Global Nuclear Energy Partnership as proposed will facilitate proliferation and the fast-neutron reactors are premature

Abstract

President Bush's proposed Global Nuclear Energy Partnership-GNEP-proposes to permit expansion of nuclear power plants worldwide by introducing the assured leasing of low-enriched-uranium fuel and the take-back of spent fuel. This is an important initiative and the US government should lead the drive to reverse law and custom in all nations to permit the transfer of spent fuel rather than its required disposal in the country in which it is produced. But the major part of GNEP is a proposal immediately to build a spent-fuel reprocessing plant to treat the entire 2500 metric ton per year output of the 103 operating US power reactors to obtain fuel for scores of new fast-neutron advanced burner reactors that in turn will require multiple reprocessing cycles. The reprocessed product, whether it is 50% uranium or not, is far more readily stolen and transported than is the current spent fuel and is suitable for fabricating nuclear weapons. The reprocessing aspect of GNEP is really a back-handed approach to deploying scores of breeder reactors. I favor the breeder approach, but only after competitive technical studies make a persuasive case that the breeders are cheaper than the current light-water reactors with direct disposal of spent fuel. The US should take the lead in encouraging the creation worldwide of competitive, commercial mined geologic repositories, with routine above-ground dry-cask storage of spent fuel for 100 years or more. These storage and disposal sites should be under international regulation, as should the spent fuel or processed high-level waste that would be disposed in them.