My reporting additionally helped reply one other query that was lingering in my mind: Why doesn’t the world recycle extra nuclear waste?
There’s nonetheless numerous usable uranium in spent nuclear gas when it’s pulled out of reactors. Getting extra use out of the spent gas might reduce down on each waste and the necessity to mine new materials, however the course of is expensive, difficult, and never 100% efficient.
France has the biggest and most established reprocessing program on the planet immediately. The La Hague plant in northern France has the capability to reprocess about 1,700 tons of spent gas every year.
The plant makes use of a course of known as PUREX—spent gas is dissolved in acid and goes via chemical processing to drag out the uranium and plutonium, that are then separated. The plutonium is used to make blended oxide (or MOX) gas, which can be utilized in a mix to gas typical nuclear reactors or alone as gas in some specialised designs. And the uranium can go on to be re-enriched and utilized in commonplace low-enriched uranium gas.
Reprocessing can reduce down on the whole quantity of high-level nuclear waste that wants particular dealing with, says Allison Macfarlane, director of the college of public coverage and international affairs on the College of British Columbia and a former chair of the NRC.
However there’s a little bit of a catch. At this time, the gold commonplace for everlasting nuclear waste storage is a geological repository, a deep underground storage facility. Warmth, not quantity, is commonly the important thing limiting issue for a way a lot materials could be socked away in these services, relying on the precise repository. And spent MOX gas offers off far more warmth than typical spent gas, Macfarlane says. So even when there’s a smaller quantity, the fabric may take up as a lot, or much more, house in a repository.
It’s additionally tough to make this a real loop: The uranium that’s produced from reprocessing is contaminated with isotopes that may be tough to separate, Macfarlane says. At this time, France primarily saves the uranium for attainable future enrichment as a kind of strategic stockpile. (Traditionally, it’s additionally exported some to Russia for enrichment.) And whereas MOX gas can be utilized in some reactors, as soon as it’s spent, it’s technically difficult to reprocess. So immediately, the most effective case is that gas might be used twice, not infinitely.
