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The economics of plutonium recycle vs. spent fuel storage
Frank von Hippel Program on Science and Global Security, Princeton University and
International Panel on Fissile Material Panel, New Diplomacy Initiative
Tokyo, 6 November 2015
Outline
• The mistake that launched civilian plutonium separation
• The high costs compared with spent fuel storage
• The danger from dense-packed spent-fuel storage
• The alternative: dry cask spent fuel storage and why it is safer.
Why do we have enough separated civilian (purple) plutonium for >30,000 Nagasaki weapons?���
(Source: Global Fissile Material Report 2015)
10,000 warheads,
(4-8 kg each)
0
500
1000
1500
2000
2500
1970 1980 1990 2000 2010 2020 2030 2040 2050
Glo
bal N
ucle
ar C
apac
ity (G
We)
1975
2015 High
2015 Low
Answer: Fears of uranium scarcity in the 1960s and 1970s led to proposals to develop “breeder” reactors.
Projected nuclear capacity (1975, IAEA)
Projected band for nuclear capacity (IAEA, 2015)
IAEA, 1975
NEA-‐IAEA, 2014
Estimated Low-cost Uranium(40-year supply for LWRs)
High
Low
5
U-235 (0.7% of natural uranium) chain-reacts and provides most of the energy in current-generation (mostly water-cooled) reactors.
U-238 (99.3%) doesn’t chain-react but turns into chain-reacting Pu-239 after it absorbs a neutron.
The 3 grams of U-238 in an average ton of crustal rock has a releasable energy of 10 tons of coal.
The proposed solution: Move from U-235 to U-238 as a fuel and you can “burn the rocks”
Fresh ���LWR fuel
95.6 % U-238
4.4% U-235
92.6% U-238 & U-236
Spent Fuel
0.8% U-2351.2% plutonium5.4% fission products &
other radioisotopes
Plutonium in light water reactor spent fuel was to be separated as startup plutonium for breeder reactors
6
1974. India used first plutonium separated for its breeder program for a “peaceful nuclear explosion”
Crater from India’s 1974 underground nuclear test.
1977. President Carter: “Do we need breeders?” Answer: “Breeders will not be competitive.”
Cost of breeder electricity increased by unreliablity Average capacity factor for water-cooled reactors ~ 80%
for sodium-cooled “demonstration” reactors ~25%.
Country Demonstration Reactor Power (Mwe) Lifetime Capacity Factor* France Superphénix (1985-98) 1200 8% (sodium leaks) Germany SNR-300 (1991) 300 Did not receive safety license Japan Monju (1994-) 246 1% (sodium fire) UK PFR (1975-94) 500 19% (sodium leaks) USA Clinch River 300 Cancelled USSR BN-600 (1980-) 560 74% (but 15 sodium fires)
*IAEA Power Reactor Information System
MOX Fuel
France decided to use its separated plutonium in water-cooled reactor fuel. Saves ~12% of natural uranium.
Spent LEU fuel storage
Reprocessing Plant
Spent MOX fuel storage
MOX Fuel fabrication plant
Plutonium & uranium
Water-cooled reactors
Radioactive waste
Spent MOX Fuel
Low-enriched uranium Fuel
Spent LEU Fuel
Separated Plutonium
US: once-throughFrance, Japan: plutonium recycle
Japan decided to do the same.
U.S.
France and Japan
0
20
40
60
80
100
120
1990 1995 2000 2005 2010 2015 2020 2025
Sepa
rate
d pl
uton
ium
(m
etric
tons
) In Japan if RRP operates and MOX delayed In Europe if MOX delayed Recycled In Japan In Europe
Japan’s MOX program has failed so far. Would have to become very successful to prevent explosive growth of Japan’s stockpile if
Rokkasho Reprocessing Plant operates as planned.
estimates of LWR unit reprocessing costs in constant dollars increased substantially from 1975 through 1983, as shown inFigure 6-2. Also shown in Figure 6-2 are the current estimates of the unit costs for reprocessing plants constructed in theUnited States, derived from estimated costs for contemporary plants in the United Kingdom, France, and Japan. Financialparameters were applied for a private venture in the United States, assuming optimistically that the financing would becharacteristic of a low-risk project in the chemical industry. The unit costs are expressed for an inflation-free economy. Theunit costs estimated for these three sources fall on extensions of the band of reprocessing costs shown by Wolfe and Judson,but at a level several-fold higher. It is clear that what may be financially valid for a government-owned European plantfinanced with customer prepayments for reprocessing services, and with relatively low annual charges on capital investment, isnot necessarily applicable to the same plant constructed by private industry in the United States.
