Bulletin of the American Physical Society
2007 APS April Meeting
Volume 52, Number 3
Saturday–Tuesday, April 14–17, 2007; Jacksonville, Florida
Session J6: Nuclear Reprocessing, Nuclear Proliferation, and Nuclear Terrorism |
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Sponsoring Units: FPS Chair: George Lewis, Cornell University Room: Hyatt Regency Jacksonville Riverfront Grand 7 |
Sunday, April 15, 2007 10:30AM - 11:06AM |
J6.00001: ``Recycling'' Nuclear Power Plant Waste: Technical Difficulties and Proliferation Concerns Invited Speaker: One of the most vexing problems associated with nuclear energy is the inability to find a technically and politically viable solution for the disposal of long-lived radioactive waste. The U.S. plan to develop a geologic repository for spent nuclear fuel at Yucca Mountain in Nevada is in jeopardy, as a result of managerial incompetence, political opposition and regulatory standards that may be impossible to meet. As a result, there is growing interest in technologies that are claimed to have the potential to drastically reduce the amount of waste that would require geologic burial and the length of time that the waste would require containment. A scenario for such a vision was presented in the December 2005 Scientific American. While details differ, these technologies share a common approach: they require chemical processing of spent fuel to extract plutonium and other long-lived actinide elements, which would then be ``recycled'' into fresh fuel for advanced reactors and ``transmuted'' into shorter-lived fission products. Such a scheme is the basis for the ``Global Nuclear Energy Partnership,'' a major program unveiled by the Department of Energy (DOE) in early 2006. This concept is not new, but has been studied for decades. Major obstacles include fundamental safety issues, engineering feasibility and cost. Perhaps the most important consideration in the post-9/11 era is that these technologies involve the separation of plutonium and other nuclear weapon-usable materials from highly radioactive fission products, providing opportunities for terrorists seeking to obtain nuclear weapons. While DOE claims that it will only utilize processes that do not produce ``separated plutonium,'' it has offered no evidence that such technologies would effectively deter theft. It is doubtful that DOE's scheme can be implemented without an unacceptable increase in the risk of nuclear terrorism. [Preview Abstract] |
Sunday, April 15, 2007 11:06AM - 11:42AM |
J6.00002: Alternative Approaches to Recycling Nuclear Wastes Invited Speaker: Nuclear power exists, and as the demand for non-fossil electricity generation increases, many more nuclear plants are being planned and built. The result is growing inventories of spent nuclear fuel containing plutonium that -- in principle, at least -- can be used to make nuclear explosives. There are countries and organizations that are believed to want nuclear weapons, posing a knotty proliferation problem that calls for realistic control of nuclear materials. Phasing out nuclear power and sequestering all dangerous materials in guarded storage or in geological formations would not be a realistic approach. Plutonium from commercial spent fuel is very hard to make into a weapon. However, a rogue nation could operate a power plant so as to produce plutonium with weapons-quality isotopics, and then chemically purify it. IAEA safeguards are designed to discourage this, but the only enforcement is referral to the United Nations General Assembly. The traditional reprocessing method, PUREX, produces plutonium that has the chemical purity needed for weapons. However, there are alternative approaches that produce only highly radioactive blends of fissionable materials and fission products. Recycle offers a market for spent nuclear fuel, promoting more rigorous accounting of these materials. Unlike PUREX, the new technologies permit the recycle and consumption of essentially all of the high-hazard transuranics, and will reduce the required isolation time for the waste to less than 500 years. Facilities for recovering recyclable materials from LWR spent fuel will be large and expensive. Only a very few such plants will be needed, leading to appropriate concentration of safeguards measures. Plants for recycling the spent fuel from fast burner reactors can be collocated with the power plants and share the safeguards. [Preview Abstract] |
Sunday, April 15, 2007 11:42AM - 12:18PM |
J6.00003: TBD Invited Speaker: |
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