Six labs draft plan to develop advanced reactor systems with closed fuel cycle

The directors of six Department of Energy (DOE) laboratories have developed an action plan to help the nation and the world achieve “sustainable peace, prosperity and environmental quality” through “immediate U.S. leadership in the global expansion of nuclear energy systems.”

The directors of Argonne, Lawrence Livermore, Los Alamos, Oak Ridge and Sandia national laboratories and the Idaho National Engineering and Environmental Laboratory developed the action plan with specific recommendations for expanding nuclear energy use in the United States and worldwide to:

• cut air pollution, reduce global climate risk and improve energy security;
• achieve enhanced capacity use of the high-level waste repository; and
• reduce the threat of proliferation.

“Reaching these goals will require national and international cooperation among industry, academia and government laboratories,” said Argonne Director Hermann Grunder. To further these goals, the lab directors have recommended four specific near-term actions.

Incentives for near-term construction
Their first recommendation is to provide significant incentives for near-term deployment of new nuclear power plants in the United States.

The directors recommended DOE continue the Nuclear Power 2010 program through which DOE works with industry to ease regulatory and other uncertainties to reduce financial risks associated with building new nuclear power plants.

“Recent studies,” Grunder said, “suggest that new nuclear power plants can be fully competitive in the marketplace once the first several begin operation. Our goal is to reduce the economic barriers and get the process started.”

Advanced reactor systems
The lab directors also recommended developing and demonstrating advanced Generation IV reactor systems that can be deployed between 2006 and 2030 to support a major expansion of commercial nuclear energy for electricity production and hydrogen generation.

They call for greater international cooperation to complete the research and development needed to select the best advanced reactor systems.

“For the world to embrace the promise of nuclear energy,” Grunder said, “there needs to be a consensus about which systems are the safest, most reliable and most economical. William Magwood III, DOE program director for Nuclear Energy, Science and Technology and the architect of the Generation IV program, is working with science and technology leaders from many nations to develop that consensus. The result will be a list of the most promising technologies for further research and development.”

Close the nuclear fuel cycle
The third recommendation is to develop and demonstrate the technology for an economically, socially and politically sustainable nuclear fuel cycle for the future. A closed fuel cycle—one in which used fuel is processed to reduce the amount of high-level waste that needs long-term disposal—is necessary to avoid the need to build new repositories in the future.

“Closing the fuel cycle,” Grunder said, “would reduce the radiological toxicity of the nuclear waste by a factor of 1,000 while safely burning plutonium and other actinides in reactors to produce electricity.”

Finally, and most urgently, the directors call for the creation of nuclear technology that will set a world standard for proliferation prevention. “The lab directors are urging DOE to develop new technologies for managing nuclear materials,” Grunder said. “New fuels, materials and systems would reduce the attractiveness of materials from nuclear fuel processing for destructive purposes.”

Civilian nuclear power plants around the world currently produce 70 metric tons of plutonium a year. Even if the U.S. continues its ban on reprocessing, halting production of this plutonium would endanger the world economy.

Consequently, the world faces the choice of either safeguarding the plutonium for tens of thousands of years or developing a proliferation-resistant reprocessing technology to extract for peaceful purposes the enormous energy it contains.

For more information, please contact David Baurac.

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