Nuclear Energy and Waste Disposal in the Age of Fuel Recycling

The magnitude of humanity’s energy needs requires that we embrace a multitude of various energy sources and applications. For a variety of reasons, nuclear energy must be a major portion of the distribution, at least one-third. The often-cited strategic hurdle to this approach is nuclear waste disposal. Present strategies concerning disposal of nuclear waste need to be changed if the world is to achieve both a sustainable energy distribution by 2040 and solve the largest environmental issue of the 21 century – global warming. It is hoped that ambitious proposals to replace fossil fuel power generation by alternatives will drop the percentage of fossil fuel use substantially, but the absolute amount of fossil fuel produced electricity will be kept at or below its present 10 trillion kW-hrs/year. Unfortunately, the rapid growth in consumption to over 30 trillion kW-hrs/year by 2040, means that 20 trillion kW-hrs/yr of nonfossil fuel generated power has to come from other sources. If half of that comes from alternative non-nuclear, nonhydroelectric sources (an increase of 3000%), then nuclear still needs to increase by a factor of four worldwide to compensate. Many of the reasons nuclear energy did not expand after 1970 in North America (proliferation, capital costs, operational risks, waste disposal, and public fear) are no longer the intractable problems once thought. The WIPP site in New Mexico, an example of a solution to the nuclear waste disposal issue, and also to public fear, is an operating deep geologic nuclear waste repository in the massive bedded salt of the Salado Formation. WIPP has been operating for eight years, and as of this writing, has disposed of over 55,000 m of transuranic waste (>100 nCi/g but <23 Curie/liter) including some high activity waste. The Salado Formation is an ideal host for any type of nuclear waste, especially waste from recycled spent fuel. From the standpoint of addressing operational and environmental risk, as well as public fear, WIPP has had extensive human health and environmental monitoring. The Carlsbad Environmental Monitoring and Research Center at New Mexico State University, located in Carlsbad, NM, has been the independent monitoring facility for the area around WIPP from 1993 to the present, i.e., from six years before disposal operations began to nine years of waste disposal operations (www.cemcr.org). Based on the radiological analyses of monitoring samples completed to date for area residents and site workers, and for selected aerosols, soils, sediments, drinking water and surface waters, there is no evidence of increases in radiological contaminants in the region of WIPP that could be attributed to releases from WIPP. THE ROLE OF NUCLEAR IN ACHIEVING A SUSTAINABLE ENERGY DISTRIBUTION BY 2040. As we approach global peak oil availability in the next decade, we must be able to diversify into the many other energy sources available in order to achieve a sustainable energy production that will allow the American economy to grow without intermittent shortages, security vulnerabilities, extreme costs or environmental degradation (Wright and Conca, 2007). Energy distribution depends strongly upon the locality (Table 1) with the United States having more coal and nuclear than the world at large. Using best-estimate population growth and global energy consumption projections (United Nations 2004), world population will exceed 9 billion by 2050 and energy consumption will top 40 trillion kW-hrs/year (Figure 1, and Deutch & Moniz 2006). With determined conservation and efficiency programs, cultural changes and new construction strategies, this might be reduced to 30 trillion kWhrs/year, although present trends indicate this to be unlikely (Energy Information Administration. 2007, Stix 2006). Ambitious proposals to replace conventional fossil fuel (coal, oil and gas) power generation by alternative energy sources hope to drop the percentage of fossil fuel use by half from its present two-thirds to one-third (Figure 2). Unfortunately, because of the rapid growth in consumption, a third of 30 trillion kW-hrs/year is 9.8 trillion kWhrs/year, which is the same absolute amount of fossil fuel used today (Figure 1). This means that CO2 emissions will not drop appreciably, and CO2 capture, sequestration, or other technologies will have to solve the emission problem. Therefore, if we are successful in cutting fossil fuel use to a third, the remaining 20 trillion kW-hrs/yr of generated power must come from other sources than non-fossil fuel (Figure 1). If half of this, or 10 trillion kWhrs/yr, comes from alternative non-nuclear sources (an increase of 3000% and beyond any anticipated goal), then 1 New Mexico State University, 1400 University Drive, Carlsbad New Mexico 88220 Corresponding author: [email protected] 2 UFA Ventures, Inc., Carlsbad, NM 88220 Reprinted from The New Mexico Journal of Science, vol. 45, p. 13-21 http://www.nmas.org/NMJoS-Volume-45.pdf TABLE 1. Energy Distribution by Country or Region. World Canada 8% oil 33% oil 39% coal 9% coal 20% gas 25% gas 17% nuclear 7% nuclear 15% hydroelectric 25% hydroelectric European Union United States 30% coal 50% coal 18% gas 19% gas 32% nuclear 19% nuclear 11% hydroelectric 6% hydroelectric 6% oil 6% other 3% other California New Mexico 2% coal 80% coal 49% gas 18% gas 15% nuclear 2% other 22% hydroelectric 11% other nuclear still needs to increase by a factor of four to compensate. If not, fossil fuel use will double and CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere will exceed 600 ppm. France is an example of how this strategy can be successful. Between 1980 and 1987, when France implemented its changeover to nuclear energy, generating 80% of its power from nuclear, its CO2 emissions dropped from 134 million tons/year to 96 million tons/year, at the same time electricity consumption increased 46%. This is the only instance in the world where a major energy-producing country has met the goals of the Kyoto protocol, indeed many times over as this rolled France’s emissions back to 1960s levels. Therefore, in order to address global warming and long-term energy sustainability, nuclear energy production must increase significantly, and all countries including the United States need to begin ambitious and sustained construction of new design nuclear power plants to reduce the number of new fossil fuel power plants anticipated over the next generation. Fully 1500 nuclear plants are needed by 2040, more if electric vehicles become the strategy for replacing petroleum-based vehicles, requiring an additional 7 trillion kW-hrs/yr. ADDRESSING NUCLEAR ISSUES Nuclear energy slowed substantially in the 1970’s for several reasons, one of which was that the United States abdicated its leadership role. The main concern was fear of proliferation, an issue that has become less U.S.-centric with the increase in enrichment capabilities worldwide, with new fuel and reactor designs, and with the possible eventual adoption by the world community of some type of nuclear energy partnership in which nuclear fuel is provided to non-nuclear-capable countries by nuclear countries thereby removing the necessity of non-nuclear countries from developing enrichment capabilities of there own that can be used to produce weapons-grade material. In order to cap CO2 emissions at 2006 levels with ~30 tkWhrs of consumption: 2/3 must be nonfossil fuel and only 1/3 can be fossil fuel World Power Consumption (trillion kiloWatt-hours per year)