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(Updated 11 June 2010)
Uranium resources and mining
The USA ranks sixth in the world for known uranium resources in the category up to $130/kgU ($50/lb U3O8), with 339,000 tU (reasonably assured plus inferred resources, 2007).
In the 1950s, the USA had a great deal of uranium mining, promoted by federal subsidies. Peak production since 1970 was 16,800 tU in 1980, when there were over 250 mines in operation. This abruptly dropped to 50 in 1984 when 5,700 tU was produced, and then there was steady decline to 2003, by which time there were only two small operations producing a total of under 1,000 tU/y, or about 5% of the uranium consumed by US nuclear plants. So, for the first step in the nuclear fuel cycle, the US must rely on imports of uranium from countries such as Canada and Australia, or downblended weapons-grade uranium from Russia (see section on Military surplus and other government stocks below).
As the price of uranium has increased in recent years, there has been a revival in exploration and plans to reopen old mines. Exploration expenditures doubled between 2006 and 2007 to $50.3 million, and this level was maintained in 2008. A number of companies have announced plans to refurbish and restart mines in Wyoming, Colorado, Utah, Arizona and New Mexico. There are now operating mines in Texas, Wyoming, Colorado, southern Utah, and Wyoming (see US Nuclear Fuel Cycle Appendix 1: US Uranium Mining and Exploration).
Most US production has been from New Mexico and Wyoming. Known resources are 167,000 t U3O8 in Wyoming, 155,000 t in New Mexico, 2,000 t in Texas and around 50,000 t in Utah, Colorado and Arizona (all to $50/lb). Production potential is about 45% in situ leach (ISL), 55% conventional mining.
Uranium production from one mill (White Mesa, Utah) and five ISL operations totaled 1,583 tU (1,866 t U3O8) in 2006 and 1,748 tU (2,061 t U3O8) in 2007. In 2008, Rosita became a sixth ISL production site before being shut down and a total of ten underground mines (four more than during 2007) produced uranium. In total, 1,503 tU (1,774 t U3O8) was produced in 2008.1
In mid-2009, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) issued a generic environmental impact statement (EIS) on ISL (or in situ recovery, ISR) mining in the western USA. This will streamline but not eliminate the requirement for a supplementary EIS for each new mine. The NRC expects 17 applications for ISL facilities in the next couple of years, with each taking two years to process, including public participation.
Details of US uranium mining are in US Nuclear Fuel Cycle Appendix 1: US Uranium Mining and Exploration.
Conversion
The large Honeywell Metropolis Works plant (MTW) in southern Illinois converts uranium oxide, U3O8, to uranium hexafluoride, UF6, which then goes to USEC's Paducah enrichment operation just across the Ohio River as well as to customers abroad. MTW is the only conversion plant in the USA. The facility was built in the 1950s under government contract to meet military conversion requirements, and began providing UF6 for civilian use in the late 1960s. Capacity has expanded from 9,000 tU as UF6 per year to 17,600 tU as UF6 today, and is expected to increase to 23,000 tU by 2020.a The next level of planned expansion at MTW is to 18,000 tU as UF6 by 2012, depending on market conditions. ConverDyn, a partnership between affiliates of Honeywell and General Atomics, is the exclusive agent for conversion sales from Honeywell-MTW.
Deconversion
Deconversion of the depleted uranium (DU) that remains as a byproduct after enrichment has not so far been undertaken on a large scale in the USA,and in fact for legal reasons DU is, in the USA, sometimes considered as a 'waste'.
In December 2009, International Isotopes (INIS) applied for a licence to build and operate a 6,500 t/y deconversion plant and fluorine extraction facility near Hobbes, New Mexico, 50 km from the Urenco USA enrichment plant at Eunice. In April 2010, INIS signed a five-year agreement to provide toll deconversion services for DU tails from Urenco, from 2014. INIS hopes to start production in 2013, subject to raising $75 million capital. Initial capacity is for about 300 cylinders, containing 3600 tonnes of UF6 per year, increasing to about 575 (6950 t) in 2016. Some 1,300 to 2,300 tonnes of anhydrous hydrofluoric acid (HF) with 450 tonnes of fluoride gas will be produced per year for sale by INIS, and the depleted uranium belonging to the enrichment companies will be stored as more stable U3O8.
