Important for what it does not say....
.....there would appear to be another solutions this article does not cover.
Nuclear recycling plan fuels debate
Illinois sites eyed in U.S. energy idea
By Hal Dardick
Tribune staff reporter
Published June 17, 2007
chicagotribune.com
For decades, 772 tons of spent nuclear fuel has languished, out of the spotlight, 60 miles southwest of Chicago.
But as the nation reconsiders its nuclear future, the glare of controversy has returned to the General Electric Co. site in Morris, and nearby Argonne National Laboratory, venues that could be chosen for a federal effort to extract energy from nuclear leftovers.
Federal officials call it recycling spent nuclear fuel, and say proposed demonstration facilities in Illinois and elsewhere could help pioneer a new, environmentally friendly energy supply, while limiting the threat of nuclear proliferation. Gov. Rod Blagojevich and others have lined up behind the idea.
Opponents, who now include Illinois Atty. Gen. Lisa Madigan and several local government bodies, counter that extracting usable material from spent nuclear fuel is far trickier than melting empty pop cans—so much so that they refuse to use the friendly word "recycling."
The Morris and Argonne sites are among 13 nationwide that have been proposed for the Global Nuclear Energy Partnership, a number federal officials will whittle to six or seven this fall. A final decision could come next year.
The goal is to prove that plutonium and other nuclear materials can be safely extracted from spent fuel and burned in "fast reactors."
That would also help facilitate a plan to provide developing nations with traditional nuclear fuel to operate smaller reactors, with the United States bringing back the waste for reprocessing.
If the program succeeds in easing concerns about nuclear waste, it will lessen reliance on convention power plants that spew greenhouse gases into the air, while leaving smaller, shorter-lived quantities of radioactive waste to be stored for millenniums, federal officials say.
Reprocessing spent fuel is not a new idea. General Electric planned to extract plutonium at the Morris site in the 1970s, a plan that stalled as nuclear contamination episodes marred the industry and fears about proliferation grew.
But new reprocessing techniques have since been developed at Argonne, near Lemont, and GE now believes it can recycle spent nuclear fuel in a way that prevents contamination and proliferation, GE spokesman Tom Rumsey said.
Morris is the ideal site, the company believes, because the spent fuel is already there. With large quantities on-site and another 1,200 tons stored at adjacent Dresden Generating Station, the radioactive material would not have to travel the nation's highways.
Nations back plan
Blagojevich's administration supports putting three demonstration facilities in northern Illinois, including a fuel-recycling operation and fast reactor in Morris and a research and development facility at Argonne, according to a letter from his top public safety official. So do two local mayors.
"If we can make GNEP a reality, we can make the world a better, cleaner and safer place to live," U.S. Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman said when he introduced the program last year. Last month, he announced that nuclear nations China, France, Japan and Russia back the effort.
But many area residents say Illinois has done more than enough for the nuclear industry. Illinois has more nuclear power reactors than any other state, and Morris falls in what anti-nuclear activists call "the Nuke Belt," a span of 70 miles encompassing three nuclear plants and the GE site.
Others doubt that the technology will live up to the promise.
"While we support in principle and appropriate context the concept of recycling, we have no reason to believe at this point that nuclear-waste reprocessing as proposed in the GNEP initiative qualifies as such," wrote Ann Alexander, Illinois Atty. Gen. Lisa Madigan's environmental counsel, in a letter to federal Office of Nuclear Energy.
The program "would risk severe environmental consequences at high cost with very minimal actual public benefit," she said.
Seven other local governmental entities, including the Cook County Board, have gone on record against proposed sites here. And U.S. House Democrats recently proposed slashing by more than two-thirds President Bush's fiscal 2008 funding for the program.
"What is the wizard really doing behind the curtain here?" asked David Kraft, director of the Nuclear Energy Information Service, a watchdog group based in Chicago. "GNEP serves, at least on paper, as a justification to continue both sides of the industry: the weapons side and the electric-generation side."
Kraft said the program would use up funds better spent on reducing energy consumption and creating alternative, green energy sources.
To implement the program would cost billions of dollars, all agree. But spending a like amount on energy efficiency and green power would not allow nations to meet the growing demand, said Steven Kraft, senior director of used-fuel management for the Nuclear Energy Institute, an industry policy organization.
"We need every source of energy and every efficiency we can get," he said, echoing government projections that demand around the globe will double by 2030. "You will still need nuclear on the scene to do what we do now."
But what to do with the waste?
In 1999, the Energy Department estimated it would cost $279 billion over 118 years to fully implement a reprocessing and reuse program for all spent fuel in the country, much of which is now stored on site at the nation's 103 nuclear power plants.
2 processes reviewed
Spent nuclear fuel is about 93 percent uranium that no longer can fuel a reactor, 5 percent "fission products" that must be stored until they are safe and 2 percent plutonium and other similar radioactive materials called "transuranics," said Mark Peters, an Argonne geochemist who has long worked on nuclear-waste disposal.
Those three sets of materials would be separated in the Energy Department's program, using either a "wet" process that employs acid, or a "dry" process that employs molten salt.
Federal officials say a new "wet" process has been developed in the decades since one used at the West Haven commercial facility in New York proved troublesome. It was shut down in 1972 after six years, and the cleanup, estimated at $5.2 billion, continues.
At a recent Department of Energy meeting in Morris, GE nuclear engineer Eric Loewen said his company is only interested in the dry process, which it believes is less likely to result in environmental contamination.
"It's not in the experimental phase, because the experiments have been done," he said. "Now GE needs to commercialize it."
Uranium separated from the spent fuel would either be reprocessed for use in traditional nuclear reactors, stored in an unshielded facility or buried as low-level waste.
The fissionable materials would be disposed of as low-level waste or, in the case of longer-lived materials, buried at a permanent disposal site, such as a controversial one proposed at Yucca Mountain in Nevada.
The material that is stored would be radioactive for thousands of years, Peters said. By comparison, radioactivity in spent nuclear fuel would last hundreds of thousands of years.
Unlike the old means of extracting plutonium from spent fuel, newer methods being explored mix the plutonium with other transuranics and some uranium, a mix unsuitable for nuclear bombs, the government argues, reducing proliferation perils.
But the critics say countries that want nuclear weapons could develop technology to further purify the plutonium. They note President Carter ended a U.S. nuclear-fuel reprocessing program 30 years ago after India developed the bomb, partly with reprocessed nuclear materials.
"Our primary objection is the potential for diversion or theft of weapons-usable materials," said Edwin Lyman, senior staff scientist of the Global Security Program at the Union of Concerned Scientists. He disputed assertions that new reprocessing methods would reduce the possibility of proliferation.
"They are wrong, and they are being deceptive," Lyman said, adding it would be easier to make weapons-grade materials from the reprocessed fuel than spent fuel.
New techniques assailed
Spent fuel, he said, has its own built-in deterrent, because limited contact with it is deadly. That would not be the case with reprocessed fuel, which also would be gathered in smaller, more-easily transported quantities, he said.
Lyman said returning to spent-fuel reprocessing would encourage other nuclear countries to do the same, increasing the risk of proliferation.Instead critics, in general, favor "hardened, on-site storage," keeping spent fuel at nuclear power plants for up to 100 years, until a permanent disposal site such as Yucca Mountain is established.
hdardick@tribune.com
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