Also shown in Figure 6-2 are recent estimates by the ALMR project of unit costs for privately reprocessing LWR fuelfinanced by U.S. construction (Taylor et al., 1992; Chang, 1993). Each plant has a throughput of 2,700 Mg/yr, with high-yieldrecovery of all actinides and volatile fission products. The estimated unit costs are about $500/kg for aqueous reprocessing and$350/kg for pyrochemical reprocessing. The latter is about six-to eightfold below the estimated unit cost of a 800- to 900-Mg/yr U.S. plant, based on contemporary plant costs in the United Kingdom, France, and Japan.
FIGURE 6-2 Current estimates of the unit costs for reprocessing plants constructed in the United States.
Also shown in Figure 6-2 are the unit costs estimated in 1991 by S.M. Stoller Co. (Gingold et al., 1991) for aqueousreprocessing and pyrochemical reprocessing, with U.S. private financing. The Stoller estimates, in a study financed by theElectric Power Research Institute (EPRI), are close to those made by GE, but far below the estimates derived herein from thenew United Kingdom, French, and Japanese plants.
Comparisons with published reprocessing prices and with other estimates of reprocessing costs are given in Appendix J.
SummaryCosts of contemporary aqueous reprocessing plants in the United Kingdom, France, and Japan are important benchmarks
to compare with U.S. estimates of reprocessing. For the purpose of this report, we adopt the OECD/NEA estimates of thecapital and operating costs of a plant with 900-Mg/yr throughput. These are based largely on the U.K.'s THORP data, withinput from France's COGEMA. We have translated these costs to U.S. construction as described in Appendix J: 10-28 and J:37-60. We estimate interest during construction and calculate the unit reprocessing costs for a similar U.S. reprocessing plantfor three forms of U.S. financing: government, $810/kg; utility, $1,330/kg; and unregulated private industry, $2,110/kg. Eachof these costs is so high that there would be no financial incentive for operating a transmutation system that would requirereprocessing spent fuel from LWRs, unless it were subsidized by the government for possible benefits to waste disposal. Toobtain the high recoveries to recycle all the TRUs (not only Pu), as proposed by DOE laboratories and contractors, the cost ofaqueous reprocessing would be even greater. Even higher costs for a U.S. reprocessing plant would occur if the delaysexperienced by previous reprocessing ventures were again encountered.
We have compared these unit costs derived from contemporary plant data with costs of aqueous reprocessing projected instudies by DOE laboratories and contractors for the purpose of transmutation economics. The latter are so much lower thanthose estimated in the present study that there is good reason to question the validity of all the recent U.S. estimates for the costof reprocessing LWR spent fuel. Given that those estimates for aqueous plants are so far below the costs inferred from theEuropean and Japanese benchmarks, it is questionable that reliable estimates could now be made of the pyrochemical processfor LWR spent fuel, which is in a relatively early stage of development.
ANALYSIS OF THE ISSUES 117
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Copyright © National Academy of Sciences. All rights reserved.
Nuclear Wastes: Technologies for Separations and Transmutationhttp://www.nap.edu/catalog/4912.html
Costs of French and UK reprocessing plants as of 1992.
Estimates on the basis of which France, Japan and UK built their reprocessing plants
Estimates by U.S. reprocessing advocates in early 1990s.
Reprocessing costs were grossly underestimated by advocates
Nuclear Wastes: Technologies for Separations and Transmutation (National Academy Press, 1996) p. 117.
X(5-‐10)
}
Conclusions of Economic Reviews
France (2000). Plutonium and uranium recycle costs five times more than the savings in LEU fuel costs.*
Today, the cost may be ~10 times because of loss of foreign customers. Reprocessing costs have become a major issue between Électricité de
France (EDF) and AREVA. EDF refused to renew UK reprocessing contract.
Japan (2011). Plutonium and uranium recycle cost ten times more than the savings in LEU fuel costs.**
Yet both countries have chosen to continue with reprocessing because change is judged too disruptive.
*Report to the Prime Minister [of France]: Economic Forecast Study of the Nuclear Power Option, 2000. **JAEC, Technical Subcommittee on Nuclear Power, Nuclear Fuel Cycle, etc. Estimation of Nuclear Fuel Cycle Cost, 2011, slide 28.
Operating Rokkasho will cost ~ ¥200 billion/yr. (¥250,000/kg) ~7x cost of buying dry-cask spent fuel storage
¥200 billion/yr.
