Management and Disposition of Excess Weapons Plutonium (1994) / Chapter Skim
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Appendix B
Appendix B
Pages 235-244
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From page 235... ...
Great Britain has a mixed strategy for managing the spent fuel from its power reactors,3 and no ~ Much of the basic information about each nation's programs and plans is drawn from David Albright, Frans Berkhout' and William Walker, World Inventory of Plutonium and Highly Enriched Uranium 1992 (London: Oxford University Press for SIPRI, 1993)
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From page 236... ...
BNFL has also pushed for construction of a MOX fabrication plant that would open in the late 1990s, possibly through a technology transfer agreement with the German corporation Siemens for the same design and 120-MTHM/yr capacity as the stalled facility in Hanau, Germany.s At the moment, however, little has moved beyond preliminary discussions. British power reactors currently do not use MOX fuel, and at present there is no plan to recycle plu 4 Frans Berkhout, "Fuel Reprocessing at THORP: Profitability and Public Liabilities," Greenpeace, 1992, p.
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From page 237... ...
Germany's civilian nuclear programs are governed by its Atomic Law, which mandates reprocessing and recycle as the only spent fuel management approach when these are "justified on technical and economic grounds."7 This has long been regarded as prohibiting long-term storage of HEW as a disposition option. Political opposition to reprocessing and recycling (see below)
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From page 238... ...
The court battles have gone on for more than 18 months, and so far the Hesse government has prevailed.~° Nuclear industry press reports indicate that the German utilities involved in the Hanau facility have told the prime contractor, Siemens, that they would not continue to support the maintenance of the facility much after the end of 1993 without a political agreement to complete the facility and allow it to operate. At present, the long-term prospects for MOX fabrication in Germany are very uncertain.
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From page 239... ...
'sAs mentioned earlier, in the wake of Germany's problems with its Hanau facility, nuclear industry press reports indicate that German utilities have begun talking to the French-Belgian company about supplying their MOX needs. Mark Hibbs and Ann MacLachlan, "German Utilities Negotiating to Shift MOX Fabrication to France, Belgium," NuclearFuel, September 27, 1993, p.
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From page 240... ...
Given its strong concern for energy independence, Japan plans to develop a complete plutonium fuel cycle. It has explicitly ruled out disposal of spent fuel in a geologic repository as a disposition option, in favor of reprocessing.
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From page 241... ...
The Soviet, and now Russian, approach to nuclear power is based on a closed fuel cycle, including reprocessing of spent fuel and a planned eventual shift to breeder reactors.~9 The current Russian plan is to reprocess the spent fuel from all of its reactors except the RBMKs, whose fuel includes a lower percentage of plutonium, thus worsening the economics of recovering the plutonium. RBMK spent fuel is currently being stored pending decisions on long-term management.
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From page 242... ...
Russia has several pilot-scale plutonium fuel fabrication facilities. The main ones are at the Mayak facility (which employs a pelletized approach to MOX fabrication similar to that used in other countries)
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From page 243... ...
At the Hanford site, there is a partly completed MOX fabrication facility designed to provide fuel for experimental fast reactors. It could be modified and completed to produce some 50 MTHM/yr of light-water reactor fuel.
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From page 244... ...
was to be phased out under the Fiscal Year 1994 budget proposed by the Clinton administration, but Congress has voted to keep it running, and debate over its future continues. Research on fast reactors continues in the Integral Fast Reactor (IFR)
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