Reprocessing doesn't make sense in US due to low cost of uranium and high supply.
When compared to another other fuel source uranium is dirt cheap on a equivalent energy basis. The low cost of natural uranium makes any reprocess looks expensive by comparison.
Agree.
That doesn't mean other countries won't be interested in it for energy security reasons.
Reprocessing doesn't do much for energy security. It might double the energy you get from your supply, but as long as a country belongs to and abides by the Non-Proliferation Treaty they won't have a problem with supply.
Example: India didn't belong to the NPT, they reached peak uranium, reprocessing didn't help much, they shut down 5 reactors and ran the rest at half power:
http://www.fissilematerials.org/ipfm/pages_us_en/blog/blog/blog.php?onepost=1&post_id=6India: Living Beyond its Nuclear Means
posted by M. V. Ramana on Nov 1st, 2007 <15:05h>
under: India, US-India Nuclear Deal
last edited on Nov 2nd, 2007 <06:15h>
On Monday, 21 October, S. K. Jain, the head of the Nuclear Power Corporation of India Limited announced that uranium fuel shortages had led to five of India’s 17 nuclear power plants being shut down and the rest were now, on average, at half power.
This crisis is no surprise. India has to rely on limited, poor quality, domestic uranium to both fuel its nuclear reactors, except for two very old imported U.S. reactors for which it is occasionally able to import fuel,
and to produce material for its nuclear weapons program, and there is not enough to go around. Over the last few years, fuel shortages have forced the capacity factors of Indian nuclear power plants to fall from an average of about 75% in 2003-04 to 56% in 2006-07. The Department of Atomic Energy has been trying to open up many new mines around the country, but has been meeting stiff local opposition on environmental, public health, and social grounds.
<snip>
So let's be clear about their priorities.
They would rather build bombs than provide electricity for their children to read at night.
They would rather build bombs than provide electricity for factories and offices and hospitals.
Bush's "nukes for mangoes" deal was designed to allow them to devote their indigenous supplies to weapons,
to escalate their arms race with China and Pakistan.
Personally I have never considered economics of reprocessing to be the benefit. High temperature reprocessing has the benefit of being able to reduce amount of waste generated. It also gives us the ability to remove useful medical & industrial isotopes. All spent fuel will eventually need to be stored. Reprocessing to store that spent fuel more efficiency may make sense someday. Current methods (like PUREX) are not useful though but that doesn't mean that future methods (especially high temp reprocessing) won't be useufl.
And future reprocessing methods might turn out to be too difficult, expensive, and messy to be useful.
Still honestly speaking there is no real NEED to reprocess fuel in the United States anytime in the next century. Likely we should abandon the idea of a long term repository in the immediate future and implement interim-length storage facilities (good for 50 to 100 years) and look at what is the "next step" in a century (reprocessing or repository).
It's going to take decades just to transport the waste, whether to reprocessing centers or to repositories. A repository is going to be necessary even if we reprocess. I agree that we shouldn't expect any near-term solutions, the waste will have to be stored onsite or in interim facilities for the next 50-100 years and possibly much longer. We're going to have to pass the problem on to future generations.
Since portions of the world are using reprocessing do you support continued funding to make that reprocessing safer and more proliferation resistant?
I support funding for IAEA monitoring of reprocessing facilities.
I support funding for people like Valerie Plame.
I wouldn't place a high priority on reprocessing research.
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