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 Friday during a webinar organized by the Department of Energy. Uranium-235 used to power nuclear reactors leaves uranium-238 and plutonium as byproducts. Advanced reactors in development today could put those materials to use, 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 at 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.”
The United States has not had any commercial reprocessing operation since the 1970s. Along with cost, one concern is the potential proliferation of plutonium extracted during reprocessing.