactive, dangerous

and "less and less attractive" to thieves, Lake said. "In theory, you can

recycle tens of times, so that the technology becomes almost renewable."



But for pyroprocessing to work even once, utilities would have to abandon

today's nuclear plants in favor of "fast" reactors that allow neutrons to

move about freely in the core. Fast neutrons are the best way to maintain a

chain reaction among impure plutonium fuel rods.



The trouble with fast reactors, however, is that when the core is surrounded

with a blanket of uranium 238, the neutrons will combine with it to create

more plutonium 239 than the reactor is using. For a rogue state, a fast

breeder of this type can become a virtual plutonium factory.



Advocates point out, however, that even if the Bush administration embraces

the technology, it will take decades to mature, allowing plenty of time to

work out the kinks. "What we do is store [spent] fuel for 20 to 30 years

while we develop an entirely different infrastructure to use the

technology," Lake said.



© 2001 The Washington Post Company





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