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This is the last story in a three-part series related to the problems of spent fuel produced by the nation's nuclear power plants. BRATTLEBORO -- Is the reprocessing of spent nuclear fuel the answer to the nation's nuclear waste storage woes? The nuclear industry contends reprocessing, or recycling as some in the industry call it, could reduce the amount of spent fuel that will one day need to be stored away and isolated from the environment for hundreds of thousands of years. The nuclear industry doesn't consider spent fuel a waste product, said Thomas Kauffman, senior media relations manager for the Nuclear Energy Institute, an industry funded organization that promotes nuclear power around the world. "It can be recycled through reprocessing," he said. "It's an energy-rich resource that needs to be stored until the government decides how it wants to handle it." The NEI believes programs currently operating in countries such as Japan, France, Germany and Russia can serve as examples for the United States. The NEI also contends that new technology, including the development of breeder reactors that can consume spent fuel, might make spent fuel storage a thing of the past. And while it is true that strides have been made in the field of nuclear fuel reprocessing, it has a checkered history that includes contamination of land, pollution of water and huge clean-up costs. "Reprocessing would be a serious mistake with costs and risks that outweigh the benefits," said Jim Riccio, Greenpeace's nuclear policy analyst.

This is the last story in a three-part series related to the problems of spent fuel produced by the nation's nuclear power plants. BRATTLEBORO -- Is the reprocessing of spent nuclear fuel the answer to the nation's nuclear waste storage woes? The nuclear industry contends reprocessing, or recycling as some in the industry call it, could reduce the amount of spent fuel that will one day need to be stored away and isolated from the environment for hundreds of thousands of years. The nuclear industry doesn't consider spent fuel a waste product, said Thomas Kauffman, senior media relations manager for the Nuclear Energy Institute, an industry funded organization that promotes nuclear power around the world. "It can be recycled through reprocessing," he said. "It's an energy-rich resource that needs to be stored until the government decides how it wants to handle it." The NEI believes programs currently operating in countries such as Japan, France, Germany and Russia can serve as examples for the United States. The NEI also contends that new technology, including the development of breeder reactors that can consume spent fuel, might make spent fuel storage a thing of the past. And while it is true that strides have been made in the field of nuclear fuel reprocessing, it has a checkered history that includes contamination of land, pollution of water and huge clean-up costs. "Reprocessing would be a serious mistake with costs and risks that outweigh the benefits," said Jim Riccio, Greenpeace's nuclear policy analyst.

Higher Costs, Pollution and Proliferation Dangers if Congress Opens Door to Reprocessing MINNEAPOLIS, Sept. 30 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Minnesota's Congressional delegation is hearing today from a diverse group of 16 Minnesota organizations -- including Clean Water Action, Environment Minnesota, Sierra Club North Star Chapter and the Minnesota Peace Project -- that strongly oppose any effort to open the door to the reprocessing of radioactive waste from Prairie Island and other nuclear reactors when Capitol Hill considers climate and energy legislation. In the case of Xcel Energy's Prairie Island site, where the entire island, including the dry cask storage, sits in a flood plain of the Mississippi River, the waste needs to be moved to a more secure site as close to the reactor as possible as a necessary interim step. The joint letter states that the controversial and dangerous practice of reprocessing is "not a solution to Minnesota's or any state's nuclear waste problem." The letter explains in detail how reprocessing actually increases the volume of radioactive waste, is enormously costly, worsens proliferation concerns (including terrorist threats), increases pollution going into lakes, streams and rivers, and poses a range of safety risks. The full text of the 16-group letter is available online at http://www.carbonfreenuclearfree.org/state-groups/minnesota.

Higher Costs, Pollution and Proliferation Dangers if Congress Opens Door to Reprocessing MINNEAPOLIS, Sept. 30 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Minnesota's Congressional delegation is hearing today from a diverse group of 16 Minnesota organizations -- including Clean Water Action, Environment Minnesota, Sierra Club North Star Chapter and the Minnesota Peace Project -- that strongly oppose any effort to open the door to the reprocessing of radioactive waste from Prairie Island and other nuclear reactors when Capitol Hill considers climate and energy legislation. In the case of Xcel Energy's Prairie Island site, where the entire island, including the dry cask storage, sits in a flood plain of the Mississippi River, the waste needs to be moved to a more secure site as close to the reactor as possible as a necessary interim step. The joint letter states that the controversial and dangerous practice of reprocessing is "not a solution to Minnesota's or any state's nuclear waste problem." The letter explains in detail how reprocessing actually increases the volume of radioactive waste, is enormously costly, worsens proliferation concerns (including terrorist threats), increases pollution going into lakes, streams and rivers, and poses a range of safety risks. The full text of the 16-group letter is available online at http://www.carbonfreenuclearfree.org/state-groups/minnesota.

