Potential Regional Nuclear Spent Fuel Management and Regional Uranium Enrichment /Reprocessing Paths for

Asia

Jungmin KANG

CISAC, Stanford University

2007 AES Meeting

Beijing, China, Oct.31 – Nov.2, 2007

Contents

I. Rationale for regional approaches of the spent fuel management and enrichment services

II. Past and recent proposals of the regional approaches

III. Scenarios of the regional approaches

IV. Needed national data

V. Concluding remarks

I. Rationale for the regional approaches• There are already about 90 total nuclear power plants in Japan, ROK, Ch

ina, and Taiwan. Nuclear power capacity of East Asia is expected to be grow in the coming years, including future NPPs deployment by Indonesia and Vietnam, since all these countries see nuclear power as an important element of their economic development strategies. Therefore, spent fuel management and fuel supply assurance will be hot issues in East Asia in near future.

• In March 2004, M. ElBaradei the Director General of IAEA referred to the wide dissemination of the most proliferation-sensitive parts of the nuclear fuel cycle – the production of new fuel, the processing of weapons-usable material and the disposal of spent fuel – as the possible “’Achiles’ heel’ of the nuclear non-proliferation regime,” and to the importance of tightening control over such operations. He indicated that this could be done by bring such parts of the nuclear fuel cycle under some form of multilateral control, with appropriate checks and balances to preserve commercial competitiveness, to control the proliferation of sensitive information and to ensure of fuel cycle services for peaceful applications.

II. Past and recent proposals of the regional approaches

• In 1982, the IAEA concluded a project of the International Fuel Cycle Evaluation (INFCE) in which IAEA expert groups suggested an establishment of international plutonium storage and international spent fuel management.

• In the mid-1990s, the concept of the International Monitored Retrievable Storage System (IMRSS) was proposed by Wolf Hafele. The IMRSS envisioned international sites where spent fuel, and possibly also excess separated plutonium, could be stored under monitoring for an extended period but could be retrieved at any time for peaceful use or disposal.

• In mid-1990s through the late 1990s, there were several proposals on the nuclear energy cooperation in the Asia-Pacific region, including spent fuel management as an important issue to be addressed regionally. Tatsujiro Suzuki summarized a comparison of various proposals for regional nuclear cooperation during the period and concluded that there are potential areas of cooperation where common needs and interests exist, including nuclear safety, management of back end of the fuel cycle for example.

II. Past and recent proposals of the regional approaches (cont’)

• In 1990s, a commercial group called Pangea was looking for an international geologic repository for both spent fuel and radioactive wastes. Envisioning a facility for disposing of 75,000 MT heavy metal of spent fuel/HLW, Pangea initially selected Australia for its proposed repository, but is seeking other sites around the world after confronting political opposition in Australia.

• During the late 1990s to early 2000s, two proposals involving depository sites in Russia were presented. One is a concept of the Nonproliferation Trust (NPT) that called for establishing a dry cask storage facility in Russia that would accept 10,000 MT heavy metal of spent fuel from abroad, and would include eventual spent fuel disposal. The other is a concept offered by MINATOM, which suggested a plan for an international spent fuel service involving offering temporary storage with later return of the spent fuel, or reprocessing of spent fuel without return of plutonium or radioactive wastes for customer countries.

• In 2003, Dr. Mohamed ElBaradei suggested multinational approaches to the management and disposal of spent fuel and radioactive waste. In 2005, commissioned at Dr. M. ElBaradei's suggestion, the IAEA published a report on Multilateral Approaches to the Nuclear Fuel Cycle in which the IAEA concluded that such approaches are needed and worth pursuing, on both security and economic grounds.

II. Past and recent proposals of the regional approaches (cont’)

• In January 2006, Russian President Vladimir Putin announced a Global Nuclear Power Infrastructure (GNPI) initiative to provide the benefits of nuclear energy to all interested countries in strict compliance with nonproliferation requirements, through a network of international nuclear fuel cycle centers (INFCC). INFCC are conceived as being related to the provision of enrichment services and to spent fuel management issues through the provision of reprocessing and the disposal of residual waste within the framework of INFCC, under IAEA safeguards.

• In February 2006, the Bush government proposed the Global Nuclear Energy Partnership (GNEP) in which the GNEP proposed fuel supply guarantees and take back arrangements. The goal of GNEP is to establish and sustain 'cradle to grave' fuel services or leasing arrangements over time and at a scale commensurate with the anticipated expansion of nuclear energy by helping in a way to solve the nuclear waste challenge.

III. Scenarios of the regional approaches

• Regional spent fuel management Option I-1: A host country providing interim storage following disposal of spent fuel from

customer countries - Conceivable host: China, Unified Korea - Conceivable customer: Japan, ROK, Taiwan, others

III. Scenarios of the regional approaches (cont’)

• Regional spent fuel management Option I-2: A host country providing interim storage following reprocessing of spent fuel from

customer countries with no return of separated plutonium and HLW to the customer countries - Conceivable host: Russia, China - Conceivable customer: ROK, Taiwan, others

III. Scenarios of the regional approaches (cont’)

• Regional spent fuel management Option I-3: A host country providing interim storage following disposal or reprocessing of

spent fuel by providing enrichment supply assurance for customer countries - Conceivable host: Russia, China, Australia - Conceivable customer: Japan, ROK, Taiwan, others

III. Scenarios of the regional approaches (cont’)

• Regional enrichment services Option II-1: A regional supplier providing enrichment supply assurance for customer countries - Conceivable regional supplier: A consortium of multilateral enterprises, e.g. USEC (US),

TENEX (Russia), URENCO (Germany, Netherland, UK) and AREVA (France) - Conceivable customer: Japan, ROK, China, Taiwan, others

III. Scenarios of the regional approaches (cont’)

• Regional enrichment services Option II-2: A regional supplier to be established by some of customer countries providing

enrichment supply assurance for customer countries - Conceivable regional supplier: A regional enrichment corporation to be established by Japan,

ROK, China and Taiwan - Conceivable customer: Japan, ROK, China, Taiwan, others

III. Scenarios of the regional approaches (cont’)

• Regional enrichment services Option II-3: A host country providing interim storage following disposal or reprocessing of spent

fuel by providing enrichment supply assurance for customer countries (the same as Option I-3) - Conceivable host: Russia, China, Australia - Conceivable customer: Japan, ROK, Taiwan, others

IV. Needed national data• Future demand of natural uranium and enrichment services as well as ge

neration of spent fuel and radioactive wastes depend on deployment of NPPs, types of NPPs, nuclear fuel cycle strategy (i.e. direct disposal or recycle of spent fuel) of a country.

• Long-term nuclear power supply plan depends on the projection of electricity generation and sharing of nuclear power over total electricity generation of a country.

• The projection of electricity depends on electricity consumption per capita and population of a country.

• For quantitative analysis on the scenarios for regional approaches in the spent fuel management and enrichment services, this study needs those relevant data which are mentioned above.

V. Concluding remarks• Quantitative analysis on the scenarios for regional approaches in the

spent fuel management and enrichment services in East Asia is underway with the aspects of material balance of nuclear materials and radioactive wastes and cost.