President Obama promised to eliminate 34 tons of plutonium from the U.S. nuclear weapons program as part of this week's nuclear security summit. But how does one actually get rid of bomb-making material that has a half-life of more than 20,000 years?

One way is to burn it in nuclear reactors. Already, roughly half of the electricity generated from nuclear power plants in the U.S. comes from the fissile materials out of Russian warheads, albeit highly enriched uranium, the other fissile material used in bombs. Such reprocessing might also help cope with nuclear waste.

In fact, Obama's recently appointed Blue Ribbon Commission on America's Nuclear Future has specifically chosen to investigate the possibility of reprocessing spent nuclear fuel rods. After all, the French, Japanese and others routinely do so—and the South Koreans and Indians would like to do so.

"[Reprocessing] displaces the need for 25 percent of the uranium, it displaces some enrichment," says nuclear engineer Alan Hanson, executive vice president of technologies and used-fuel management at Areva, a French nuclear power company that conducts that country's reprocessing. "We need to destroy this material. If you think this stuff [plutonium] is so bad, what's so bad about burning it up?"

In essence, reprocessing involves taking the spent nuclear fuel from reactors and separating out the plutonium and other fission byproducts. Chemicals, such as nitric acid, are applied to the spent fuel, and solvents then separate out the fission byproducts, including uranium and plutonium. The separated byproducts (or downblended fissile materials from nuclear weapons) are then combined with fresh uranium to create a new fuel—so-called mixed oxide (MOX) fuel—that can be used in modified existing reactors. In that subsequent use, some of the plutonium is destroyed via fission.

Reprocessing may reduce the demand for fresh uranium fuel. Although various estimates catalog known uranium reserves capable of fueling the existing global fleet of 440 reactors for at least 100 years, the growth in demand for new reactors in China, the U.S. and elsewhere might change that equation. "If we build 200 to 400 more reactors, then it's definitely only 100 years of supply," argues Hanson, whose company is the largest supplier of uranium fuel in the world. "Would you build a nuclear power plant with a 60-year lifetime with only 100 years of supply? I wouldn't if I was an investor."

Nevertheless, Areva has also sold all its mining operations in the U.S. "The U.S. is the most unfriendly place on Earth for mining," Hanson says. "The grades [of uranium] are not high enough to make it worthwhile."

But even low-grade uranium is cheaper to work with than reprocessing, according to critics such as physicist Frank von Hippel of Princeton University. "Recycling and reprocessing don't buy you much in terms of uranium resource savings unless you go to breeders, which have not succeeded commercially."

As von Hippel notes, to really take advantage of reprocessed fuel requires a new type of nuclear reactor: so-called fast breeder reactors that essentially create, or breed, their own fuel. There is only one problem: commercial versions of such reactors have not worked despite efforts for at least 60 years to improve them. "We have spent $100 billion trying to make them commercial and they still have safety, proliferation and cost issues," says physicist Arjun Makhijani, president of the Institute for Energy and Environmental Research. And Hanson agrees: "Fast reactors are not ready for prime time."

Even without fast-neutron reactors, however, some, such as new Nuclear Regulatory Commission commissioner William Magwood, have argued that reprocessing makes sense to deal with nuclear waste in the absence of a geologic repository like the one proposed for Yucca Mountain in Nevada. All told, the U.S. fleet of 104 nuclear reactors produces roughly 2,000 metric tons of waste per year, according to the Department of Energy (DOE). That adds up to roughly 70,000 metric tons at various places throughout the country—and reprocessing could reduce the radioactive half-life of much of this waste.

Hanson also argues that reprocessing turns spent fuel rods—rods of lightly enriched uranium fuel clad in zirconium—into a form more suitable for long-term storage: glass logs of vitrified nuclear waste. "Used fuel is hotter than hell. And nobody designed it to be thrown away," he says. "Glass has durability."

But reprocessing can end up producing more waste. According to the DOE, reprocessing spent fuel ends up increasing the total cumulative volume of nuclear waste by more than six times—thanks to more materials being contaminated with plutonium—from a little less than 74,000 cubic meters destined for some form of repository to nearly 460,000 cubic meters. Reprocessing also results in radioactive liquid waste: the French reprocessing plant in La Hague discharges 100 million liters of liquid waste (pdf) into the English Channel each year. "They have polluted the ocean all the way to the Arctic," Makhijani says. "Eleven western European countries have asked them to stop reprocessing."

