On Feb. 13, the Discovery Channel aired an episode of “The Green Room,”
hosted by John Holden which provided a great look at AREVA’s La Hague
facility and the process of recycling used nuclear fuel.

Check out the clip below that features AREVA Executive V.P. Alan Hanson
as he walks through the key facts about recycling and the facility
itself.

By Mike McMahon

My name is Mike McMahon, and I am an American living in the south of France on an expatriate assignment at AREVA’s MELOX mixed-oxide (MOX) fuel fabrication facility in the Rhône family. My family and I moved from Bethesda, Maryland to France in July 2008 to begin a multi-year assignment learning firsthand the technologies that AREVA uses to recycle nuclear fuel for the entire French nuclear fleet and for customers in Japan and Germany as well.
read more…

Friday Secretary Chu announced the formation of a Blue Ribbon Commission that will provide recommendations for managing used fuel and nuclear waste.

AREVA supports the Department of Energy’s efforts to move forward with the development of this program.

Energy Secretary Steven Chu with President Obama. (image: msn.com)

From the Department of Energy:

Washington, D.C. – As part of the Obama Administration’s commitment to restarting America’s nuclear industry, U.S. Secretary of Energy Steven Chu today announced the formation of a Blue Ribbon Commission on America’s Nuclear Future to provide recommendations for developing a safe, long-term solution to managing the Nation’s used nuclear fuel and nuclear waste. read more…

Construction at MOX Fuel Fabrication Facility in South Carolina

A recent report from the National Center for Policy Analysis examines the growing demand for U.S. energy needs and the requirements that this energy comes from a renewable or carbon-free source.  The National Center for Policy Analysis finds in its report that “to meet this growing demand nuclear energy remains one of the safest and more reliable forms of energy available—it also emits no greenhouse gases…Nuclear power is reliable, sustainable, and clean.”

Reliable?
“Solar and wind require backup from coal, natural gas or nuclear power plants for day-to-day baseload power or for on-demand peaking power.  By contrast, the output from nuclear power plants can be adjusted based on user demand and to keep the electricity grid at maximum efficiency.”

Sustainable?
“An additional supply of nuclear fuel is readily available, after reprocessing, in the more-than-15,000 plutonium pits removed from dismantled U.S. nuclear weapons.”*

“An even larger fuel supply can be found in spent fuel rods from existing reactors.  Thus, recycling could provide an almost unlimited supply of nuclear fuel in the United State.  Recycling spent fuel would significantly decrease the problem of nuclear waste disposal.  Reprocessing can also be a boon to local communities and create jobs.”

Clean?
Nuclear power has among the lowest CO2 emissions of all energy sources.  Paul J. Meier of the University of Wisconsin analyzed CO2 emissions from various electric power sources over their entire lifecycle…Meier found that for every gigawatt hour (one billion watt hours) of electricity generated”:
-Coal emits 1,041 tons of CO2 equivalent
-Natural gas emits 622 tons
-Solar emits 39 tons
-Hydropower emits 18 tons
And nuclear power emits only 17 tons of CO2.

Check out the entire report, Nuclear Power and the U.S. Energy Future.

*(AREVA is a partner in the construction of this plant, the MOX Fuel Fabrication Facility, currently being built in South Carolina to turn these warheads into fuel for a reliable power supply.)

We’ve said it before, but we’ll let someone else say it this time, “with 10 percent unemployment and a government determined to stimulate economic growth and put people back to work, what better use for our stimulus programs than building a series of nuclear facilities around the country?”

This astute statement is from a piece by Raymond J. Learsy Sunday in The Huffington Post. Learsy’s point is that nuclear energy is a clean reliable energy source—and it also means energy security, jobs, and potential economic base.

We hear much about the job-creating possibilities of new clean energy technologies. They should go forward at full speed. But in nuclear power, we have a preeminent technology being sought out by others and vast knowledge in an energy field that is that the top of the agenda for many nations in a world needing efficient and clean energy solutions. And here we are, going close to nothing in bringing about a nuclear renaissance to our own communities even when it could be at the core of dealing with climate change and a key stimulus to our labor market.

Learsy emphasizes India’s and China’s substantial commitments to new nuclear builds. These two developing countries already have dozens under construction or planned for the next 20 years, which means the United States is steadily losing its leadership in nuclear diplomacy and technological development. The change is happening, and we are falling behind.

A key factor to kick-start building U.S. energy infrastructure is to allow for used fuel recycling, as Learsy puts it:

A first and important step would be to reverse President Carter’s almost unilateral “indefinite deferral” of our plans to reprocess and recycle used nuclear fuel because of concerns that reprocessing could contribute to the proliferation of nuclear weapons. President Carter expected other nationals to follow his lead, but they did not, recognizing Carter’s policy offered no viable path to prevent proliferation.

• More information on Recycling and AREVA’s expertise in the field

Senator Pete DomeniciBy Katherine Berezowskyj

By Katherine Berezowskyj

Today at the National Press Club, Sen. Pete Domenici called on U.S. leadership to really engage and begin work on the question of used nuclear fuel. Domenici declared that “the United States lags in the development and deployment of new nuclear technologies.” In particular, he asserted that:

“America is stalled in thinking about used nuclear fuel. Other countries have developed, or are in advanced stages of developing, strategies to address waste and non-proliferation concerns. Countries like France and Japan have been applying recycling technology to reduce waste volume by 75 percent or more. They have been tackling this challenge for years. We are stuck in policies that are more than 30 years old.”

Domenici called for a waste management strategy to concentrate on the “deployment of a strong domestic capability [that] is necessary to provide the foundation for the United States to participate in any meaningful way in the global management of used nuclear fuel.”

