Title: Potential Regional Nuclear Spent Fuel Management and Regional Uranium Enrichment /Reprocessing Paths for Asia
1Potential Regional Nuclear Spent Fuel Management
and Regional Uranium Enrichment /Reprocessing
Paths for Asia
- Jungmin KANG
- CISAC, Stanford University
- 2007 AES Meeting
- Beijing, China, Oct.31 Nov.2, 2007
2Contents
- Rationale for regional approaches of the spent
fuel management and enrichment services - Past and recent proposals of the regional
approaches - Scenarios of the regional approaches
- Needed national data
- Concluding remarks
3I. Rationale for the regional approaches
- There are already about 90 total nuclear power
plants in Japan, ROK, China, and Taiwan. Nuclear
power capacity of East Asia is expected to be
grow in the coming years, including future NPPs
deployment by Indonesia and Vietnam, since all
these countries see nuclear power as an important
element of their economic development strategies.
Therefore, spent fuel management and fuel supply
assurance will be hot issues in East Asia in near
future. - In March 2004, M. ElBaradei the Director General
of IAEA referred to the wide dissemination of the
most proliferation-sensitive parts of the nuclear
fuel cycle the production of new fuel, the
processing of weapons-usable material and the
disposal of spent fuel as the possible
Achiles heel of the nuclear non-proliferation
regime, and to the importance of tightening
control over such operations. He indicated that
this could be done by bring such parts of the
nuclear fuel cycle under some form of
multilateral control, with appropriate checks and
balances to preserve commercial competitiveness,
to control the proliferation of sensitive
information and to ensure of fuel cycle services
for peaceful applications.
4II. Past and recent proposals of the regional
approaches
- In 1982, the IAEA concluded a project of the
International Fuel Cycle Evaluation (INFCE) in
which IAEA expert groups suggested an
establishment of international plutonium storage
and international spent fuel management. - In the mid-1990s, the concept of the
International Monitored Retrievable Storage
System (IMRSS) was proposed by Wolf Hafele. The
IMRSS envisioned international sites where spent
fuel, and possibly also excess separated
plutonium, could be stored under monitoring for
an extended period but could be retrieved at any
time for peaceful use or disposal. - In mid-1990s through the late 1990s, there were
several proposals on the nuclear energy
cooperation in the Asia-Pacific region, including
spent fuel management as an important issue to be
addressed regionally. Tatsujiro Suzuki summarized
a comparison of various proposals for regional
nuclear cooperation during the period and
concluded that there are potential areas of
cooperation where common needs and interests
exist, including nuclear safety, management of
back end of the fuel cycle for example.
5II. Past and recent proposals of the regional
approaches (cont)
- In 1990s, a commercial group called Pangea was
looking for an international geologic repository
for both spent fuel and radioactive wastes.
Envisioning a facility for disposing of 75,000 MT
heavy metal of spent fuel/HLW, Pangea initially
selected Australia for its proposed repository,
but is seeking other sites around the world after
confronting political opposition in Australia. - During the late 1990s to early 2000s, two
proposals involving depository sites in Russia
were presented. One is a concept of the
Nonproliferation Trust (NPT) that called for
establishing a dry cask storage facility in
Russia that would accept 10,000 MT heavy metal of
spent fuel from abroad, and would include
eventual spent fuel disposal. The other is a
concept offered by MINATOM, which suggested a
plan for an international spent fuel service
involving offering temporary storage with later
return of the spent fuel, or reprocessing of
spent fuel without return of plutonium or
radioactive wastes for customer countries. - In 2003, Dr. Mohamed ElBaradei suggested
multinational approaches to the management and
disposal of spent fuel and radioactive waste. In
2005, commissioned at Dr. M. ElBaradei's
suggestion, the IAEA published a report on
Multilateral Approaches to the Nuclear Fuel Cycle
in which the IAEA concluded that such approaches
are needed and worth pursuing, on both security
and economic grounds.
6II. Past and recent proposals of the regional
approaches (cont)
- In January 2006, Russian President Vladimir Putin
announced a Global Nuclear Power Infrastructure
(GNPI) initiative to provide the benefits of
nuclear energy to all interested countries in
strict compliance with nonproliferation
requirements, through a network of international
nuclear fuel cycle centers (INFCC). INFCC are
conceived as being related to the provision of
enrichment services and to spent fuel management
issues through the provision of reprocessing and
the disposal of residual waste within the
framework of INFCC, under IAEA safeguards. - In February 2006, the Bush government proposed
the Global Nuclear Energy Partnership (GNEP) in
which the GNEP proposed fuel supply guarantees
and take back arrangements. The goal of GNEP is
to establish and sustain 'cradle to grave' fuel
services or leasing arrangements over time and at
a scale commensurate with the anticipated
expansion of nuclear energy by helping in a way
to solve the nuclear waste challenge.
7III. Scenarios of the regional approaches
- Regional spent fuel management
- Option I-1 A host country providing interim
storage following disposal of spent fuel from
customer countries - - Conceivable host China, Unified Korea
- - Conceivable customer Japan, ROK, Taiwan,
others
8III. Scenarios of the regional approaches (cont)
- Regional spent fuel management
- Option I-2 A host country providing interim
storage following reprocessing of spent fuel from
customer countries with no return of separated
plutonium and HLW to the customer countries - - Conceivable host Russia, China
- - Conceivable customer ROK, Taiwan, others
9III. Scenarios of the regional approaches (cont)
- Regional spent fuel management
- Option I-3 A host country providing interim
storage following disposal or reprocessing of
spent fuel by providing enrichment supply
assurance for customer countries - - Conceivable host Russia, China, Australia
- - Conceivable customer Japan, ROK, Taiwan,
others
10III. Scenarios of the regional approaches (cont)
- Regional enrichment services
- Option II-1 A regional supplier providing
enrichment supply assurance for customer
countries - - Conceivable regional supplier A
consortium of multilateral enterprises, e.g. USEC
(US), TENEX (Russia), URENCO (Germany,
Netherland, UK) and AREVA (France) - - Conceivable customer Japan, ROK, China,
Taiwan, others
11III. Scenarios of the regional approaches (cont)
- Regional enrichment services
- Option II-2 A regional supplier to be
established by some of customer countries
providing enrichment supply assurance for
customer countries - - Conceivable regional supplier A regional
enrichment corporation to be established by
Japan, ROK, China and Taiwan - - Conceivable customer Japan, ROK, China,
Taiwan, others
12III. Scenarios of the regional approaches (cont)
- Regional enrichment services
- Option II-3 A host country providing
interim storage following disposal or
reprocessing of spent fuel by providing
enrichment supply assurance for customer
countries (the same as Option I-3) - - Conceivable host Russia, China, Australia
- - Conceivable customer Japan, ROK, Taiwan,
others
13IV. Needed national data
- Future demand of natural uranium and enrichment
services as well as generation of spent fuel and
radioactive wastes depend on deployment of NPPs,
types of NPPs, nuclear fuel cycle strategy (i.e.
direct disposal or recycle of spent fuel) of a
country. - Long-term nuclear power supply plan depends on
the projection of electricity generation and
sharing of nuclear power over total electricity
generation of a country. - The projection of electricity depends on
electricity consumption per capita and population
of a country. - For quantitative analysis on the scenarios for
regional approaches in the spent fuel management
and enrichment services, this study needs those
relevant data which are mentioned above.
14V. Concluding remarks
- Quantitative analysis on the scenarios for
regional approaches in the spent fuel management
and enrichment services in East Asia is underway
with the aspects of material balance of nuclear
materials and radioactive wastes and cost.