Nuclear power's future: Reprocessing returns?

POSTED 28 FEBRUARY 2008

Nuclear power's future: Reprocessing returns? 
Is nuclear back? The growing energy shortage, combined with the fact of greenhouse warming, have sparked a flurry of interest in non-carbon energy sources, including nuclear energy. After all, according to the Nuclear Energy Institute, nuclear is "Clean air energy."

The result is a sudden end to a 30-year drought in U.S. nuclear-plantapplications. By February, 2008, the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) has received applications for six new reactors.

The long drought had several causes. Cost was one -- the last U.S. nuclear plants came in way late and way over budget, partly due to safety and regulatory changes following the 1979 meltdown at Three Mile Island. "One reason you saw the stall in nuclear building was that the uncertainty made investors much more cautious about getting involved," says Todd Allen, an assistant professor of nuclear engineering at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. "There was a lack of certainty from the time of taking out a loan to selling electricity." Regulatory delays and design changes can eat up profits on such an expensive plant, he adds.

Reactor operators are now trying to control costs by standardizing their designs, and the NRC has promised faster regulatory decisions. Nuclear power makes about 20 percent of U.S. electricity, and about 16 percent globally.

But we see little cause for optimism about a second key source of the nuclear willies -- safe disposal of the intensely radioactive spent fuel that must be removed from reactors. The giant, federal nuclear-waste warehouse at Yucca Mountain, Nev. was supposed to solve the spent-fuel problem. But Yucca was scheduled to open 10 years ago, and it is unlikely to open for another 10 years -- if ever.

When a neutron hits a uranium-235 atom and causes it to split ("fission") in a nuclear reactor, we get fission products and "transuranics" (heavy elements like plutonium), along with more neutrons and a gob of energy.

With Yucca in limbo (some scientists say it cannot contain radwaste for 1 million years), the high-level waste problem remains unsolved.

So in the year that Yucca was supposed to celebrate its 10th birthday, here's our question: Who's got some good ideas for safely storing high-level nuclear waste?

These "dry casks" are an increasingly popular, but temporary, solution to radioactive waste storage at reactor sites. Photo: NRC

Radwaste: The original Mr. Yuck 
High-level radwaste -- the yuck Yucca is slated to receive -- is spent fuel from nuclear reactors, and it's roughly one million times more radioactive than fresh uranium fuel. High-level waste is extremely carcinogenic, even lethal, and must be handled by remote control or under heavy shielding.

Spent fuel can also provide the basis for good ol' explosive nuclear bombs and dirty bombs (which spew radiation without that familiar mushroom cloud). So to prevent nuclear proliferation, nuclear terrorism, and a cancer epidemic, spent fuel must be contained virtually forever.

The goal at Yucca is to safely store 70,000 tons of radwaste for 1 million years. Over those 10,000 centuries, the radioactive isotopes will gradually cool and be converted into stable, non-radioactive isotopes. (Isotopes are versions of an element with a different number of neutrons. Different isotopes decay at different rates; with many elements, some isotopes are stable, others will decay and release radiation.)

For the repository at Yucca, about 100 miles northwest of Las Vegas, the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) would love to follow GambleVille's marketing mantra ("What radiates near Vegas stays near Vegas"). But the giant repository is unlikely to open for at least another 10 years, and in the meantime, spent fuel will continue stacking up at reactors across the country, making a splendid target for terrorists eager to release a deadly cloud of radiation or even trigger a nuclear meltdown.

As electric generating plants spew out millions of tons of the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide, interest in nuclear energy is rising. But new plans to reprocess nuclear fuel have raised old fears. Photo ©David Tenenbaum

Reprocessing redux? 
The slipping schedule at Yucca has refocused attention on nuclear fuel reprocessing. When uranium fuel is first used in a reactor, it releases only about 1 percent of its nuclear energy (the fuel must then be replaced because a buildup of uranium breakdown products interferes with the chain reaction).