France has indicated its willingness to consider taking back uranium for reprocessing if India is not in a position to reprocess the entire amount. "India has a reprocessing facility which will be put under International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) safeguards. So for us the best is that the fuel is reprocessed here. (But) India does not have enough capabilities. We will consider the option of taking the fuel back to France for reprocessing," the French Ambassador to India, Mr Jerome Bonnafont, said on Friday. He was speaking at a luncheon meeting organised by the PHD Chambers of Commerce and Industry here. This comes in the wake of the recent signing of an agreement between India and France which is to see Areva deliver 300 tonnes of uranium to India. "This contract is to be implemented in the next few weeks and months. There is nothing holding back implementation of the contract. It is simply that you need to gather the uranium, package it, organise the transport and (get through the) legal methods involved," Mr Bonnafont said.

The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) manages high-level waste (HLW) at sites across the DOE complex. This HLW is the highly radioactive waste material produced as a byproduct of the reactions that occur inside nuclear reactors: * Much of this HLW is spent (depleted) nuclear fuel, which has been accepted for disposal. * Some HLW consists of other highly radioactive materials that are determined (consistent with existing law) to require permanent isolation. * The remaining HLW comprises the liquid and solid waste byproducts (containing significant concentrations of fission products) that remain after spent fuel is reprocessed to extract isotopes that can be used again as reactor fuel. Although commercial reprocessing is currently not practiced in the United States, the defense reprocessing programs at certain facilities managed by DOE do produce significant quantities of HLW. From time to time, however, in accordance with DOE Order 435.1 exit icon, DOE has determined that certain waste resulting from reprocessing spent nuclear fuel is actually waste incidental to reprocessing (WIR), rather than HLW. For an understanding of the role that the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) plays in the waste determination and disposal processes, see the following pages, as well as the related information provided below:

A June 25 opinion editorial by a vice president for Entergy Nuclear about nuclear waste reprocessing proposed that "reprocessing can reduce the amount of radioactive material." Few countries in Europe and Asia have such programs because these have been financially and environmentally catastrophic. The Bush administration began the new push for a Global Nuclear Energy Partnership. In 1979 a United States naval nuclear engineer and president, Jimmy Carter, ended this dangerous program. Reprocessing spent nuclear fuel was supposed to be one alternative to lots and lots of mining forever and forever. The biggest experiment in reprocessing was at Sellafield in Britain. In 2005, after decades of contamination and leaks and general spewing of horrible matter into the ocean, air, and land around the reprocessing plant, Sellafield was shut down because a bigger-than-usual leak of fuel dissolved in nitric acid -some tens of thousands of gallons - was discovered. It contained enough plutonium to make about 20 nuclear bombs.

Japan's Rokkasho Reprocessing Plant, built to extract plutonium from the spent fuel produced in Japan's nuclear reactors, continues to be plagued by technical difficulties that have pushed its start-up date for commercial operations to August this year. The plant in Rokkasho in northern Japan was out of action for six months from the end of 2008 due to problems in one of its vitrification facilities, a furnace that mixes high active liquid waste with molten glass to seal radioactive waste in steel canisters that can safely be buried in the ground. Attempts to restart the plant failed last November as problems with the glass melting process persisted. Then in January, 150 liters of high-level liquid radioactive waste leaked from pipes in the vitrification cell, forcing Japan Nuclear Fuel Ltd. to postpone operations until August. The problems at Rokkasho, especially with extracting plutonium from spent nuclear fuel, are a blow to Japan's nuclear fuel-cycle program, whose goal is to reprocess and re-use recoverable resources from spent nuclear fuel to produce fuel for its power plants. In fact the commitment to a domestic program to increase energy and reduce nuclear waste by reprocessing spent fuel led to the creation of Japan Nuclear Fuel Ltd.

