Confessions of a Greenpeace Dropout: The Making of a Sensible Environmentalist (49 page)

Recycling used nuclear fuel is a very complex subject and cannot be treated in depth here. For those who wish to dig deeper I suggest beginning with the World Nuclear Association’s detailed explanation of the topic.
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It is ironic that while the United States is the largest producer of nuclear energy, with 104 of the world’s 439 nuclear plants, it does not recycle any of its used nuclear fuel at this time. During the 1960s and 1970s three recycling plants were built to produce recycled fuel. One at West Valley, New York, operated successfully from 1966 to 1972. It was shut down when regulations were brought in that made it uneconomical. Another at Morris, Illinois, incorporated a new technology and did not perform satisfactorily. A third large plant was built at Barnwell, South Carolina, but never operated because the American government changed its policy in 1977 and ruled out all civilian recycling technology. Again ironically, the policy did not ban the military use of the technology to make weapons grade plutonium even though the ban on civilian recycling was rationalized in terms of preventing nuclear weapons proliferation. Thus ended U.S. attempts to enter the used fuel recycling business.

There is a common misconception that so-called nuclear waste is liable to leak out and contaminate the environment. As in
The Simpsons
cartoons, it is depicted as a yellowish-green corrosive liquid that roils around in its container trying to eat its way out. In fact used nuclear fuel takes the form of solid pellets that are not at all corrosive and are securely contained in steel and concrete casks built to last for hundreds of years.

The used nuclear fuel that is stored safely and securely at nuclear reactors around the world will certainly be recycled eventually. One of the reasons it is not all being recycled now is that new uranium is cheaper than recycled fuel. There is no panic to recycle the used fuel. It can be stored for decades or even centuries without difficulty before it is recycled.

In a typical reactor, one-third of the fuel is removed and fresh fuel added every two years. At the time of removal the used fuel is very radioactive and hot and must be cooled to prevent it from melting. This is done by placing it in a large pool of water adjacent to the reactor. Water is also a very good radiation shield. One can stand above the pool looking directly at the used fuel under six feet of water and not be exposed to harmful radiation. After five to ten years the fuel has cooled sufficiently and can be removed from the pool. At this time it can be placed in
dry casks
. (They are called dry casks because the fuel has been taken out of the water; really they are just casks made from concrete and steel.) These casks are designed to withstand the most severe imaginable impact by trains, planes, and large trucks.

Because the U.S. has not established either a recycling program or a long-term waste repository, all the used fuel is still stored at the nuclear reactor sites. At some reactors that have been operating for 30 to 40 years, the pools have become full and the older used fuel has been transferred to dry casks and stored on site on concrete pads with secure perimeters. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission has stated that the dry casks are capable of containing the used fuel for 120 years when stored outdoors
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This is certainly a very conservative estimate. And if the dry casks were in a climate-controlled building, they would be secure for 1000 years or longer.

All the used fuel produced in U.S. reactors over the past 50 years would fit on a football field stacked 22 feet high. If the used fuel were recycled, the fission products, the actual “waste,” would cover a football field about nine inches in depth. We are certainly capable of securely storing this relatively small amount of material until it decays into nonradioactive elements. One hopes more people will come to understand we are not, and likely never will be, harmed by nuclear reactors or used nuclear fuel. And one further hopes the United States will join the other countries that are continuing to improve recycling technology and making use of this valuable source of future energy.

The fact that new uranium is less expensive than recycled used fuel has not stopped France, Japan, the U.K., or Russia from moving forward with recycling technology. One reason for this is that the nuclear industry in these countries is, or has traditionally been, state owned. State-owned corporations do not operate in the free market, as is largely the case in the U.S. If the French government wants to develop recycling technology, it simply makes the decision to do it and provides the necessary funds. In the U.S. the fact that it is less expensive to buy new uranium will cause the private companies that own nuclear plants to choose new uranium. Therefore the only way the American nuclear industry will consider investing in recycling is if the government provides sufficient incentives or funds to make it financially attractive.

There are two reasons for the U.S. government to create an environment that promotes recycling. First, unless you are engaged in developing the technology you can’t be an effective part of the international dialogue about it, you can’t work to improve the technology to make it more efficient, and you can’t be as effective in improving security at an international level to prevent used fuel and its by-products from falling into the wrong hands.

Second, recycling used nuclear fuel is obviously the right thing to do in order to make use of the energy in it, to reduce the volume of waste and the time its takes to decay, and to live up to the principle of reuse, recycle, and reduce. In many cases it costs more to recycle glass and paper than it does to produce new glass and paper. But we recycle them anyway because this is a superior approach from the perspective of sustainability.

I do not propose that the U.S. enter into a crash program of recycling used fuel. France is not recycling all its used fuel, partly due to the higher cost, but it is recycling enough to create a viable industry. In the early years there were significant discharges of radiation to the environment from these recycling facilities. Through continual improvement this has been reduced to levels that are not significant from an environmental or health perspective. It would not have been possible to make such advances if there were no recycling plant to improve. Therefore it makes sense for the American government to develop a public-private partnership with the nuclear industry that results in the establishment of nuclear recycling, either as an advanced applied research project or as a commercial operation. As Canada has no recycling program it may be wise for it to join in a venture with the U.S.

