NUCLEAR: Chu says new commission will probe wide range of nuclear waste recycling options (Monday, January 18, 2010)

NUCLEAR: Chu says new commission will probe wide range of nuclear waste recycling options (Monday, January 18, 2010)/ Peter Behr, E&E reporter

Obama administration's proposed blue-ribbon commission on nuclear waste, once appointed, will be given a very long-range mandate, Energy Secretary Steven Chu told reporters last week. It will be asked to look at options for handling spent reactor fuel that may require two decades of research.

"This is a commission that is asked to step back, look at where we are scientifically, technologically, where we think we can be, say, to begin to deploy something in 50 years. That leaves a couple of decades in R&D time," Chu said.

The commission, whose appointment has been expected for months, is supposed to be named soon, but Chu offered no predictions as to when that might be. "It's moving ahead," he said. "This is, remember, a White House charge."

Chu noted, as he has in the past, that current U.S. light water reactors use about 1 percent net of the energy content of their enriched uranium fuel assemblies. "So we are going to be looking at a wide swath of things, from making a once-through cycle that can maybe use 10 percent of the energy," he said. "If it's economically feasible, you've just reduced the amount of waste by a factor of 10, without even recycling."

Experts have stressed the daunting challenges in handling growing volumes of spent nuclear fuel with current reactor designs if nuclear power expands dramatically to help reduce carbon emissions from electricity generation. The recycling of spent fuel for reuse, or the deployment of "fast" reactors that would consume more of the nuclear fuel's energy -- reducing waste volumes -- is on the research agenda.
We're going to have to look at what are the possibilities of recycling in a proliferation-resistant way that's also economically viable. We want this blue-ribbon panel to look at all of those things," Chu said.

But future of Yucca Mountain 'is off the table'

"They have to understand what might occur and form a strategy on what to do. The good news is, we have at least a half-century of safe storage on [existing reactor] sites. That allows us to go forward and still build nuclear power plants, because I think these are solvable problems and we have at least for half a century a way to store the waste safely."

The administration has no choice but to continue storing spent fuel units on existing reactor properties because it has cut off support for the proposed Yucca Mountain nuclear fuel repository in Nevada. Using current technology that requires disposal of most of the spent fuel, the Yucca Mountain site's current storage capacity would have been filled in this decade, had it become operational.

Chu said the new commission would not go back into the debate over the Nevada site. "The administration has been very clear. Yucca Mountain is off the table. This is not going to a commission that sites" fuel repositories, he said.

Chu was asked how it was that he changed from supporting the licensing of the Yucca Mountain facility in 2008 to opposing it once he joined the Cabinet of President Obama, who came out against it during the 2008 presidential campaign in Nevada. Chu laughed with what appeared to be some embarrassment and said, "I think I had to work with the reality I found myself in. But let me also go on and say that the more I looked at what we could do, going forward, there are better solutions. I really, truly, scientifically believe there are better solutions than what was started 25 years ago, and that is part of what the blue-ribbon panel is supposed to be doing."

Forcing a 'technological leap' could be good for U.S. business
nother issue, Chu said that passing climate legislation that requires a steady reduction in carbon emissions would push U.S. industry toward leadership in a post-carbon economy. He offered as evidence a conversation with an executive of Cummins Inc., the U.S. diesel engine manufacturer, in Columbus, Ohio, last week. Critics of climate policies say U.S. companies that can't afford higher energy prices caused by carbon penalties won't be around to compete for post-carbon supremacy.
Chu had gone to Cummins' Columbus Technical Center to award the company nearly $54 million from the Energy Department for research on fuel efficiency improvements for light- and heavy-duty vehicles.
Chu said that Cummins' president and chief operating officer, Tom Linebarger, recounted how Cummins had opposed federal environmental regulation in the 1990s that required costly improvements to reduce exhaust pollution its diesel engines. "They didn't like it at all. They didn't think it was giving value to customers, because they were concentrating on making higher-efficiency, higher-performance, longer-lasting engines," Chu said. Suddenly, the government was telling the company to engineer emission reductions. "But they had to do it, so they did," Chu added.
Chu said Linebarger told him that if it hadn't been for the federal mandate, Cummins might not have become a world leader in clean diesel technology and might not have been able to continue as an independent company.
Chu said he asked Linebarger how he viewed a cap on carbon emissions. "He said, 'In the end, it would be better for the United States if we did it now and became a leader in that, because although companies might not like it, it will force them to take that technological leap, because in the end, the world is going to be in that place.'"