U.S. Under Secretary of State for Arms Control and International Security Ellen Tauscher in a written response to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee said the EU, India and Japan reprocess nuclear fuel within their own territories at present, but she did not think the Obama administration must apply those cases of authorized reprocessing to other countries, including South Korea. She added there was no need for a revision in the Atomic Energy Agreement signed between South Korea and the United States. The comments effectively slap down calls within South Korea to start reprocessing its own spent nuclear fuel. The U.S. government seems wary of South Korea reprocessing spent nuclear fuel from the standpoint of "peaceful" use of nuclear energy, suspecting that the country over the long-term wants to make its own nuclear weapons. South Korea tried to develop nuclear weapons in the 1970s, but scrapped the plan. Now the issue has re-emerged after North Korea's second nuclear test.

HIGH-LEVEL radioactive waste built up at Sellafield from fuel reprocessing over the years will soon be sent back to foreign customers. This is a milestone for both the nuclear industry and the British government, who hope the move will dispel claims that Sellafield was destined to become "the world's atomic dustbin". The waste comes from the fuel Sellafield has reprocessed over 30 years after removing the plutonium and uranium energy products. The Nuclear Decommissioning Authority says it will reduce the stockpile of high level waste stored at Sellafield. All UK reprocessing contracts with foreign customers since 1976 have included an option for the waste to be returned to "country of origin" and 10 years later the British government decided the option should be taken up.

HIGH-LEVEL radioactive waste built up at Sellafield from fuel reprocessing over the years will soon be sent back to foreign customers. This is a milestone for both the nuclear industry and the British government, who hope the move will dispel claims that Sellafield was destined to become "the world's atomic dustbin". The waste comes from the fuel Sellafield has reprocessed over 30 years after removing the plutonium and uranium energy products. The Nuclear Decommissioning Authority says it will reduce the stockpile of high level waste stored at Sellafield. All UK reprocessing contracts with foreign customers since 1976 have included an option for the waste to be returned to "country of origin" and 10 years later the British government decided the option should be taken up.

On August 25, 2008, the Nuclear Energy Institute released a fact sheet for press at the Democratic National Convention claiming that "Nuclear power plants and the proliferation of nuclear weapons are not linked." This statement assumes that sensitive nuclear technologies will not spread. However, the Bush administration's current proposal to resume reprocessing of spent nuclear fuel under the Global Nuclear Energy Partnership has increased the risk that nuclear energy will result in more nuclear weapons-usable material in the United States and abroad. The Bush Administration's Global Nuclear Energy Partnership (GNEP) proposes that the United States would separate plutonium from spent nuclear fuel through reprocessing. GNEP envisions that "receiver" countries would voluntarily give up nuclear enrichment and reprocessing technologies and, in exchange, and would send their nuclear waste to "supplier" countries for reprocessing. In practice, GNEP is a proliferation risk, exorbitantly expensive, and not a solution to the growing nuclear waste problem in the United States

Yucca Mountain may never be used, but a physicist lays out his argument favoring repositories over costly reprocessing. By Frank von Hippel September 15, 2009 * EmailE-mail * printPrint * Share * increase text size decrease text size Text Size The Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository project is now comatose, if not dead. And that puts us back at square one on a crucial question: What are we going to do with all the radioactive waste being discharged by U.S. nuclear power reactors? Many conservatives on Capitol Hill favor the French "solution": spent-fuel reprocessing. But reprocessing isn't a solution at all: It's a very expensive and dangerous detour. Reprocessing takes used or "spent" nuclear fuel and dissolves it to separate the uranium and plutonium from the highly radioactive fission products. The plutonium and uranium are then recycled to make new reactor fuel, thereby reducing the amount of fresh uranium required by about 20%. But based on French and Japanese experience, the cost of producing this recycled fuel is several times that of producing fresh uranium reactor fuel.