And separating plutonium and highly enriched uranium is exactly how governments go about building nuclear weapons, so reprocessing can raise the risk of proliferation or theft of fissile materials. Already, at least 250 metric tons of plutonium sits waiting at various sites around the world—enough to make 30,000 nuclear weapons equivalent to the bomb dropped on Nagasaki, according to von Hippel.

Reprocessing is also expensive. The French spend roughly an extra 800 million euros ($1.1 billion) per year for reprocessed fuel compared to conventional uranium fuel rods and the National Research Council estimated in 1996 that reprocessing existing U.S. spent nuclear fuel would cost at least $100 billion. "The power produced from MOX fuel costs 2 cents more than that produced from uranium fuel," Makhijani says. "It is tenfold higher than the underlying resource cost."

Hanson disagrees. "There's plenty of money for recycling…. A light water [nuclear] reactor is a machine that turns foreign uranium into domestic plutonium."

The mixed oxide fuel rods that result from reprocessing have a mixed track record for performance. Although not a single such MOX fuel rod has failed, according to Hanson, they have not lasted as long as fuel rods from fresh uranium. "It was supposed to go around for three refueling cycles," or roughly 4.5 years, von Hippel notes of U.S. excess weapons plutonium turned into MOX fuel. "They had to pull it out after two [refueling cycles of 18 months each] because the fuel had expanded so much. It isn't fully equivalent to low-enriched uranium fuel."

As a result, some have proposed moving toward smaller reactors that could use spent fuel directly, such as contained nuclear reactor modules that would consume nuclear waste over a 30-year lifespan. "We were driven to large reactors by the need for economies of scale," Hanson says. "It's hard to see how you go back down in size."

In the end, the solution—at least in the next few decades—will continue to be the same solution in use today: moving spent fuel rods from cooling pools to dry casks that sit on the grounds of a nuclear power plant. "Dry cask storage is going to go on forever," Hanson says.

And, whether there is reprocessing or not, a repository for nuclear waste would still be required. "Recycling doesn't eliminate the need for a repository, just changes it," Hanson adds. As it stands, the waste plutonium from the U.S. nuclear weapons program goes into a salt cavern in New Mexico. More such sites may be needed to secure the fissile materials that result from civilian nuclear power.

16 Comments

1. 1. Wayne Williamson 05:42 PM 4/15/10

   this article is so wishy washy(sp)...one moment they say half our nuclear energy is coming from reprocessed nuclear war heads and in the next statement they say only modified reactors can use it...

   Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this

2. 2. Johnay in reply to Wayne Williamson 08:47 PM 4/15/10

   Read again. It says half our nuclear energy comes from enriched uranium from Russian warheads. Then it says burning the plutonium from other warheads, and waste from current reactors, would require modifications.
   
   That's two types of warheads, one of which provides fuel directly burnable in current reactors, the other of which provides fuel which would require modifications.

   Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this

3. 3. Wayne Williamson 08:54 PM 4/15/10

   Johnay...thanks, i missed the uranium vs plutonium on the warhead thing...

   Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this

4. 4. tjostemj 11:11 PM 4/15/10

   This piece is not up-to-date on nuclear reactor technology. It seems to take an anti-nuke attitude.
   
   Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia includes the Institute for Energy and Environmental Research in Category:Anti-nuclear organizations in the United States.
   For example the statement: "We have spent $100 billion trying to make them commercial and they still have safety, proliferation and cost issues," says physicist Arjun Makhijani, president of the Institute for Energy and Environmental Research.
   
   The BN-600 sodium-cooled fast reactor built at the Beloyarsk Nuclear Power Station, designed for 600 MW(electric), produces 560 MW(electric) and has been in operation since 1980. It has the best safety record of all types of Russian reactors. The BN 600 will be modified next year to burn up weapons grade fuel. Russia has sold two BN-800 reactors to China. The BN-800 is similar to the BN-600 but with recent improved features.
   
   France generated electricity with a 250 MW FBR, the Phenix from 1973- 2009. It also operated the Superphenix a 1250 MW FBR until politics shut it down.
   
   ORNL operated two prototype research reactors for several years in the `1950s and 1960s to the Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactor (LFTR). This generation IV reactor has outstanding safety, proliferation, and low cost potential. The Traveling Wave Reactor that has caught Bill Gates eye is another development worthy of mention. It seems that Scientific American is stuck in a rut just wanting to plow old ground.
   

   Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this

5. 5. sethdayal 01:14 AM 4/16/10

   India's new nuke waste burning 500 Mw GenIV power plant is coming into service next year at a cost of $1.5B/Gw and six year construction time for a first of a kind reactor. If the Indians did it from scratch in 6 years, we should be able to do it in two without NRC interference.
   
   The commercial version of the very successful IFR has been designed (Prism) and is awaiting NRC approval. The IFR was shut down by Clinton and Kerry in exchange for Big Oil campaign donations.
   
   Candu reactors burn nuclear waste from used PWR fuel rods just with a fuel rod remix not reprocessing. Google AECL Qinshan.
   
   Both von Hippel and Makhijani are notorious Nuclear Deniers, who believe in opinion rather than evidence based science.
   
   

   Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this

6. 6. wayt 02:05 PM 4/16/10

   Two years ago, the physicist and nuclear policy expert Frank von Hippel made a very cogent case against reprocessing in a feature article in Scientific American:
   http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=rethinking-nuclear-fuel-recycling
   
   All of his points are even more valid today, as events in North Korea and Iran have demonstrated. Aside from its stratospheric cost (the last reprocessing facility built cost some $30bn), reprocessing requires the isolation of weapons-grade plutonium and the transoceanic shipment of plutonium-laced material. It creates myriad opportunities for sabotage or interception by bad actors.
   
   A much wiser course is to pursue new reactor designs that could extract the substantial energy remaining in spent fuel from light-water reactors and in depleted uranium (the byproduct of enrichment) without chemical reprocessing. Several such designs have been proposed.

   Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this

7. 7. gregdavid 04:28 PM 4/16/10

   Nuclear Energy as an answer to our energy crisis is like a band-aid for a small cut that cointains staph bacteria. As alwasy we need to solve our demand side problem. In America our per capita energy demand growth far out strips our population growth even though our manufacturing base remains in continued decline meaning that end users themselves are clearly to blame due to a continued proliferation of home electronics and appliances that consume ever more energy (ever if each is more efficient than its predecessor). As always, we need to starve this beast rather than ever feed it. We are not only physically obese, we are energy obese as well! And we are leading the world in this devolution toward a very bleak dystopia.

   Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this

8. 8. Dr.Kamlander in reply to gregdavid 05:50 PM 4/16/10

   Correct, even here in europe. Dr.Kamlander@aon.at

   Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this

9. 9. andreanis 04:23 AM 4/17/10

   If I may express my humble opinion (not an expert in this field) I don't think nuclear energy may be labeled as a "band aid" in the sense that if properly used (without warfare risks & through an international consensus, especially on research matters.),it may indeed theoretically give a good hand to solving the world's energy current crisis.Let's think about nuclear fusion & its complicated cycle,even though we maybe won't be able to reproduce whats goin on inside the sun,elucidating in depth this process will for sure bring some scientific/cultural benefit (at least from an engineering point of view)..morevoer starting a public energy debate has the potential of cutting costs since people will get an "intellectual incentive"towards cheap energy bills...

   Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this

10. 10. tjostemj 09:18 AM 4/17/10

    Nuclear energy is the only way to retain a livable planet without lowering our living standards and providing the Third World an opportunity raise theirs. It’s just that simple and it is our only real hope; no other options are on the table. We move forward with nuclear fission, or it is coal & gas, with the environmental consequences.
    Let’s urge Secretary Chu to declare and energy emergency. Climate change, peak oil, and the industrialization occurring in developing countries are driving up energy costs and threatening to bring on critical shortages of energy. The time has come for our government to make the necessary investments in research and development of clean, affordable generation IV nuclear reactor alternatives to fossil fuel. Unlike subsidies and entitlements where once the money is spent it is gone, money spent on R&D, education, and infrastructure is investment that pays back big dividends.
    
    Our regulatory infrastructure needs to be streamlined and beefed up to assure timely deployment of the fruits of our R&D investments. If we can develop and export a nuclear technology that is cheaper than coal we not only address our economic problems but also the climate change threat.
    
    We can also address the overpopulation problem. By helping developing countries get clean, cheap nuclear power, they get the energy to industrialize. Industrialization is followed by lower birth rates.
    

    Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this

11. 11. adamjhoffman 10:36 AM 4/17/10

    Fission is the only way to really "get rid of" plutonium. There has been a great deal of recent research on novel fuel types for efficient plutonium destruction in existing reactors. (In fact, I presented research on a thorium-plutonium PWR fuel at a conference last week.) If your goal is simply to get rid of plutonium as easily as possible, this is a viable approach. That said, I think this country should take a longer view on managing its fissile resources.
    
    Reprocessing once-irradiated uranium and plutonium for use in conventional light water reactors, as Areva does in France, is a half-measure. It results in a uranium savings of about one third, a slight increase in the cost of already cheap fuel (but requiring a multi-billion-dollar facility), and it has little effect on the challenge of long-term waste disposal (volume is not the issue: long-lived radioactivity is). There is no pressing motivation to adopt this practice in the US in the near term.
    
    However, the US should be investing in advanced recycling technology and fast "burner" reactors (as exemplified by the Integral Fast Reactor project and the GE PRISM reactor). This technology recycles not only the uranium and plutonium, but all of the actinides (e.g. neptunium, americium, etc.), which are the dominant source of long-lived radioactivity in used fuel. Unlike the "breeder" reactor, which is designed to improve the sustainability of nuclear power, the "burner" reactor is designed to maximize the destruction of troublesome radioactive elements in waste. This approach, with multiple recycles of the fuel, will vastly reduce the long-lived radioactivity of used fuel: waste that was formerly radioactive for 100,000 years will only be a hazard for about 300 years. This approach solves the nuclear waste problem and removes the need for a long-term "Yucca Mountain"-type disposal facility.
    
    This is the technology the US should pursue.
    
    Also:
    Contrary to what von Hippel implied, the international community has extensive experience using plutonium-bearing reactor fuels and they have had good performance.
    
    Contrary to what Makhijani implied, funding for fast reactor research has been limited and inconsistent over the last 60 years. When it became clear in the 1960s that uranium reserves were very extensive, there was little motivation to develop fast "breeder" reactors. Now, however, the potential of fast "burner" reactors to address the challenges of waste disposal motivates us to revisit fast reactor technology.

    Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this

12. 12. Wayne Williamson 10:58 AM 4/18/10

    adamjhoffman..nice comments...
    any chance you could provide a link to your presentation or is it classified....

    Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this

13. 13. Daniel35 04:24 PM 4/18/10

    I'd definitely favor nuke power generation if it only used already mined and concentrated materials such as reprocessed and weaponry, while it lasted. Can't reprocessed material be used as is for "co-generation"? James Lovelock says he'd be happy to have some to bury in his back yard as a long-term power source.
    
    I haven't heard about hydrogen bombs for quite a while. Is it because of what I heard years ago that tritium, critical to H-bombs, has a half-life of about 12 years and has to be constantly renewed?

    Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this

14. 14. Jarret 12:24 PM 4/19/10

    This is good article, mostly. In their roles as anti-nuclear activists, Mssrs. von Hippel and Makijani provided some misleading information about benefits recycling nuclear fuel. In fact, AREVA has been recycling fuel safely and effectively for decades and has many satisfied customers around the world.
    In terms of cost, recycling is comparable with the once-through approach for managing used fuel. In addition, recycling would significantly reduce the volume and toxicity of waste that must be disposed in a geological repository. Find out more at http://us.arevablog.com/2010/04/09/presenting-the-reality-again-on-the-myth-of-nuclear-recycling/.

    Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this

15. 15. oddjob1947 10:49 AM 4/24/10

    ...anti nuclear organization..
    Perhaps the physics and facts of the assertion might be,
    discussed, rather than the perceived goals of the
    organization?
    
    As to recycling in France, casual research shows trainloads
    of French Rad Waste sent to Russia for 'disposal'.
    
    As to fast breeders, here I have an enquiry. SOMEwhere,
    I picked up the idea that fast breeders were essentially
    'tricky' to control, as to reaction rate. Notably, they
    respond Very Quickly to control inputs: essentially the
    automatics/computers MUST NOT FAIL. (If correctly
    informed 'conventional' reactors respond 'more slowly':
    (minutes?) giving the operators a chance to 'react'.)
    I Could be Talking Rot here: I'd be interested..
    
    best

    Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this

16. 16. oddjob1947 02:00 PM 4/25/10

    foo

    Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this