31 countries with nuclear power plants: 6 reprocess
• France (62 tons of separated plutonium) and Japan (48 tons) for use in water-cooled reactors
• China (0.025 tons), India (3.6 tons) and Russia (85 tons) for breeder reactor prototypes.
• UK (103 tons). Disposal path not yet decided.
250 tons total is enough for 30,000 Nagasaki weapons
Most countries manage older spent fuel with safe onsite dry cask storage. (Japan has dry cask storage at Fukushima-Daiichi and Tokai.)
Tokai
U.S. Connecticut Yankee (old picture)
Lingen NPP, Germany
At Fukushima Daiichi after the tsunami
15
Tokai
Dry-cask storage also alternative to dense-packed storage pools. A spent-fuel fire in Fukushima Daiichi Pool #4 could have forced
evacuation of Tokyo (JAEC chair Kondo to Prime Minister Kan)
Thermal analysis of pool heatupand boil off
� Models of spent fuel pools developed to predict pool boil off time and to understand hydrogen production
� Used to perform analysis of pool leakage scenarios� Calculations based on several codes and models to provide range in
turn-around time and fidelity
0 9
8642
1 3 5 7
0 9
8642
1 3 5 7
0 9
8642
1 3 5 7CR
CR
CR CR CR
CR CRCRCR
CR30
0
2
4
6
8
9
1
3
5
7
CR
CRCR
CR
CR
CR
CR
CR
C
E F P M W F P M
UNIT 4 SFP HEAT GENERATION RATE DISTRIBUTION POOL LEVEL FOR VARIOUS SCENARIOS FOR UNIT 4
16 0.19 kW
24 0.16 kW
14 0.20 kW
10 0.22 kW
12 0.21 kW
9 0.23 kW
5 0.30 kW
8 0.24 kW
2 0.55 kW
4 0.40 kW
1 1.12 kW
IF 3.60 kW
Fuel discharged end Nov 2010
Fresh fuel BWR fuel assembly contains ~ 170 kg U
3/25
1. SF at Fukushima NPS(1/2)-(1) In the reactor buildings-
CRIEPI
Unit 1 2 3 4 5 6
FA in Core (No.)400 548 548
(MOX 32)0 548 764
SF in Pool (No.) 292 587 514 1331 946 876
FF in Pool (No.) 100 28 52 204 48 64
Decay Heat in Pool(MW)
March 11,2010
0.18 0.62 0.54 2.26 1.00 0.87
June 112010
0.16 0.52 0.46 1.58 0.76 0.73
Ref.1
Condition of Unit 4‘s spent fuel pool
U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission estimates release from fire in a high-density pool 100 times worse than Fukushima
(average consequences for the Peach Bottom site in Pennsylvania)
Sources. http://pbadupws.nrc.gov/docs/ML1328/ML13282A564.pdf;http://pbadupws.nrc.gov/docs/ML1328/ML13282A563.pdf , http://pubs.rsc.org/en/Content/ArticleLanding/2013/EE/c2ee24183h#!divAbstract
Explanation: Enough hydrogen from zirconium-steam reaction in high-density pool to destroy reactor building.
High-density pool
Low-density pool
Fukushima-Daiichi release
Release (PBq) 925 4 6-20 Cancer deaths 43,100 1,100 ~1000 Area evacuated 46,600 221 ~650 Population displaced
10.9 million
72,000
~100,000
Some of the Commissioners on Japan’s Nuclear Regulation Authority (NRA) understand the danger
On 19 September 2012, in his first press conference, NRA Chairman, Shunichi Tanaka urged “Spent fuel not requiring active cooling should be put into dry casks … for five years or so cooling by water is necessary…I would like to ask utilities to go along those lines…”
On 29 October 2014, Chairman Tanaka and Commissioner Fuketa urged the president of Kyushu Electric Power Company, to introduce dry-cask storage.
If dense-packed pools are dangerous, why does the NRA not order nuclear power plant operators to follow Chairman Tanaka’s advice?
Summary
1. Using a nuclear-weapon material as a commercial nuclear fuel is a very bad idea.
2. Sodium-cooled reactors are much more costly and much less reliable than water-cooled reactors. After 50 years, no country has commercialized them.
3. Plutonium recycle in light water reactors is about 10 times more costly than storage.
4. Reprocessing persists in 4 weapon states and Japan. South Korea is pressing for the right to reprocess.
5. Spent fuel pools are safer if fuel that has cooled more than 5 years is downloaded to casks.