By Timothy Gardner
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The Biden administration on Friday said it is funding projects to recycle nuclear waste from power plants including through reprocessing, a technology that has not been practiced in the United States for decades because of concerns about costs and proliferation.
The Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy, or ARPA-E, aims to develop a dozen projects to recycle the waste, also known as spent nuclear fuel, with $38 million in funding. A Department of Energy agency, ARPA-E supports research into high-risk but potentially transformational projects.
Jenifer Shafer, a program director at ARPA-E, said concerns about proliferation related to the handling of dangerous nuclear materials during reprocessing are “precisely the challenges” the program aims to address.
“One possible route is by preventing production of pure plutonium streams,” Shafer said. Another is by “actively monitoring” special nuclear material throughout the process to improve nuclear material accountancy, she added.
Many nonproliferation experts oppose reprocessing because its supply chain could be a target for militants seeking to seize materials for use in a crude nuclear bomb.
France and other countries have reprocessed nuclear waste by breaking it down into uranium and plutonium and reusing it to make new reactor fuel. A U.S. supply chain would likely be far longer than in those countries, nonproliferation experts say.
Former President Jimmy Carter halted reprocessing in 1977, citing proliferation concerns. Former President Ronald Reagan lifted Carter’s moratorium in 1981, but high costs have prevented plants from opening.The ARPA-E projects include $6.5 million for GE Research in New York to develop safeguards for aqueous reprocessing facilities, $1.5 million for Argonne National Laboratory in Illinois to develop and test equipment for reprocessing, and $4.7 million for NuVision Engineering in North Carolina.
President Joe Biden’s administration supports development of advanced nuclear plants to help reach his goal of decarbonizing the U.S. economy by 2050. It believes that recycling the spent fuel will bolster further development of nuclear power.
“For America to further harness the safe, reliable clean energy produced at nuclear facilities across the country, the Biden-Harris Administration and DOE recognize the importance of developing practical uses for America’s used nuclear fuel,” U.S. Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm said in a statement.
Recycling nuclear waste “can significantly reduce the amount of spent fuel at nuclear sites, and increase economic stability for the communities leading this important work,” Granholm said.
The United States has spent billions of dollars over decades on a project at Yucca Mountain in Nevada to store highly toxic nuclear waste from power plants. Yucca has never opened due to local opposition. As a result, the waste is now stored at nuclear power plants across the country in spent fuel pools and in casks made of steel and concrete.
(Reporting by Timothy Gardner; Editing by Paul Simao)
