L. BROWN
Department of Energy,
Washington, D.C., United States of America Email: larry.brown@hq.doe.gov
Abstract
The paper describes the USA’s initiative called the Global Nuclear Energy Part-nership which, amongst other things, seeks to reduce the generation of radioactive waste from the nuclear fuel cycle and to minimize the associated risks of nuclear proliferation.
The paper outlines the reasons for the initiative and its essential technical aims.
Last year, US Secretary of Energy Sam Bodman called senior staff together and told us that President Bush had called for a significant expansion of nuclear power. The Secretary formed a task force under Deputy Secretary Sell, and challenged us to do three things:
(1) Review and make recommendations on additional policy options to support the Department’s spent fuel management obligations;
(2) Review and evaluate all aspects of our domestic and international policies related to the civilian use of nuclear power;
(3) Develop and recommend policies that would promote the use of nuclear power in the USA and internationally as a means of safe, pollution free, environmentally sound and plentiful energy.
The result is the initiative that was named the Global Nuclear Energy Partnership, which we also call GNEP, and which President Bush announced last February.1
I would like to tell you today why the USA is proposing GNEP and to elaborate on exactly what it is and how we propose to get started. The President set a policy goal of promoting a great expansion of nuclear power both in the USA and around the world. There are many important reasons for this. I will focus my remarks on the most important.
The Department of Energy projects that total world energy demand will double by 2050. Looking only at electricity, the projections indicate that there will be a 75% increase in electricity demand over the next 20 years. Nuclear power is the only mature technology capable of providing large amounts of completely emission-free base load power to meet this need. Expanding its use would result in significant benefits around the globe: reduced world
greenhouse gas intensities, pollution abatement, and the security that comes from greater energy diversity.
But nuclear power, with all its potential for benefiting humanity, carries with it two significant challenges. First, what should be done with the nuclear waste? Second, how can the proliferation of fuel cycle technologies that can lead to the development of nuclear weapons be avoided?
GNEP seeks to address and minimize these two challenges by developing technologies to recycle the spent fuel in a more proliferation resistant manner, and by supporting a re-ordering of the global nuclear enterprise to encourage new fuel cycle technologies, credible fuel supply assurances and strong commercial incentives for leasing nuclear fuel, instead of building indigenous enrichment and reprocessing capabilities.
Regarding our own policy on spent nuclear fuel, the USA stopped the old form of reprocessing in the 1970s, principally because of heightened domestic concerns about separated plutonium production. But in other major nuclear economies, for example, France, Japan, the United Kingdom, the Russian Federation, reprocessing continued and expanded.
The world today has a total of nearly 250 t of separated civilian plutonium. That is 250 000 kg. The IAEA says that a nuclear weapon can be made with 8 kg of separated plutonium. That should concern us all.
Each year, the world’s nuclear power plants produce roughly 10 000 t of spent fuel. About 1% of this spent fuel is a mixture of plutonium and other fissionable isotopes. In the USA, about 2300 t of spent fuel are produced each year. Applying the rough ‘rule of thumb’ that each ton of fissionable material can produce 1 GW of electricity, 23 GW of electricity could be produced from the fissionable material in US spent nuclear fuel each year.
Although the USA foreswore reprocessing, the world’s reprocessing capacity has continued to expand. There is now almost enough capacity to reprocess almost half the world’s output of spent fuel annually.
If we consider only the USA we are on the verge of a nuclear renaissance.
In many respects this is due to the provisions enacted in the Energy Policy Act of 2005. New plants will be built, but if many more are to be built the USA must rethink the wisdom of its once through spent fuel policy. With nearly one fourth of the world’s nuclear capacity, the USA must move to a waste management system that recycles spent fuel.
Unless a technological or policy alternative is provided, as the use of nuclear power expands around the globe other nations will find it commercially attractive to address the buildup of spent fuel with reprocessing. In doing this they will inherit the burden of safeguarding and protecting the technologies and nuclear materials that reprocessing produces. It also means that there will be multiple waste repositories around the globe. A fully functioning repository
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is required whether or not fuel is reprocessed. But if the nations of the world work together, using the economies of scale, the growth of the number of enrichment, reprocessing and repository facilities can be restrained — to everyone’s benefit.
The USA remains confident that Yucca Mountain is the best location for a permanent geological repository in the USA. Licensing and opening the Yucca Mountain facility remains a top priority. Whether or not the USA recycles, the Yucca Mountain repository is needed. However, the statutory capacity limit of the Yucca Mountain repository, as currently configured, will be exceeded by 2010. If nuclear power’s contribution to US electricity demand remains only at 20% for the rest of the century, it will be necessary to build the equivalent of nine Yucca Mountain repositories to contain ‘once through’ spent fuel.
The current US Administration believes that the wiser course is to recycle the used fuel coming out of the reactors, thereby reducing its amount and its radiotoxicity, so that only one Yucca Mountain equivalent would be required for the rest of this century. It believes that a system must be built that reaches equilibrium with the production of spent fuel — so that inventories of plutonium are consumed to produce power — and destroyed so they cannot fall into the wrong hands. If this technology and policy solution is right for the USA, then it should also be made available to other States through mutually acceptable, commercially attractive arrangements.
