Internationalization of the Nuclear Fuel Cycle Goals, Strategies, and Challenges (2009) / Chapter Skim
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2 INTERNATIONAL NUCLEAR FUEL CYCLE CENTERS
2 INTERNATIONAL NUCLEAR FUEL CYCLE CENTERS
Pages 25-56
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From page 25... ...
It is, indeed, feasible to establish international enrichment centers, as demonstrated by the fact that two such centers exist and Russia is creating another one. Urenco represents one approach, where each of the partners (Germany, the Netherlands, and the United Kingdom)
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From page 26... ...
Armenia and the Ukraine have expressed interest in joining.4 In the future, international centers could be developed and set up for spent nuclear fuel management (including its long-term storage and reprocessing and further use in innovative fast reactors) , innovative reactor and nuclear fuel cycle technology development, or nuclear personnel training (Ruchkin and Loginov, 2006)
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From page 27... ...
While it cannot be assumed that a nation rejecting such offers aspires to nuclear weapons capability, the availability of a mechanism for assurance of fuel supply undercuts that particular argument and strengthens suspicions that the country may be trying to develop the option of a nuclear weapons program. Mechanisms other than assurance of fuel supply, such as nuclear fuel leasing with spent fuel take-back, may be possible and could prove to be significantly stronger incentives against developing enrichment capabilities than assurance of fuel supply.
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From page 28... ...
describes a structure for assurance of nuclear fuel supply that would operate as a tiered set of mechanisms, with the existing market as the first tier, a virtual fuel bank or enrichment bonds as a second tier,7 and an actual fuel bank as the third tier, to be exercised only if the first two fail. Countries, under this proposal, would have access to these mechanisms based on four possible criteria for states to be able to access the proposed assured fuel supplies: (1)
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From page 29... ...
Nuclear fuel is highly specialized, and each nuclear power station reactor needs nuclear fuel with inherent specific characteristics of this reactor. International fuel supply centers are somewhat different from such mechanisms as virtual or real fuel banks.
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From page 30... ...
Spent LEU Take-back The take-back of spent fuel is substantially more complicated because there are several possible options for the disposition of spent fuel. Moreover, because there is a lack of competitive markets for most services at the back end of the fuel cycle, the costs of the various options are uncertain.
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From page 31... ...
A second option for the disposition of spent LEU fuel is to reprocess the fuel and recycle the recovered plutonium in mixed-oxide (MOX) fuel for another pass through light-water or other thermal reactors.19 France and the United Kingdom have reprocessed spent fuel from other countries, including Belgium, Germany, Japan, and Switzerland.
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From page 32... ...
If, in keeping with the goal of limiting the spread of sensitive fuel cycle steps, the return of plutonium or MOX fuel to countries without sensitive fuel cycle technologies is prohibited, it seems unlikely that those countries would pay the additional costs associated with the reprocessing of their spent fuel, unless the take-back country also assumed responsibility for final disposal of the high-level wastes. But if the take-back country assumes responsibility for both the plutonium and waste, the decision of whether to reprocess for thermal recycling would be entirely up to the take-back country.
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From page 33... ...
Long-term spent fuel storage has the added advantage of deferring reprocessing for several decades, which is equivalent to a cost savings of at least $300-400/kg.24 Plutonium that is separated from recently discharged spent fuel still contains nearly all of its plutonium-241. If that plutonium is then stored for some years, the plutonium-241 decays with a 14.4- year half-life to produce americium-241 -- a radionuclide that complicates fuel fabrication and handling.
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From page 34... ...
If fast reactors prove to be cheaper than thermal reactors, a mechanism would be needed to limit the spread of the cheaper fast-reactor technology and its associated reprocessing and the fabrication of plutonium fuels. It is not realistic to expect current supplier states to retain a monopoly on a reactor technology that generates cheaper electricity, and to expect all other 27 Assumes spent fuel with an average burn-up of 50 MWtd/kg containing 1.3 percent TRU (1.16 percent plutonium, 0.06 percent neptunium, 0.06 percent americium, 0.008 percent other)
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From page 35... ...
For Japan, the main driver was a desire for some degree of energy security, considering the nation's scarce energy resources.29 But this latter consideration has been invoked for Japan to construct facilities for a full, closed fuel cycle: uranium enrichment, nuclear fuel fabrication, spent nuclear fuel storage and reprocessing, and waste storage (pending availability of waste disposal facilities)
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From page 36... ...
These actions substantially undermined the perception of the United States as a reliable supplier, and increased the priority given to European efforts to establish independent enrichment capacities that were already under way; in addition, the Soviet Union began supplying Europe with enrichment for the first time. Brazil, which had an "Atoms for Peace" agreement with the United States and a contract for Westinghouse to build a set of power reactors, further sought the full range of nuclear fuel cycle facilities -- it had uranium mining and milling operations (and large uranium resources)
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From page 37... ...
Tarapur and the other cases of cutting off states from nuclear fuel supplies outside the NPT without full-scope safeguards were supply disruptions based on nonproliferation concerns, not politically motivated cutoffs. It is widely accepted that nonproliferation is a condition of nuclear reactor fuel supply, and the mechanisms now being proposed to increase assurance of supply would only be available to states that were in compliance with their nonproliferation obligations (though, as discussed elsewhere in this report, there are varying formulations concerning the particular nonproliferation commitments that would be included in the criteria for participation)
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From page 38... ...
While they did not involve cutoffs of fuel supply, they probably did contribute to a perception that foreign nuclear supplies were potentially subject to being interrupted. Concerns such as these led the countries participating in the International Nuclear Fuel Cycle Evaluation (INFCE)
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From page 39... ...
