ALEXANDRIA, Va. — The Energy Department’s Office of Nuclear Energy has begun a limited program to explore opportunities for recycling used nuclear fuel, a senior official said Tuesday.
“We are starting a small effort to look at some of these options, but it’s early in development and there’s no clear outcome on where it’s going to lead,” Andrew Griffith, deputy energy assistant secretary for nuclear fuel cycle and supply chain, said during the opening presentation at the Institute of Nuclear Materials Management’s 35th Spent Fuel Management Seminar.
Griffith said it was too early to discuss details of the effort.
Assistant Energy Secretary for Nuclear Energy Rita Baranwal has said on a regular basis she believes the nation’s stockpile of used fuel represents an untapped resource for power production.
Spent fuel retains as much as 95% of its original energy. Yet the federal government has for decades tried to find some place to bury it forever – with the federal property at Yucca Mountain, Nev., being the legally required location by law.
The United States has not had a commercial nuclear fuel recycling facility since the Nuclear Fuel Services plant in West Valley, N.Y., suspended reprocessing in 1972 after six years of operation. What was intended to be a temporary freeze for upgrades became permanent.
Cost and proliferation concerns have prevented fuel recycling from taking hold domestically since then, Griffith acknowledged.
The plutonium that is separated from used fuel in reprocessing can be put back to use in nuclear power plants, but could also be employed to fuel weapons.
“But we believe it’s a value to look at it,” Griffith told the audience. “Clearly the technology we’ve been developing over the years all lend itself toward how could we do it more cost-effectively, how could we do it with higher performance, and so forth.”
