Skip to main content

Reaction to GNEP Proposal

There's plenty of reaction to yesterday's news concerning the Bush Administration proposal for the Global Nuclear Energy Partnership, including this AP account that quotes NEI's Chief Nuclear Officer, Marv Fertel:
"Reprocessing could help avoid or delay the need for a second repository," Marvin Fertel, a senior vice president of the Nuclear Energy Institute, the industry's lobbying group, told a congressional hearing last March.

But Fertel emphasized that the nuclear industry views fuel reprocessing as a technology that is still decades away from being economical - and won't be as long as fresh uranium is plentiful and relatively cheap.
More later, as we pile through the coverage.

UPDATE: American ex-pat Jim Freeman has some thoughts.

Technorati tags: , , , , , ,

Comments

Matthew66 said…
Reprocessing may not be an economical source of reactor fuel, but I believe that it is an economical method of waste management. Reprocessing reduces the volume and radioactivity of the spent fuel. The MOX and recovered uranium should be viewed as by-products that can be sold to partially offset the cost of recycling.

We began recycling aluminum, paper and plastics, not because recycling these is cheaper than using raw materials, but because we needed to reduce quantity of material going into landfill, and because we have legitimate environmental concerns about disposing of material that can be reused. Why on earth would we view the recycling of used nuclear fuel rods any differently?
Anonymous said…
Partitioning alone won't reduce the need for additional repository space. We're going to have to go to actinide recycle to get the heat load down as well.
Anonymous said…
It was pointed out at a LANL shindig
fifteen years ago that CANDU (fast
shuffle) reactors can reburn spent
light water pellets after simply de-
and re-cladding. No need to qualify
by adding "if they work"--and if they
aren't economical why are they so
popular outside the USA?

Not Invented Here Syndrome!

They also will burn unenriched U but
you would never know it from reading
press accounts: it is accepted as
"common knowledge" that generation
*requires* enrichment. Very handy
for Iran...

Popular posts from this blog

Fluor Invests in NuScale

You know, it’s kind of sad that no one is willing to invest in nuclear energy anymore. Wait, what? NuScale Power celebrated the news of its company-saving $30 million investment from Fluor Corp. Thursday morning with a press conference in Washington, D.C. Fluor is a design, engineering and construction company involved with some 20 plants in the 70s and 80s, but it has not held interest in a nuclear energy company until now. Fluor, which has deep roots in the nuclear industry, is betting big on small-scale nuclear energy with its NuScale investment. "It's become a serious contender in the last decade or so," John Hopkins, [Fluor’s group president in charge of new ventures], said. And that brings us to NuScale, which had run into some dark days – maybe not as dark as, say, Solyndra, but dire enough : Earlier this year, the Securities Exchange Commission filed an action against NuScale's lead investor, The Michael Kenwood Group. The firm "misap

An Ohio School Board Is Working to Save Nuclear Plants

Ohio faces a decision soon about its two nuclear reactors, Davis-Besse and Perry, and on Wednesday, neighbors of one of those plants issued a cry for help. The reactors’ problem is that the price of electricity they sell on the high-voltage grid is depressed, mostly because of a surplus of natural gas. And the reactors do not get any revenue for the other benefits they provide. Some of those benefits are regional – emissions-free electricity, reliability with months of fuel on-site, and diversity in case of problems or price spikes with gas or coal, state and federal payroll taxes, and national economic stimulus as the plants buy fuel, supplies and services. Some of the benefits are highly localized, including employment and property taxes. One locality is already feeling the pinch: Oak Harbor on Lake Erie, home to Davis-Besse. The town has a middle school in a building that is 106 years old, and an elementary school from the 1950s, and on May 2 was scheduled to have a referendu

Wednesday Update

From NEI’s Japan micro-site: NRC, Industry Concur on Many Post-Fukushima Actions Industry/Regulatory/Political Issues • There is a “great deal of alignment” between the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission and the industry on initial steps to take at America’s nuclear energy facilities in response to the nuclear accident in Japan, Charles Pardee, the chief operating officer of Exelon Generation Co., said at an agency briefing today. The briefing gave stakeholders an opportunity to discuss staff recommendations for near-term actions the agency may take at U.S. facilities. PowerPoint slides from the meeting are on the NRC website. • The International Atomic Energy Agency board has approved a plan that calls for inspectors to evaluate reactor safety at nuclear energy facilities every three years. Governments may opt out of having their country’s facilities inspected. Also approved were plans to maintain a rapid response team of experts ready to assist facility operators recoverin