reprocessing

The Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG) has decided to tighten the norms of enrichment and reprocessing equipment and technology exports. The revised rules, under discussion for years, have been adopted at a June 23-24 Nuclear Suppliers Group meeting in the Dutch town of Noordwijk. In fact, this means a partial reversal of the exemption for India to have access to nuclear equipment and technology, although some analysts are unsure about the wording in the final statement.

The U.S. Bush administration helped India (which never signed the Non-Proliferation Treaty) to become eligible for imports of nuclear technology, including sensitive enrichment and reprocessing (ENR) equipment and technology, in September 2008. This was adopted by NSG and an exemption from the existing NSG rules that banned nuclear trade with countries that are not signatories of the NPT. The landmark civilian nuclear cooperation agreement ended India's atomic isolation following its 1974 nuclear test and could mean billions of dollars in business for US corporations, as well as for reactor-supplying firms from France and Russia. But now enrichment and reprocessing equipment and technology, however, are no longer part of the deal. But still there seems to be a snag somewhere in the NSG decision.

The NSG was just set up after India's first nuclear weapons explosion in 1974 “to ensure that nuclear trade for peaceful purposes does not contribute to the proliferation of nuclear weapons or other nuclear explosive devices”. But in September 2008 it did the very opposite by agreeing to the exceptional waiver for India as part of New Delhi's controversial Indo-U.S. nuclear cooperation deal. However, in the build-up of this agreement there was a great deal of resistance to the waiver within the NSG. India’s non-NPT status stuck in many throats during the negotiations leading up to the 2008 waiver by the NSG allowing India to engage in nuclear commerce. NSG failed to produce a consensus, necessary for any decision to go through. Six “like-minded” countries - Austria, Ireland, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway and Switzerland - which argued that India must accept three conditions in order to resume nuclear trade, led the resistance. These included a periodic review of compliance with India's nonproliferation pledges, exclusion from trade of sensitive technologies such as uranium enrichment and spent fuel reprocessing, and cessation of nuclear commerce in case India tests. In the event, India only accepted the first condition and doggedly refused to go beyond reiterating its unilateral moratorium on testing. But the NSG agreed.

At the Noordwijk meeting the exemption has been partly reversed under the new NSG rules. There aren't any restrictions to trade in reactors or nuclear fuel, but it limits India's access to sensitive enrichment and reprocessing (ENR) equipment and technology which are vulnerable for proliferation. But India's Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee has rejected as untrue, reports that the clean waiver India got from the NSG for ENR equipment and technology has ended because of an NSG ban for non-NPT countries. Speaking to NDTV, an Indian TV channel, Mukherjee said America must honor its commitments to India. He said the US is committed to the civilian nuclear cooperation deal with India and the clean waiver given by the NSG. He said he reminded the US administration that the clean waiver to India still stands according to the deal signed by both countries. 

Reprocessing equipment and technology comes into play in the treatment of spent fuel from a nuclear reactor, which can be reprocessed and used in a fast-breeder reactor. In 1985, India became the sixth nation to possess fast-breeder technology. The former chairman of India's Atomic Energy Commission Anil Kakodkar commented on the NSG decision: “In the bilateral 2008 Indo-US civilian nuclear deal, there was some forward looking language. The understanding was that even if it is not possible now, it would be made possible in the future. The new NSG guidelines are completely contrary to that spirit.” […] “It's a big departure, or betrayal of the exemption NSG had granted India.” According to Kakodkar the ENR technology is key to the enhancement of the power capacity using fast breeder reactors. India is among a handful of nations to have its own ENR technology, but the plan was to use international ENR technology in the nuclear program that was born out of the international cooperation, he said. “India's very large domestic program or the nuclear fuel cycle will not be affected in any way as far as I understand,” he added.

India's main opposition party BJP asked Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to give clarifications on the recent decision made by NSG. Spokesman Rajiv Pratap Rudy told media the reports emanating from The Netherlands had confirmed the worst fears expressed by BJP in parliament when it ratified the Indo-US Nuclear Treaty signed between Dr Singh and U.S. President George Bush. "The exemption India got is being sought to be nullified and we got nothing in return for the deal it signed with U.S. and India would be treated on par with countries like Pakistan, North Korea and Israel who too have not signed the NPT", he said. “Our apprehensions have become true with the NSG resolving to strengthen its guidelines on transfer of sensitive ENR technologies after considering all aspects of the implementation of the 2008 Statement on Civil Nuclear Cooperation with India.”

NSG members such as the US, Russia, Germany and the Netherlands support India to join the NSG., although it did not sign the NPT. Just before the NSG Noordwijk meeting the Obama administration lauded the NSG move to restrict trade enrichment and reprocessing systems even as it reaffirmed its support of civilian atomic trade with India. Former Indian envoy M.K. Bhadrakumar said, “There is a clear double standard here on the part of the U.S..” Also France and Russia, who each have signed nuclear agreements with India and have also repeatedly voiced their openness to selling enrichment and reprocessing technology to India, have accepted the new NSG rules.

Ambiguous NSG declaration
There is some wording in the Public Statement of the Noordwijk meeting that shows the ambiguous NSG position and makes it difficult to analyze the exact outcome.

- the NSG therefore agreed to strengthen its guidelines on the transfer of sensitive enrichment and reprocessing technologies […] and

- continued to consider all aspects of the implementation of the 2008 Statement on Civil Nuclear Cooperation with India and discussed the NSG relationship with India.

How do these accounts relate to each other? Proliferation expert Mark Hibbs of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace firmly believes that the outcome is a strengthening of the guidelines. “The new (NSG) guidelines include language saying transfers of enrichment and reprocessing technologies should be limited to NPT states and India doesn't qualify.” [..] “India has been trying to get that particular item out of the new guidelines and they failed,” Hibbs said. “It limits their access to sensitive technology.”

The NSG - which consists of 46 nations, including the five recognized nuclear weapons states that are not subjected to the IAEA safeguards regime - tries to ensure that nuclear exports are not diverted for military purposes. This would bar all NPT outsiders - India, Pakistan, Israel and North Korea - from such items, which can have both civilian and military applications. Even though they are NPT signatories, the new guidelines would also apply to Iran and Syria as they are being probed by the IAEA over suspicions that they have channeled nuclear activities towards military ends.

Sources: Nuclear Monitor 677, 25 September 2008; NSG Public Statement, 24 June 2011 on www.nuclearsuppliersgroup.org; The Economic Times, 29 June 2011; Reuters, 28 June 2011; NTI, 28 June 2011
Contact: Laka Foundation, Ketelhuisplein 43, 1054 RD Amsterdam, The Netherlands.
Email: info@laka.org
Web: www.laka.org

December 8 is “Phase Out Nuclear Energy Day” in Japan. The “Phase Out Nuclear Energy Day” campaign, which now includes a wide range of people, is supporting campaigns around country and wants to remain rooted in people’s daily lives.

“Phase Out Nuclear Energy Day” Organizing Committee - In September this year a few people formed a “virtual group” to initiate a “Phase Out Nuclear Energy Day” campaign. They created an email list and drafted a statement about the nature and purpose of the campaign and publicized it through “Twitter” and “Mixi”. Supporters began to join the email list and a poster and Blog were created to gather supporters, further publicize the campaign and generate “phase out nuclear energy” actions all over Japan around the December 8 date. The campaign, which now includes a wide range of people, wants to remain rooted in people’s daily lives.

The “virtual” group is limiting its aim for this year to getting “Phase Out Nuclear Energy Day” known. We do not plan to organize a major event ourselves this year, but we are supporting other events (see below).