Unfortunately, many of these "fission products," such as cesium 137 and strontium 90, are remarkably radioactive. Still, about 99 percent of the nuclear energy remains in the spent fuel, mainly in the uranium 235 and plutonium 239. During reprocessing, these isotopes are separated out and blended into new fuel rods that go into another reactor. The fission products, however, become high-level radwaste.

Recycling uranium makes more sense than one-time use to many experts, including radiochemist Peter Burns of Notre Dame University. "Why are we calling this stuff waste? Why do we have a policy of sending this stuff to a nuclear waste repository?"

Indeed. Does reprocessing make sense?

Gov. Schwarzenegger Issues Statement on Nation-Leading Green Building Code

Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger today issued the following statement on the California Building Standards Commission vote to adopt the nation's first statewide green building code:

"By adopting this first-in-the-nation statewide green building code, California is again leading the way to fight climate change and protect the environment.  This is literally a groundbreaking move to ensure that when we break ground on all new buildings in the Golden State we are promoting green building and energy efficient new technologies. Cars and buildings are two of the leading users of energy - we're already addressing cars, and these new building standards will ensure that California remains at the forefront of reducing our carbon footprint and conserving valuable natural resources while also protecting our economy. We have already committed to making our state-owned buildings more green and energy efficient and this statewide code will reduce greenhouse gas emissions, improve energy efficiency and conserve water in all new buildings.

"With today's action, California continues to lead the nation and I commend the hard work of the Building Standards Commission to adopt the first-in-the-nation statewide green building standards."

Fred Friendly Seminar Socratic Dialogue, by Mark Ganguzza

A Fred Friendly Seminar, produced by Mark Ganguzza, will be taped as a centerpiece of BPS 2008 and aired nationally on public television at a later date. Fred Friendly Seminars are based on Socratic dialogue techniques that have been refined by the Fred Friendly organization over the years to explore critical issues and legitimate but differencing points of view. Unlike many contemporary issues oriented programs, the objective is to encourage people to talk to each other rather than shouting past one another. They are powerful, dramatic and educational vehicles by which preconceptions can be challenged, and public and private notions of energy sustainability and our environment can be re-examined. Through the Seminars and intensively coordinated outreach activities, this project aims to reach critical target audiences - the general public and key opinion leaders and decision makers (especially policymakers and journalists) — with transforming messages about the world's current state of energy consumption, and possible ways of encouraging people from around the world to embrace sustainable energy.

The Fred Friendly Seminars -- housed at the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism -- and Blue Planet Foundation in Honolulu share a commitment to fostering an international discussion on the future of our planet and the world's commitment to sustainable energy. These two groups will work together to develop an integrated project centered on a Fred Friendly Socratic Dialogue produced for public television, and an extensive community and professional educational outreach campaign. All phases of the comprehensive project will be informed by the latest research and policy developments and will be designed to move beyond preconceptions to a more fact-based, realistic and consensus-building way to approach these important issues.

Fred Friendly Seminars

"Our purpose is to make the agony of decision-making so intense that one can escape only by thinking." - Fred W. Friendly

The objective of The Fred Friendly Seminars is not to change minds or to support a particular point of view; rather it is to open minds to the complexity and ambiguity of issues facing contemporary society. The Seminars begin by painting "little pictures" — dilemmas or conflicts that almost any viewer might confront in their lives — and end with an informed and emotionally compelling exploration of the large ethical, legal and public policy questions at the heart of a well-functioning democratic society.

It is the unique Socratic Dialogue format that makes the programs so distinctive and engaging. The meticulously prepared narrative hypothetical scripts, the trained and accomplished moderators and the carefully cast panels, under the direction of the renowned production team, result in television programs of unrivaled spontaneity, freshness, immediacy and depth. For the audiences, the fascination of these Seminars comes, in part, from seeing panelists struggle to find their way through issues with no final or "best" answer. The broader success of the Seminars consists in compelling viewers to confront these knotty but essential problems in their own minds.

In addition to the Socratic Dialogue format, The Fred Friendly Seminars are distinguished by the thorough research process used to find and frame the best issues. As each program is developed, producers conduct extensive background and historical research; they engage in an intensive interview process with a broad range of key players; and they draw on the expertise both of specially recruited content advisors in relevant fields and of the moderators affiliated with the Seminars. The hundreds of hours of research and interviews allow producers to identify potential panelists who will provide the range of views required for the television panel, and help prioritize issues essential to the hypothetical scenario.

