Unloading and cooling
Spent reactor fuel is extremely radioactive, and its radioactivity also makes it a source of heat (see above Fueling and refueling LWRs). When the spent fuel is removed from the reactor, it must continue to be both shielded and cooled. This is accomplished by placing the spent fuel in a water-storage pool, or spent-fuel cooling pool, located next to the reactor. The water in the pool contains a large amount of dissolved boric acid, which is a strong absorber of neutrons; this ensures that the fuel assemblies in the pool do not go critical. (Pool water is also a common source of emergency cooling water for the reactor.)
Pools vary in size; older spent-fuel cooling pools are able to accommodate only about 10 years’ worth of spent fuel. As the pools fill up, more spent fuel storage is needed. Additional storage space can be gained by loading spent fuel into the pool more densely than originally planned, by building a new pool, or by removing the oldest fuel assemblies from the existing pool and storing them in air-cooled concrete and steel silos—called spent-fuel storage casks—located aboveground. This last method becomes feasible after fuel has been stored in cooling pools for two or three years, because radioactivity and the rate of heat generation decrease rapidly over this period. Dense storage in existing pools and casks tends to be less expensive and more economical for utilities than building new pools.
Reprocessing
Both the converted plutonium and residual uranium-235 in spent fuel can be recycled by chemically reprocessing the fuel and extracting the specific elements of interest. Reprocessing not only provides a means to recycle nuclear fuel, but it also can reduce the volume and radioactivity of the waste material that must ultimately be eliminated by some method of permanent disposal.
One motivation for reprocessing is ultimately to provide a “closed-loop” fuel cycle within the nuclear industry. Closed-loop refers to recycling with 100-percent efficiency of all materials that are fabricated for use as nuclear fuel (including the most commonly used fuel, uranium dioxide pellets). Though the goal of 100-percent efficiency has yet to be attained by any country’s nuclear industry, a closed-loop fuel cycle is not an unrealistic ambition, based on current progress in reprocessing technology. Many benefits would result from fuel recycling, including lower cost for fuel (once the recycling infrastructure was in place) and reduced quantities of spent fuel to be stored on reactor sites around the world.
Reprocessing methods
The most common method for reprocessing, known as the PUREX (for plutonium-uranium extraction) process, begins with dissolving the spent fuel in nitric acid and contacting the acid solution with oil in which tributyl phosphate (TBP) has been dissolved. TBP is a complexing agent for uranium and plutonium, forming compounds with them that bring them into the oil solution. A physical separation of the (immiscible) oil and acid serves to remove the desired products from the nitric acid solution (which still contains all the fission products). The uranium and plutonium are then washed out of the TBP back into a water solution and separated from each other by various means to the degree desired. Thus, reprocessing produces three product streams: (1) a purified uranium product, (2) a plutonium product that may be either pure or mixed with uranium, and (3) a waste stream of fission products dissolved in nitric acid.
Reprocessing policies
During the period of ambitious nuclear power plant construction in the United States in the 1950s and ’60s, it was generally assumed that after two to five years, spent fuel would be delivered to a reprocessing plant. Some commercial reprocessing plants were built or planned, but by the mid-1970s the cost of reprocessing had escalated to a point where its economics became questionable. Also, in 1977 Pres. Jimmy Carter, in order to take a public, symbolic stand against nuclear proliferation, declared that the federal government would permanently defer all permits for the commercial reprocessing and recycling of plutonium. Carter’s directive was rescinded by his successor, Ronald Reagan, and it has not been reinstated by any subsequent president. Even so, reprocessing is still not done commercially in the United States, partly because of the huge costs of building a reprocessing plant in a period when the supply of uranium ore has been sufficient to satisfy demand relatively cheaply.
Policy and institutional arrangements have been different in France and the United Kingdom, where commercial plants reprocess spent fuel not only from nuclear plants in the host countries but also from plants in other countries. The reprocessed plutonium can be used not only as fuel for proposed future liquid-metal reactors (LMRs) but also to help fuel existing LWRs. In the latter application, the plutonium is utilized in mixed oxide (MOX) form—a combination of uranium and plutonium dioxides having 3 to 6 percent plutonium.
A number of other countries, including Russia, India, Japan, and China, reprocess their spent fuel or plan to do so. The proactive reprocessing efforts of these countries have reduced the waste scheduled for long-term disposal to amounts well below those that are accumulating in countries that do not reprocess.
Waste disposal
In the absence of reprocessing, spent fuel is considered to be waste and must be prepared for permanent disposal in a separate facility. In addition, the waste stream from spent-fuel reprocessing must also be disposed of. Many nuclear countries, from the United States to China to Finland, have researched the technologies and geologic locations for disposal sites, but no permanent disposal site is in use anywhere in the world. Pending approval and construction of disposal sites, all spent fuel and processed waste are being kept either in cooling pools or in aboveground storage casks.