Why December 8?
December 8 is the fifteenth anniversary of the sodium leak and fire at the Monju Prototype Fast Breeder Reactor in Tsuruga City, Fukui Prefecture. About a month later Shigeo Nishimura, deputy general manager of PNC's general affairs department and one of the team leaders of the in-house team tasked with looking into the cover-up, jumped to his death from a hotel in Tokyo and many details of the accident remain unclear to this day.

What is clear, however, is that plutonium-fueled, sodium-cooled Monju is an exceptionally complicated and dangerous nuclear reactor, subjecting the public to even greater risks than “normal” light water reactors and exacerbating the problem of nuclear proliferation.

Believing that the Monju accident should have been the end of nuclear power in Japan, we chose December 8 as “Phase Out Nuclear Energy Day” to simultaneously commemorate the Monju accident, call for the closure of Monju and call for a total phase out of nuclear power.

Why phase-out nuclear energy?
Unfortunately, in spite of strong opposition, Monju was restarted in May this year. There has been a series of problems, culminating in an accident on August 26 in which a 3-ton fuel-loading device dropped into the reactor when it was being removed. Monju has been out of action since then.

Monju is part of Japan’s failed nuclear fuel cycle program. The Rokkasho Reprocessing Plant, another core nuclear fuel cycle facility, is also in serious trouble. Commercial operations were officially postponed for the eighteenth time in September.

In earthquake-prone Japan, nuclear power is the most unsuitable way of generating electricity. There are now 54 nuclear power plants operating in Japan (not including Monju). Besides the danger of accidents, the warm water released from nuclear power plants damages the marine environment and radioactivity released into the environment during the course of regular operations bio-accumulates in the food chain and exposes human beings to radiation.

Nuclear energy is unable to contribute to solving the problem of global warming. Rather it exacerbates the problem. There is an urgent need for the whole of Japan to shift to renewable forms of energy.

Specific actions
The “Phase Out Nuclear Energy Day” campaign is supporting campaigns around Japan, including the 28-year opposition of the people of the island of Iwaishima to Chugoku Electric Power Company’s plan to construct the Kaminoseki Nuclear Power Plant in Yamaguchi Prefecture. We are sponsoring a film screening and public meeting on December 4 in Yamaguchi City.

Our Japanese blog is on the following link http://ameblo.jp/datsugenpatsu1208/entry-10696488685.html

Source: Mari Hoshikawa, Member of the “Phase Out Nuclear Energy Day” Organizing Committee
Contact: Kazuhide Fukada
Email: datugen@gmail.com

The annual announcement of further delay in the start-up of the Rokkasho reprocessing plant might become a biannual announcement from now on. On November 18, 2005 Japan Nuclear Fuel Ltd. (JNFL) announced that start-up of Rokkasho would be pushed back to July 2007. Just before that date, in May 2007, JNFL suspended the receipt of spent fuel at the plant after it was revealed that incorrect data had been used to calculate design standards for some shearing and fuel handling equipment in the event of an earthquake. In November 2008 a delay was announced as it was in September 2009.

On September 10, this year Japan Nuclear Fuel Ltd (JNFL) announced that the commencement of commercial operations of the Rokkasho Reprocessing Plant would be delayed by two years from October this year to October 2012. This is the eighteenth time the start date has been delayed. The reason for the delay is a series of problems and accidents during testing of the process of vitrifying high-level radioactive liquid waste. All the other tests have been completed, but unless the two vitrification furnaces can achieve a production capacity of 1,000 glass canisters per year, the plant cannot begin commercial operations.

JNFL says that the first 18 months of the extension period will be spent on activities including fitting thermometers to the vitrification furnaces and comparing operational data from a mock up facility (KMOC) in Tokai Village which is conducting experiments vitrifying an imitation of the radioactive liquid waste produced at the Rokkasho plant.

So far all the vitrification tests at Rokkasho have used Vitrification Furnace A, but glass and other material have become stuck in the furnace. JNFL now wants to begin testing Vitrification Furnace B and conduct "hot tests" (using real high-level liquid waste) in both furnaces from April 2012.

However, it is completely unclear when it will be possible to resume testing of the Vitrification Facility. No matter how well comparison of the KMOC data goes, since KMOC is not using the strong heat and radiation generating highly radioactive liquid waste produced at the Rokkasho Reprocessing Plant, the problems involved are not the same. JNFL's attempts to gather new data from KMOC since testing of the Rokkasho plant came to a standstill are bound to fail. They only go to show that the development of the vitrification furnaces was a total failure in the first place. JNFL needs to reconsider the fundamental design and development of the vitrification furnaces.

Testing of the vitrification furnaces has been a vicious circle in which one problem has led to another. Due to its lack of technical ability, JNFL has only been able to respond to problems in a haphazard fashion. To deal with the sedimentation of platinum group elements at the bottom of the vitrification furnace it inserted a stirring rod, but the stirring rod bent and in the ensuing confusion a brick was dislodged from the ceiling of the furnace. As attempts were being made to overcome the problem, about 150 liters of highly radioactive liquid waste leaked and evaporated within the cell. No doubt there will be more problems in future and JNFL will end up chasing its tail as it tries to respond to them, while the real tests are pushed further and further into the future.

It is hard to read any technical logic into the two-year period of the delay. Rather, it seems to have more to do with the fact that the spent fuel pools at Japan's nuclear power plants can just manage to get by without sending spent fuel to Rokkasho for a period of two years. Rokkasho's spent fuel storage pools are almost full. As at September, 2,776 tons of spent fuel was already stored in the pools, which have a total capacity of 3,000 tons.

The two-year delay will have a severe impact on the finances of Rokkasho Village. Rokkasho Village expects to receive about 2 billion yen (US$ 23 million or 17.5 million euro) in fixed assets taxes in the first year the plant begins commercial operations. The figure will gradually decrease thereafter. It is four and a half years since active testing of the Rokkasho Reprocessing Plant began on March 31, 2006 and almost three years have passed since testing of the Vitrification Facility began on November 5, 2007. Now completion of the tests has been pushed back another two years. This small village made all sorts of plans on the assumption that it would receive huge taxation income from the reprocessing plant, but now it is forced to reconsider its finances.

At the same time as announcing the delay, JNFL announced that it was making third-party allocations of new stocks worth a total of 400 billion yen (US$ 4.68 billion or 3.5 billion euro). The thirteen recipients are the nine electric power companies that operate nuclear power plants, plus Japan Atomic Power Company, Hitachi, Toshiba and Mitsubishi Heavy Industries. A September 14 article published on the English web site of The Denki Shimbun (The Electric Daily News) made the following comment:

"As of March 31 this year, JNFL's equity ratio was about 7.5%. Its financial position was weak for an enterprise executing the nuclear fuel cycle as a matter of national policy, and was viewed with concern by the electric power companies and other shareholders. Once the new third-party allocations are made, JNFL's equity ratio will top 20%...."

The stock issue shows that JNFL is experiencing financial difficulties, but a question that remains unanswered is the impact that this and previous delays will have on the total cost of the Rokkasho Reprocessing Plant. After so many delays, it is inconceivable that construction costs will not exceed the official figure of 2.14 trillion yen (US$ 25 billion or 19 billion euro).

1982: Rokkasho finished in 1991.
​One of the first articles in the Laka archive-file on the Rokkasho reprocessing plant is a Mainichi Daily News clipping of January 8, 1982. Although a site was not definitive chosen, the plans to construct a reprocessing plant, and related facilities (a plutonium-conversion plant, a fission products vitrification plant, spent fuel storage, a "specialized ship designed to carry used nuclear fuel" a pier and other port facilities) were announced. The company, Japan Nuclear Fuel Services, plans to complete the reprocessing plant and related facilities "by the end of fiscal year1 1990 (March 31, 1991) at an estimated cost of  690 billion Yen in 19979 terms (which works out  to about US$ 3.15 billion at present rates)."
Mainichi Daily News, 8 January 1982.

