Some of the United States’ radioactive spent fuel could be recycled for use in advanced nuclear power reactors, but the nation still needs a long-term repository for the waste, according to the head of the industry policy organization.
Used nuclear fuel retains 95% of its original energy, Nuclear Energy Institute President and CEO Maria Korsnick noted May 29 during a webinar organized by the Department of Energy. Uranium-235 used to power nuclear reactors leaves uranium-238 and plutonium as byproducts that could be recycled and put to use in advanced reactors in development today, she indicated.
The head of DOE’s Office of Nuclear Energy, Assistant Secretary Rita Baranwal, has regularly touted reprocessing as an option to help address the long impasse over disposition of the domestic stockpile of spent fuel. Congress gave that job to the Energy Department in 1982, but the agency still does not have anywhere to put the waste – now at over 80,000 metric tons of used fuel, spread across dozens of locations around the nation. The Trump administration tried in three consecutive budget plans to resume licensing of the planned repository under Yucca Mountain, Nev., but gave that up in its fiscal 2021 proposal in favor of $27.5 million for early work on interim storage of used fuel.
“So, we really need a long-term sort of integrated strategy,” Korsnick said. “We do not reprocess fuel in the United States today, and today as you know from lots of conversations, we don’t even have the long-term geologic repository. At the end of the day we will need a long-term repository. It’s an interesting conversation about closing that fuel cycle should we choose to reprocess.”
There are upward of 60 advanced nuclear reactors in different stages of development in North America. “More than a few” of those should be able to use reprocessed fuel, according to Rod McCullum, NEI senior director for used fuel and decommissioning.
“It is difficult to say at this point how much used fuel could be recycled, and it depends on how many advanced reactors are deployed that use recycled used fuel,” he said by email Thursday. “The use of used fuel in advanced reactors can result in higher utilization of uranium and is expected to reduce the fuel costs of advanced reactors.”
The United States’ sole commercial reprocessing plant operated at West Valley, N.Y., from 1966 to 1972. There have been a few attempts since then to stand up a new facility, but none came to fruition. The leading obstacles in recent decades have been presidential opposition during the Ford and Carter administrations, costs, and concerns over potential proliferation of weapon-usable plutonium extracted during reprocessing.
“What we need to balance in the conversation around reprocessing is doing it safely, going back to those proliferation concerns,” Korsnick said during the webinar. “But at the same token. If you think about the fuel that we use today, there’s still 95% good energy in that thing we call used fuel. It’s just been transformed.”
Baranwal and other officials at the Office of Nuclear Energy have discussed initial DOE efforts to re-evaluate the potential for reprocessing. The assistant secretary, a materials engineer with a background in nuclear fuel, has also discussed potential opportunities for the United States to employ foreign facilities to reprocess U.S. spent fuel. The Energy Department this week did not respond to a query regarding those efforts.
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission spent a decade, through 2016, considering potential updates to federal regulations for licensing domestic reprocessing facilities. The process was spurred by seeming industry interest in reprocessing early in the century, but was suspended four years ago in part as the interest appeared to have faded. The agency is expected by early next year to decide whether to resume the proceeding.
