Roger Mayes opines that since the early 1970s, the U.S. government has spent billions of dollars to find a suitable site for a geologic repository to hold high-level radioactive waste. It is time to consider a new approach that would substantially reduce the amount of nuclear waste yet increase the financial rewards for a state willing to host the facility.
Reducing the amount of nuclear waste might seem impossible, but it is not. Often mistaken for nuclear waste, spent fuel that is being stored at nuclear power plants around the country contains plutonium and other valuable nuclear materials that can be chemically recovered to produce new fuel for use in reactors to generate more electricity. Such reprocessing was done in the U.S. until it was discontinued for economic reasons during the Ford administration and then banned by President Jimmy Carter because he mistakenly contended it could lead to the spread of nuclear weapons.
Several European countries continued reprocessing their spent fuel, and have demonstrated that it can be done proficiently under international safeguards. There have been advances in reprocessing technology that greatly reduce the risk of plutonium diversion.
With concern over climate change, increasing the production of carbon-free electricity by reprocessing would be of interest to everyone. Reprocessing would substantially reduce the amount of high-level waste that cannot be recycled and would need to be disposed of in a geologic repository. Since there is a limit on the amount of waste that a repository can hold, reducing the stocks of spent fuel at nuclear plants is essential.
In addition to spent fuel, a geologic repository, like the one that was being developed at Yucca Mountain in Nevada until the current administration suspended work on it, would still need to store high-level waste from both the commercial production of electricity and the military program.
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