Sources: Nuke Info Tokyo 138, Sept/Oct 2010 / NucNet, 3 December 2008
Contact:  Masako Sawai, CNIC (Citizens' Nuclear Information Center) Akebonobashi Co-op 2F-B, 8-5, Sumiyoshi-cho, Shinjuku-ku, Tokyo, 162-0065, Japan
Tel:  +81-3-3357-3800
Email: cnic@nifty.om
Web: http://cnic.jp/english

On 16 April, The US Department of Energy (DOE) announced its decision for only partial cleanup of the West Valley nuclear waste site 30 miles (45 km) south of Buffalo and upstream of Western New York's main water supply. Members of the West Valley Action Network which includes local, state, national and international environmental, religious, labor, recreational, sports and government entities advocating full clean up of the intensely radioactive site, expressed extreme disappointment, but not surprise.

The New York State Energy Research and Development Authority’s decision on the site is expected later in April. Major concerns include Department of Energy’s giving only lip-service to the clear call by all sectors of the public for full cleanup decision now, ignoring the state-funded, ground-breaking independent study on long-term health and economic effects on the region of leaving nuclear waste buried at West Valley, the lack of commitment to full legal Environmental Impact Statement process for Phase 2 (which involves the majority of the radioactivity at the site), and the appearance of a setup to allow the rest of the deadly waste to be left in the highly erosion-prone ground permanently.

DOE chose to split the cleanup into phases: the first to cleanup one major building and part of a spreading radioactive leak already in groundwater and making its way to creeks that flow to Lake Erie. Meanwhile, DOE will take up to a decade to decide whether to carry out a second phase, which could be to leave the rest of the waste, which comprises the majority of the radioactivity, buried there. The high level radioactive waste tanks with intensely radioactive sludge from reprocessing, radioactive burial grounds with long-lasting waste from 1960s and 70s nuclear power and weapons reactors, including damaged irradiated fuel will be left to potentially leak more.

DOE will begin to clean up part but not all of a spreading plume of dangerous radioactivity that was first detected in the early 1990s which they attribute to a 1968 spill in the reprocessing building. That huge building is slated to be dismantled in phase 1, but some of the underground pipes could be left in the ground. Studies will be carried out to “inform” the decision on whether to remove all waste from the rest of the site or to leave the buried waste and merely cover it over.

"Phase I will only address 1% of buried radioactive waste. The public must have a say in the final cleanup; we cannot afford to allow federal and state government agencies to merely walk away from the remaining 99% of buried radioactivity in the high level underground tanks and the two radioactive burial areas," according to Barbara Warren, Executive Director, Citizens' Environmental Coalition.

Despite requests from the West Valley Action Network that DOE study HOW to cleanup the rest of the site, DOE is choosing to continue analyzing WHETHER to clean it up.

The 2008 West Valley Full Cost Accounting Study by independent scientists analyzed the geology, economics and radiological consequences of full clean up versus leaving buried waste at the erosion-prone site. The study assessed long range costs whereas DOE discounted and ignored future economic and environmental costs and risks. The report concluded that it is less expensive in the long run and more protective of health to dig up the West Valley waste before it leaks into the Cattaraugus Creek and Lake Erie.

The West Valley site
West Valley is a complex radioactive waste site with long-lasting nuclear waste mainly from atomic weapons and power production and some other generators. The site has high-level, so-called “low-level,” transuranic and mixed (radioactive and hazardous) wastes buried, stored and leaking. Burial of radioactive waste in 20-30 foot deep trenches began in the early 1960s and continued until 1974 when water filled up the trenches, burst through the trench caps and flowed into surrounding streams that run into Cattaraugus Creek, through Zoar Valley and the Reservation of the Seneca Nation of Indians, into Lake Erie, upstream of the intake water intake for Buffalo and other major cities in the US and Canada.

From 1966-1972, irradiated nuclear fuel from both atomic weapons and commercial power reactors was brought in and reprocessed (to extract uranium and plutonium remaining and formed in the fuel rods), resulting in high worker exposures, high levels of radioactive contamination into the streams that drain the site and gush into the Great Lakes, and many fires. Reprocessing wastes were also buried at the site. Plans to resume reprocessing were cancelled when earthquake dangers were identified and improvements were projected to cost too much. Shortly thereafter the US decided to stop all reprocessing of commercial nuclear fuel because of the nuclear weapons proliferation danger. Geologically, the site is in a bedrock valley that is expected to erode into the Great Lakes in centuries to come, but the nuclear waste buried at the site will remain dangerously radioactive much longer than the projected erosion rate.
(NIRS Radioactive Waste Project)

Source: Press Release: NIRS, Sierra Club, CHEJ, 16 April 2010
Contact: Diane D’Arrigo at NIRS

It is only recently that reprocessing is being promoted as a “solution” to the problem of mounting quantities of spent fuel. In this context, it is often called “recycling.” It is now explicitly being promoted as a means for greatly increasing the use of the uranium resource contained in the spent fuel. Proponents of nuclear power often state that 95 percent of spent fuel (or used fuel or irradiated fuel) can be “recycled” for recovering the energy in it.

This has become a new mantra of nuclear waste management: spent fuel is a treasuretrove of energy.

A new report ('The Mythology and Messy reality of Nuclear Fuel Reprocessing') by the Institute for Energy and Environmental Research (IEER) looks at France (often called an 'inspirational example for nuclear waste management') and shows that for existing spent fuel the slogan belongs in the same realm of economic claims for nuclear energy that would be “too cheap to meter.”

It is worth noting at the outset that reprocessing and breeder reactors were not proposed as asolution to the problem of nuclear waste, which has so far turned out to be intractable for a host of technical, environmental, and political reasons. Reprocessing was also not proposed as an essential accompaniment to burner reactors, like the light water reactors, to increase the use of the uranium resource because its value in that regard is marginal.

In light water reactor systems, almost all the uranium resource winds up as depleted uranium or in spent fuel. Even with repeated reprocessing and re-enrichment, use of the natural uranium resource cannot be increased to more than one percent in such a system. The use of 90 to 95 percent of the uranium resource in the spent fuel is impossible in a light water reactor system even with reprocessing. These are technical constraints that go with the system.

Reprocessing in France
Reprocessing in France is continuing mainly due to the inertia of primarily-government-owned electricity generation and reprocessing corporations (EDF and AREVA respectively). It continues also due to the political and economic dislocations that closing an established large industrial operation would cause in a largely rural area in Normandy that has scarcely any other industries. After it was clear that the breeder reactor program was not going to fulfill its theoretical promise any time soon, the decision to continue reprocessing in France was not about economics, technical suitability, waste management, or significantly increasing the use of the uranium resource in the fresh fuel.(*1) It was driven mainly by the inertia of a system that was government-owned and had already invested a great deal of money and institutional prestige in the technology.

Reprocessing in the US?
French company Areva has no immediate plans to build a reprocessing and associated MOX fabrication complex in the US. Areva spokesman Jarret Adams said the company has been discussing designs for a US reprocessing and MOX fuel fabrication complex with utilities for many years and that it is 'starting to educate President Barack Obama’s administration' on Areva’s vision for nuclear fuel recycling in the US.

But on March 25, Alan Hanson, Areva’s executive vice president of technology and used fuel management, said in Washington, that preliminary designs show that a reprocessing and associated MOX fuel fabrication complex built at one site in the US would be a US$25 billion capital expenditure.