The Obama administration may be melting down a program that would have shipped deadly radioactive wastes from around the world to a reprocessing facility eyed for Chicago's Southwest suburbs. "The program has been terminated," Department of Energy spokesman Brian Quirke told Chicago Page One Examiner last week about the Global Nuclear Energy Partnership. That happened in late March, when GNEP was chopped from the new budget, he said. The controversial Global Nuclear Energy Partnership [GNEP] was a pet project of the DOE during the Bush years. It called for transporting radioactive waste from the nation's 104 nuclear reactors and from 25 foreign countries signed on as "GNEP Partners." The DOE for two years was mulling a contract with Argonne National Labs that had tentative plans to site a nuclear reprocessing plant near Morris. Highly radioactive weapons-useable plutonium from nuclear reactors across the nation and around the world would have been shipped by truck, rail, and barge for research, development, reprocessing, and long-term storage.

"France Uses Less than 1 Percent of the Natural Uranium Resource, Has Higher Waste Volume; Reprocessing Still Requires a Repository and Increases Costs, Proliferation Risks WASHINGTON, April 8 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Contrary to some prevailing opinion, reprocessing would not eliminate the need for a deep geologic disposal program to replace Yucca Mountain. It aggravates waste, proliferation, and cost problems. The volume of waste to be disposed of in deep geologic repository is increased about six times on a life-cycle basis in the French approach compared to the once-through no-reprocessing approach of the United States. A new report by the Institute for Energy and Environmental Research (IEER), a nonprofit scientific research group, shows that France uses less than 1 percent of the natural uranium resource, contrary to an impression among some policy makers. The report has several recommendations for President Obama's Blue Ribbon Commission on America's Nuclear Future, which was created to address U.S. nuclear waste issues after the administration's cancellation of the Yucca Mountain program."

"Frank von Hippel's article ("South Korean Reprocessing: An Unnecessary Threat to the Nonproliferation Regime," January/February 2010) on the proliferation risks of South Korea's plans for reprocessing spent fuel from its nuclear power program elegantly frames what is likely to become a major controversy as South Korea's agreement for nuclear cooperation with the United States comes up for renewal in 2014. Von Hippel argues that the South Korean approach, based on an unproven technology known as "pyroprocessing" and yet-to-be-designed fast reactors, is unlikely to succeed on a scale sufficient to alleviate South Korea's spent fuel management problem. Moreover, he stresses, it could introduce new proliferation risks by creating stocks of material from which plutonium could be more easily extracted than from spent fuel. To underscore his point, von Hippel highlights the great difficulties Japan has encountered in its own spent fuel reprocessing program, based on classic reprocessing technology that is well understood, and conventional reactors. The situation in Japan, however, is considerably worse than von Hippel describes, making his core point all the more powerful."

SELLAFIELD has applied to raise the limit on the amount of radioactive discharge it can release into the air. The site has applied to the Environment Agency for a five-fold increase in gas discharges known as Antimony 125 from the Magnox reprocessing plant. The agency says there is no danger to the public, but the move has drawn criticism from the anti-nuclear group Cumbrians Opposed to a Radioactive Environment (Core). Core's Martin Forwood said: "We deplore any increase in environmental discharges but Sellafield has got the agency over a barrel. "We are now paying the price for the industry's abject failure to develop an alternative to reprocessing Magnox fuel."

SELLAFIELD has applied to raise the limit on the amount of radioactive discharge it can release into the air. The site has applied to the Environment Agency for a five-fold increase in gas discharges known as Antimony 125 from the Magnox reprocessing plant. The agency says there is no danger to the public, but the move has drawn criticism from the anti-nuclear group Cumbrians Opposed to a Radioactive Environment (Core). Core's Martin Forwood said: "We deplore any increase in environmental discharges but Sellafield has got the agency over a barrel. "We are now paying the price for the industry's abject failure to develop an alternative to reprocessing Magnox fuel."

SELLAFIELD has applied to raise the limit on the amount of radioactive discharge it can release into the air. The site has applied to the Environment Agency for a five-fold increase in gas discharges known as Antimony 125 from the Magnox reprocessing plant. The agency says there is no danger to the public, but the move has drawn criticism from the anti-nuclear group Cumbrians Opposed to a Radioactive Environment (Core). Core's Martin Forwood said: "We deplore any increase in environmental discharges but Sellafield has got the agency over a barrel. "We are now paying the price for the industry's abject failure to develop an alternative to reprocessing Magnox fuel."