Preceding this proposal an agreement was signed in 2005 between LES and Areva to make use of the latter's technology in deconverting LES' DU tails. Areva NC has operated a small deconversion plant in association with its fuel fabrication plant in Washington state. The US Department of Energy envisages further deconversion plants at Portsmouth/Piketon, Ohio and Paducah, Kentucky.
Enrichment
The USA currently has one operating enrichment plant, USEC's Paducah, Kentucky facility built by the government in the early 1950s to provide fuel for military reactors. This large gaseous diffusion plant began providing enriched uranium for civilian reactors in the 1960s. Originally government-owned, USEC became a private sector corporation in 1998, and leased two large enrichment plants from the DOE. In 2001, it consolidated its enrichment operations at the Paducah site after closing the older facility at Piketon, Ohio. Both plants were very energy-intensive and costly to run. The Paducah plant has a capacity of 8 million SWU/y, compared with the 12.7 million SWU/y required by the 104 operational US reactors. It is expected to close down once the new US capacity comes on line.
Three new enrichment plants, being built by other companies, are expected to begin operation before 2020. In addition, USEC had started building its own enrichment plant, the American Centrifuge Plant in Piketon, Ohio, which had been due to begin operation in 2010, but the project was put on hold in July 2009.
From 2009, Russia’s Tenex has signed a number of contracts with US utilities to supply enrichment services and enriched uranium product. To mid-2010 the contracts totaled some $3 billion, covering supplies to 2020.
This Russian supply is in addition to that of 4.4% low-enriched uranium supplied through USEC having been blended down from Russian weapons material (see section below on Military surplus and other government stocks). This supplies about half of US annual needs, and runs to 2013.
American Centrifuge Plant
In April 2007, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission licensed construction and operation of USEC's American Centrifuge Plant in Piketon, Ohio. The American Centrifuge technology has been developed over many years by USEC, based on work by the Department of Energy (DOE) in 1970s and 1980s. The plant was being constructed on the same Portsmouth site where the DOE's experimental plant operated in the 1980s, involving 1,300 centrifuges as the culmination of a very major R&D program. It is also the site of USEC's large Portsmouth diffusion plant which is now closed. The prototype lead cascade started operation in September 2007 and the test program with it to April 2010 refined the design of the AC100 centrifuge machines (which are much larger than the European Urenco centrifuges). An AC100 lead cascade started operation in March 2010 with "approximately two dozen" machines which USEC plans to increase to 40-50 in operation later in 2010. The original AC100 design was superseded in 2009 by the "value-engineered AC100 machine", or AC100 Mod 1, which is intended to be deployed in the commercial plant, and is expected to deliver 350 SWU/yr per machine. The most recent cost estimate was around $3.5 billion, excluding finance, and utilizing existing infrastructure. By March 2010, the company had spent $1.8 billion and required "additional capital beyond the $2 billion in Department of Energy loan guarantee program funding that it has applied for and USEC's internally generated cash flow."
The plant would use only 5% of the power of the old diffusion plant it replaces. The licence authorises 7 million SWU/y enrichment up to 10% U-235, though normal levels today are only up to 5%, which is becoming a serious constraint as reactor fuel burnup increases. In March 2009, USEC said that it had commitments for $3.3 billion of services from ten customers including leading utilities in the USA, Europe and Asia, and amounting to more than half of the initial sales from the plant.
The full plant was expected to commence commercial operation by the end of first quarter 2010, reach 1 million SWU capacity a year later and achieve full 3.8 million SWU annual capacity at the end of 2012. However, early in 2009 the whole project was slowed pending funding through the DOE loan guarantee program, and in July 2009 it was suspended due to the DOE refusing to award a $2 billion loan guarantee, and asking USEC to withdraw its application. USEC refused to do this, and early in 2010 said that completion of the project depended on "a timely commitment and funding for a loan guarantee from DOE".2
Urenco USA (formerly National Enrichment Facility)
Urenco USA has a major centrifuge enrichment plant at Eunice, New Mexico. It uses 6th generation Urenco technology from Europe, and was planned by the Louisiana Energy Services (LES) partnership – comprising Urenco, Exelon, Duke Power, Entergy, and Westinghouse. Construction of the $1.5 billion plant was licensed by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) in mid-2006 and as agreed the three utilities then passed their share to Urenco, and the company is now a subsidiary of Urenco USA. Utility support for the venture – initially amounting to $3.15 billion in orders – was crucial in persuading the NRC that further US enrichment capacity was required beyond that provided and envisaged by USEC.