Jacques Besnainou, CEO of Areva North America, said in that Areva would be willing to invest its own money to help develop a reprocessing complex in the US. On March 25, Besnainou said that a US reprocessing complex could be a regional hub capable of reprocessing spent fuel from the Americas and small countries from other regions. “I think we should help the [United Arab Emirates] with their used fuel 20 years from now,” he said.
Nuclear Fuel, 5 April 2010

Light water reactors(*2) and reprocessing
Uranium-238 is almost 99.3 percent of the natural uranium resource. It requires about 7.44 kilograms of natural uranium to produce one kilogram of 4 percent enriched uranium fuel, assuming 0.2 percent U-235 in the tails (depleted uranium).(*3) This means that about 86.6 percent of the natural uranium resource winds up as depleted uranium. Even if the efficiency of enrichment improved so that only 0.1 percent of U-235 remained in the tails, it would still mean that about 84 percent of the natural uranium resource would wind up as depleted uranium when it is first enriched. (For simplicity, the authors ignore losses of uranium during milling and the series of processing steps prior to enrichment. These are small compared to the amount of depleted uranium.)

It should also be noted that the vast majority of the uranium in the fresh fuel is still non-fissile U- 238. In the case of 4 percent enriched uranium, made from natural uranium, the other 96 percent is uranium-238. The fraction of U-238 is a little lower in fuel made from reprocessed and re-enriched uranium due to the buildup of other uranium isotopes, notably U-236.  A small fraction (about two percent) of this U-238 gets converted into plutonium.(*4) Some of this is fissioned in the course of reactor operation and therefore provides a portion of the energy output of the reactor. But the vast majority of uranium-238 will remain unused in burner reactors – that is, the type of reactors in use today.

Commercial reprocessing using the PUREX process, the only commercial technology at present, separates the spent fuel into three streams – (i) plutonium, (ii) uranium, and (iii) fission products, plus traces of non-fission radionuclides, like neptunium.

France uses most, but not all (see below), of the separated plutonium as a mixed plutonium dioxide uranium dioxide fuel, called MOX fuel for short. It uses depleted uranium to make MOX fuel. However, of the 6.44 kilograms of depleted uranium created in the process of making fresh fuel from natural uranium, in the used example, just over a tenth of a kilogram is used as a component of MOX fuel; most of that remains unused in spent MOX fuel.

France also uses a part of the uranium recovered from spent fuel as a fuel. But this uranium must be re-enriched to the requisite level. To get the same performance as fresh 4 percent fuel, the reprocessed uranium must (because of the degraded isotopic composition of the uranium) be enriched to about 4.4 percent, which means that about 87 percent of the recovered uranium becomes depleted uranium waste. Further, roughly 93 percent of this re-enriched fuel is also uranium-238. When this recovered and re-enriched uranium is used as fuel only a small amount of it is converted to plutonium, while most remains unused. If repeated reprocessing and re-enrichment are carried out, the pile of depleted uranium mounts rapidly, while the amount of fissile material dwindles. Further, it should be noted that the process of enriching reprocessed uranium also increases the concentration of uranium-236, which is not fissile; this reduces the usefulness of re-enriched uranium as a fuel.

The flow of materials in a light water reactor scheme with reprocessing is shown in diagram in Figure 2. It corresponds to the example the authors have been using: an initial fuel loading of 1 kilogram of fresh (4 percent) low-enriched uranium fuel, 0.2 percent U-235 in the depleted uranium tails at the enrichment plant, and 8 percent plutonium in MOX fuel, and assuming that all the recovered uranium is re-enriched.

Figure 2: Fuel and Waste Streams in a Light Water Reactor System with Reprocessing and Re-Enrichment for One Kilogram of Fresh Fuel (4% Enriched)
Notes:
1. Nat U = natural uranium; DU = depleted uranium tails (0.2 percent U-235 assumed for this chart); EU = enriched uranium; Pu = plutonium from spent fuel; REU = re-enriched uranium; MOX = mixed plutonium dioxide uranium dioxide fuel; FP = fission products; SF = spent fuel; TRU = transuranic radionuclides other than plutonium isotopes; RU = uranium recovered from spent fuel; DRU = depleted recovered uranium. Pu value rounded up to nearest gram.
2. U-235 in the tails at the enrichment plant = 0.2 percent.
3. The amount of matter converted to energy (according to the famous E = MC2) is very small (much less than one gram per kilogram of fuel) and is ignored in the above diagram.

Only one round of reprocessing and re-enrichment is shown in Figure 2. At the end of the use of the MOX fuel and re-enriched uranium fuel, only about 6 percent of the kilogram of original fresh fuel has been used to generate energy. In turn this is only about 0.8 percent of the 7.44 kilograms natural uranium resource used to make the single kilogram of 4 percent enriched uranium fuels.

Repeated reprocessing, MOX fuel use, and re-enriched reprocessing uranium fuel use does not improve the picture much. This is because most of the remaining spent fuel is left behind as depleted uranium in each round. In fact after five rounds, about 99 percent of the original uranium resource is depleted uranium. This means that the fraction of the uranium resource that can be used in a light water reactor-reprocessing-re-enrichment scheme is one percent or less. This can be raised slightly by reducing the amount of U-235 in the tails below 0.2 percent.

This is a conservative calculation, done as a simple illustration. It ignores the isotopic degradation of both the uranium and plutonium in the second and subsequent rounds of use in a reactor. Specifically, uranium-236 and uranium-234, which are not fissile isotopes and which degrade fuel performance, build up in the fuel as the reactor operates; uranium-236 increases in concentration with re-enrichment. Small amounts of uranium-232 also build up.(*5) This isotope has a specific activity (defined as disintegrations per second per unit mass) that is 30 million times greater than natural uranium. Unlike fresh uranium fuel, it quickly generates decay products that emit strong gamma radiation, which creates higher worker radiation risks. Fuel quality requirements limit U-232 to a few parts per billion. As a result, re-enrichment becomes more complex and costly for each round of recycled uranium fuel use in a reactor. The fraction of uranium-236 and uranium-232 must be reduced by blending the enrichment feedstock with natural, un-reprocessed uranium or by blending the enriched uranium derived from reprocessed uranium with enriched uranium originating from fresh ore. Similarly, the isotopic composition of MOX fuel degrades with each round of MOX fuel use and reprocessing; this makes reprocessing even more expensive and the fuel less valuable.

As a result of the above considerations, technical and cost considerations limit the practical ability to reprocessing and re-enrich for more than one round past the first use of fresh fuel made from natural uranium.

Even when the initial depleted uranium is left out of the calculation (though it should not be, since it contains most of the natural uranium resource), reprocessing and repeated re-enrichment and MOX fuel use will utilize only about six percent (rounded) of the fuel originally loaded into the reactor, with about two-thirds of that occurring in the initial irradiation and most of the rest occurring in the first round of MOX fuel use. Repeated reprocessing, re-enrichment, and MOX fuel use just does not increase resource use significantly, because most of the uranium becomes part of the depleted uranium stream at each step. Finally, it should be noted that these numbers ignore uranium losses at the uranium mill (where, typically, several percent of the uranium is discarded into tailing ponds along with almost all the radium-226 and thorium-230 in the ore) and in the processing steps needed to make the uranium hexafluoride feed for the enrichment plant. The actual resource utilization based on the uranium content of the ore at the mill is, in practice significantly less than one percent. Fresh fuel plus one cycle of MOX use and re-enrichment uses only about 0.8 percent of the natural uranium resource. This is reduced to about 0.7 percent when the losses of uranium in the processing at the uranium mill and the conversion to uranium hexafluoride are taken into account.

France currently only re-uses a third of the recovered uranium. This means that France uses less than six percent of the uranium resource in the original fresh fuel; about 80 percent of this is used in the first round of fresh fuel use prior to reprocessing. In other words, the expense, risk, and pollution created by French reprocessing only marginally increases the use of the underlying uranium resource. Further, the re-enrichment is not done in France but in Russia. The depleted uranium from re-enrichment, amounting to roughly 87 percent of the reprocessed uranium by weight, remains behind in Russia.

