Propelled by pork-barrel politics and flawed assumptions, reprocessing¹ is making a come-back in the United States. In recent press releases and statements to the media, the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) has outlined a program of "limited" reprocessing for "environmental management" purposes to extract plutonium and/or uranium from some of its inventory of approximately 2,700 metric tons of spent nuclear fuel. According to DOE, reprocessing will reduce accident risks from continued spent fuel storage and will make it easier to dispose of nuclear materials in a geologic repository. However, DOE's program raises serious environmental and nonproliferation concerns.

DOE Spent Fuel Inventory in Metric Tons, 1995

Location	Amount	Percent
Hanford	2133	80.6
ID Natn'l Engineering Lab.	261	9.8
Savannah River Site	206	7.8
Oak Ridge Reservation	1	0.03
Other DOE Facilities	27	1.0
Universities	2	0.08
Other	16	0.6
TOTAL	2646	100
NOTES: According to DOE, approximately 95 metric tons of spent fuel will be added to the inventory by 2035 from foreign research reactors, naval reactors, domestic research reactors, and other sources. Data on global military and commercial plutonium production can be found in Science for Democratic Action, Vol. 4 No. 3, "Rough Estimates of Cumulative Global Plutonium Production." Source: DOE 1995a, Programmatic Spent Nuclear Fuel Management and Idaho National Engineering Laboratory Environmental Restoration and Waste Management Programs Final Environmental Impact Statement, Summary, p.8

The fine print on reprocessing is contained in dozens of DOE documents and environmental impact statements (EIS's) released in 1994 and 1995. They show that DOE is considering a hodgepodge of programs and policies that could resurrect reprocessing in the United States over the long-term. The documents demonstrate that DOE has not fully considered the environmental and non-proliferation liabilities of its reprocessing proposals. In fact, DOE's own data show that reprocessing carries greater environmental and health risks than other alternatives for spent fuel stabilization. But with an undiminished Cold War attachment to reprocessing among powerful members of Congress and in some parts of DOE, current proposals could be the first step down a decades-long reprocessing road in the United States.

A Dangerous Backslide

DOE's decision is a dramatic reversal of previous policy. The Department of Energy and its predecessor agencies operated reprocessing plants for almost five decades to obtain bomb materials for the U.S. nuclear arsenal. But because of safety concerns and because the U.S. no longer needed fissile materials, reprocessing was suspended around 1990. Reprocessing ended at the Hanford Reservation in Washington in 1990. In 1992 DOE committed to phase-out reprocessing at the Savannah River Site (SRS) in South Carolina and at the Idaho National Engineering Laboratory. In the same year, President Bush officially halted military reprocessing and said his decision was part of a "set of principles to guide our non-proliferation efforts in the years ahead." The White House added that this decision was "intended to encourage countries in regions of tension such as the Middle East and South Asia to take similar actions."²

Now DOE is backsliding on its 1992 phase-out commitment and is undermining the important non-proliferation groundwork that was laid in 1992. The Department's proposals carry serious non-proliferation consequences because other countries will not be able to verify the purpose of the reprocessing or the destination of the fissile materials that may be extracted. They may perceive only that the United States is adding to its stockpile of weapons-usable materials. This comes at a time when the United States is working to end reprocessing programs in other countries such as North Korea, India, and Russia.

The United States is currently in a strong position to work to stem the proliferation dangers of reprocessing in other countries because it is the only major power not currently reprocessing for military or civilian purposes. DOE reprocessing proposals, though not military in nature, will nevertheless undermine U.S. credibility by creating the perception of a reprocessing double standard, especially since at least one of the two formerly military reprocessing plants at SRS will be in operation. (DOE reopened its F-Canyon reprocessing plant at SRS in February 1996.) Resuming reprocessing in the United States may undermine negotiation and implementation of the U.S.-supported international treaty barring fissile material production for military purposes. Despite these risks, non-proliferation issues are addressed only briefly or not at all in the DOE documents.

Long-Term Reprocessing Relapse

While DOE characterizes its reprocessing proposals as a short-term environmental stabilization program, reprocessing remains very much an open-ended project. DOE has not put any end-point on the amount of material that may be reprocessed or on the time in which reprocessing plants may operate. Indeed, DOE is investigating several new types of reprocessing techniques, notably "electrometallurgical processing" at the Idaho National Engineering Laboratory. It has considered constructing new reprocessing plants at the Savannah River Site and at Hanford, as well as utilizing the existing Sellafield and Dounreay reprocessing plants in the United Kingdom.

In February 1996, DOE decided it would accept and manage 20 metric tons of spent fuel from research reactors in foreign countries, 95% of which will be sent to the Savannah River Site. Despite a rhetorical nod in the direction of studying alternatives, DOE appears to be on a course to reprocess this material. These proposals are a far cry from DOE's 1992 commitment to phase out reprocessing.

The Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board, which is charged with overseeing DOE facilities, said in a November 15, 1995 letter that "the Department of Energy will always need to have available a capability for chemical processing of spent nuclear fuel..." Though the two reprocessing plants at SRS are already over forty years old and are "not in the best of shape," the Safety Board advocated keeping both in operable condition. "Then in event of an unfortunate incident, such as an accident that incapacitated a Canyon (e.g., a fire, a massive contamination, a seismic event), there should still be the other to carry on." Surprisingly the Safety board did not consider the environmental, health, or safety consequences of keeping reprocessing plants open compared to continued storage of spent fuel. Its recommendation appears to be oriented toward maintaining the reprocessing capacity of the facilities rather than minimizing safety, health and environmental risks.

DOE appears to be preparing for long-term reprocessing in other ways. In 1995, it decided to consolidate spent fuel according to cladding type.³ Since removal of the cladding is the first step in reprocessing, and different types of cladding involve different removal techniques, fuel consolidation by cladding-type makes it easier for DOE to reprocess its spent fuel inventories.

A Return of Civilian Reprocessing?

One of the most troubling aspects of DOE's policy is that it seems to reopen the door for a possible resumption of reprocessing of spent fuel from civilian nuclear power reactors. The United States has not reprocessed civilian spent fuel since 1972 because of cost, regulatory, and non-proliferation concerns. As a result, it is the only leading power with the credibility to work to stem the proliferation dangers from civilian reprocessing in countries such as Britain, France, Japan, Russia, and India. President Clinton has stated that the United States does not encourage civil reprocessing programs in other countries and that the U.S. abstention from reprocessing is important to achieve this goal.

Despite the Clinton administration policy, the Department has already tested electrometallurgical processing, a new kind reprocessing technology being developed in Idaho, with spent fuel from a civilian pressurized water reactor.⁴ A DOE Environmental Impact Statement stated that future research and development efforts will include "electrometallurgical processing using limited quantities of commercial SNF [spent nuclear fuel]."⁵

Also very significant is a 1995 report by Westinghouse, DOE's Savannah River Site contractor, advocating that all 30,000 metric tons of civilian spent fuel in the United States, as well as naval spent fuel and all aluminum-clad DOE spent fuel, be reprocessed at the Savannah River Site. The prospect of long-term civilian reprocessing and the abandonment of close to two decades of U.S. leadership on the proliferation impacts of civilian reprocessing makes current proposals especially dangerous.

The Westinghouse proposal for reprocessing civilian spent fuel coincides with increased support on Capitol Hill for reprocessing DOE and civilian spent fuel. In June 1995, Senate Armed Services Committee Chair, Strom Thurmond (R-SC) wrote that "a rational program for dealing with nuclear waste..." should include, "at minimum:"

construction and funding of storage and reprocessing facilities at SRS specifically for commercial, research (foreign and domestic) and other DOE spent fuel, along with legislative mandates that reprocessing, once begun, not be interrupted.⁶

Senator Frank Murkowski, chairman of the Energy and Natural Resources Committee, visited French reprocessing facilities in 1995 and commented that the French policy of civilian reprocessing was "very responsible."⁷

The favorable climate on Capitol Hill and the desire of the state of South Carolina to continue reprocessing in order to maintain jobs have been important factors in advancing reprocessing proposals.

Environmental Consequences of Reprocessing

While it is true that much of DOE's inventory of spent fuel is not stored under adequately safe conditions today, reprocessing is a cure that is worse than the disease. U.S. military reprocessing plants were never intended for environmental management. In fact, reprocessing was a leading cause of waste generation and environmental contamination among all stages in the nuclear weapons production process. DOE itself projects that stabilization and management of reprocessing wastes will be responsible for over half the costs of cleaning up the nuclear weapons complex.⁸

DOE's reprocessing proposals will generate a significant amount of highly radioactive liquid waste that will be added to waste tanks already at risk of fire or explosion. Reprocessing proposals for the Savannah River Site, for example, will add about three million gallons of high-level liquid waste to the tanks there, a nine percent increase above current levels of high-level waste at the site.

The impact of reprocessing on the safety of the waste tanks is the most serious environmental liability of reprocessing, yet DOE has failed to consider this issue in any of its environmental impact statements. DOE made a similar mistake five years ago when it proposed reprocessing spent fuel from Hanford's N-Reactor. The plan was terminated after a study conducted by IEER pointed to serious unanswered environmental and cost considerations in DOE's analysis.

