The Obama Administration has dismissed spent-fuel reprocessing systems already used in France and Japan because of security and environmental risks.
FORBES: U.S. nuclear fuel rods to sit in pools -- like those that failed in Japan -- until 2050
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.
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.
FORBES: U.S. To Bury Almost All Existing Used Nuclear Fuel; Recycling Deferred At Least 20 Years
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.
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.
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.
FORBES: U.S. To Bury Almost All Existing Used Nuclear Fuel; Recycling Deferred At Least 20 Years
The same is true of reprocessing: you can get plutonium out of used fuel.
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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