Yes, reprocessing is real and needed, but what's needed most in the United States is better understanding of the complex technology and a corporation to manage development, design, construction and operation of the facility.
Reprocessing is the chemical separation of long-lived, energy/weapon-usable nuclear materials such as plutonium, neptunium and uranium from short-lived, highly radioactive fission products using remote technology within a massive, contained, heavily reinforced concrete structure. It is needed for efficient use of nuclear materials for energy. It is also needed to remove long-lived weapon-usable materials from nuclear waste prior to its permanent disposal, since safeguards cannot be assured for the hundreds of thousands to millions of years needed for full decay of these materials.
Reprocessing is complex chemical engineering technology that is a challenge to the most experienced chemical company and is not understood by most nuclear engineers and nuclear facility managers, and other scientists and engineers not experienced with the challenges of safe, sustained chemical processing of large amounts of materials in a hazardous environment.
The only successful reprocessing in the United States was by Dupont at Hanford, WA during World War II, and at the Savannah River Plant during the Cold War. Use and export of failed, pilot plant reprocessing technology from the Idaho Chemical Processing Plant, which was designed and built under direction of engineers and scientists of Oak Ridge National Laboratory, resulted in failure of nuclear power plant fuel reprocessing in the U.S., nuclear weapons proliferation in India, and problems worldwide.
The U.S. Atomic Energy Commission made changes during its final years to build on the successes and avoid problems with nuclear power plant fuel reprocessing, and Dupont was asked to manage programs for integrated reprocessing and re-fabrication of fuels. Dupont completed designs of integrated facilities that would have avoided problems, but nuclear program leaders of AEC successor organizations reversed the changes and rejected the Dupont designs in order to support development of other invalid laboratory concepts. White House reviews and/or decisions by Presidents Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan were made with no input from persons knowledgeable of reprocessing.
The cost for construction and operation of the Dupont facility and long-term isolation of "glassified" waste would have been much less than the money spent for investigation of Yucca Mountain and development of invalid laboratory concepts.
The U.S. Nuclear Waste Technical Review Board should thoroughly review reprocessing successes and failures and recommend appropriate changes.
Clinton Bastin
Chemical Engineer/Nuclear Scientist
U.S. Department of Energy (retired)
Maybe in some sense reprocessing is "real," but the French, who have the most experience with it, have not had a happy or successful run with it. Just that fact that you point out here, that they have 250 metric tons of plutonium sitting around in "secure" above-ground storage in The Hague should be enough to raise some eyebrows. Does that not concern you?
Getting 20-30 percent more use for the uranium in a still large and much more dangerous form, with no technical solution for its long-term storage in sight should be reason to pause for the most enthusiastic supporter of nuclear. The French people are not at all happy about it and are beginning to speak up.
Jack Zeiger
It's good to see reprocessing being seriously considered. It's always seemed ironic to me that when so many folks appear to be in favor of recycling because of its claimed environmental benefits, that anyone can be against reprocessing of used nuclear fuel, which has considerable remaining energy.
Regarding the article itself, I'm surprised to see the statement that reprocessing would be more expensive than disposal. In order to make such a statement, one would need to know the cost of disposal. Since we have no disposal site, and no viable plan for one, how does anyone know what disposal costs?
Also, why is it assumed the cost of reprocessing would be borne by the taxpayers, when the nuclear utilities have already paid many billions to the government for disposal of spent fuel, an obligation that has not been satisfied? It would seem that if the DOE refuses to take care of the spent fuel disposal, they should use the money collected for that purpose and apply it to reprocessing.
The mention of generator capacity factors is also a bit simplistic, as it is not just production cost that determines capacity factor; it is also dependent on load factor of the regional load. If the load factor is only 55 or 60 percent, it's obvious that not all the generators can have high capacity factors, even if their production costs were all the same, or even zero.
Richard (Rick) Gonzalez, P.E.
Chief Engineer, Transmission Planning
Excel Engineering, Inc.
Copyright © 1996-2006 by CyberTech, Inc. All rights reserved.