In sum, the French use only about 0.7 percent of the original uranium resource to create fission energy. The rest is mainly in depleted uranium at various locations, or is piling up as reprocessed uranium that is not being used, or is uranium left in spent fuel of various kinds (including MOX spent fuel). This figure cannot be increased significantly even with repeated reprocessing and re-enrichment so long as the fuel is used in a light water reactor system.

Notes (For full references see the original report):
(*1) All calculations are based on four percent enriched fresh fuel made from natural uranium as the starting point, unless otherwise specified. The results would be similar with any starting enrichment for light water reactors, which are designed to use low enriched fuel (generally less than five percent U-235).

(*2) Light water reactors are a specific example of “burner” reactors, which have a net consumption of fissile materials in the course of energy production from fission. Some new fissile material is created, mainly plutonium-239, but the amount of fissile material used (or burned), mainly a combination of uranium-235 and plutonium-239, is greater than the amount of fissile material residing in the irradiated material at the end of the reactor operation period. This discussion is focused on light water reactors (LWRs), and specifically on pressurized water reactors (PWRs), the design used in France. The arguments are essentially the same for boiling water reactors (BWRs). The U.S. commercial nuclear power reactor system consists entirely of PWRs and BWRs. Unless otherwise stated, the examples and figures used in this report are typical of pressurized water reactors. The exact assumptions, such as the enrichment level of the fresh fuel, make no difference to the overall conclusion about the efficiency of resource use in a light-water-reactor system with reprocessing and re-enrichment.

(*3) Used is 4 percent enrichment as a typical figure. Actual enrichments in pressurized water reactors may range from 3 percent to above 4 percent. During enrichment, natural uranium is separated into two streams – the enriched stream, which is then chemically further processed to make reactor fuel, and the depleted stream, which is also called the “tails.” These tails, which consist of depleted uranium, have been accumulating at enrichment plants in the United States and elsewhere. The authors assume a U-235 content of about 0.2 percent in the tails (i.e., in the depleted uranium). In practice, the U-235 in the tails varies and a typical range generally considered is 0.2 to 0.3 percent. The amount of natural uranium needed to produce a kilogram of fuel will vary according to the enrichment of the fuel used and the percent of U-235 in the tails. The lower the percent of U-235 in the tails, the less natural uranium is needed for a given level of enrichment. Hence the example discussed here is a favorable practical case for maximizing resource use in a light water reactor system.

(*4) The main isotope (over 50 percent) in the separated plutonium is Pu-239, but there are also substantial amounts of higher isotopes, including Pu-240 and Pu-241. The mixture is known as reactor-grade plutonium. Pu-240 is not fissile. When used as part of MOX fuel in light water reactors some of it gets converted into Pu-241, which is fissile. Pu-240 can fission with fast neutrons and generate energy.

(*5) Uranium-233 and -237 are also formed in very small quantities and have very little radiological impact. Uranium-233 is a fissile material which gives a tiny added benefit to the reprocessed uranium. (IAEA-TECDOC-1529 2007 pp. 7-8)

Source: 'The Mythology and Messy reality of Nuclear Fuel reprocessing', Arjun Makhijani, Ph.D., April 8, 2010, available at: http://www.ieer.org/reports/reprocessing2010.pdf
Contact: Institute for Energy and Environmental Research (IEER), 6935 Laurel Ave., Suite 201, Takoma Park, Maryland, 20912 USA.
Tel: +1-301-270-5500
Email: info@ieer.org
Web: www.ieer.org

U.K. wants to sell Urenco stake.
The U.K. Government’s stake in Urenco, which owns nuclear enrichment plants in Britain, Germany and the Netherlands, will be sold off to help to repay the country’s escalating debt mountain, the Prime Minister announced on October 12. The plan to sell off the Government’s one-third stake in Urenco could be the most controversial. The stake is controlled by the Shareholder Executive, which was created in 2003 to better manage the Government’s performance as a shareholder in businesses. The other two thirds are owned by the Dutch Ultra-Centrifuge Nederland and German Uranit. Downing Street sources said that the sale would be subject to national security considerations, which could lead to the Government maintaining a small interest in the company or other restrictions placed on the sale.

Meanwhile, the Dutch state took over the last 1.1% of the stakes in Ultra-Centrifuge Nederland, the Dutch part of Urenco, from private companies. Now, The Netherlands, owns the full 100% of the company. The Netherlands is not in favor of selling the uranium enrichment company to private parties.

The Times (U.K.) 12 October 2009 / Letter Dutch Finance Minister, 12 October 2009

Belarus: EIA Hearing new NPP.
On October 9, a public hearing took place in Ostrovets, in the Grodno Region, on the question of construction of a nuclear power plant in Belarus. All the entrances to the cinema where the hearings were held got blocked by riot police and streets were filled with plainclothes police. Documents and leaflets critical of the EIA (Environmental Impact Assessment) were confiscated illegally, because of their 'doubtful' contents. Employees of state institutions were brought to the hearings by busses. Forcedly assembled audience was registered in advance, in violation of regulations. Many registered participants were however not let inside the building. Speaking was allowed only to state employees in favor of nuclear power plant construction, others were denied to speak. The denial was motivated by the fact that they supposedly have been registered too late. It is clear that the procedure of these hearings didn't meet the standards and therefore the results can't be recognized as independent. Russian expert in nuclear physics Andrey Ozharovskiy was arrested in the morning on a charge of disorderly conduct when he wanted to enter the building and handing out a critical response to the EIA. He was released only after 7 days in jail. Thus, the authorities showed their true face again - they are not going to let the dissident speak openly on the matters important to those in power.

Belarus Anti-Nuclear Resistance, 10 October 2009

Sellafield: Dramatic rise to discharge limit.
Sellafield Ltd is expected to ask the U.K. Environment Agency (EA) for an almost 5-fold increase in gas discharge limit for Antimony 125 (Sb-125) so that the Magnox reprocessing plant can continue to operate. Sb-125 has a radioactive half-life of 2.75 years and emits beta radiation.

Disclosed in its Quarterly Report to the local West Cumbria Sites Stakeholder Group meeting scheduled for 1^st October, the EA confirms that Sellafield wants the limit to be raised from its current level of 6.9 to Gigabequerels (GBq) to 30GBq. The bulk of Sellafield’s Sb-125 gas discharges arise during the de-canning  (removal of the fuel’s outer casing) of spent Magnox fuel, particularly the higher burn-up fuel, in the site’s Fuel Handling Plant prior to its transfer to the reprocessing plant.

In early 2008 the Sb-125 discharge limit stood at just 2.3GBq but later had to be raised to its current level of 6.9GBq when the discharge chimney sampling equipment was found to be under-reporting. In October 2008 Sellafield Ltd indicated to the EA that, as part of its Periodic Review submission, it would be seeking to increase the limit from 6.9GBq to 11.6 GBq. In a spectacular misjudgment of its discharge requirements, Sellafield now needs to raise the limit to 30GBq to allow the de-canning and subsequent reprocessing of the larger volumes of higher burn-up fuel being received in the Fuel Handling Plant from UK’s Magnox power stations.

Since 2007, processing higher burn-up fuel in the Fuel Handling Plant has lead to Sellafield breaching its discharge Quarterly Notification Level on a number of occasions, and in late 2008 exceeding the site’s internal trigger level. Subsequently, in April this year, as releases of Sb-125 from the Fuel Handling Plant threatened to breach the Sellafield site limit itself, Magnox reprocessing had to be abandoned for several weeks. Currently, the EA expects the current discharge limit to be breached again but is permitting Magnox reprocessing to continue – as the lesser of two evils.

