Cost analysis of the US spent nuclear fuel reprocessing facility

a r t i c l e i n f o The US Department of Energy is actively seeking ways in which to delay or obviate the need for additional nuclear waste repositories beyond Yucca Mountain. All of the realistic approaches require the reprocessing of spent nuclear fuel. However, the US currently lacks the infrastructure to do this and the costs of building and operating the required facilities are poorly established. Recent studies have also suggested that there is a financial advantage to delaying the deployment of such facilities. We consider a system of government owned reprocessing plants, each with a 40 year service life, that would reprocess spent nuclear fuel generated between 2010 and 2100. Using published data for the component costs, and a social discount rate appropriate for intergenerational analyses, we establish the unit cost for reprocessing and show that it increases slightly if deployment of infrastructure is delayed by a decade. The analysis indicates that achieving higher spent fuel discharge burnup is the most important pathway to reducing the overall cost of reprocessing. The analysis also suggests that a nuclear power production fee would be a way for the US government to recover the costs in a manner that is relatively insensitive to discount and nuclear power growth rates. Nuclear power accounts for 20% of the electricity production in the United States and concerns over global warming and energy independence have rekindled calls for an increase in its use (National energy policy, 2001). The current US fleet of light–water reactors (LWRs) produces around 2000 tonnes of spent fuel (SF) heavy metal each year all of which is destined for interment at Yucca Mountain along with the existing inventory of stockpiled SF. However, at current production rates the expected capacity of this repository will be met While appropriate engineering could increase the amount of SF that can be stored safely at Yucca Mountain, it is unlikely that the repository could handle more SF than that anticipated from the LWRs that are in operation today 2 (Richter et al., 2002; Schneider et al., 2003). Because of this, a 1987 amendment to the US Nuclear Waste Policy Act mandates the Secretary of Energy to report on a site for a second repository by 2010 (Nuclear Waste Policy Amendments Act, 1987). However, the difficulties encountered with opening Yucca Mountain have led the US Department of Energy (DOE) to seek strategies that …