Reprocessing too dangerous, too expensive, too polluting, groups say Additional Download(s): Letter to Senator Akaka on Nuclear Reprocessing WASHINGTON (September 17, 2008)-Thirty science, nuclear security and environmental organizations today urged the Senate to reject a provision in pending energy legislation that would fund the construction of a nuclear waste reprocessing facility.

With the failure of the nation's nuclear spent fuel repository at Yucca Mountain to open and $1.6 billion in federal stimulus funds in the offing, some legislative officials are offering up our state to become the nation's dumping ground for the more than 55,000 tons of deadly radioactive waste generated by nuclear reactors, even suggesting a revival of the reprocessing debacle. Nuclear reprocessing produces the sort of high-level waste that is sitting in leaking tanks at the Savannah River Site, considered by many, even DHEC, to be the most significant environmental hazard threatening South Carolina. Why are some of our legislators actively pursuing what many consider the most risky, dirty and dangerous nuclear activity? U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham and Reps. James Clyburn and Joe Wilson are openly calling for reprocessing, although they admit our state has a dismal record of ever getting rid of any radioactive waste dumped here. Reprocessing would mean the whole nation would transport its high-level waste to our state. We would become Yucca Mountain.

"President Obama promised to eliminate 34 tons of plutonium from the U.S. nuclear weapons program as part of this week's nuclear security summit. But how does one actually get rid of bomb-making material that has a half-life of more than 20,000 years? One way is to burn it in nuclear reactors. Already, roughly half of the electricity generated from nuclear power plants in the U.S. comes from the fissile materials out of Russian warheads, albeit highly enriched uranium, the other fissile material used in bombs. Such reprocessing might also help cope with nuclear waste. In fact, Obama's recently appointed Blue Ribbon Commission on America's Nuclear Future has specifically chosen to investigate the possibility of reprocessing spent nuclear fuel rods."

Speakers were split on whether the nation needs to get a faster jump on reusing spent commercial nuclear fuel or drop plans to reprocess it during comments at a public hearing Monday evening in Pasco. About 120 people came to the hearing on a new draft environmental study for the Global Nuclear Energy Partnership, or GNEP, that considered whether fuel should be used more than the one time now allowed in the United States. The draft study favored reprocessing fuel to use multiple times, but did not pick a preferred way of doing that. It also did not look at specific sites for reprocessing fuel, as expected when 300 people attended a meeting on GNEP in Pasco last spring and Tri-City residents promoted a new production mission for Hanford.

ANTI-NUCLEAR campaigners fear that a second controversial reprocessing plant could be built at Sellafield. Government chiefs have admitted that the controversial MOX reprocessing plant at the Cumbria site has been a disappointment with it failing to achieve anywhere near its initial targets. It is now likely to be closed down despite being open for only a decade and costing the British taxpayer an estimated £472m. The Mixed Oxide (MOX) plant was designed to produce new fuel from recycled plutonium and uranium. Initially it had been hoped it would reprocess 120 tonnes of fuel each year but in the last five years has only managed to produce an average of 2.6 tonnes per year. The Nuclear Decommissioning Authority has confirmed the future of the plant is currently under review.

Article Highlights * With the nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain seemingly dead, reprocessing again is being proffered as a way to deal with U.S. nuclear waste. * But the reality is that reprocessing neither solves the waste problem nor reduces safety risks. * Research should continue into next-generation reactors that can burn spent fuel, but until then, dry casks and repositories must be pursued. There are 104 commercial nuclear power reactors in the United States, which supply about 20 percent of the nation's electricity. These are light water reactors (LWR) fueled with low-enriched uranium (LEU), containing initially about 5 percent of the fissile isotope uranium 235. Each nuclear plant receives about 25 tons of LEU fuel annually, in the form of long pencil-thin rods of uranium oxide ceramic enclosed in thin metal "cladding", that are bundled together (in bunches of 300) to form fuel elements. Each year, nearly the same amount of spent fuel is removed from each reactor, but it's now intensely hot, both thermally and radiologically. In fact, even after five years of cooling in the "swimming pool" associated with each reactor, a fuel element would soon glow red-hot in the atmosphere because of the continuing radioactive decay of the products of nuclear fission. At this point, spent-fuel elements can be loaded into dry casks and stored at reactor sites on outdoor concrete pads with two casks added each year per reactor.