The hypothetical itself is a detailed script or "roadmap" that the moderator puts forward to the panelists over the course of the seminar. As this script is being developed, the moderators and advisors repeatedly vet it. It is not, however, shared with the panelists. A rehearsal of the hypothetical case with the moderator and a group of expert "run-through" panelists serves to further evaluate the effectiveness and accuracy of the scenario. This in-depth research procedure puts each Socratic Dialogue to the test in several different ways before it is completed. The result is a scenario that is relevant, spontaneous, compelling and dilemma-driven.

During the television taping, the roving moderator compels panelists to decide how they would act in complicated situations where the "right" choices are not always clear. Because the question, "What would you do?" is different from, "What do you think about such-and-such?" and because the dynamics are controlled by a skilled moderator, participants find it difficult to evade the subtlety and perplexity of the issues. As panelists wrestle with the hypothetical and as vague opinion gives way to the need for decisions, the drama created illuminates complex questions in a stimulating, compelling and entertaining way.

Visit fredfriendly.org for more information.

Production Team

Frank Sesno is a veteran broadcast journalist, providing enterprise reporting and analysis for the network on a wide range of issues that touch people's lives. An Emmy-award winning journalist, Sesno formerly served as CNN's Washington, D.C. bureau chief. Sesno's reporting can be seen network-wide including on CNN Presents, the network's flagship documentary program. Mr. Sesno is also a professor of Media and Public Affairs at George Washington University.

Mark Ganguzza has been involved in the production of major TV news programs and special events for the last 35 years. After almost 13 years at CBS he moved on to independent production of many different and widely recognized projects for PBS (Fred Friendly Seminars, various Bill Moyers programs, WideAngle, Charlie Rose), BBC, Lifetime, and many national foundations and associations. Mr. Ganguzza's work has received many awards, the most recent being a 2003 Alfred I. duPont Silver Baton award.

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Oahu to host Blue Planet Summit

HONOLULU
Oahu to host Blue Planet Summit

By Lynda Arakawa
Advertiser Staff Writer

Dozens of local and national energy experts, environmentalists, business leaders and others are scheduled to gather on O'ahu in April to discuss ways to increase renewable energy programs.

The three-day Blue Planet Summit, planned by Honolulu-based nonprofit Blue Planet Foundation, aims to foster and bring attention to clean energy initiatives in Hawai'i and around the world.

"We want to see what we can do to help Hawai'i become that model for clean energy elsewhere," said Stephen Reed, executive director of the Blue Planet Foundation.

"If Hawai'i can help show how these things can be done in a way that's economical, that's environmentally friendly, then you can export that concept, that technology, that business model to other places."

Reed said the summit will be an annual event here. The summit — to be held at the JW Marriott Ihilani Resort & Spa — is expected to include about 60 participants, including environmentalist Robert F. Kennedy Jr., National Geographic Society explorer Elizabeth Kapu'uwailani Lindsey, former U.S. Congressman Pete McCloskey, Stanford University environmental studies professor Stephen H. Schneider, and Bullitt Foundation CEO and coordinator of the first Earth Day Denis Hayes.

U.S. Sen. Daniel K. Inouye and University of Hawai'i President David McClain are also scheduled to participate.

The summit will be closed to the public, but part of the event will be taped to air nationally on public television, and other segments will be recorded to be made available on either DVD or the foundation's Web site, or both, Reed said.

"We want to raise the level of the dialogue, to help the public be that much better informed about what the issues are," Reed said.

Inouye said in a statement that the summit "will provide a unique window on the world with Hawai'i in the spotlight for its diverse test beds in renewable energy efficiency, generation and distribution.

"In the end, we must each take a measure of personal responsibility to help ensure that what we leave succeeding generations is better than how we found it."

Reach Lynda Arakawa at larakawa@honoluluadvertiser.com.