A Proposal to Recycle Nuclear Waste Draws Mixed Reviews, Raising Concerns about Weapons Proliferation

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Illustration by Hadley Hooper

Americans recycle glass bottles, aluminum cans, and newspapers. The Bush Administration now wants the United States to recycle spent nuclear power plant fuel so that it can be used again. Proponents say recycling would reduce nuclear waste and head off the depletion of uranium reserves. Critics counter that recycling will separate plutonium from spent fuel so that it could easily be stolen and used by terrorists to make nuclear weapons.  Excerpted from the session “The Nuclear Fuel Cycle: Reprocessing vs. Once-through,” here are two views on the subject.

James Laidler, Argonne Distinguished Fellow, Argonne National Laboratory
Right now we have 443 nuclear power plants in operation worldwide. We expect that by 2050, there will be something like 1,100 nuclear power plants in operation. That has a consequence. If we don’t do recycling, we will most certainly deplete our uranium reserves. There is a finite reserve of uranium.
 A lot of people say we can always recover uranium from seawater. Well, there are a few parts per billion of uranium in seawater. I just don’t see where the cost of recovering uranium from seawater is economical.  
 
Reprocessing is the chemical treatment of spent nuclear fuel, which separates valuable components from the rest. Reprocessing would be conducted under the proposed Global Nuclear Energy Partnership (GNEP). So far 21 nations, including the United States, have signed GNEP’s statement of principles.
 
Under GNEP, nations such as the United States would provide nuclear fuel to developing countries to use in their nuclear power plants. Then the spent fuel would be returned to the supplier countries for recycling. The reason we want to take it back is that spent fuel contains nearly one percent plutonium. We believe each fuel cycle must be under international control and not at risk for nuclear weapons proliferation.
 
Under the arrangement, developing counties would agree to forego technologies that are likely to lead to the production of nuclear weapons material. In exchange, they would be given a supply of uranium dioxide fuel at a competitive cost. This allows them to avoid the cost of a nuclear infrastructure. They don’t have to build enrichment plants, reprocessing plants, or a waste depository.
 
James Laidler is responsible for technical coordination of international fuel cycle activities under the Global Nuclear Energy Partnership at Argonne National Laboratory.

Edwin Lyman, Senior Scientist, Union of Concerned Scientists
The problem is that not everything is worth recycling, and recycling is certainly not a good thing in the case of spent nuclear fuel. This is an example where there is a lot of hype. But if you start examining it, you will see that there’s much less than meets the eye.  
 
Reprocessing of nuclear fuel sounds simple. But we really want to look at what it means to reprocess. As we’ve heard before, plutonium is generated as a byproduct of reprocessing. A single assembly of fuel-spent nuclear fuel rods has about ten pounds of plutonium. That would be just about enough to make a crude nuclear weapon.
 
The good news is that it’s not easy to steal a spent fuel assembly. It weighs about half a ton. It’s radioactive. You can’t approach it. These assemblies can’t be transported without a heavy radiation shield, and that makes it less credible that a terrorist could steal it.
 
So without reprocessing, the plutonium is locked up in spent fuel. But reprocessing extracts plutonium in concentrated form. And in that form, it doesn’t exhibit the same radiation hazard that spent fuel does. It does not have the high-energy gamma rays that produce penetrating whole-body radiation. So reprocessing greatly increases the risk that plutonium could be stolen.
 
The typical large reprocessing plant would reprocess 2,000 tons of fuel a year, which would yield 20 tons of plutonium a year. These plants cannot account for the diversion and theft of small quantities of plutonium. It’s impossible.  
 
Edwin Lyman is senior staff scientist in the Global Security Program at the Union of Concerned Scientists.