Skip to main content

Budget Details on GNEP

By Eric McErlain
From Bloomberg:
The Bush administration, reversing a 29-year-old government policy, is seeking to reprocess the waste produced by nuclear reactors in the U.S. and other nations.

The administration requested $250 million in the budget it unveiled today for development of a process to reduce and recycle radioactive waste. The process would foster expansion of nuclear power in the U.S. by reducing by 80 percent the amount of waste sent to the storage site in Yucca Mountain, Nevada.

The proposed Global Nuclear Energy Partnership would also take spent fuel from other nations, addressing growing concern about the proliferation of nuclear weapons by keeping the capability to enrich and recycle nuclear material in U.S. hands, according to budget documents released today.
For our previous posts on GNEP, click here and here. And it looks like Russia might be interested.

Technorati tags: , , , , , ,

Comments

Anonymous said…
Japan may be welcome to GNEP. However, it may be risky to transport apent fuel and MOX over Pacific Ociean. Furthermore your nation may not allow to recieve Japanese nuclear waste in Mt.yukka.
February 6, 2006 at 7:01 PM
Matthew66 said…
Japan and Australia have been sending spent fuel, power reactor fuel from Japan and research reactor fuel from Australia, to Cogema in France for reprocessing for many years. Under the current arrangements, France ships vitrified high-level waste to Japan/Australia aboard one of two specially designed ships, escorted by Japanese/Australian/French warships. The ship unloads the waste in Japan/Australia and loads spent fuel for return to France for reprocessing. The amount of waste shipped to Japan/Australia is the amount that would result from the reprocessing of the fuel to be sent to France. Neither Japan or Australia has a problem with accepting responsibility for the high-level waste they produce.

Under its agreement with the USA, Australia is not permitted to ship US originated fuel elements anywhere but the USA. Until the USA decided to repatriate US sourced research reactor fuel, these spent fuel elements were safely stored at the Lucas Heights reactor in Sydney.

Australia reprocesses spent fuel elements to minimize the volume of high level waste to be disposed of, and to enable the recovered uranium and plutonium to be reused in power reactors. Australia considers this to be the most environmentally ethical approach to the disposition of spent fuel, notwithstanding that it is an expensive option.

There have been no incidents related to the shipping of spent fuel or vitrified high level waste, save for some protests by the usual anti-nuclear suspects.
February 7, 2006 at 9:41 AM
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Activists' Claims Distort Facts about Advanced Reactor Design

By
Below is from our rapid response team . Yesterday, regional anti-nuclear organizations asked federal nuclear energy regulators to launch an investigation into what it claims are “newly identified flaws” in Westinghouse’s advanced reactor design, the AP1000. During a teleconference releasing a report on the subject, participants urged the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to suspend license reviews of proposed AP1000 reactors. In its news release, even the groups making these allegations provide conflicting information on its findings. In one instance, the groups cite “dozens of corrosion holes” at reactor vessels and in another says that eight holes have been documented. In all cases, there is another containment mechanism that would provide a barrier to radiation release. Below, we examine why these claims are unwarranted and why the AP1000 design certification process should continue as designated by the NRC. Myth: In the AP1000 reactor design, the gap between the shield bu...
23 comments
Read more

How many nuclear plants does it take to meet the world's energy needs?

By
Several weeks ago Joshua Pearce at Clarion University in Pennsylvania released a study titled “ Thermodynamic limitations to nuclear energy deployment as a greenhouse gas mitigation technology .” In the study he stated... nuclear energy production would have to increase by 10.5% per year from 2010 to 2050 to both replace fossil-fuel-energy use and meet the future energy demands. This line, of course, made the headlines and has been picked up by several outlets and blogs . When looking into his calculations for this statement, he made one assumption error that overstated the above sentence by nearly a factor of three. Page 121, Section 4.1 of the study states: Richard Smalley pointed out that in 2004, the global economy consumed the equivalent of 220 million barrels of oil per day, which converted into electricity terms is the equivalent of 14.5 TeraWatts (TW), or 14,500,000 MegaWatts (MW) (2005). … With a nuclear plant having about 1000 MW (1 GW) of capacity, we would need 14,500...
7 comments
Read more

What Happens During a Refueling Outage?

By
You may have noticed over the past few weeks that a number of nuclear plants are shut down for refueling outages or are resuming operations after just returning from one. This type of routine outage usually occurs in the spring or fall when electricity demand is low so that nuclear reactors can replace about one-third of the spent fuel rods with new fuel and conduct other routine maintenance and repairs at the plant. To get a better sense of how refueling works at a nuclear energy facility, I spoke with Marcus Nichol, NEI’s senior project manager for used fuel storage and transportation, and asked him to explain the basics. Why does a nuclear plant need to replace one-third of its fuel? Nichol: The main purpose of a refueling outage is to replace older fuel that is depleted—meaning it can no longer efficiently produce energy from nuclear fission reactions—with new fuel. This “used fuel” has typically been used in the reactor for four-and-a-half to six years before it is pe...
6 comments
Read more