NRC approval to begin commercial operation was obtained in mid-2010, with full capacity of 3.3 million SWU/y to be reached in 2013. The new plant will be a major step forward in underwriting new US nuclear generating capacity and in ensuring security of fuel supply, with flexibility of operation enabling more energy input to produce more fuel from the same natural uranium feed if required. LES has confirmed plans to increase the capacity to 5.9 million SWU/y over 2014-17, with total investment reaching $4 billion. A new centrifuge design may be used in the expansion. The incremental capacity will require NRC approval.
Eagle Rock Enrichment Facility
In mid-2007, Areva announced that it proposed to build a 3.3 million SWU/y $2 billion centrifuge plant in the USA to supply domestic enrichment services. It submitted a licence application to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) for this Eagle Rock Enrichment Facility in December 2008 with a view to licence approval in mid-2011 and operation early in 2014, ramping up to full capacity in 2019. It would be similar to Areva's new French plant (Georges Besse II) and would be built at Idaho Falls, near the Department of Energy's Idaho National Laboratory. It will be owned an operated by Areva Enrichment Services LLC. In 2009, Areva notified a planned doubling in capacity to 6.6 million SWU/y, with the first stage being 3 million SWU/y. In May 2010, DOE granted it a $2 billion loan guarantee.
Global Laser Enrichment
In 2006 Silex Systems in Australia and GE Energy received US government approval for development in the USA of the SILEX (Separation of Isotopes by Laser Excitation) uranium enrichment process using laser technology. This approval cleared the way for development and eventual full commercial production under a licence agreement with Silex. GE (now GE-Hitachi, GEH) is funding the development and making a series of payments to Silex. It will then pay a royalty on revenues from commercial production. GE said that "commercialisation of the SILEX enrichment technology is a crucial part of GE's long-term growth strategy for the nuclear business." SILEX was rebadged as Global Laser Enrichment (GLE).
In October 2007, the two largest US nuclear utilities, Exelon and Entergy, signed letters of intent to contract for uranium enrichment services from GEH. The utilities may also provide GEH with facility licensing and public acceptance support if needed for development of a commercial-scale GLE plant. GEH is now operating the GLE test loop at Global Nuclear Fuel's Wilmington, North Carolina fuel fabrication facility - GNF is a partnership of GE, Toshiba, and Hitachi, while GLE comprises GE (51%), Hitachi (25%) and Cameco (24%). If the test loop results are positive, GEH will move ahead with full-scale production plans. GLE anticipates gleaning sufficient data from the test loop by the end of 2009 to decide whether to proceed with a full-scale commercial enrichment facility, and if so, its schedule. In mid-2009, GEH submitted the last part of its licence application for this GLE plant, which is expected to take the NRC 30 months to process. If construction proceeds, the GLE commercial production facility at Wilmington, North Carolina would have a target annual capacity of 3.5 to 6 million separative work units (SWU).
New US enrichment capacity
Fuel fabrication
The USA has five fuel fabrication facilities to convert enriched uranium oxide into solid pellets for fuel rods. Areva, Westinghouse, Babcock & Wilcox and General Electric operate fabrication facilities in Virginia, Washington state, North Carolina and South Carolina.
In addition, Shaw-Areva MOX Services (30% Areva) is constructing a mixed oxide (MOX) fuel fabrication facility at the US Department of Energy's Savannah River Site in South Carolina. Under current plans, the plant, which will be owned by the government's National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA), will dispose of at least 34 tonnes of weapons-grade plutonium and convert it into useable fuel.
In 2009, Areva's 35-year-old Richland, Washington fuel fabrication plant was the first to receive a 40-year licence extension from the NRC.
Military surplus and other government stocks
Almost half of the uranium used in US nuclear power plants currently comes from Russian weapons-grade military uranium, downblended in Russia. Under this program, by mid 2009, 367 tonnes of high-enriched uranium (HEU) had been downblended into some 10,600 tonnes of low-enriched uranium (LEU) for reactor fuel, representing 65 million SWU of enrichment and over 14,500 warheads, at a cost of $5.5 billion (paid by electricity consumers).