The proposed increase in site discharge limit to 30GBq is unlikely to be authorized until April next year when approval from the European Commission, under Euratom Article 37, is expected to be given. Whilst the current limit of 6.9GBq is likely to be breached between now and then, it is understood that discharges of other fission products released during the de-canning of Magnox fuel in the Fuel Handling Plant, whilst also on the increase, will remain within their respective site discharge limits

CORE Press release, 30 September 2009

Ratings NEK downrated due to Belene.
On 5 October, according to the Platts News Flashes, the rating agency Standard & Poor's Rating Services down rated the credit ratings for Bulgaria's dominant state power utility NEK from BB to BB- partly because of its involvement in Belene. The down rating "reflects our view of a weakening of NEK's financial profile and liquidity on the back of large investments and in the context of a deteriorating domestic economy," said S&P credit analyst Tania Tsoneva. The spending that NEK did "prior to the project's financing, coupled with large regular investments, have significantly weakened NEK's financial metrics". In November there will be an update of S&P's CreditWatch.

Email: Greenpeace, 6 October 2009

U.A.E. Passes Nuclear-Energy Law.
On October 4, the United Arab Emirates issued the Federal Law Regarding the Peaceful Uses of Nuclear Energy. The law provides for "the development of a robust system for the licensing and control of nuclear material." Federal Law No. 6, which was issued by U.A.E. President Sheikh Khalifa bin Zayed Al Nahyan, establishes the independent Federal Authority of Nuclear Regulation to oversee the country's nuclear energy sector, and appoints the regulator's board. It also reiterates the U.A.E.'s pledge not to domestically enrich uranium as part of its plans to build nuclear power plants, the first of which is slated for commercial operation in 2017. The law makes it illegal to develop, construct or operate uranium enrichment or spent fuel processing facilities within the country's borders.

The bilateral agreement for peaceful nuclear cooperation between the U.A.E. and the U.S., or the 123 Agreement, could come into force at the end of October, when a mandatory 90-day period of Congressional review is expected to end.

Wall Street Journal, 5 October 2009

Uranium waste: Urenco transports to Russia stopped.
A TV-report by the German/French-TV-station ARTE brought a new wave of media coverage concerning uranium waste transports from France and Germany to Russia. One of the positive results of the media interest: Urenco has confirmed that the UF6-transport from Gronau to Russia on 26 August was indeed the last one!

This is a major success for the joint campaign involving Russian, Dutch, French, Finnish, Swedish and German activists and organizations for the last three-four years. Thanks to this hard campaign the anti-nuclear groups have finally stopped this part of the dirty export of nuclear waste to Russia. Considering that they were up against several of the biggest nuclear players in Europe and various governments they have done very well!

But the same documentary, aired on October 13, made clear that France’s energy giant EDF is still sending its uranium hexafluoride to the Seversk facility in Siberia, Russia. According to the ‘Liberation’ newspaper, 13 percent of French radioactive waste produced by EDF could be found in the open air in the town in Siberia to which access is forbidden. An EDF spokeswoman declined to confirm the 13 percent figure, or that waste was stored in the open air, but confirmed EDF sends nuclear waste to Russia. Because a small part (10-20 %) of the depleted uranium is send back after being enriched to natural levels U-235, authorities claim it is not waste but raw material.

Reuters, 12 October 2009 / Email: SOFA Muenster (Germany) , 16 October 2009

Bad news for American Centrifuge Plant.
On October 15, the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) announced it could not support a program to prove USEC’s centrifuge technology. The loss of US$30 million (Euro 20 million) for the next financial year comes after the DOE's July decision to refuse USEC a loan guarantee to help it secure finance for the American Centrifuge facility at Piketon, Ohio. At the time the company said it would have to 'demobilize' the project, on which it had already spent US$1.5 billion (see Nuclear Monitor 691, 16 July 2009, In Brief). The DOE placed USEC's application on hold and gave the company a chance to improve its application by proving the commercial viability of its technology. The DOE was to financially support a proving program with US$30-45 million per year, starting in the financial year 2010.

However, the US$30 million for the first financial year was recently denied by Congress during the appropriations process. And in another piece of bad news for USEC it has emerged that a manufacturing fault in its centrifuges will mean several months' delay while replacement parts are made and the units rebuilt. In a statement, the DOE noted that the deal with USEC still stands to postpone review of its loan guarantee application until certain "technical and financial milestones are met," which would probably take six months even without the delay of rebuilding. The department noted that it had "worked closely" with USEC this year on its loan guarantee application, and had put an extra $150-200 million per year into Cold War clean-up at an adjacent site managed by the company. This boost should lead to 800-1000 new jobs, the DOE said, which would offset the 750 jobs at risk on the American Centrifuge.

World Nuclear News, 16 October 2009

Jordan: site studies begin for Aqaba nuclear plant.
On October 13, the Jordan Atomic Energy Commission (JAEC) launched environmental and feasibility studies for the location of the countries’ first nuclear power plant. It marked the first gathering of the implementing parties of the site-selection and characterization study, a two-year process that will examine the proposed site, located in the southern strip of Aqaba, nine kilometers inland and 450 meters above sea level.

Over the next three months, nuclear engineering and consultant bureau’s, will determine whether the site, some 20km outside Aqaba city, will be suitable for the construction.

The JAEC selected Aqaba due to the abundant water sources of the nearby Red Sea and the proximity to infrastructure such as the Port of Aqaba and the electrical grid, the chairman said, noting that there are plans in place to establish up to six reactors at the site.

During the meeting on October 13, JAEC Chairman Khaled Toukan indicated that the JAEC is also considering a proposal to establish two power plants at the site simultaneously. The measure would decrease costs by 20 per cent through utilizing economies of scale, he added.

A week later Toukan announced that Jordan is coming up with 'strong results' indicating the country would emerge as a key exporter of uranium by the end of 2011. He made the remarks during a tour of the uranium exploration operations, which are being carried out in central Jordan by the French atomic energy conglomerate, Areva.

Jordan Times, 14 October 2009 / Deutsche Presse Agentur, 20 October 2009

French Polynesia: nuclear compensation very restricted.
There was much praise in July when the French National Assembly approved a bill for compensating the victims of tests carried out in French Polynesia and Algeria over more than three decades. About 150,000 civilian and military personnel took part and many later developed serious health problems. (see Nuclear Monitor 686, 2 April 2009; In Brief) But now activists fighting for victims of French nuclear testing in the Pacific are stunned by conditions imposed in the compensation bill by France's upper house.

Roland Oldham, president of Mororua e Tatou Association, representing French Pacific nuclear test workers, said the actions of the upper house Senate reflected arrogance in metropolitan France towards its territories. He said the Senate has imposed strict requirements on applicants to prove their case on various grounds. The geographic zone from which claims would be considered had been greatly limited. The Senate had further rejected a bid by his organization - fighting for years for compensation - to be part of a compensation committee, which would now be only made of people nominated by the French Ministry of Defence. "It's the same people that have done the nuclear testing in our place, in our island," Mr Oldham said. "And finally, there's only one person decides if the case is going to be taken into account, (if a victim) is going to have compensation or not - and that's the Ministry of Defence. "For our Polynesian people it's going to be hard. A lot of our people won't be part of compensation."

Radio Australia News, 15 October 2009

Taiwan: life-time extension of oldest plants.
State-owned Taiwan Power Company has asked to keep using the oldest nuclear power plant, Chinshan, operational since 1978 in a coastal area of north Taiwan, after the licenses of its two reactors expire in 2018 and 2019, the Atomic Energy Council said. The application is for extending the life of the plant's two generators from 40 to 60 years. Environmental activists voiced severe concerns about what they called a risky plan, also citing a shortage of space to store the nuclear waste. “We strongly oppose the measure. We cannot afford taking such as risk," Gloria Hsu, a National Taiwan University professor, told AFP.

