In an effort to green up the debate on recycling nuclear fuel, several anti-nuclear activists have decided recycle some old misinformation about the topic. In fact, recycling nuclear fuel has some distinct advantages to the once-through approach proposed in the U.S. and deserves consideration as a solid option for our country.

AREVA's La Hague Recycling Facility

As AREVA Executive V.P. Alan Hanson wrote in an op-ed last year, “Recycling nuclear fuel is a proven solution that makes waste management easier, conserves natural resources, is cost competitive and reduces proliferation concerns.”

So let’s hit a few of the largest myths being spread about recycling:

Myth: The volume of waste to be disposed in a deep geological repository is increased by recycling.

Reality: False. The volume of high-level waste for disposal would decrease by a factor of at least four. The toxicity of this waste would decrease by a factor of 10.

Myth: Recycling nuclear fuel is uneconomical.

Reality: Management of used nuclear fuel – whether you recycle or not – represents only 1 – 2% of the retail price of electricity generated by nuclear energy.  In addition , recycling offers other benefits in much the same way as recycling paper or glass costs provide other benefits.

Myth: The use of recycling would eliminate the need for a repository.

Reality: True. AREVA does not claim that recycling would eliminate the need for a repository. One would be required regardless of the used fuel management approach. But with recycling, the U.S. would avoid having to build more than one, perhaps forever.

Myth: Recycling has not been made commercial after decades of research and development.

Reality: AREVA has decades of experience recycling nuclear fuel safely, efficiently and economically for customers around the globe. Today, MOX fuel manufactured by AREVA is in use in 38 reactors in Europe and Japan. AREVA’s Back End business group, which includes recycling, last year posted revenue of about $2.2 billion.

Click here to take a virtual tour of AREVA recycling facility.

AREVA EVP Dr. Alan Hanson, who’s in charge of our recycling efforts in the U.S., has a great editorial up in the Cleveland Plain Dealer making the case for recycling nuclear fuel as a major part of America’s long-term nuclear energy plans, and pointing out the need to recycle used fuel instead of just letting it all go to waste:

Recycling nuclear fuel is a proven solution that makes waste management easier, conserves natural resources, is cost competitive and reduces proliferation concerns.

Recycling used nuclear fuel reduces the volume of high-level waste for disposal in a repository such as the one envisioned at Yucca Mountain. Only 4 percent of used fuel is high-level waste; the remaining 96 percent can be recycled and reused as fuel for nuclear plants.

Check out the rest of Dr. Hanson’s op-ed over at the Plain-Dealer‘s site.

Today we’d like to highlight a thought-provoking question about recycling that was asked recently on the AREVA North America blog.

Randal Leavitt asked:

Recycling fission fuel is better than not recycling, but there are other approaches that are better still. My preferred technology is the liquid fluoride thorium reactor. How do we shift the nuclear industry over to this technology?

Randal,
We definitely agree that recycling used fuel is much better than “throwing it away” (i.e: direct disposal). The ability to shift the nuclear industry to a new technology is really something that is determined by the success of three conditions:
1. It must be proven and demonstrated at large industrial scale
2. It must be economically justified as compared to other alternatives
3. It must be licensed by the appropriate nuclear regulatory authorities

Large scale deployment of new technology requires – as soon as the principles are reasonably well stabilized and enough data from R&D is available – the preparation of a thorough and credible business case to justify the large investments needed to develop it.

To demonstrate that a new technology is fully proven and obtain the final license, one has to go through a lengthy piloting process. This involves designing, building and operating a series of “pilot models” of progressively increasing scale. A first model is developed to evaluate and understand the basic performance of the new technology, and it takes several years to test it rigorously. This first step is followed by incremental increases in the scale and the capacity of the models, (generally two further steps) to reach full commercial production size. The final model is considered as pre-industrial and is used to demonstrate the full range of safety, security and reliability requirements. Today nuclear reactors fueled with thorium have not yet been shown to meet the three conditions.

Some highlights include Hanson’s analysis of the main benefits and criticisms of recycling:

The main benefits associated with recycling are that it makes waste management easier, provides strategic flexibility and confidence for the long term, and saves natural resources and is able to burn plutonium, thereby reducing proliferation concerns.

• Makes waste management easier by reducing the volume of high level waste for disposal. “When such waste is vitrified, or specially-packed into a highly compact glass-like waste form for final storage, and added to the volume of compacted structural waste, the total volume necessary for final disposal is 75% less than the volume required if the used fuel is disposed directly in a repository.”
• This saves space in the geological repository, and “when a high-level waste repository eventually opens in the U.S., one would want to make optimal use of every cubic unit of emplacement.” The quantity of used fuel from U.S. reactors is already very large, about 60,000 metric tons. “If Yucca Mountain were to open in the next decade, the amount of fuel available for emplacement would already completely fill the repository’s legal capacity.” Even further, by extracting plutonium and uranium from the waste, it reduces the toxicity by a factor of about 90%.
• Recycling saves “15% of natural uranium resources. Recycling plutonium into mixed oxides, or MOX, fuel, allows about 12% of natural uranium savings…a total savings of at least 27% of natural uranium resources.”
• It is a means to burn plutonium, thereby, reducing proliferation concerns. “Recycling plutonium in MOX fuel consumes roughly one-third of the plutonium through single recycling and significantly alters the isotopic composition of the remaining plutonium, thus severely degrading its potential weapons attractiveness.”

Hanson also addressed the criticisms of used fuel recycling:

• On non-proliferation concerns, “the U.S. government has demonstrated an ability to prevent diversion of its weapons material, there is no reason to believe it could not prevent diversion of material recovered from used fuel by the same means. If recycling is done by a commercial entity, the government could impose its own safeguards in addition to IAEA (International Atomic Energy Agency) safeguards to prevent diversion.”
• About the associated cost, Hanson highlighted the Boston Consulting Group Study from 2006 which the economics of “once-through” and recycling are comparable within a 10% difference, attributed to the increasing cost of uranium, high total life-cycle costs of a geological repository, and the significant cost savings created by the 2,500 metric tons capacity of the recycling facility.
• Concerning the volume of waste generated, he explained that there are “two streams classified according to their ultimate disposal pathway: surface disposal and underground, or geologic, disposal, the latter being order of magnitude more complex, more expensive, and more sensitive to implement.” Comparing the volume of material (high level waste) for underground disposal, reduced by at least 75%, the projected increase for low-level waste, disposed in near-surface facilities, would amount to “only 2.5% of the volume of such waste disposed annually in the U.S.”

Importantly for the future, Hanson stated firmly that “it is time for America to regain global leadership” and “a used fuel recycling facility should be built in the U.S. Britain, France, China, Japan, and Russia have already built or are developing recycling capabilities. America was the first to develop this technology, we were the first to send a man to the moon, and it is time for America to take the lead again.”