Former US DOE official attacks GNEP on nuclear waste risks, cost

Washington (Platts)--23Apr2007

The US Congress should halt funding for the Global Nuclear Energy
Partnership, at least until the Department of Energy can provide
well-supported estimates on the waste the fuel-cycle initiative is expected to
produce, a former official with DOE said Monday.

In a report and a conference call with reporters, Robert Alvarez, a
senior policy adviser to the Secretary of Energy during the Clinton
administration, said the technical and financial risks of the GNEP have not
been fully evaluated and that Congress likely would "walk away" from the
program if it realized those risks.

GNEP is a long-term, multibillion-dollar program to develop new kinds of
reprocessing plants and fast reactors. While DOE's plan calls for aboveground
storage of GNEP fission products--principally strontium and cesium--for about
300 years, it actually could take 600 years or more for the materials'
radioactivity to drop to levels that would allow them to be stored as
low-level waste, said Alvarez, who now is a senior scholar with the Institute
for Policy Studies.

Also, Alvarez said, spent fuel is about 95% uranium, and DOE might have
to dispose of the uranium as waste rather than turning it into commercial
fuel. That is because of the high cost of removing impurities to meet
commercial fuel standards, he said.

--Daniel Horner, daniel_horner@platts.com