On the US side, 174 tonnes of military high-enriched uranium has been declared to be surplus and available for civil power generation. A start has been made on downblending this by Nuclear Fuel Services in Tennessee, and the first fuel fabricated from it has been shipped to Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) power plants.
In 2005, the Department of Energy's (DOE's) National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) announced that it was committing 40 tonnes of off-specification HEU in the US to its Blended Low Enriched Uranium (BLEU) program, with the fuel produced going to TVA power plants.
In June 2007, the Department of Energy's (DOE's) National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) awarded contracts to Wesdyne International and Nuclear Fuel Services (NFS) to downblend 17.4 tonnes of HEU from dismantled warheads to be part of a new international Reliable Fuel Supply program.b In June 2009, NNSA awarded a further contract ($209 million) to NFS and Wesdyne for 12.1 tonnes of HEU, which will yield some 220 tonnes of LEU by 2012. This batch of LEU is to provide fuel supply assurance for utilities which participate in the DOE's mixed-oxide fuel program utilising surplus plutonium from US weapons. To cover the cost of the project, Wesdyne will sell a small part of the LEU on the market over a three- to four-year period. (The scheme is consistent with international concerns to limit the spread of enrichment technology to countries without well-established nuclear fuel cycles. Russia has agreed to join the initiative.)
In March 2008, the DOE announced a policy for dealing with uranium which was surplus to defence needs. The inventory, totaling nearly 59,000 tonnes of natural uranium equivalent, was as follows:
* Natural uranium exchanged under the 1993 agreement whereby Russian blended-down uranium is supplied to US utilities – effectively Russian-origin stocks
The DOE plan shows a total of 22,700 tonnes of its uranium entering global markets before the end of FY2017, but with no more than 10% of US annual requirements being delivered to the market in any one year – apart from an allocation for the first cores of newly built US reactors.c In 2009 the DOE is reported to have transferred about 617 t to the market, and in 2010 it plans to transfer up to 1337 t of excess uranium to the domestic market, including that which will go to USEC in payment for the clean-up of the Portsmouth enrichment plant.
The DOE will maintain a uranium reserve of 670 tonnes U – equivalent to about 20 power reactor reloads – for energy security reasons. This will be kept as low-enriched uranium stored either at the DOE's Portsmouth or Paducah sites, or may be kept as part of a commercial entity's working inventory.
See also information page on Military Warheads as a Source of Nuclear Fuel.
Plutonium disposition
In addition to the HEU surplus, the US government has declared 61.5 tonnes of weapons-grade plutonium to be excess to the needs of the US defence program. Of this, the government agreed under the 2000 US-Russia Plutonium Management and Disposition Agreement to dispose of 34 tonnes by 2014, incorporating it (with depleted uranium) into mixed oxide (MOX) fuel.
Construction of a MOX fuel fabrication plant at the DOE Savannah River site in South Carolina was authorised by NRC early in 2005 and began in August 2007 when funding became available. The MOX Fuel Fabrication Facility (MFFF) is being built by Shaw Areva MOX Services under a $2.7 billion contract to the DOE's National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA), which will own the plant. (Most MOX plants use fresh reactor-grade plutonium comprising about one-third non-fissile Pu isotopes; this uses weapons plutonium with more than 90% fissile isotopes.) The plant is expected to be in operation in 2016, eventually producing 1,700 MOX fuel assemblies from the 34 tonnes of weapons-grade plutonium - or more, should the government decide to dispose of some or all of the balance of the 61.5 tonnes surplus plutonium in this way.
In February 2010, the NNSA signed an agreement with TVA to evaluate the use of this MOX in its Sequoyah and Browns Ferry power plants.
Duke Energy has used four mixed oxide test fuel assemblies incorporating this weapons-grade plutonium (fabricated in France) at its Catawba 1 nuclear power reactor. This was to prepare for possible use of MOX for 20-40% of the cores of the Catawba and McGuire reactors from about 2010, using the fuel fabricated at MFFF.
Weapons-grade plutonium in MOX test assemblies has been burned at the Saxton prototype reactor in the mid-1960s, and some MOX was burned in other US plants before 1977.
