Reuse of spent nuclear fuel urged

Aug 24 - McClatchy-Tribune Regional News - Cliff Hightower Chattanooga Times/Free Press, Tenn.

The only way to address global warming is through nuclear power, and reprocessing nuclear waste would solve the problem of what to do with contaminated material, U.S. Rep. Zach Wamp said Thursday.

"Over 80 percent of France's electricity is nuclear power," Rep. Wamp, R-Tenn., said. "What do they do with the waste? They don't bury it. They turn it back into energy and reprocess it."

Rep. Wamp, of Chattanooga, toured the Watts Bar Nuclear Plant in Spring City on Thursday and held a news conference afterward touting an experimental process that takes nuclear waste and burns it as energy.

Tennessee Valley Authority officials said the U.S. Department of Energy has four proposals for demonstrations of nuclear waste reprocessing. One of the proposals involves TVA, officials said.

"You have to accept nuclear power," Rep. Wamp said. "It is zero emissions. It is no carbon emissions."

Dr. Edwin Lyman, a senior staff scientist for the Union of Concerned Scientists in Washington, D.C., said Thursday that while proponents of reprocessing nuclear power make it sound good, it is a "bad idea" because it creates a possible security risk and actually develops more waste.

During reprocessing, plutonium is separated from uranium, creating weapons-grade material, he said. That material could be stolen by terrorists and made into a nuclear bomb, Dr. Lyman said.

"The U.K. has piled up 100 tons of plutonium, and that's the equivalent of tens of thousands of nuclear bombs," he said.

Reprocessing also creates more waste because any chemicals or materials used become waste, he said. Plus, any fuel made from reprocessing is not as desirable as the original, he said.

Rep. Wamp said there are 103 commercial nuclear reactors online right now and 140 need to go online to address future U.S. energy needs. Reusing spent fuel from reactors would cut nuclear waste by 80 percent, he said.

But in order to do that, a congressional act would need to be passed, he said.

"It's not in our national policy," Rep. Wamp said.

In Oak Ridge, Tenn., Department of Energy contractor BWXT already converts weapons-grade nuclear materials into fuel used by TVA at the Browns Ferry Nuclear Plant.

Georgie Dials, director of the Y-12 plant in Oak Ridge and a former director of the DOE's Yucca Mountain Repository in Nevada, said the reprocessing done in Oak Ridge highlights the potential to recapture more energy from spent nuclear fuel.

"There's a lot of energy still left in the spent fuel (in commercial nuclear power plants), and if we are moving toward a nuclear future, it would certainly make sense to consider more reprocessing," Mr. Dials told the Chattanooga Times Free Press editorial board in July.

Mike Bradley, spokesman for Oak Ridge National Laboratory, said the lab received funding two months ago for a small reprocessing project. Dana Christensen, associate director for energy and engineering sciences at ORNL, said the project is in conjunction with President Bush's Global Nuclear Energy Partnership, an initiative seeking to expand nuclear energy and reduce waste.

Mr. Christensen said the United States has 600,000 tons of nuclear waste, and 90 percent theoretically could be reused. The toxicity of the waste decreases in reprocessing, he said. So, while there might be waste generated, it does not pose the problems of the original waste, he said.

He said U.S. Department of Energy officials are working on a secure tracking system for the separated plutonium.

Staff writer Dave Flessner contributed to this story.

E-mail Cliff Hightower at chightower@timesfreepress.com