[ RadSafe ] Reprocessing

[Jaro]

I think its a mistake to look just at economics and profitability.
If we were to do that consistently, there would be very few recycling
programs in general, because in many cases its easier to make new things,
from fresh stock, than to collect, sort and process recycled material.
I think that economics counts only to the extent that the cost of a
recycling scheme should not be very high in the global picture.
And that's certainly the case with nuclear fuel reprocessing and MOX
manufacture, within the nuclear industry as a whole.
In terms of cents per kWh of energy produced & sold by the industry, a
reprocessing program would add a very small premium -- much like the
premiums for SNF disposal or liability insurance.
So the question comes down to "why bother doing it at all ?"
Probably for environmental reasons -- like other recycling programs, aiming
to reduce garbage landfills.
With SNF, separating the FPs and vitrifying them for disposal not only cuts
the volume of waste (although perhaps not the size of the disposal facility,
due to decay heat limitations), it probably also allows the design of the
storage facility to be limited to a ~1E3y design life, instead of ~1E6y.
And if we're convinced that we're eventually going to have a complete
nuclear fuel cycle, including breeder reactors anyway, then we might as well
get started with the reprocessing industry now and stock the separated fuel,
like the gold treasure at Fort Knox, for future use. In terms of value of
the energy content, the nuke store would likely be worth much more than the
gold.
Of course there's no big rush -- especially since the large stocks of PWR
SNF can be recycled much cheaper than using the PUREX process, by initially
using the DUPIC process instead: The "Direct Use of Pwr fuel In CANDUs" uses
a dry process to refabricate the SNF pellets into new ones, which are
suitable for use in CANDU reactors without any chemical separation.
If the issues weren't so politicized, we could probably come to some sort of
agreement whereby the US pays Canada to take their spent fuel, which is then
used in CANDUs to produce electricity, sold back to the US (ie. Canada makes
money twice).
Canada would then be left with the responsibility of long-term storage of
the spent fuel in its national repository -- which appears destined to be a
retrievable type (according to the Canadian Nuclear Waste Management
Organization - NWMO - http://www.nwmo.ca/ ), allowing for the a deferred
program of chemical reprocessing at some future time.
Then when chemical reprocessing becomes profitable because of uranium price
increases, Canada makes money a third time, by selling MOX back to the US
:-)

 Jaro
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