So what exactly is GNEP? GNEP is really about identifying the policies, developing the technologies and building the international regimes that would manage and promote a growth in nuclear electricity generation that enhances common waste management and non-proliferation objectives. The initial programme would focus on a few of the important engineering and development efforts that are key to the success of GNEP.
First, the Department of Energy seeks to greatly accelerate its work on the demonstration of advanced recycling. This effort would build on the advanced fuel cycle initiative started by the US Congress several years ago.
In the laboratory, recycling technology has been developed that does not separate plutonium, unlike the current reprocessing technologies used around the globe. Rather, this process keeps the actinides together, including plutonium, so that they can be made into fuel to be consumed in fast reactors that will also produce electricity. By not separating plutonium and building the most advanced safeguards technologies into the system, recycling can be performed in a way that greatly reduces proliferation concerns.
Another key objective of GNEP is to demonstrate, on an engineering scale, an advanced burner reactor that will consume plutonium and other actinides, extracting energy potential from recycled fuel, reducing the
radiotoxicity of the waste in repeated cycles so that the resultant waste requires dramatically less geological repository space and is in an environmentally robust form.
These technologies would be bound together in a ‘reliable fuel services’
framework. GNEP would build and strengthen a reliable international fuel service consortium under which fuel suppliers who chose to operate both nuclear power plants and fuel production and handling facilities would provide reliable fuel services to States that choose to only operate nuclear power plants.
This international consortium is a critical component of the GNEP initiative because it would provide a strong, commercially attractive alternative to the spread of enrichment and reprocessing technologies.
In exchange for an assured fuel supply on attractive commercial terms, States that are interested in bringing the benefits of nuclear power to their economies would have a strong commercial and policy incentive not to invest in enrichment and recycling. The Non-Proliferation Treaty does not restrict the right of States to build and operate technologies that have the potential capability of producing materials usable for creating weapons. States have a sovereign right to build and deploy enrichment and recycling facilities.
However, a compelling commercial alternative could discourage them from acting on those rights. Participating in a mutually advantageous global nuclear enterprise would enhance energy and physical security.
There are two other key elements of GNEP requiring further technology development. The USA would hope to work in partnership with other States to develop exportable, proliferation resistant, perhaps modular or factory built, reactors that are appropriate to the needs of the developing world. In all cases we would work to develop and incorporate the most advanced safeguards technologies, and ensure and emphasize best practices for the handling of nuclear materials worldwide.
So, what is the status of the initiative? In the fiscal years 2006 and 2007 the Department of Energy proposed concentrating its efforts on technology development to support a 2008 decision on whether to proceed with these demonstrations. In general terms, the Department’s US $250 million request for funding in 2007 is to initiate work on separation and advanced fuels technology development, transmutation engineering, systems analyses and planning functions to support the development of an advanced spent fuel recycling plant, and to support the demonstration of a commercially deployable reactor that consumes actinide based fuels.
In conclusion, all available technologies should be pursued to address the anticipated growth in the demand for energy. But the growth of nuclear energy is vitally important for the USA and for the world. Our country has chosen to change its current path and to begin the transformation to a new, safer and
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more secure approach to nuclear energy — an approach that brings the benefits of nuclear energy to the world while reducing vulnerabilities from proliferation and from nuclear waste.
Challenges remain in demonstrating the GNEP technologies. But without GNEP the inventories of plutonium throughout the world will continue to increase for generations to come. There will be a greater volume of high level radioactive waste, and its radiotoxicity will not be reduced. There will be a greater proliferation risk. There will be greater amounts of greenhouse gases emitted into the environment and less energy both in the USA and abroad.
The Global Nuclear Energy Partnership is not a ‘silver bullet’, but it is part of a broad strategy that, when combined with advances in renewable energy sources, clean coal and other technology developments, can and will make a difference to the security, environmental and energy challenges that we face. More information can be found at the US Department of Energy’s web site: www.GNEP.gov.
1 President Bush’s Radio Address Focuses on Energy Issues: WASHINGTON, DC — This morning President Bush discussed the Global Nuclear Energy Partnership (GNEP) during his weekly radio address. The transcript is below.
THE WHITE HOUSE Office of the Press Secretary (Lake Buena Vista, Florida)
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At 10:06 A.M. EST Saturday, February 18, 2006
RADIO ADDRESS BY THE PRESIDENT TO THE NATION
THE PRESIDENT: Good morning. This coming week, I will visit Wisconsin, Michigan, and Colorado, to discuss our strategy to ensure that America has affordable, reliable, and secure sources of energy. The best way to meet our growing energy needs is through advances in technology. So in my State of the Union Address, I announced the Advanced Energy Initiative. We will pursue promising technologies that will transform how we power our vehicles, businesses, and homes — so we can reduce our Nation’s dependence on foreign sources of energy.