Reprocessing used fuel
In 1977, the US government called a halt to the reprocessing of used fuel from commercial reactors as part of its stance against nuclear non-proliferation. The country has some experience with reprocessing oxide fuels as part of its military program, and has also built three civil reprocessing plants. The first, a 300 t/y plant at West Valley, New York, was operated successfully from 1966-72. However, escalating regulation required plant modifications which were deemed uneconomic, and the plant was shut down. The second was a 300 t/y plant built at Morris, Illinois, incorporating new technology which, although proven on a pilot-scale, failed to work successfully in the production plant. It was declared inoperable in 1974. The third was a 1500 t/y plant at Barnwell, South Carolina was built but not commissioned due to the changed government policy. It is now demolished. In all, the USA has over 250 plant-years of reprocessing operational experience, the vast majority being at government-operated defence plants.
One of these is the H-Canyon plantd at the DOE Savannah River site in South Carolina. This facility is the last such US plant able to treat used HEU fuel and similar materials still operational. From 2011 it will treat used HEU fuel from the USA and overseas research reactors which have been converted to LEU or shut down under the Global Threat Reduction Initiative.
Several shifts in energy policy beginning in 2002, however, increased the likelihood of a resumption in reprocessing. In June 2005, the report accompanying the $31 billion energy and water funding bill approved by the Senate Appropriations Committee emphasised the need for new nuclear energy technologies. The DOE's Advanced Fuel Cycle Initiative (AFCI) would receive $85 million to develop fuel cycle technologies for Generation IV reactors including reprocessing and using fast neutron reactors to destroy long-lived components of wastes. A major driver for reprocessing was the reduction in the volume of high-level wastes, possibly obviating the need for any expansion of the planned repository at Yucca Mountain. In July 2005, with passage of the Energy Policy Act of 2005, the "recovery of the energy value from spent commercial fuel" became an explicit objective of the AFCI.
The shift on reprocessing was given further impetus by the government and industry commitment to develop of advanced nuclear reactors. In late 2005, the American Nuclear Society issued a position paper stating that "the development and deployment of advanced nuclear reactors based on fast-neutron fission technology is important to the sustainability, reliability, and security of the world’s long-term energy supply."3 An initial $50 million for "integrated spent fuel recycling facilities" focused largely on fast reactors was committed by the US Congress in 2006. The US industry body, the Nuclear Energy Institute, has said that the US nuclear industry needs to plan for recycling used fuel to reduce the long-lived radioactivity arising from it so that in a relatively short time high-level wastes become no more toxic than the original uranium ore. This means recycling and burning all the long-lived actinides, which is most efficiently done in fast neutron reactors.
The development of new reprocessing technology became a central element in the government's 2006 proposal for a Global Nuclear Energy Partnership (GNEP) to reduce the risk of nuclear proliferation (see information page on Global Nuclear Energy Partnership). Under this proposal, the US and other developed countries would develop proliferation-resistant recycling technologies and provide nuclear fuel to developing countries that promised not to engage in enrichment and reprocessing activities. GNEP has attracted criticism, but has brought increased attention to the possibilities of reprocessing, an issue once thought to be decided. However, financial support for GNEP has been decreasing and, by 2009, under Barack Obama's Democratic administration, the DOE removed its GNEP website and did not refer to the program in its budget request for FY 2010.4 In June 2009, the DOE cancelled the programmatic environmental impact statement for GNEP "because it is no longer pursuing domestic commercial reprocessing, which was the primary focus of the prior Administration's domestic GNEP program."5
Despite the lack of US government support for GNEP as such, research activities under AFCI have continued. A DOE-funded demonstration project involving several versions of the UREX+ process for spent fuel is underway at the Argonne National Laboratory. The DOE is also exploring reprocessing technologies such as AREVA's COEX, which is based on processes already used in France, the UK, Russia and Japan, as well as a number of other technologies that would require the widespread use of fast neutron reactors. (See information page on Processing of Used Nuclear Fuel.)
Areva has costed plans for a major recycling complex in the USA, including reprocessing plant and MOX fuel fabrication plant, at $25 billion. It would have annual input capacity of 2500 tonnes, and is expected to take 12-15 years to licence and build. The reprocessing cost is expected to be less than the 0.1 ¢/kWh fee now charged for the nuclear waste fund.
