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8 January 2007 -- Reflecting a major shift in decades of opposition, a U.S. federal agency has taken another step in the pursuit of building nuclear fuel recycling centers, advanced recycling reactors and fund a research facility dedicated to fuel recycling.
The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) announced that under the hospices of President Bush's Global Nuclear Energy Partnership (GNEP) Initiative, it has filed a Notice of Intent (NOI) to prepare a Programmatic Environmental Impact Statement (PEIS) as part of the regulatory approval process to recycle spent nuclear fuel and destroy its long-lived radioactive components.
To accomplish this, DOE proposes to design, build, and operate three facilities: - A nuclear fuel recycling center, which would separate spent nuclear fuel into reusable and waste components and then manufacture new nuclear fast reactor fuel using the reusable components.
- An advanced recycling reactor, which would destroy long-lived radioactive elements in the new fuel while generating electricity.
- An advanced fuel cycle research facility, which would perform research and development into spent nuclear fuel recycling processes and other advanced nuclear fuel cycles.
DOE is considering 13 sites as possible locations for one or more of the proposed GNEP facilities. Eleven of these sites were selected based on responses received regarding the Funding Opportunity Announcement, as well as two additional DOE sites that the department has preliminarily identified as a possible location for a DOE-directed advanced fuel cycle research facility.
GNEP also includes two international initiatives: 1) Ensure reliable fuel services, in which the U.S would cooperate with countries that have advanced nuclear programs to supply nuclear fuel services to other countries that refrain from pursuing enrichment or recycling facilities to make their own nuclear fuel; and, 2) Development of proliferation-resistant nuclear power reactors suitable for use in developing economies.
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