The National Academies Press

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1 INTRODUCTION
Pages 9-24

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From page 9... ... The current increased interest has been called a nuclear renaissance, because after years of relatively slow worldwide growth, many countries that do not have a nuclear power plant are considering building one; and many nations that already have one or more nuclear power plants are considering adding more nuclear power plants and expanding their nuclear enterprises with fuel fabrication, uranium enrichment, and (in at least one case) spent fuel reprocessing facilities to serve an expanded fleet of nuclear power plants. Read the entire page →
From page 10... ... Five key motivations have spurred proposals for multinational or international fuel cycle approaches: • Assured fuel supply or spent fuel management. Countries may feel more assured that they will always have reliable fuel supply for their reactors (and therefore have less incentive to build their own enrichment plants) Read the entire page →
From page 11... ... Discussions with North Korea about shipping its plutonium elsewhere are ongoing. International spent fuel or nuclear waste management facilities might provide ready-made institutions that could receive high-risk materials, making such removals of high-risk materials easier to carry out; offers to remove spent fuel for storage or processing in other countries could avoid accumulating large stocks of plutonium-bearing spent fuel in many countries as nuclear energy expands and spreads in the future. Read the entire page →
From page 12... ... ; (b) the desire to protect the functioning market for uranium, uranium enrichment, and fuel fabrication; and (c) Read the entire page →
From page 13... ... construction of about 20 VVER-1000-type nuclear power plants to replace the legacy nuclear plants, and (b) completion of construction of the BN-800 fast-breeder reactor as a transition to nuclear plants with a new generation of fast-breeder reactors to be used in a closed fuel cycle. Read the entire page →
From page 14... ... Moreover, natural uranium is not directly related to the problem of the proliferation of weaponsgrade nuclear material. However, a substantial increase in demand for fresh nuclear fuel, growth in uranium enrichment and the generation of still greater amounts of spent nuclear fuel and possible reprocessing (a change of approximately 1,300 to 3,400 metric tons of fuel per year by 2020,10 if 7 At the time this report was issued, 1 U.S. Read the entire page →
From page 15... ... Uranium enrichment facilities and nuclear fuel reprocessing facilities used for peaceful nuclear energy objectives (serving civilian nuclear power plants) can also be used to create direct-use nuclear material for weapons. Read the entire page →
From page 16... ... . There is no fundamental technological difference between a uranium enrichment facility used for civilian nuclear fuel and one used to produce HEU for weapons. Read the entire page →
From page 17... ... into reactors as fuel is sometimes referred to as closing the fuel cycle. A plant that reprocesses irradiated nuclear fuel or targets to separate plutonium may serve either a civilian nuclear energy program or a nuclear weapons program, or both. Read the entire page →
From page 18... ... A smaller set of countries reprocesses irradiated nuclear fuel: China, France, India, Japan, Pakistan, Russia, and the United Kingdom.16 Only France, Russia, and the United Kingdom offer commercial reprocessing services to other countries, and only Russia provides options in which the radioactive wastes generated in spent fuel reprocessing may not be returned if that is stipulated in international agreements. FUEL FABRICATION It is important to note that reactor operators use manufactured fuel assemblies in reactors, not raw enriched uranium. Read the entire page →
From page 19... ... The financial costs for a nation to develop its own uranium enrichment and/or spent nuclear fuel reprocessing technologies or acquire them from elsewhere may be an economic constraint for a country pursuing the development of a national nuclear power industry. Moreover, there are technical barriers, including the acquisition of both required special knowledge and experience, and respective equipment and material relevant to the creation of nuclear explosive devices. Read the entire page →
From page 20... ... Furthermore, in case of nuclear fuel supply in the form of nuclear fuel assemblies for such countries' nuclear reactors with a condition of spent nuclear fuel take-back (nuclear fuel leasing) , the risk that these countries will acquire plutonium from spent fuel reprocessing is also lower. Read the entire page →
From page 21... ... Rather than separating nearly pure plutonium and uranium from spent fuel, these new processing technologies generally keep some portion of the minor actinides and, in some cases, a portion of the fission products with the plutonium as it is recycled, with the goal of making the material in the fuel cycle more radioactive and less attractive for use in weapons (though in some proposals the difference might be small enough to have only a modest nonproliferation or counterterrorism benefit) Read the entire page →
From page 22... ... spreads, the greater the proliferation risks. Currently it appears that more countries that have not already deployed these technologies are interested in establishing uranium enrichment programs than in pursuing spent fuel reprocessing technologies, making the spread of enrichment technology a greater near-term concern for nuclear proliferation. Read the entire page →
From page 23... ... Hence, if countries choose to establish their own fabrication capabilities to produce fuel assemblies for their own nuclear power stations, without establishing uranium enrichment or spent fuel reprocessing capabilities―as South Korea has done, for example―this should not pose significant international concerns. Finding 2 Several messages are clear from the NAS-RAS Workshop and other recent discussions in Vienna about assurance of supply: a. Read the entire page →
From page 24... ... governments should support a broad menu of these approaches, ensuring that these do not undermine each other. Recommendation 2b The governments of the United States and Russia should seek to establish additional benefits and incentives for countries that choose not to establish their own uranium enrichment and spent fuel reprocessing facilities. Read the entire page →

From page 9...

... The current increased interest has been called a nuclear renaissance, because after years of relatively slow worldwide growth, many countries that do not have a nuclear power plant are considering building one; and many nations that already have one or more nuclear power plants are considering adding more nuclear power plants and expanding their nuclear enterprises with fuel fabrication, uranium enrichment, and (in at least one case) spent fuel reprocessing facilities to serve an expanded fleet of nuclear power plants.

1 INTRODUCTION Pages 9-24

1 INTRODUCTION
Pages 9-24