Nuclear Fuel Reprocessing: The Mythical Silver Bullet

The United States is grappling with a nuclear waste quandary that exposes one of the most fundamental problems of nuclear power – what do you do with the waste?

There is increasing talk about spent-fuel reprocessing as the silver bullet for this sticky situation. However, there are many reasons that we should pause before biting the bullet on this one.

How it works
Case Study: Sellafield in Great Britain
Security Risks
Economics
Summary

How it works

Reprocessing is simply a process to repackage nuclear waste--not eliminate it. The idea is to reuse some of the energy in a fuel rod after it has gone through its first life cycle. Once the uranium-filled fuel rods that create the nuclear power plant's nuclear reaction are “spent,” they are cooled for a few years at the reactor site and are then transported to a reprocessing plant. At the reprocessing facility the fuel rods are cut up and dissolved in a bath of nitric acid. Uranium and plutonium are then separated out from the other highly radioactive wastes in the nitric acid solution. The remaining solution, which is still high-level waste, is typically blended with glass, a process known as vitrification, and must ultimately be stored in a deep geologic repository, like the one proposed at Yucca Mountain.

In theory, the extracted uranium, which comprises 95% of the volume of the spent fuel rods, could be refabricated into nuclear fuel rods. However, in practice, no significant amount of this reprocessed uranium is reused in countries that currently reprocess, including France and Britain. This is because the extracted uranium is contaminated with highly radioactive and hazardous fission products. The process of turning this contaminated uranium into nuclear fuel rods is prohibitively dangerous for workers and would be extremely expensive. The result is that most of the radioactive materials from spent fuel rods are not reused, and must still go into a deep geologic repository.

The United States' only foray into reprocessing commercial nuclear waste was an environmental and economic diseaster. Between 1966 and 1972, the West Valley reprocessing facility, located in New York State, reprocessed only one-sixth of the spent fuel slated for processing while creating radioactive waste that is threatening evenutal leakage into Lake Erie. Thirty-three years after the facility's closre, taxpayers are still footing the $5.2 billion remediation tab. ¹ Return to top

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Case Study: Britain's Sellafield Plant

England first began reprocessing commercial nuclear materials at the Sellafield site in 1964 and built a second plant at the same site in 1994.¹ The facilities have long been plagued with technical problems, high costs, and public concerns about health and safety.²

One of the most contentious issues is the discharge of radioactive waste into the Irish Sea. Of the hodgepodge of radioactive isotopes released into the sea, plutonium and technetium-99 (Tc-99), which has a half-life of 213,000 years, have raised the greatest concern. Many along the Norwegian coast are particularly distressed that Tc-99 has affected Norway’s seaweed and lobster yield.³

A study funded by the British Department of Health, which examined more than 3,000 molars extracted from young teenagers across England, found plutonium in all the teeth sampled, including samples taken from as far away as Scotland and Northern Ireland. According to The Guardian, the British government admitted that the Sellafield site, “‘is a source of plutonium contamination’ across the country.”⁴ The study also showed that those living closer to the Sellafield plant had more than twice the amount of plutonium in their teeth than those living 140 miles away.

Major leaks on 2005 and 2007 have led to Sellafield shutting down its reprocessing facilities. It will now focus its attention on cleaning up the “radioactive legacy” of 50 years of nuclear power generation and waste reprocessing.⁵ According to the British Decommissioning Authority, the cleanup and decommissioning process will likely continue through 2130 and costs are estimated at £17-18 billion.⁶ Return to top

Security Risks

A particularly controversial aspect of nuclear fuel reprocessing is that one byproduct of the process is the creation of separated plutonium, which increases the risks of nuclear proliferation. There is enough plutonium sitting around the world today to make over 30,000 bombs. Adding credence to the concern that these materials could get into the hands of terrorist groups is the fact that a 2003 report found enough plutonium to make five nuclear bombs had gone missing from the Sellafield plant. In fact, auditors have regularly found plutonium missing from the plant, with 24.9kg missing in 1999, 5.6kg in 2001, and 19.1kg 2003, none of which has been accounted for.¹ It only takes about 6kg to make a nuclear bomb.

In the spring of 2005, all spent fuel reprocessing at the Sellafield site was indefinitely put on hold due to a spill of a nuclear and toxic waste. The 20 tons of contaminated liquid is expected to take months to cleanup as the chamber holding the toxic soup is so radioactive that it is impossible to enter. Experts will likely have to specially design robots to execute the cleanup effort.² Return to top

Economics: Proposed Reprocessing in the U.S.

Even critics and advocates can agree that reprocessing, simply put, is prohibitively expensive. In order for reprocessing to be economically feasible, the price of uranium would have to increase from its current price of $32-$70/kg to $400/kg.¹ If the U.S. were to require all nuclear power plants on-line today to reprocess spent fuel, roughly $2 billion each year would be added to the cost of nuclear-generated electricity – costs that would be passed on either to ratepayers or taxpayers.²

Reprocessing the United States' waste is estimated to cost over $100 billion. The Department of Energy has requested $405 million this year to begin a reprocessing program called GNEP. Return to top

Summary

Reprocessing nuclear waste will not alleviate the need for a geologic (Yucca Mountain-type) repository for nuclear waste. Reprocessing creates a larger volume of nuclear waste because it dilutes radioactive materials; it does not make them disappear. In an analysis of nuclear power, an MIT study that supports the development of new nuclear power plants concluded that, “the incremental costs and short-term safety and environmental risks” of reprocessing would have to be greatly reduced in order for reprocessing to become the preferred nuclear waste management solution.¹ Return to top