A possible site for an initial reprocessing plant is at Morris, Illinois, which is the only licensed away-from-reactor wet used fuel storage facility in USA. It is adjacent to the Dresden nuclear power plant and currently stores about 700 tonnes. It was the site of GE's Midwest Fuel Recovery Plant, a small reprocessing plant built in the early 1970s but not operated.
Decommissioning reactors
Nearly 30 civil prototype and commercial reactors are being or have been decommissioned in the USA. A few have been totally dismantled so that the site is released for unrestricted use, notably Fort St Vrain, Big Rock Point and Shoreham. The majority are in various stages of dismantling or safestore.
The Nuclear Energy Institute reported in 2006 that of the total $32 billion estimated to decommission all eligible nuclear plants at an average cost of $300 million, about two-thirds has already been funded. The remainder will be funded over the next 20 years (US nuclear plants are licensed for 40 years initially, and more than half have had licences extended to 60 years)e.
Nuclear wastes
US policy since 1977 has been to forbid reprocessing of used fuel and to treat it all as high-level waste, which the government is responsible for finally disposing of in a deep geological repository. Congress established a trust fund for waste management in 1982 under the Office of Civilian Radioactive Waste Management (OCRWM), and utilities have supplied over $30 billion (including interest) to this Nuclear Waste Fund through a 0.1 cent/kWh levy towards final disposal, so that by the end of 2009 it had a balance of $21 billion, after development expenses for Yucca Mountain. The fund is growing by about $770 million per year from utility inputs and $1 billion from interest.
It is the responsibility of utilities to store this used fuel on site until it is taken over by the federal Department of Energy (DOE) for final disposal in a geological repository. Such a repository is not yet available and the DOE defaulted on its 1998 deadline to start accepting used fuel, which has put pressure on storage space at many plants.
A 70,000 tonne high-level waste repository had been planned at Yucca Mountain in Nevada. This would take 63,000 tonnes of used reactor fuel, 2,333 t of naval and Department of Energy (DOE) used fuel and 4,667 t of other high-level wastes, all from 126 sites in 39 US states. As of 2008, there was some 58,000 tonnes of civil used fuel awaiting disposal and about 12,800 tonnes of government used fuel and separated high-level wastes. The total increases by about 2,500 tonnes per year. Recent studies by the Electric Power Research Institute show that the repository could hold at least 260,000 tonnes and possibly 570,000 tonnes of used fuel and high-level wastes, rather than the arbitrary 70,000 tonnes set by Congress in 1982.6
The government was originally scheduled to begin taking charge of the waste at the repository in 1998, but there have been delays due to the underfunding of construction, legal challenges and political opposition.f The first budget from the Obama administration in 2009 cut off most of the money for the project, and it now appears unlikely that it will ever be completed.7
Before budget cuts and policy announcements early in 2009 which threatened to abort the project, the latest DOE estimate of when Yucca Mountain repository might be operational was about 2020-21, with some expansion of the original 70,000 tonne capacity. The total cost in mid-2008 was put at about $96 billion (in 2007 dollars) for its construction, operation for 110 years, decommissioning from 2133 and the transport of used fuel to it.8
Technical oversight of the DOE repository program is carried out by the Nuclear Waste Technical Review Board. In October 2009, it stated that it would in future focus its responsibilities to include reprocessing of used fuel and the technical implications of very long-term dry storage of used fuel.
In January 2010, the DOE announced the formation of a 15-member Blue Ribbon Commission on America’s Nuclear Future to "provide recommendations for developing a safe, long-term solution to managing the nation’s used nuclear fuel and nuclear waste."9 In a memorandum to energy secretary Steven Chu10, President Obama said: "The commission should conduct a comprehensive review of policies for managing the back end of the nuclear fuel cycle, including all alternatives for the storage, processing, and disposal of civilian and defence used nuclear fuel and nuclear waste." The commission is to submit an interim report within 18 months and a final report within 24 months.
In the meantime, storage space at some operating nuclear reactors has run out and at 40 of the 65 nuclear sites pool storage is being supplemented with dry cask storage. Of the total inventory of 58,000 tonnes of used fuel, 10,700 tonnes was in dry cask storage as of early 2008. By 2017, it is anticipated that practically all nuclear power plant sites will need dry storage which will then hold 22,300 tonnes of used fuel. A number of utilities have sued the federal government for not meeting its obligation under the 1982 Nuclear Waste Policy Act to begin taking waste by 1998 and have been awarded about $1 billion by the courts.g Utilities may also seek to recover the $22 billion they have paid into the Nuclear Waste Fund over the years to finance the building of the repository.