Taiwan Power operates three nuclear power plants, while a fourth is being constructed.

AFP, 21 October 2009

Sellafield Ltd, the company that operates THORP (Thermal Oxide Reprocessing Plant) under contract to the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority (NDA), is facing yet another extended shut-down of THORP – this time for an estimated 7 months – when the only High Level Waste Evaporator configured to deal with THORP’s high level waste is taken off line for a major investigation.

The closure comes as little surprise given that Company reports and presentations over the last year have clearly anticipated the need to take action on the plant’s operational future because of increasing problems in managing the dangerous high level waste (HLW) produced not only by THORP, but also by the Magnox reprocessing plant (B205) and the effluents from the site’s Vitrification plant (WVP). 

At the heart of the problem are the site’s three HLW Evaporators A, B & C, which condense the liquid HLW from the site’s reprocessing plant and the effluents arising from the subsequent vitrification of HLW. THORP, by design, is configured for use with Evaporator C only, whilst A and B have historically been used to process WVP and Magnox wastes respectively - both the latter given priority over THORP wastes by the Nuclear Installations Inspectorate (NII) for ‘hazard reduction purposes’.  As a consequence, if either A or B break down and have to be taken out of service (as has happened in recent years), THORP’s Evaporator C is pressed into service to process Magnox or WVP wastes, leaving THORP effectively with no ‘evaporative capacity’ and therefore unable to reprocess.

THORP’s future operations at anything like a full commercial rate are therefore dependent on the regular and reliable operation of A & B. Their unreliability in recent years however has resulted in Sellafield Ltd having to place orders for 2 new Evaporators (D & E). Of similar design to C, the first of the new Evaporators is not expected to come into operation before 2014, the project currently being only at the stage of site foundation work. The original cost of BP 90 million is understood to have escalated to some BP 400 million (US$654 million, 470 million Euro)

In May 2008, in rationing the use of Evaporator C between the various facilities, the NII approved its further use for THORP - but only up to a maximum of 300 tons of oxide fuel derived HLW. Whilst this placed a limit on THORP reprocessing, it ensured that should the operation of A or B remain problematic, the prioritised Magnox and WVP wastes could at least be diverted for processing in Evaporator C if needs be.

Against this background of uncertainty over the reliability of Evaporators, Sellafield Ltd’s recent reports and presentations have assessed a number of possible options for THORP’s future - one being a moratorium on reprocessing at the plant and another being to operate THORP for part of the year only – with its workforce redeployed to other work on site. The prospect of such options becoming a reality came a step closer on the May 18 this year when Sellafield Ltd announced that Evaporator B had been shut down following the discovery of a rise in radioactivity levels in one of its internal heating/cooling coils.

Though the closure of B for inspection was relatively short lived, Sellafield Ltd was forced to refute opposition claims that THORP faced imminent closure, and to assure its workforce that, despite the problem with Evaporator B, there ‘was no danger of any plant closures’. 

In early June the claim of no plant closures was however thrown into disarray when confirmation was given to CORE, at a meeting with the NDA, Sellafield Ltd and Sellafield’s new parent body organisation Nuclear Management Partners (NMP), that Evaporator C was shortly to be taken out of service for a thorough investigation.  As Evaporator C is the only Evaporator configured to process THORP HLW, THORP would have to close down for 7 months - the projected duration of the Evaporator investigation. This would include not only the physical investigation itself (thickness measurement of internal cooling coils), but also the subsequent evaluation of the data from the investigation, the making of a new Safety Case for the Evaporator, and gaining approval from the Nuclear Installations Inspectorate (NII) for future use of the Evaporator for THORP reprocessing.

The prospect of a further 7-month closure of THORP, following the large number of unplanned ‘outages’ that have blighted the plant’s operational life, will do little to calm the increasing concerns of its reprocessing customers. Already known to be highly critical of Sellafield’s inability to operate THORP properly, overseas customers must now reconcile themselves to having to wait even longer for their contracts to be completed – perhaps 13 or more years late.

When THORP opened in 1994, its contracted customers had been assured by the then owners British Nuclear Fuels plc (BNFL) that, as Sellafield’s ‘flagship’ plant, THORP would reprocess 7000 tons of spent fuel in its first ten years of operation (the base load contracts). At the end of that 10-year base load period, THORP had struggled to complete 5000 tons of that order book.

Originally scheduled to close ‘with all contracts completed’ around 2010/11, the closure date had to be put back to around 2016 when, with a total 5729 tonnes reprocessed, THORP was closed down in April 2005 following the major accident (INES Level 3) when 83,000 litres of dissolved spent fuel leaked undetected from a fractured pipe in THORP’s Feed Clarification Cell. Re-opened in 2007, and still with contracts for 800 tons of overseas fuel and 2000-3000 tons of UK AGR fuel to complete, THORP has reprocessed a further 300 tons to date, including 50 tons of overseas fuel (Dutch and Swiss), bringing the overall total reprocessed since 1994 to 6000 tons.

The throughput target for the current financial year 2009/10 – the plant’s 16^th year of operation - is just 200 tons, 17% of its original design throughput of 1200 tons per year, and a rate previously described to CORE by BNFL as being commercially uneconomic for THORP. As a result of the imminent 7-month closure for Evaporator C investigation, THORP is now projected to close (with all contracts completed) in 2017, though any combination of further Evaporator failures, delays to new Evaporators or any other unexpected technical failures within THORP itself, could see reprocessing operations continuing to 2020 or beyond.

The NII’s current 300-ton limit for THORP’s use of Evaporator C is expected to be reached at some point in July this year. Once reached, and with the Evaporator taken out of service and THORP closed, the burden of processing Sellafield’s Magnox and WVP wastes will fall entirely on Evaporator B which only came back on line in July 2008 after a 43-month outage for repair. Evaporator A will be kept on stand-by.

Built some fifty years ago, A & B are fitted with a cooling/heating jacket around the base and sides of the evaporator and four internal coils, which can be used alternately for heating and cooling the HLW under process. By comparison, Evaporator C was commissioned in 1990 and has 6 internal coils. Corrosion and vibration pose the greatest threat to the integrity and lifetime of these evaporators, particularly the coils and stainless steel base of the evaporators which are subject to high temperatures and hot-spots within the bottom layer of the waste sludge’s.

Failure of the coils through corrosion has resulted in A & B being forced out of service on numerous occasions in the last few years and both now have to be operated with less than their full complement of heating/cooling coils. Heating and cooling provision for Evaporator B, for example, is restricted to its jacket and just two (of the original four) heating/cooling coils. In its Quarterly report on Sellafield (July to September 2008) the NII considered the operational life of B could be quite considerable ‘provided that waterside corrosion does not cause premature failure of the remaining two heating/cooling coils’.

For its part,  Evaporator A, with its jacket and just one serviceable coil, is kept on stand-by ‘as a contingency’ to deal with the wastes from WVP which have a lesser heat loading than those from reprocessing and are therefore less demanding on the Evaporators.

It is ironic that as the worldwide economic downturn forces household-name businesses into liquidation across the UK, reprocessing at THORP - arguably the UK’s largest white-elephant of all – should continue to get the backing of the UK Government and the plant’s owners the NDA despite its woeful performance and its increasingly poor commercial prospects. It apparently owes its survival, not on any merit as a spent fuel management option, but solely because of the revenues it continues to bring in from the now disgruntled overseas customers who signed up with THORP decades ago. The NDA, funded by the taxpayer, uses the revenues to offset some of its spiralling clean-up and decommissioning costs at Sellafield and other UK sites.

