"Energy Options: Nuclear" - Nuclear Power and Waste (Part 3)
Wednesday, October 31, 2007SUSIE GHARIB: Some of the nation's biggest utilities are gearing up for what could be a nuclear renaissance, but many companies say the U.S. won't be able to meet its growing energy needs without new reactors. But in part three of our series, "Energy Options: Nuclear," Diane Eastabrook reports that renaissance may not become reality if the problem of nuclear waste isn't solved.
DIANE EASTABROOK, NIGHTLY BUSINESS REPORT CORRESPONDENT: For more than four decades, nuclear power plants have produced electricity for U.S. homes and businesses. They have also produced something else during that time: 50,000 metric tons of radioactive nuclear waste. The utility companies store the waste at their plants either in spent fuel pools or in dry casks. But Exelon Corporation CEO John Rowe says they can't keep doing that. He says the utilities need a safe place to store hazardous waste over the long term.
JOHN ROWE, CHAIRMAN & CEO, EXELON CORP.: I think the waste disposal issue is the single biggest hang-up to a nuclear renaissance.
EASTABROOK: A Federal repository is one possible answer to the U.S. nuclear waste issue. The Department of Energy has identified a site in Nevada's Yucca Mountains for a repository and plans to file a license for it next summer. But U.S. Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman says it could be another decade or more before the site begins accepting waste.
SAMUEL BODMAN, SECRETARY, U.S. DEPARTMENT OF ENERGY: I think the odds are that it will probably be somewhat longer than that just because there is no doubt that we will have litigation. We will have other challenges as we go along.
EASTABROOK: One challenge could come from Nevada's U.S. Senator Harry Reid.
SEN. HARRY REID D-NEVADA: You can't haul the most poisonous substance known to man across this country. We're not going to wake up one morning and suddenly this stuff is in Yucca Mountain.
EASTABROOK: Recycling nuclear waste is another possible answer. Only a fraction of the uranium in a fuel rod is consumed when it's used to create power in a nuclear reactor. Argonne National Laboratory near Chicago is developing technology to recycle unused uranium. Using a containment area called a hot cell, researchers are trying to recapture used uranium and other elements created during nuclear fission. Those materials could be recycled into fuel for reactors. While other countries already recycle nuclear fuel, they do it in a way that separates plutonium from other elements. The U.S. fears that presents a security risk because plutonium in the wrong hands could be turned into a nuclear weapon. Argonne says its technology would minimize that risk by marrying plutonium with another element. Deputy associate laboratory director Mark Peters says so far Argonne's technology has worked, but on a very small scale.
MARK PETERS, DEPUTY ASSOC. LAB DIR., ARGONNE NATIONAL LABORATORY: We are a decade to a couple of decades away from being able to take the lab- scale demonstrations that we've done and scaling them up to be able to build a commercial plant.
EASTABROOK: But some scientists aren't convinced Argonne's technology is safe. Kennette Benedict, executive director of the public interest group Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, thinks plutonium with another element could be as deadly as plutonium by itself.
KENNETTE BENEDICT, EXECUTIVE DIR., BULLETIN OF THE ATOMIC SCIENTISTS: The other question is, what other kinds of explosive devices might you be able to make with plutonium that even has these other materials? And some people suggest that some of them are very dangerous, indeed.
EASTABROOK: Still, Exelon's Rowe thinks nuclear power could be the best way to meet the nation's growing energy needs, but he says his company won't build more reactors until the waste issue is resolved.
ROWE: We are going to need not only a repository like Yucca Mountain. We are going to need some sort of reprocessing-based nuclear industry so that we cut the volumes of nuclear waste by a factor of 10 or something like that.
EASTABROOK: Many experts think the U.S. will open a nuclear waste repository over the next 20 years, but they aren't sure that it will come quickly enough or be large enough to handle the spent fuel from any new reactors. Diane Eastabrook, NIGHTLY BUSINESS REPORT, Chicago.
