Costly new nuclear system may cut waste, arms risk

By Nao Nakanishi - Analysis

LONDON (Reuters) - A new nuclear fuel recycling system could cut radioactive waste and remove the possibility of plutonium from spent nuclear fuel being used to make weapons, but it won't come cheap.

Nuclear experts say the proposed Advanced Recycling Center (ARC) could help to solve some of the biggest worries as the world looks to build more than 100 nuclear reactors to curb greenhouse gas emissions while ensuring energy supply.

"It's very clever," said Tim Stone, KPMG's Corporate Finance Partner.

"The principles have been known for a long time but the overall package is very neat ... A positive part of this is burning the worst radioactive waste," said Stone, who advises the British government on nuclear matters.

The drawbacks of the system by GE Hitachi Nuclear Energy are that the fast reactors involved are very costly and the reprocessing technology involves handling highly radioactive material yet to be proven on industrial scale.

The ARC would include GE Hitachi's fourth generation PRISM sodium-cooled fast reactors and an electrometallurgical separation process that would make a new form of fuel from spent fuel rods without separating plutonium.

GE Hitachi says the ARC will cut radioactive waste as it can extract by up to 90 percent of the energy in uranium, instead of the 2-3 percent that widely-used light water reactors do.

"It allows you to think about different designs for long-term waste storage and disposal," said Lisa Price, a senior executive of GE Hitachi unit Nuclear Fuel Cycle.

"As you are able to unlock the energy, you reduce the amount of storage time and disposal time. And you have much less high-level waste," she told Reuters on the sidelines of a conference in London.

Experts say it could be of particular interest for countries like the United States, which is home to the world's biggest fleet of nuclear reactors but where the government put on hold a plan to build the Yucca Mountain repository.

Price said the ARC would have the additional advantage of not extracting plutonium, which can be used for nuclear weapons.

Current reprocessing methods, deployed in countries like France, Britain or Japan, extract uranium, plutonium and fission products separately from spent fuel rods.

"Recycling does not need to separate plutonium at all. So it does not ever come out in a form that could be used for ill gain. And that's a major advantage from a non-proliferation point of view," Price said.

COSTS, SAFETY, GOVERNMENT

Experts say there are no customers yet for fourth generation reactors such as GE Hitachi's PRISM, but there has been enough experience to prove most of the technology since the 1950s.