Assistant Energy Secretary for Nuclear Energy Rita Baranwal suggested Friday that a foreign entity could be used for recycling of U.S. spent nuclear fuel.
“If we don’t build a recycling plant in the United States, that’s OK, there are other entities that certainly could do this for us,” Baranwal said during a webinar hosted by the American Nuclear Society.
Since taking office in July 2019, Baranwal has regularly discussed reprocessing as an option for addressing the nation’s stockpile of used fuel from commercial nuclear power plants. There is now more than 80,000 metric tons of the material spread across 70 locations in 34 states, with more than 2,000 metric tons generated each year.
The United States has not had a commercial reprocessing operation since the 1970s.
As she has previously, Baranwal noted that sent fuel has used only 5% of its energy potential. If the United States wants to be competitive in the global market for export of nuclear fuel, it must be able to manage the material once it is used and repatriated, she said.
“I need to have something to do with that fuel when I take it back. And if I can’t store it in a place like Yucca Mountain, I need to be able to do something with it, and that is one of the motivators for looking at recycling,” according to Baranwal.
Baranwal said her team at the Office of Nuclear Energy has determined there are no statutory or legal prohibitions on spent-fuel reprocessing and has studied how it is conducted in other nations.
The 1982 Nuclear Waste Policy Act required the Department of Energy to by Jan. 31, 1998, begin disposal of spent fuel and high-level radioactive waste from defense nuclear operations. The agency does not yet have a federal license for the congressional mandated repository at Yucca Mountain, Nev., with the proceeding defunded a decade ago by the Obama administration. The Trump administration asked Congress in three consecutive budget proposals to appropriate money to resume licensing, but was rebuffed each time.
The White House relinquished that approach for the upcoming fiscal 2021, instead requesting $27.5 million for a program emphasizing centralized interim storage of used fuel.