This morning, I want to speak to you about one part of this initiative: our plans to expand the use of safe and clean nuclear power. Nuclear power generates large amounts of low-cost electricity without emitting air pollution or greenhouse gases. Yet nuclear power now produces only about 20 per cent of America’s electricity. It has the potential to play an even greater role. For example, over the past three decades, France has built
58 nuclear power plants and now gets more than 78 per cent of its electricity from nuclear power. Yet here in America, we have not ordered a new nuclear power plant since the 1970s. So last summer I signed energy legislation that offered incentives to encourage the building of new nuclear plants in America. Our goal is to start the construction of new nuclear power plants by the end of this decade.
As America and other nations build more nuclear power plants, we must work together to address 2 challenges: We must dispose of nuclear waste safely, and we must keep nuclear technology and material out of the hands of terrorist networks and terrorist states.
To meet these challenges, my Administration has announced a bold new proposal called the Global Nuclear Energy Partnership. Under this partnership, America will work with nations that have advanced civilian nuclear energy programs, such as France, Japan, and the Russian Federation. Together, we will develop and deploy innovative, advanced reactors and new methods to recycle spent nuclear fuel. This will allow us to produce more energy, while dramatically reducing the amount of nuclear waste and eliminating the nuclear byproducts that unstable regimes or terrorists could use to make weapons.
As these technologies are developed, we will work with our partners to help developing countries meet their growing energy needs by providing them with small scale reactors that will be secure and cost effective. We will also ensure that these devel-oping nations have a reliable nuclear fuel supply. In exchange, these countries would agree to use nuclear power only for civilian purposes and forego uranium enrichment and reprocessing activities that can be used to develop nuclear weapons. My new budget includes $250 million to launch this initiative. By working with other nations under the Global Nuclear Energy Partnership, we can provide the cheap, safe, and clean energy that growing economies need, while reducing the risk of nuclear proliferation.
As we expand our use of nuclear power, we’re also pursuing a broader strategy to meet our energy needs. We’re investing in technologies like solar and wind power and clean coal to power our homes and businesses. We’re also investing in new car technolo-gies like plug-in hybrid cars and in alternative fuels for automobiles like ethanol and biodiesel.
Transforming our energy supply will demand creativity and determination, and America has these qualities in abundance. Our Nation will continue to lead the world in innovation and technology. And by building a global partnership to spread the benefits of nuclear power, we’ll create a safer, cleaner, and more prosperous world for future generations.
Thank you for listening. END
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DISCUSSION
Y.A. SOKOLOV (IAEA): I see some controversy here, because it looks like you are inviting for partnership only countries with developed technology.
There are no points at which the concerns or interests of developing countries can be addressed. If you are talking about ‘partnership’, both sides have to be included.
L. BROWN (United States of America): That is an important point.
When you sit down with potential partners everybody brings capabilities to the table. To use an analogy, you may change tyres while the other party fixes radios, so the two of you come together in order to set up an automobile repair company. There are about 40 countries in the Nuclear Suppliers Group with different capabilities. Some build reactor vessels (which we do not do in the USA any more — we import them), some make nuclear instrumentation, and so on.
If there really is a renaissance of nuclear power, it will benefit everybody who is involved in some aspect of the nuclear business — whether it is uranium mining in Australia or reactor vessel manufacturing in the Republic of Korea.
Where a country simply wants the nuclear energy in order, say, to reduce its dependence on oil or coal, we think it would welcome a multinational arrangement for the leasing of the nuclear fuel, which would be returned after use to the supplier — an arrangement rather like the one between the Soviet Union and some other countries of eastern Europe in the 1970s and 1980s.
A. GONZÁLEZ (Argentina): Mr. Brown’s point about restricting the spread of enrichment and reprocessing could give rise to controversy if a country feels that it is being restricted. If a country feels that it belongs to ‘the club’ and is therefore not being restricted, there will be no controversy.
Perhaps one could formulate the second point in a positive manner by talking not about ‘restricting’ something but about ‘ensuring the availability of’
something. That is perhaps the only area where a consensus would be necessary.
H.G. FORSSTRÖM (IAEA): I am very positive towards what you are saying, but I am worried sometimes that you are over-selling. Clearly you are trying to solve a radioactive waste problem for the USA. However, what you are not mentioning — and I think you must be honest and mention it — is that whatever you do will require a lot of recycling, and recycling means waste as there are always process losses. I think that for the sake of honesty it is important not to over-sell the long term waste aspect, because you will still have long term waste — perhaps at a level that is 5% instead of 100%, but you still have it there.
L. BROWN (United States of America): That is absolutely right; there are a lot of complexities to this idea.
We wanted to come up with something that we could show would actually work now. So we tried to take as much as possible ‘off the shelf’ and then focus on what the technology challenges would be. There may be some complexities, as you pointed out, that we have missed. However, one thing we said at the beginning was that, whatever we come up with, it will not be what we end up with. A lot of work has to be done, and it has to be done with a lot of detailed research, and it is going to take time.
J. BOUCHARD (France — Chairperson): We are very happy to see the USA rejoining the ‘closed fuel cycle club’. France is very interested in the proposals that have been made.
A. GONZÁLEZ (Argentina): After what happened about 20 years ago,
A. GONZÁLEZ (Argentina): After what happened about 20 years ago,