2003 National Meeting - International Perspectives: Reprocessing, Storage and Disposal

Comment: Please review the following article about nuclear waste by the NAS! In addition, this blog will follow other countries and their effect on reprocessing nuke spent rods! The Reprocessing cycle is not successful and very expensive. America does not need to invest into the reprocessing cycle. In addition, leaders of America do not make remarks about the nuke cycle like: "We need to be like France, France gets all her power from nuke plants and US needs to like France.” Well, when leaders of US make the above comment, that means they know nothing about the French Nuke Cycle. The Nuke French way is a failure, the French Nuke companies are located in unstable countries, the French Nuke Companies have to buy power from Europe this year because of the rivers are too warm to cool the Nuke reactors . The French reprocessing plants dumps the waste into the ocean! So stop saying, "We need to be like France,” no we do not want to be like France! We demand clean, true green energy; the nuke way is the old way!

Speaker: Charles McCombie
ARIUS: Association for Regional an International Underground Storage
5405 Baden/Switzerland

Introduction

In this symposium on technology and policy issues associated with nuclear wastes, I have been asked to address specifically three key issues: reprocessing, storage and disposal. Before doing so, I will give a brief, but quantitative, overview of the nuclear fuel cycle in order to illustrate which wastes arise from the activities involved therein.

Following this I will try to overview the status of technologies for storage, reprocessing and disposal and to address key policy issues associated with each of these technologies. The technical maturity and development potential differ strongly between the three fields, as do the political and societal issues currently being debated in each case.

Conclusions
The broad conclusion that can be built upon the above discussions can be summarised as follows:

The technologies for storage of HLW and spent fuel, for reprocessing and for disposal have all been developed to the implementation stage. The challenges facing these activities are in all cases more societal than technical.
Storage technologies are well tried and long tested; they present no technical problems. Siting of the centralised storage facilities that are needed as reactor stores fill up is a serious societal challenge.
Reprocessing technology has been developed and implemented in various countries; improvements could be made, but there is little incentive at present, given the declining interest being shown primarily for economic reasons. The intensive debate on the proliferation hazards potentially associated with reprocessing has abated; should it re-emerge, new technologies that avoid segregating plutonium could be developed.
The technology for geologic disposal is developed and could be implemented today, although significant optimisation of designs is possible. The chief obstacle has been obtaining the required level of societal acceptance. Some countries, however, are moving ahead now in a way that promises the operation within 10-20 years of repositories that could act as reference facilities.
The USA, through implementation of the project at Yucca Mountain, could become the first example of a country that has implemented deep geologic disposal of spent fuel, thus following upon the long-delayed success of the WIPP project.
Not all of the lessons that can be drawn from the US programmes are positive. The costs involved are horrific examples for smaller nations. The exemplary transparency of programme progress is somewhat tarnished by the prominence of political bargaining and adversarial legal wrangling.

The role of the National Academies in influencing waste management strategies has been long-lasting and important. This is illustrated by the overarching reports produced at regular intervals from the landmark report of 1957 through to the staging report released on the day of this symposium. It is emphasised further by the numerous more technical reports produced by scientists and technologists working within the framework of the extensive committee system set up by the National Research Council to give unbiased input on issues vital to ensuring safe management of all radioactive wastes.

PLEASE CLICK THE LINK BELOW TO READ ALL OF THE ARTICLE:
http://www.nae.edu/cms/News/8436/8619.aspx