The Next Generation of Nuclear Power

Research and development programs are under way in many countries to design and eventually build the next generation of nuclear reactors. Perhaps the two most important of these new designs are high-temperature gas-cooled reactors and fast neutron reactors, including those called breeder reactors.

Nearly all the world’s conventional reactors are based on water-cooled low-temperature technology. These reactors are relatively inefficient at converting heat to electricity and they can’t produce steam that is hot enough for most industrial processes. High-temperature gas-cooled reactors are much more efficient, produce high-temperature steam that can be used in place of steam produced by fossil fuels, and can produce hydrogen directly by splitting water through a thermo-chemical process. They will be capable of replacing fossil fuel energy in oil refineries, paper mills, chemical plants, and many other industries. They can also be used to desalinate water for domestic, irrigation, and industrial use. China, South Africa, and the United States are leading in this technology.
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Fast neutron reactors will be necessary to carry out the complete recycling of used nuclear fuel. Conventional reactors can be used for the first stages of recycling but cannot finish the job. Most importantly, fast reactors can burn a number of by-products from conventional reactors that conventional reactors cannot burn, thus making nuclear waste shorter lived and easier to handle. Fast reactors can also be used to desalinate water. A number of fast breeder reactors have been built and operated. The Russian BN-350 fast reactor ran from 1964 to 1999, producing 135 megawatts of electricity and 16 million gallons of water per day, which was used by people living in the town of Altau on the Caspian Sea. Fast reactors now operate in France, Japan, Russia, and India. Fast reactors are currently under construction in Russia and China and additional ones are being built in Japan and India. The United States operated a fast reactor at Hanford, Washington, from 1982 to 1993 when it was decommissioned. As a result the U.S. has fallen behind a number of other countries that use this technology.
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A breeder reactor is a type of fast neutron reactor that produces more fuel than it consumes. With this technology it is possible to burn all the uranium-238, thus extracting the maximum amount of energy from nuclear fuel. This will ensure a supply of nuclear fuel that will last thousands of years.

Another interesting development is the renewed emphasis on small reactors, ranging in size from under 50 megawatts up to 300 megawatts, for electricity, hydrogen, industrial heat, and desalination. Small reactors are not new but in the past most of them were used in either research or military contexts. The reactors that power nuclear submarines, aircraft carriers, and icebreakers fall into this category. Small reactors are especially useful in remote areas off the electric grid and on islands, where the only alternative is often diesel generators.

In a remote area of Siberia there are four small reactors in four communities that produce steam for district heating and 11 megawatts of electricity each. They have performed well since 1976, at a much lower cost than fossil fuel alternatives in the Arctic region.

Russia is developing both 35-megawatt and 200-megawatt floating reactors on self-propelled barges to service remote industries, such as the oil and gas and mining industries, in Siberia. In addition, Argentina, Japan, Korea, South Africa, and the United States are in the late stages of developing various types and configurations of small reactors.
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There are 15 small reactor programs worldwide that are well advanced, including three in the US, four in Russia, two in China, and one each in Argentina and South Africa. In the future they will serve markets and industries that can’t be served by large centralized reactors.

Swords to Plowshares

The proliferation of nuclear weapons represents one of the greatest threats to world peace and security. The situations in the Middle East and North Korea are extremely difficult with no obvious solution in sight. This problem will no doubt be with us for centuries to come. Even if a true world government is someday realized, society will always have to contend with rogue elements, tribal factions, and criminal activity. But as explained earlier, the threat of nuclear proliferation has very little to do with nuclear energy. It is a problem that must be dealt with separately and that will require hardball diplomacy and possibly force, one hopes with United Nations approval.

Meanwhile there are many positive activities and trends on the other side of the coin, which involve turning nuclear weapons programs and materials toward peaceful purposes. One of the first of these involved South Africa.

During the 1970s and 1980s, while the apartheid regime was still in power, South Africa mined uranium, enriched it, and produced six nuclear warheads as a deterrent against invasion. As preparations were made in the early 1990s for the post-apartheid democratically elected government, these weapons were dismantled. South Africa had become the first (and only) nuclear weapons state to voluntarily give up nuclear arms.
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South Africa had already built two nuclear reactors near Capetown by 1985, both of which still operate today. They had nothing to do with the nuclear weapons program. When the nuclear bombs were dismantled, the highly enriched uranium was stockpiled to make isotopes for nuclear medicine. One of the most important medical isotopes, technetium-99m, is produced by bombarding enriched uranium with neutrons from a nuclear reactor, thus producing molybdenum-99, which has a half-life of 66 hours. The molybdenum is then delivered to hospitals around the world, where it then decays into technetium-99m, with a half-life of only six hours. Technetium is used to diagnose more than 20 million medical conditions every year and provides the best possible images of the brain, kidneys, liver, lungs, skeleton, blood, and tumors. Eighty-five percent of all nuclear diagnostic imaging is done with this isotope. South Africa is now one of the top producers of medical isotopes in the world.

Beginning with the first Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty between the United States and the Soviet Union in 1972, the number of nuclear weapons actively deployed in the world has been reduced from 65,000 to about 20,000, only about 8,000 of which remain in active operation.
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In March 2010, the U.S. and Russia signed a deal to reduce each other’s arsenals to 1550 warheads each.
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While this is still more than enough to destroy our civilization, it is certainly a move in the right direction. And while these weapons may threaten our future, the uranium and plutonium from the thousands of dismantled warheads offers hope for the future of clean energy.