Nuclear power´s [international] prominence as a major energy source will continue over the next several decades, according to new projections made by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA)...
That's from the IAEA press release for their new report, Energy, Electricity and Nuclear Power for the period up to 2030 [pdf]. The report's ultimate goal is "...not so much to predict the future but to prepare for it," and describes relative nuclear power use by a number of countries (flash presentation).
Regarding the US, the report found that, as of the end of 2006:
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President Bush sits in the control room at the Browns Ferry Nuclear Plant in Athens, Ala. Thursday June 21, 2007. Unit 1 of the Browns Ferry plant was restarted in May 2007, after being shut down for over 20 years. (AP Photo/Gerald Herbert) |
The US had 103 reactors providing 19 percent of the country´s electricity... Altogether three-quarters of the US reactors either already have license renewals, have applied for them, or have stated their intention to apply. There have been a lot of announced intentions (about 30 new reactors´ worth) and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission is now reviewing four Early Site Permit applications.
Since the beginning of Bush's first term, his administration has been a strong advocate for a nuclear renaissance, pushing especially hard over the past several years, with strong economic incentives and government loan guarantees for new plant construction, investment protection for unforeseen plant construction delays, etc. . One sentence buried deep within a massive energy bill can go a long way.
But more nuclear plants means more nuclear waste; in the US alone, there are approximately 55,000 metric tons of spent nuclear fuel in temporary storage at about 120 sites across the country, with no permanent storage solution in sight [pdf]. And other countries, with far more nuclear plants, have a similar problem. Spent nuclear fuel storage poses many problems (security, potential public safety hazards, etc.).
So, back in the beginning of 2006, the Bush administration announced its Global Nuclear Energy Partnership (GNEP) proposal. The program is ambitious. Under the slogan of "Accelerating Clean and Safe Nuclear Energy", it advocates worldwide expansion of nuclear power via nuclear fuel-recycling technology, with (theoretically) less nuclear waste. In short, build more nuclear plants, and...reduce, reuse, recycle!
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The general GNEP nuclear fuel supply/demand/waste relationship. (Click to enlarge.) |
[The GNEP proposal] will use a nuclear fuel cycle that enhances energy security, while promoting non-proliferation. It would achieve its goal by having nations with secure, advanced nuclear capabilities provide fuel services — fresh fuel and recovery of used fuel — to other nations who agree to employ nuclear energy for power generation purposes only. The closed fuel cycle model envisioned by this partnership requires development and deployment of technologies that enable recycling and consumption of long-lived radioactive waste.
One noteworthy GNEP-related partnership was forged with Russia in 2006 "...that would pave the way for Russia to become one of the world's largest repositories of spent nuclear fuel...". (The important implications and details are discussed here.)
The program is billed as a technological panacea for all things climate, energy, proliferation, and environment-related; it sounds like prime nerd bait as well as a prime target for anti-nuclear power nongovernmental organizations.
So guess who's criticizing it? Well, my title gave it away: it's the nerds.
Last week, the National Academy of Sciences' (NAS) National Research Council published a report criticizing the DOE's accelerated push for GNEP-related nuclear technology as unrealistic and incompatible with both technical and funding requirements. You can read the press release for the report here; among other things, the report committee recommended that funding for the GNEP be scaled back, and the DoE "should instead assign the highest priority to facilitating the startup of new commercial nuclear power plants, a program that is currently falling behind schedule due to funding gaps."
The US nuclear power industry has limited enthusiasm as well; it is concerned that the new recycling/reprocessing infrastructure required by the GNEP will take much longer to put in place than is practical, and that the urgent problem of permanent waste disposal (like Yucca Mountain, or similar) should take priority (see the Nuclear Energy Institute white paper, "Nuclear Waste Disposal for the Future: The Potential of Reprocessing and Recycling" [pdf]).
Dr. Ivan Oelrich, Vice President of the Federation of American Scientists' Strategic Security Project, has provided some of the most comprehensive analysis and criticism of the GNEP (click here for his bio). For example, in August of this year, he published a detailed editorial about the GNEP in Nuclear Engineering International (bookmark it for later reading). But for now, let's turn to his fantastic October 29, 2007 post at the FAS Strategic Security Project blog, where he says:
What has been most remarkable about the GNEP program is not simply the ambitious technical goals it sets, rather it is the extraordinary urgency with which the program is promoted. Currently, the GNEP program is planning on moving basically from lab-bench scale experiments to essentially commercial scale operation without intermediate pilot programs and engineering development. Sort of the missile defense approach to plutonium reprocessing. But the press office summary of the report states that "...the technologies required for achieving GNEP's goals are too early in development to justify DOE's accelerated schedule for construction of commercial facilities that would use these technologies..." Except for the political calendar—DOE may be trying to create facts on the ground, quite literally by pouring concrete, before the end of the Bush administration—I cannot figure out what motivates the big rush.
Oelrich echoes what both his editorial (linked above) and the NAS report says, namely that although the DOE reasons that pushing the program through as fast as possible will have economic benefits in the end, there really is no justification for doing so. He points out that the DoE tends to drag its feet when it comes to studies on cost effectiveness of a program. This is a phrase to save:
(DOE seems to take a more empirical approach to cost studies: keep sending them money until they are finished with the project and when they are done they will tell you how much it cost.)
He ends with:
Even a group [NAS committee] generally sympathetic to nuclear power isn’t sold on GNEP.
Perhaps the basic problem is, as the committee observes, that "Moreover, there has been insufficient peer review of the program." This report is an important step in correcting that shortcoming.
Absolutely.
Whether or not you're pro-nuclear power, everyone can agree that the GNEP problem is far more complex than the simple diagram they have on the site; it's a complex domestic issue as well as a thorny international one. Political and environmental situations are not static; and regardless of how "friendly" the reprocessing technology proposed by the GNEP sounds, it is not foolproof when it comes to proliferation (again, see Oelrich's analysis.).
Whether you're in favor of storing spent nuclear fuel at Yucca Mountain or Novaya Zemlya, we can all agree that something has to be done. The GNEP will not solve it... not in this lifetime.