The failure of the DOE to relieve the utilities of used fuel as legally required has led to the industry calling for reform of the DOE civil nuclear waste program by creating a new government entity to assume all obligations for used fuel. It is suggested that the new entity should enter into a public-private partnership which builds interim storage and recycling facilities.
As well as the DOE Yucca Mountain enterprise, Private Fuel Storage LLC (PFS) planned to store used fuel on a site in Utah for up to 40 years pending disposal. PFS is a consortium of eight utilities impatient with DOE. In February 2006, the NRC issued a 20-year licence for a 40,000 tonne centralised surface dry storage facility on land owned by the Skull Valley band of the Goshute Indians.h But ongoing state government opposition led to the Department of Interior then disapproving the Goshute-PFS lease and the use of public land as a transport corridor to the planned facility. This decision is being appealed but the proposal is not proceeding.
In the light of this the Nuclear Energy Institute in 2007 started a search for communities willing to host interim storage sites for used fuel. It received several offers and by mid-2008 had reduced the possibilities to two. A commercially operated facility on a 400 ha site is envisaged for each.
Under new standard contracts with DOE, proponents of new reactor construction must undertake to store used fuel on site indefinitely, so that the DOE does not become liable for delays. The contracts specify that the DOE will begin removing used fuel within 20 years of the first refueling. As of January 2009, 19 such contracts had been signed under the Nuclear Regulatory Commission's (NRC’s) Waste Confidence Rule. They are a prerequisite for new reactor licensing and for licence renewals, and reflect the degree to which the NRC is confident that used fuel from US power reactors can be safely managed. The rule states that the NRC is confident that a repository (not necessarily Yucca Mountain) will be available 50 to 60 years after a reactor operating licence expires.
For low-level waste (LLW),i there is a facility run by EnergySolutions at Barnwell, South Carolina, for Class A-C LLW from that state, New Jersey and Connecticut; and another EnergySolutions facility at Clive, Utah, which accepts class A LLW (about 90% of all LLW) from all over the USA. A third facility run by U.S. Ecology and located in Richland, Washington accepts Classes A-C waste from the Northwest and Rocky Mountain compacts. A new one was licensed in Texas in 2009, for class A, B & C LLW and run by Waste Control Specialists, which will operate from late 2010 and will also take Vermont's and DOE LLW. The company is also seeking to take LLW from other states. Otherwise storage is at reactors.
Further Information
Notes
a. Actual annual production at the Metropolis conversion plant is currently around 15,000 tU – see Metropolis Expansion Update, ConverDyn press release (18 June 2007) [Back]
b. NFS will dilute the material in Tennessee to yield some 290 tonnes of low-enriched uranium (4.95% U-235) by 2010. Wesdyne, the prime contractor, will then store the LEU at the Westinghouse fuel fabrication plant in South Carolina to be available for the Reliable Fuel Supply program – an international fuel reserve. This batch of LEU will be available for use in civilian reactors by nations in good standing with the International Atomic Energy Agency that have good nonproliferation credentials and are not pursuing uranium enrichment and reprocessing technologies. The fuel – worth some $500 million – would be sold at the current market price. [Back]
c. In line with this, the annual quantity coming from dismantled weapons and re-enriched depleted uranium increases steadily to reach 1,920 tonnes U in 2013 and then continues at that level, totalling 15,000 tonnes U. From 2010 to 2015, another 7,700 tonnes U from Russian-origin stocks is allocated for the first cores of newly-built reactors in the USA. [Back]
d. H-Canyon dates from 1955 and originally recovered uranium, neptunium and plutonium from used military and research reactor HEU fuel. Since 1998 it has recovered HEU from degraded materials and spent fuel, to recycle it as LEU. This program will continue to 2019.[Back]
e. For further information, see the web page on Sites Undergoing Decommissioning on the Nuclear Regulatory Commission's website (www.nrc.gov); see also the WNA information page on Decommissioning Nuclear Facilities, which has some detail of US plants. [Back]