Whilst Sellafield Ltd will be keeping its fingers crossed that the site’s Evaporator problems can be overcome, it will also be working hard to understand and improve the weakness in associated facilities that similarly threaten THORP’s future. One such is the continuing underperformance of WVP whose ability to deal with the HLW from reprocessing is essential in reducing the overall stocks of HLW at Sellafield (currently just under 1000 cubic meters) as required by the NII’s 2001 Specification, to a buffer stock of 200 cubic meters by 2015. Then there is the condition of the storage tanks in which the HLW is stored prior to vitrification. Having been subject of particular NII concern over recent years because of corrosion problems, plans are now being drawn up to build new tanks, though their installation and operation is not envisaged for at least ten years.  

Whilst THORP is owned by the NDA, its operators Sellafield Ltd now come under the management of Sellafield’s new Parent Body Organisation (PBO) appointed late last year by the NDA. The PBO – Nuclear Management Partners Ltd (NMP) is a consortium of the US Washington International Holdings Ltd., AMEC and AREVA. NMP will hold shares in Sellafield for the next 17 years under a contract estimated at some BP 22 billion (US$ 36 billion, 26 billion Euro). As relative newcomers to Sellafield, NMP’s view on the future of THORP and reprocessing remains unknown.

Source and contact: Cumbrians Opposed to a Radioactive Environment (CORE). Dry Hall, Broughton Mills, Broughton-In-Furness, Cumbria, LA20 6AZ England.

Tel/Fax: +44 1229 716523
Email: info@corefurness.co.uk
Web: www.corecumbria.co.uk

When the phrase “reducing the hazard” is used, usually it means reprocessing and/or transmutation.

However: Transmutation does not eliminate the need for a repository for high-level waste and spent fuel!

First, no transmutation scheme is able to deal with all of the radionuclides of concern since many cannot be transmuted for practical purposes. Second, transmutation of Technetium-99 and Iodine-129 is not 100% effective, even with multiple passes through the reactor, and new long-lived fission products are created from the fission of the actinides. Third, fissioning of the actinides is not 100% effective. The composition of the residual transuranic waste would be shifted towards higher isotope actinides and the waste would thus be more radioactive. This would pose greater radiological risks and complicate disposal. Finally, since cesium-137 will be disposed of in the repository with cesium-135, the large amount of heat generated by it would mean that the space requirements for disposal could be considerable.

Transmutation, even in the context of a phase-out of nuclear power, would also require decades to implement and possibly centuries to complete. This may require institutional control over the waste for time periods much longer than is feasible or desirable.

Implications of Transmutation

Proliferation. All transmutation schemes require reprocessing of transuranic radionuclides. While these schemes may not yield materials attractive to weapons designers in nuclear weapons states, they can be used to make nuclear weapons and would pose significant proliferation risks in that non-state groups or non-weapons states might seek to acquire and use them. Even the reprocessing methods that are labeled as proliferation resistant, such as pyroprocessing, can be easily modified to allow for the extraction of plutonium pure enough to make weapons. These types of facilities may in fact increase proliferation risks due to their compact size and potential problems in developing adequate safeguards. Furthermore, promotion of transmutation as a waste management tool may result in the widespread transfer of this technology.

Environment and Health. Reprocessing, which is required by all transmutation schemes, is one the most damaging components of the fuel cycle. It results in large volumes of waste and radioactive emissions to air and water. Its health impacts on workers, off-site residents, and even far away populations are well documented. Because fuel fabrication does not involve the production of liquid waste, its effects are mainly restricted to workers and are on the same order as for workers in the reprocessing sector. The increased radiological risk of handling fuel that has been repeatedly irradiated is cause for serious concern. Finally, the increased transportation of high level waste required under a number of transmutation schemes would increase the probability of a transportation accident with its attendant effects.

Reactor Safety. Transmutation would require the development and implementation of new reactor technologies and/or the expanded use of existing reactors. Some of these new reactors have been described as "inherently safe." However, increases in certain safety features, in comparison with existing reactors, is countered by decreases in other safety features and the creation of new safety problems unique to the new reactor designs. For example, some feedback effects that help prevent a runaway reaction in existing reactors do not exist in some transmutation reactors.

Cost. The cost of transmutation, particularly for the advanced schemes that would be required in order to have significant reduction of actinides, is prohibitively expensive. Furthermore, while electricity would be produced to offset these costs, it is highly unlikely that these revenues will be sufficient. Transmutation would likely require tens of billions of dollars to develop, and additional large subsidies even during operations, when electric power sales are expected to generate some revenue.

Continuation of Nuclear Power. Transmutation is not only considered in the context of managing the waste from the current generation of nuclear reactors (i.e. as part of a phase-out of nuclear power). Most transmutation schemes, particularly in Europe and Japan, assume an indefinite continuation of nuclear power, with transmutation as one part of a new nuclear fuel cycle. By supposedly solving some of the current problems with nuclear power, transmutation is seen by some as essential to ensuring the continued growth of nuclear power.

Source: "The Nuclear Alchemy Gamble: An Assessment of Transmutation as a Nuclear Waste Management Strategy", IEER, available at: http://www.ieer.org/reports/transm/index.html

(December 15, 2006) The French government announced on November 24, an agreement with the Italian government on the transport of Italian highly radioactive nuclear waste to the French reprocessing plant at La Hague, where weapons-usable plutonium will be extracted. Italy will use France as a nuclear dump site because it has no storage facilities to take back the reprocessing waste.

(650.5774) Laka Foundation - The Italian nuclear waste was generated in its nuclear power plants, the last of which was closed in 1990, following the referendum of 1987, one year after the Chernobyl accident. In total, some 235 tonnes of so-called spent nuclear fuel are stored in Italy. The Italian government now intends to dispose off the waste by sending it to France, which has already received thousands of tonnes of such waste from Germany, Japan, Belgium, Netherlands and Switzerland.

The purpose of the framework agreement which was signed is to commit the Italian government to take back the large volumes of wastes generated by reprocessing between 2020 and 2025, thereby allowing Italy to use La Hague for interim storage of its waste. But Italy might not be able to honour this future commitment because Italy has no clear plans to build facilities to store reprocessing wastes,. In November 2003 a site at Scanzano (southern Italy) is chosen for the construction of a nuclear waste dump but in December 2003 the Italian government cancels the plan after massive public opposition. Any future contract signed between the Italian waste company SOGIN and the French reprocessing company Areva therefore threatens to become a de-facto dumping contract.

An important issue is that under the new France waste law, storing the Italian waste till 2025 is not illegal any more. In the 1994 law, it was required to return the reprocessing wastes as soon as technically feasible, which is clearly before 2025. Now, under the new law its simply said that there needs to be a bilateral agreement in which the government sending the spent fuel commits to take back the waste within the timeframe which is agreed. That's much weaker of course. Thus this is a very crucial agreement, the first after the new law came into force and it immediately proves to what extent the new law weakens the old one. Greenpeace France obtained major legal victories using the old law. Reaction of this right-wing France government: just change the law to allow France to remain an international dump site.

The 235 tonnes of Italian fuel has to be handed over from the beginning of 2007 to half-way through 2012. The waste will then be returned to Italy from January 2020 to December 2025. Italy will begin work on selecting a site for a geologic repository for the waste in 2009, with the final site selection being made in 2012.

In 1980 Italy signed a reprocessing contract with BNFL (UK) for 53 tonnes of spent nuclear fuel from the Garigliano reactor. The first transport took place 23 year later, in April 2003, and the thirteenth and last in February 2005 (and was blocked by Greenpeace).

Sources: WNA News Briefing, 22-26 November 2006 / Greenpeace France, Press release, 25 November 2006 /
Contact: Greenpeace France, Yannick Rousselet, 22, rue des Rasselins, 75020 Paris, France.
Email: yannick.rousselet@diala.greenpeace.org