Nuclear mattersDebate over alternatives to Yucca Mountain project
The Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository project is being deliberately starved for funds by the Obama administration; some argue the United States should use UREX reprocessing technology to reprocess waste (this was the Bush administration’s preference); MIT and Harvard scientists say it is perfectly safe to store nuclear waste above ground for 60 or 70 years, while working on a better alternative to UREX
The Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository project may doomed, but leading U.S. energy experts are not worried. If they have their way, the United States will be storing tens of thousands of tons of nuclear waste above ground for decades to come. Are dry casks, originally intended as a short-term fix for nuclear waste, a safe bet?
Phil McKenna writes that researchers from MIT and Harvard University fielded questions from U.S. Senator Tom Carper the other day in Cambridge, Massachusetts on what the United States should do with its nuclear waste now that plans for Yucca Mountain, a national underground repository, have been put on hold by the Obama administration.
McKenna says that, surprisingly, the assembled scientists unanimously told Carper not to worry, saying existing above ground storage would be perfectly safe for another sixty to seventy years. Instead, they pressed the senator to spend time and money to develop better waste reprocessing technology, rather than rush to develop the same reprocessing technology now used by Japan and other countries. Existing reprocessing technology is “costly, prone to sabotage, offers very little waste reduction, and very little additional energy,” said Harvard’s Matthew Bunn of a process that can yield weapon-grade plutonium.
Bunn and the other scientists criticized a reprocessing technology called UREX. Three years ago the Bush administration overturned a 30-year domestic ban on reprocessing spent nuclear fuel. It said at the time that it also wanted to reprocess spent fuel from other countries, arguing that the United States is a safer place to keep extracted plutonium (plutonium is extracted in the process of reprocessing spent-uranium rods).
The U.S. Department of Energy proposed the use of a technology known as UREX. Developed by the Argonne National Laboratory in Illinois, the procedure can reprocess spent fuel and produce a mix of plutonium and uranium, which can be used to fuel reactors.
Many fear that this would send the wrong message to countries like Iran and North Korea, and encourage reprocessing in Russia. “This is the worst possible thing to do,” said Damon Moglen of the Union of Concerned Scientists in Washington, D.C.“It is a classic example of the U.S. telling the world to do as we say, not as we do.”
Bush officials, however, said at the time that the risk of countries diverting plutonium into bombs would be reduced if their spent fuel was reprocessed in the United States.
The question now, then, is which is better: Storing spent fuel for decades on end in less than ideal storage conditions while working on developing safer, more efficient reprocessing technology than UREX — or using UREX to reprocess the waste today into plutonium-rich fuel?
The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) says that, based in part on an unblemished 20-year track record, dry cask storage is perfectly safe. Similar casks in the United Kingdom, however, have corroded in the past, exposing radioactive waste to the elements.
Whatever decision Carper and his fellow congressmen decide to pursue could have far reaching implications. Ernest Moniz of MIT closed the discussion saying that to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, building new nuclear plants as soon as possible should be our number-one priority.