f. After several years of failure to get matching bills through both houses of Congress, early in 2000 the House of Representatives finally passed the Nuclear Waste Policy Amendments Act 2000 by 253 votes to 167, matching the earlier Senate passage of the legislation by 64 to 34. However, the President then vetoed it. The Bush Administration sought to make some urgent headway on the matter, and several reports in 2001 suggested no insurmountable scientific or technical problems with the proposed repository site in Nevada. The US Energy Secretary recommended that the site be approved as the nation's permanent repository. This was strongly supported by Congress and signed into law in July 2002. The DOE submitted a licence application to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission in June 2008. Less than a year later, the new Obama administration's FY 2010 Congressional Budget Request confirmed "the Administration's decision to terminate the Yucca Mountain program while developing nuclear waste disposal alternatives." [Back]
g. In 2004, Exelon reached agreement with the US Justice Department on recovering up to $300 million in storage costs for its used fuel to 2010. The agreement covered all of Exelon's 17 nuclear reactors, and the cash came from tax monies, not the Nuclear Waste Fund. In 2006, the US Federal Court awarded $143 million in damages to three related New England utilities and $40 million to the Sacramento Utility District for the same reason - the former had had to build dry storage facilities. Then $43 million was awarded to Pacific Gas & Electric. In 2007, Duke Energy negotiated $56 million on same basis for three plants, plus ongoing costs. Then Xcel Energy was awarded $116 million for costs associated with three reactors from 1998 to 2004 and Entergy Arkansas was awarded $48.6 million for costs to 2006. Progress Energy was awarded $82.8 million in 2008. Other utilities have been suing the federal government to achieve the same result and billions of dollars are involved. [Back]
h. PFS then offered the facility to the Department of Energy for use from 2008 pending Yucca Mountain repository opening, suggesting that it would be very much cheaper for DOE than leaving the used fuel at reactor sites. While fuel ownership was originally intended to remain with utility customers, the proposal to DOE was that it would take ownership at the reactor site (as was legally required by 1998) and be responsible for moving it to PFS, and ultimately to Yucca Mountain. [Back]
i. Class A low-level waste contains radionuclides with the lowest concentrations and the shortest half-lives; Classes B and C contain greater concentrations of radionuclides with longer half-lives. Class A LLW must be contained for up to 100 years, Class B waste for up to 300 years and Class C waste for up to 500 years. [Back]
References
1. Data from US Energy Information Administration (www.eia.doe.gov) [Back]
2. USEC Anticipates Loan Guarantee Decision by Early August, USEC news release (6 July 2009); Department of Energy Denies USEC’s Loan Guarantee Application, USEC news release (28 July 2009); Department of Energy and USEC Announce Decision to Delay USEC Loan Guarantee Application Final Review, Department of Energy press release (4 August 2009); USEC Reports $58.5 million net income for 2009, USEC news release (1 March 2010); USEC Updates Status of American Centrifuge Project, USEC news release (4 May 2010) [Back]
3. Fast Reactor Technology: A Path to Long-Term Energy Sustainability, American Nuclear Society Position Statement (November 2005) [Back]
4. Green focus in US energy budget, World Nuclear News (8 May 2009) [Back]
5. Fatal blow to GNEP?, World Nuclear News (29 June 2009); Federal Register, Notices, Vol. 74, No. 123, pages 31017-31018 (29 June 2009) [Back]
6. Program on Technology Innovation: Room at the Mountain, Electric Power Research Institute, Product ID: 1015046 (29 June 2007) [Back]
7. Yucca Mountain 'terminated', World Nuclear News (8 May 2009); FY 2010 Congressional Budget Request: Environmental Management/Defense Nuclear Waste Disposal/Nuclear Waste Disposal, U.S. Department of Energy, DOE/CF-039, Volume 5 (May 2009) [Back]
8. Yucca Mountain cost estimate rises to $96 billion, World Nuclear News (6 August 2008) [Back]
9. Secretary Chu Announces Blue Ribbon Commission on America’s Nuclear Future, U.S. Department of Energy, Press Release (29 January 2010) [Back]
10. Blue Ribbon Commission on America's Nuclear Future, Office of the Press Secretary, The White House (29 January 2010) [Back]
General sources
American Centrifuge Plant page on the USEC website (www.usec.com)
Urenco USA (formerly National Enrichment Facility) page on the Urenco website (www.urenco.com)