The American Nuclear Society is urging the federal government to proceed with a moribund update to regulations on recycling of spent fuel from nuclear power plants.
“While no new reprocessing facilities are planned in the United States at this time, this in itself should not be the rationale for suspending rulemaking,” ANS Executive Director and CEO Craig Piercy wrote in a May 28 letter to officials at the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. “Rulemaking is a deliberative process, and it is important to establish a comprehensive regulatory framework prior to any license application being submitted.”
The 10,000-member professional organization has in policy papers supported minimization of waste to strengthen the domestic and global nuclear industries, and specifically recycling to reclaim some portion of the 95% of untapped energy in spent fuel, Piercy wrote.
During a meeting in March, the NRC said it expects in early 2021 to recommend a potential path forward for the spent fuel reprocessing rulemaking, which was suspended in 2016. It is currently unfunded.
If reactivated, the intent is to augment current rules for used fuel reprocessing plants. “These requirements would provide an effective, transparent, and efficient approach to licensing and regulating a reprocessing facility,” according to the web page for the suspended rulemaking. “The scope of this rulemaking would affect the licensees and applicants of nuclear reprocessing facilities.”
Radioactive waste has been building up in the United States since the start of the Atomic Age. There is now more than 80,000 metric tons of used fuel in temporary storage, mostly on-site at the nuclear power plants where it was generated.
The United States’ sole commercial nuclear fuel reprocessing plant, at West Valley, N.Y., shut down in 1972 after just six years of operations. A handful of other projects never achieved liftoff.