In 2003, Dr. ElBaradei offered a three-part proposal: process direct-use material only in facilities under multinational control, with assurance of supply for legitimate use; deploy nuclear energy systems that are designed to avoid creating or using direct-use materials; and consider multinational approaches to the management and disposal of spent fuel and radioactive waste (ElBaradei, 2003)
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From page 40... ...
As has been seen in the Angarsk facility, setting up an international or multinational center requires addressing many issues, including who owns the technology, what legal arrangements are needed between the center and the customers, and how to obtain competent management of the facility. Recommendation 3 Over time, Russia, the United States, and other nations should work to create a global system featuring a small number of centers for the sensitive steps of the fuel cycle (especially enrichment and spent fuel management, possibly including storage, reprocessing, or disposal)
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From page 41... ...
However, none of these programs proposes to take back the spent fuel, although in the past Russia has proposed a program to take back spent fuel and reprocess it or store the waste temporarily.39 Russia has passed multiple legislative drafts on allowing takeback of Russian spent fuel or import of foreign spent nuclear fuel on certain conditions.40 Fuel leasing and other approaches that allowed countries to ship away their spent fuel and nuclear waste (which need not necessarily involve shipping them to the country that provided them) could create strong incentives for countries to rely on international fuel supply, as they would not have to provide a geologic waste repository of their own.
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From page 42... ...
At the same time, however, discussions of potential regional or international nuclear waste repositories continue, and over the next few decades, it is plausible that one or more such facilities can be established. This would avoid every country with even one nuclear reactor having to build its own nuclear waste repository.42 Even countries that intend to reprocess fuel in a future fuel cycle need not reprocess the fuel until there is a near-term efficient use for the separated constituents.
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From page 43... ...
Nonetheless, if the goal of an international nuclear fuel center is to strengthen efforts to contain these technologies, special efforts are needed to ensure that effective technology controls are maintained, so that the centers do not themselves become proliferators of sensitive technologies. Different multinational or international fuel cycle facilities and proposals have taken different approaches to this problem.
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From page 44... ...
Such training centers might be separate from international fuel cycle centers themselves, to avoid leakage of the sensitive technology used at the fuel cycle center. For the same reason, training personnel on the technical work of fuel cycle services, while important, is not properly the primary role of an international nuclear fuel center.
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From page 45... ...
Along with training of technical personnel, professional education in law, international relations, economics, and social and cultural issues is a major aspect of the Angarsk international nuclear fuel cycle center's activities. Therefore, a new institute for nuclear industry training, the International Institute for Energy Policy and Diplomacy, has been established at the Moscow State Institute for International Relations.
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From page 46... ...
In both international fuel supply approaches and take-back of spent fuel, Russia is further along in offering services 44 Today the only discussions of reactor leasing are those on the floating power plants being built by Russia and the nuclear battery being proposed by Toshiba. There will be many legal issues to work out in both cases.
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From page 47... ...
There are currently a number of options for fissionable material ownership during the entire fuel cycle. Fuel leasing is the clearest ownership situation: In a lease arrangement, the country of origin maintains ownership of the fuel.
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From page 48... ...
Ownership can be transferred at each step or process of the fuel cycle, and the end user may simply buy fuel from the fuel manufacturer. Alternatively, some reactor owners buy uranium, retain ownership, and just buy enrichment and fuel fabrication as services.
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From page 49... ...
Limiting the assured fuel supply to states that do not currently operate enrichment and reprocessing plants would provide an additional incentive for states not to invest in such plants of their own. On the other hand, states such as Brazil and South Africa have strongly objected to such an arrangement, seeing it as an infringement on rights to the peaceful use of nuclear energy under Article IV of the NPT, and since the IAEA Board of Governors operates by consensus, this objection might make it difficult to establish an IAEA-controlled fuel bank with such a requirement.
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From page 50... ...
Multinational or international fuel cycle centers might have several nonproliferation benefits. As has already been discussed, states may have more confidence that their fuel supply is assured if they are part owners of such a center and have intergovernmental agreements in place prohibiting any political interference with deliveries.
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From page 51... ...
In addition to its potential benefits, multinational or international control of fuel cycle facilities raises important questions and issues. Questions that will need to be resolved for each center include how key decisions are made, what criteria should make states eligible or ineligible to take part, who gets what share of the profits and losses, who bears what share of the liabilities (such as those for accidents and for nuclear wastes the facilities may generate)
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From page 52... ...
In general, centers with a variety of states participating should limit access to sensitive technologies to personnel from states that already possess these technologies. (See the discussion of technology controls for international centers.)
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From page 53... ...
that provides the wherewithal for that agency to perform its work effectively. While the joint committees do not expect that a supplier of fuel cycle services will be required to monitor this aspect explicitly, or to deny such services on the basis that the country does not have an effective regulatory regime, the committee does expect that there will be enough international 48 With respect to safeguards, all nonnuclear-weapon states that are parties to the NPT are required to accept IAEA safeguards on all of their civil nuclear activities, and to have state systems of accounting and control of nuclear materials that are comprehensive and accurate enough to serve as the basis for declarations and inspectors' checks of the accuracy of those declarations.
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From page 54... ...
? It is not an appropriate role for an international fuel cycle center to ensure this training and confidence.
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From page 55... ...
A8. What changes in laws and regulations in the countries sending, consuming, and receiving spent fuel would be required to implement an international assured fuel cycle concept?
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From page 56... ...
, with the country where the fuel is to be shipped. Hence, international centers for spent fuel management would not be able to handle U.S.-obligated fuel―representing a substantial portion of the world's stock of spent fuel―unless the United States had a 123 agreement in place with the country where the center was located, and a policy of approving the transfers.
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