DOE's haphazard methodology is exemplified by the fact that some of its waste generation figures came from a Westinghouse report stating, "it is likely that careful scrutiny [of this report] will reveal numerous discrepancies, inconsistencies, and omissions," and that "there is little documented basis or calculations to support the data presented."⁹ DOE has also relied on flawed assumptions, optimistic cost projections for reprocessing, and misleading terminology. DOE no longer uses the term "reprocessing" in its documents, preferring instead such terms as "processing," "conditioning," or "treatment of spent fuel" to refer to the separation of weapons-usable material from spent fuel. (See sidebar.) This misleading terminology may be a purposeful effort to hide reprocessing proposals behind unfamiliar names.

An Alternative to Reprocessing

Interim storage of DOE spent fuel is the most sound alternative to reprocessing. DOE has already decided to store Hanford N-reactor spent fuel, which comprises about 75% of its spent fuel inventory, and it could build a similar storage facility at the Savannah River Site within five years. Under this option, spent fuel at SRS would have to remain underwater in storage pools for a few years while the new storage facility is constructed. The safety of interim storage can and should be improved, as this approach does pose some degree of safety risks, but DOE's own data show these risks to be far lower than those from reprocessing.

Interim storage generates far less liquid high-level radioactive waste than reprocessing, and, according to DOE, the incremental radiation dose to the offsite population near the Savannah River Site is four to five million times less from interim storage than from reprocessing. DOE has estimated that one worker will die from cancer over a forty year period as a result of a DOE decision to reprocess at SRS, but that there is negligible worker cancer risk from the storage option.¹⁰

An additional benefit of interim storage is that it does not exacerbate proliferation risks. On the contrary, it would allow DOE to more rapidly decommission and dismantle its existing reprocessing plants -- a move likely to aid non-proliferation efforts.

Finally, interim storage would allow DOE to gain more information about repository options for its spent fuel before making irreversible near-term decisions. DOE's investigation of a repository site at Yucca Mountain, Nevada has a troubled history of delays and cost overruns, and repository emplacement of DOE nuclear materials may be two or more decades away.¹¹ DOE is putting the cart before the horse in letting long-term repository issues drive its near-term decisions on reprocessing.

Conclusion

The United States is at a critical juncture. It could reverse the sound decisions that were made in 1992 and reprocess for a decade or more, jeopardizing important U.S. non-proliferation efforts. Or it could implement a spent-fuel management program based on interim storage and dismantle its existing reprocessing plants. In the documents and environmental impact statements released over the past two years, DOE has rushed to judgment in favor of the reprocessing option without sufficient analysis. By starting up its reprocessing plant at SRS, it has embarked on an environmental management program by relying on the most hazardous option. Though there are no ideal options for addressing the Cold War legacy of spent nuclear fuel, reprocessing is one option that should be abandoned.

Copies of the full, 99-page report, Risky Relapse Into Reprocessing, are available from IEER for $10.00, including postage. Special arrangements can be made for low-income groups or individuals.

1. Reprocessing is the separation of spent nuclear fuel (material that has been irradiated inside a nuclear reactor) into its constituent parts, mainly plutonium and/or uranium and lighter elements, called fission products, that are the product of nuclear fission in reactors.
2. Statement by the President and Fact Sheet on Nonproliferation Initiative. White House Office of the Press Secretary, July 13, 1992.
3. Cladding refers to the type of material out of which the tube that contains the fuel pellets is made. Cladding materials include aluminum, zircaloy (an alloy made with zirconium), stainless steel, and others.
4. DOE, DOE Spent Nuclear Fuel Technology Integration Plan, DOE Office of Environmental Management, Office of Spent Fuel Management and Special Projects, December, 1994, p. B-4.
5. DOE, Programmatic Spent Nuclear Fuel Management and Idaho National Engineering Laboratory Environmental Restoration and Waste Management Programs Final Environmental Impact Statement, Volume 1, DOE Office of Environmental Management and DOE Idaho Operations Office, April 1995, pp 3-9.
6. Letter to Senator Frank Murkowski, June 29, 1995.
7. As quoted in The Energy Daily, April 28, 1995, "Murkowski Looks Overseas for Nuclear Waste Solution."
8. DOE, Estimating the Cold War Mortgage: The 1995 Baseline Environmental Management Report, Volume 1, DOE Office of Environmental Management, March 1995, p. 4.21, figure 4.11.
9. Westinghouse Savannah River Company, Technical Data Summary Supporting the Spent Nuclear Fuel Environmental Impact Statement, Revision 2, Westinghouse Savannah River Co., March 1994, pp 2 and 8.
10. DOE, Programmatic Spent Nuclear Fuel Management, Appendix C, pp 5-42 and 5-43.
11. For more information on the proposed Yucca Mountain waste repository see SDA Vol. 4 No. 4.