Building recycling infrastructure is important for non-proliferation initiatives like the 123 Agreement with the United Arab Emirates. To develop its own nuclear energy program, the U.A.E. has agreed to not pursue uranium enrichment or to recycle the used fuel. According to Domenici, “this is a model that, with modifications, may work in future agreements with other nations. However, this model requires adequate international infrastructure to responsibly manage used fuel through arrangements for take-back, treatment, recycling, and storage of spent fuel. America’s present domestic policy is out of step with our demonstrated technology and scientific abilities.”

Domenici is challenging the United States to jumpstart our domestic resurgence and provide credible international leadership-”The global resurgence of nuclear power is a reality. We need to recognize that and provide leadership in the areas of non-proliferation and waste treatment.”

You can find the full text of his speech here on the Bipartisan Policy Center site.

Please see below a response from a DOE National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) spokesperson to an innaccurate and misleading new release issued yesterday by an anti-nuclear organization regarding MOX fuel and the MOX Fuel Fabrication Facility under construction at the Savannah River Site in South Carolina. As we have mentioned many times here, AREVA has many satisfied MOX fuel customers around the world and decades of experience in producing safe, efficient MOX fuel assemblies. Here is the NNSA statement:

“The news release issued today by Friends of the Earth is inaccurate and draws incorrect conclusions about the performance of the MOX lead test assemblies and the overall state of the Department’s mixed oxide fuel program at the Savannah River Site.  Shaw AREVA MOX Services and the National Nuclear Security Administration remain steadfast in our commitment to dispose of surplus weapons plutonium in a manner that results in the safe, affordable, and carbon-free generation of electricity for the benefit of American public.  Not only will the fuel produced at the MOX Fuel Fabrication Facility produce enough energy to power one million homes for 50 years, but the disposal of weapon-grade plutonium is a key component of President Obama’s commitment to strengthening international arms control and nonproliferation programs.  In addition, the Department of Energy has evaluated numerous approaches for disposing of surplus weapon-grade plutonium and, simply put, there is no, ‘cheaper, safer and faster alternative.’  This critical project also is important for the Southeastern region of the United States, where it will create jobs and stimulate the local economy.” –NNSA Spokesperson Jennifer Wagner

Jason Ribeiro has a great post up over at Pro-Nuclear Democrats highlighting a CNN-Money poll showing that fully 76% of those polled believe that nuclear power is a “safe, clean alternative right now” for our nation’s energy needs.
 

 
Now, being a web poll it’s unscientific, but the overwhelming support for nuclear energy speaks for itself.  Ribeiro’s key point is about the media’s desire to paint nuclear power as something “controversial” when the reality is that overwhelming majorities see the need for nuclear power to be part of our CO2-free energy future.  Does the presence of a loud but small minority make the issue “controversial” when, according to this poll at least, over three quarters of Americans support nuclear power right now?
 
But the key quote comes at the end:
 

Based on the feedback from these stories, we can clearly see people have been doing better homework by checking different sources on the internet and deciding for themselves who is the more credible source.  I think Americans are also getting sick and tired of being told they cannot move forward with the most powerful clean energy source ever discovered simply because the government is too incompetent to deal with what amounts to a small warehouse of spent nuclear fuel.

 
We certainly wouldn’t use the word “incompetent,” but we agree that the U.S. government needs to step it up, particularly when it comes to approving and helping put in place a used fuel recycling program like France has successfully operated for decades now.  As we’ve talked about on multiple occasions, recycling offers a solid solution to the used nuclear fuel “problem.”

Today marks an important step for Japan’s energy independence and for the future of the nuclear industry.  As World Nuclear News and others are reporting, Kyushu Electric Power Company restarted Unit 3 of the Genkai nuclear power plant using MOX (mixed oxide) fuel recycled at AREVA’s MELOX facility in Marcoule, France.  Eventually, the Genkai plant plans to use MOX fuel at one-quarter of their 193 assemblies.

Because of Japan’s unique place on the world stage – a nation with a large energy appetite but relatively few natural resources – they’ve embarked on a plan to generate fully 40% of their energy from nuclear power and to start their own recycling operations on the islands, instead of sending their used nuclear fuel to France for recycling (as they’d done up until 1998, when they started collecting their own fuel).  They’ve known for a long time that just storing away once-used  
nuclear fuel and calling it “waste” – as we do here in the U.S. – doesn’t make sense.  Not only does recycling get more energy out of the used nuclear fuel, it also reduces the volume of the most dangerous waste by over 60%.

We’re proud to be working with Japan in taking this first step toward a cleaner, carbon-free, independent energy future.  Japan’s example makes it clear that a crucial stepping stone toward sustainability and energy independence – not only in Japan, but here in the U.S. and Canada as well – is expanding the use of nuclear power and putting in place a program to recycle used fuel.

Kyushu is one of the first of AREVA’s agreements to supply MOX fuel to Japan; the latest came in September with Chogoku.

by Mary Beth Ginder

AREVA North America President Jacques Besnainou chatted today with members of the North American Young Generation in Nuclear (NA-YGN) in a webinar session hosted by NA-YGN’s professional development committee. Jacques spoke informally and answered member’s questions about the need for nuclear recycling capabilities in the U.S. Recycling offers a safe, competitive and sustainable way to deal with used fuel. As we wait for the Department of Energy Blue-Ribbon panel to weigh different options for managing used fuel, the AREVA model for recycling offers a proven solution for conserving resources and creating a more sustainable fuel cycle.

As a follow up to the webinar chat, here are a couple of PDF documents that might be of interest:

• a Boston Consulting group study on “Economic Assessment of Used Nuclear Fuel Management in the United States”
• Recycling Slideshow from Jacques Besnainou