The Department of Energy’s recent solicitation for nuclear lifecycle hubs creates opportunities to better address the back-end of the fuel cycle, several nuclear officials said during a Thursday webinar.
The solicitation, published Jan. 28 meant to gauge states’ interest in hosting what DOE calls a “nuclear lifecycle campus” that could include fuel fabrication, uranium enrichment and disposal of waste. The hubs could also support a potential advanced reactor and a co-located data center.
Several states have already inquired about DOE’s request for information (RFI).
During a Thursday Energy Communities Alliance webinar, Curtis Roberts, Orano USA vice president of communications, said it is exciting to see the federal government seeking to centralize multiple aspects of the nuclear fuel lifecycle in one location. Orano USA, the U.S. subsidiary of France-based Orano, operates in several parts of the fuel cycle, including fuel recycling.
Other panelists, Rod Baltzer, CEO of Deep Isolation, and Bill Goodwin, Oklo chief legal and strategy officer, found it interesting how the RFI approached the back-end. The panelists said waste management, in means of recycling/reprocessing and disposal, was at the forefront of the RFI.
Deep Isolation, based in Berkeley, Calif., is a company currently developing deep borehole disposal technology. The Santa Clara, Calif. nuclear company Oklo, is developing a reactor under DOE’s pilot reactor program. Oklo has also announced plans to construct a nuclear fuel recycling facility in Oak Ridge, Tenn.
“When we [Deep Isolation] saw the request for information come out [and] focus on the back end and looking at the disposition of fuel, we thought this was a really good opportunity,” Baltzer said. “It finally kind of started the discussion on the back end.”
During the webinar, panelists agreed that states should consider and value the upside of having a permanent repository as a part of a lifecycle hub.
Goodwin said states should consider at least a regional repository because a long-term solution “changes the game” for something that remains unresolved on a national level. Through taking on waste, states will be economically rewarded and spur growth in new nuclear generation, he added.
“Long-term storage is essentially the key that unlocks huge economic growth because it solves the most, or at least dramatically reduces a lot of the most intractable aspects of the community support problem,” Goodwin said. “I think that’s a reason why that was so heavily focused in the RFI because that’s how this administration views long-term storage.”
While recycling and reprocessing are mentioned often in the RFI, Baltzer said reprocessing will not solve all of the nation’s nuclear waste problems. A deep geologic repository is still needed, he said.
“It [the repository] doesn’t have to be large, and it can definitely be modular and tailored to the community and states [it] impacts and what they need there, but there is a really good economic opportunity to make sure those future liabilities are maintained and controlled.”