Benefits and concerns of a closed nuclear fuel cycle

Abstract

Nuclear power can play an important role in our energy future, helping to meet increasing electricity demand while at the same time decreasing carbon dioxide emissions. However, the nuclear fuel cycle in the United States today is unsustainable. The 1982 Nuclear Waste Policy Act establishes the U.S. Department of Energy as responsible for disposing of spent nuclear fuel ͑SNF͒ generated by commercial nuclear power plants operating in a "once-through" fuel cycle in a deep geologic repository located at Yucca Mountain, NV. However, unyielding political opposition to the Yucca Mountain site has hindered the commissioning process to the extent that the current administration has recently declared the site unsuitable. In light of this, the DOE is exploring other options, including closing the fuel cycle through reprocessing and recycling of spent nuclear fuel. The possibility of closing the fuel cycle is receiving special attention because of its ability to minimize the final high level waste package by separating and isolating the most long-lived components, as well as recovering additional energy value from the original fuel. Reprocessing and recycling of SNF can decrease the volume of waste stored by a factor of 4 and reduce the timeframe of storage from hundreds of thousands of years to thousands of years. Reprocessing and recycling technologies are, however, still very controversial because of the increased cost and proliferation risk reprocessing can present. Estimates of increases in the levelized cost of electricity with reprocessing range from about 10% to 50% due to large uncertainties in the financing, construction, and licensing of a new plant. Ultimately, the U.S. will need to compare each of these fuel cycle options with respect to sustainability, proliferation risk, commercial viability, waste management, and energy security to define the future of nuclear power.

A Review of the Nuclear Fuel Cycle Strategies and the Spent Nuclear Fuel Management Technologies

“…However, the opposite happens when it comes to the DGR costs, because it is a new, untested technology. As reported [27,28], the DGR cost dominates the back-end costs for the direct disposal option and reprocessing is the most important cost for the back end of the twice-through cycle. Therefore, this explains why the twice-through cycle costs are decreasing more rapidly than the once-through cycle costs.…”

“…However, since SNF is composed of more than 96% of U and Pu, the final HLW volume is reduced about 80%, its radiotoxicity decreases about 90% and its decay heat is also reduced compared to the once-through cycle [25,26]. Thus, the cost of a DGR for vitrified waste would be about 25% of the cost of a DGR for SNF [27,28].…”

“…The cost of the twice-through cycle is usually higher than for the once-through cycle. However, the magnitude of the difference between these costs depends on the methodology and the adopted hypothesis and assumptions [20,27,28,[31][32][33][34][35][36][37][38][39][40].…”

“…However, this slope is slightly more pronounced for the twice-through cycle, which means that, eventually, reprocessing might become as economically viable as the once-through cycle, or even more. Figure 1 shows the evolution of the nuclear fuel cycle strategies costs with time, in mill/kWh, for different international studies [27,28,[30][31][32][33]38,40], which have been updated to 2016. One of these costs [30] is much lower, so it has been excluded from the trend lines.…”

“…The cost of the twice-through cycle is usually higher than for the oncethrough cycle. However, the magnitude of the difference between these costs depends on the methodology and the adopted hypothesis and assumptions [20,27,28,[31][32][33][34][35][36][37][38][39][40]. Figure 1 shows the evolution of the nuclear fuel cycle strategies costs with time, in mill/kWh, for different international studies [27,28,[30][31][32][33]38,40], which have been updated to 2016.…”