The Obama Administration has dismissed spent-fuel reprocessing systems already used in France and Japan because of security and environmental risks.
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TOKYO Japan is preparing to start up a massive nuclear-fuel reprocessing plant over the objections of the Obama administration, which fears the move may stoke a broader race for nuclear technologies and even weapons in North Asia and the Middle East.
The nuclear industry is going belly up due to several very high profile failures -Fukushima, a fuel reprocessing plant explosion in with fatality in France, a pending plant closure due to radioactive leaks in the US, Germany, Italy, Switzerland and Denmark all announcing plans to shut down all nuclear activities, and India, and several other countries announcing moratoriums pending safety investigations and reports.
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Would it make sense to embrace some sort of closed-fuel cycle, with limited reprocessing of spent fuel?
Creating international nuclear fuel banks and shared management of enrichment, reprocessing and spent fuel storage facilities would make nonproliferation sense as well as supporting civil nuclear power in energy-thirsty Asia.
North Korea has said that it will reactivate all of its nuclear facilities and go ahead with reprocessing spent fuel.
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That figure includes mining uranium, designing power plants and reprocessing waste fuel.
The answer lies in its plant for reprocessing spent fuel, built partly to take used fuel from Germany and Japan (which largely paid for its construction) and partly to produce the plutonium that was once expected to be needed as fuel for fast-breeder reactors, in Britain and elsewhere.
The United States long opposed the reprocessing of used nuclear fuel because of terrorism and proliferation concerns, but DOE began researching new reprocessing technologies in 2005, and the Obama Administration has remained open to new technologies.
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While the report focuses more on finding long-term storage for radioactive waste, it also considered the reprocessing of such fuel.
Rokkasho has been seen as a facility that will allow Tokyo to reduce radioactive wastes from its nuclear power plants by reprocessing spent nuclear fuel.
Still, in a September letter to the United Nations, North Korea announced that Pyongyang's"reprocessing of spent fuel rods is at its final phase and extracted plutonium is being weaponized, " state media reported at the time.
South Korean negotiators had been seeking a new nuclear-cooperation agreement with the U.S. that would allow it to begin enriching uranium and reprocessing spent reactor fuel, arguing these technologies are crucial for Seoul to expand and secure its civilian nuclear-power program.
But China is growing increasingly anxious, both at North Korea's brinkmanship (before the 1994 deal the previous Clinton administration had considered reprocessing of spent fuel as justification for a military strike), and at America's firm insistence that North Korea dismantle its illicit weapons programmes before relations can improve.
Reprocessing the remaining spent fuel rods at Yongbyon would give it one more bomb.
In a study completed late last year, Oak Ridge officials determined that the U.S. is at least 20 years away from large-scale reprocessing of used nuclear fuel, if it decides to pursue such technologies.
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As a prelude to Tuesday's meeting, they made the chilling announcement that they had finished reprocessing 8, 000 nuclear-fuel rods and were using the plutonium extracted from them to make bombs.
That led the current North Korean president, Kim Jong Il, to order the reprocessing of the nation's spent nuclear fuel rods, to expel the inspectors and to explode two nuclear devices, destabilizing the region, Carter said.
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The same is true of reprocessing: you can get plutonium out of used fuel.
Reprocessing the recovery of plutonium from spent reactor fuel to make new fuel was conceived when plutonium was valuable.
So a supposedly cheaper option was agreed on: to convert the reactors to use fuel that would produce far less plutonium and would not require subsequent reprocessing.
It has its hands in every part of the nuclear industry, from uranium mining to enrichment to fuel fabrication to reactor design and construction to maintenance and refueling to reprocessing and recycling.
Maybe some company could offer a reprocessing service that gives the utility a smaller quantity of waste for the repository plus some nuclear fuel to help offset the cost.
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