@@ America violates its own non-proliferation rule @@

New York Times
February 18, 2006

A Shift Based on Science and Politics

By Matthew L. Wald

As a naval officer, Jimmy Carter helped design nuclear reactors for submarines. But
as president, Mr. Carter banned the reprocessing of spent nuclear fuel to extract
material that would be useful in reactors and bombs.

Thirty years later, President Bush has proposed a new version of reprocessing.
The reversal can be traced mainly to uneven progress in technology over the last
three decades, and to a lesser extent to political and economic factors.

Today, it is much less expensive to manufacture uranium for nuclear weapons, reducing
the likelihood that a country with weapons ambitions would reprocess spent fuel for
that purpose. And the failure to find an acceptable way to dispose of the fuel after
use ? including burying it ? has made reprocessing look better by comparison.

Recently the Energy Department admitted that it no longer had any schedule or cost
estimate for the planned spent-fuel repository at Yucca Mountain in Nevada, and that
without reprocessing, it would soon have to find a second repository site.

In one way, it seems counterintuitive that the United States is considering
reprocessing now, when the number of reactors has been growing slowly, compared with
the Carter era, when experts expected hundreds of reactors to be built. Back then,
uranium was expensive and thought to be scarce, and demand was growing. Mr. Carter's
suspension precluded the production of potentially cheaper fuel.

On the other hand, by reintroducing reprocessing, President Bush is trying to develop
a different source of fuel for reactors when the uranium they use is plentiful.

Nuclear advocates say, though, that hundreds of new reactors will eventually be
built, and that there is no reason to deny the world the value of resources that are
locked in spent fuel for fear of weapons proliferation, since reprocessed fuel is no
longer the easiest route to a bomb.

"A key part of the logic behind the U.S. decision to forgo reprocessing is now
perversely incorrect", said Per F. Peterson, a professor of nuclear engineering at
the University of California, Berkeley.

It is still possible to make a bomb from reprocessed material from civilian power
plants ? the United States did it on an experimental basis decades ago. But as the
current argument with Iran shows, the preferred route is to make bomb material from
virgin uranium, because the technology that enriches the uranium for use in a bomb
has advanced so much faster than the technology for disposing of spent fuel.

There are other reasons for the shift, too, including ideology. President Carter, who
had been an engineering officer in Admiral Hyman G. Rickover's nuclear submarine
program, had a decidedly modest view of what nuclear technology could accomplish. But
President Bush's approach to energy, ranging from fuel cells to ethanol to a new
generation of nuclear reactors and reprocessing factories, is highly optimistic.

The energy secretary, Samuel W. Bodman, told a Senate committee last week that the
administration's solution to energy problems was "transformational technologies".

There are also political problems that favor radical approaches like a new
reprocessing plan. While the Bush administration has slogged toward preparing to ask
for a license to open a waste repository at Yucca Mountain, the 20-year-old law under
which it is looking to open a site has a far more onerous task.

The administration will soon be required to tell Congress what it is doing about
finding a site for the next repository, which must go in the eastern United States.
If there is no other solution, like reprocessing, the administration could find
itself at the beginning of the next presidential primary season scouting out the
granite formations of New Hampshire as waste burial sites. (The Energy Department
actually looked there in the 1980's).

Hence the move to the Global Nuclear Energy Partnership, announced as part of the
administration's budget. Under the program, countries that already have enrichment
technology would lease reactor fuel to countries that lack production means. The
producing country would take back the fuel after it was used.

This would mean that countries like Iran could have reactors without fuel technology.
Countries that already have nuclear weapons or, like Japan, do not want them would
reuse the plutonium and other nuclear fuels for civilian purposes and reduce the
volume of waste.

That is not to say the plan is feasible. Turning ideas about nuclear physics into
commercially viable technology is notoriously difficult.

When the Bush budget was released, Clay Sell, the deputy energy secretary, was asked
what price uranium would have to reach before a recycled product could compete. He
had no answer except to say that the value of reducing the waste's volume and
toxicity should be figured in.

The commercial industry applauds the Bush administration's support for new reactors
that are modifications of the current designs, but is silent on new reprocessing
plants and a new generation of reactors that would use reprocessed material. Congress
has not embraced reprocessing, either.

"If the raw material is still cheaper, nobody buys the recycled product", said a
federal energy official, who insisted on anonymity because he did not want to hurt
his ties with the White House. "Why would you want to pay more for fuel?"

The global partnership, the official said, is not impossible, but "it's not something
that is going to be driven by the industry".

It is also opposed by some experts in nuclear proliferation, who say America's
30-year pledge not to take bomb-usable plutonium out of spent fuel has made it harder
for other countries to do that.

But the plan still appeals to people who put faith in technology. Senator Pete V.
Domenici, Republican of New Mexico and chairman of the Senate Energy and Natural
Resources Committee, spoke warmly of the idea. He said it would help the United
States regain leadership in the nuclear field.

President Carter, he said, had stopped reprocessing on the theory that others would
follow, but Britain and France still reprocess, and Japan wants to. "We stopped, and
the world didn't", Mr. Domenici said.

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/02/18/politics/18nuke.html?_r=1&pagewanted=all&oref=slogin


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