MIT looks at US fuel cycle options

MIT looks at US fuel cycle options

20 September 2010

The availability of uranium resources, as well as scientifically sound methods for managing used nuclear fuel, should mean that nuclear fuel will not need to be recycled in the USA for much of this century at least, according to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).

In 2003, MIT published a report on The Future of the Nuclear Power, which said "that in order to make a serious contribution to alleviating global climate change, the world would need new nuclear plants with a total capacity of at least a terawatt [1000 gigawatts] by 2050." In an update of that report in 2009, MIT noted that the rate of deployment of new nuclear power plants around the world has been much slower than needed in order to combat climate change.

MIT announced that it has now released a report on The Future of the Nuclear Fuel Cycle because "of the continuing importance of nuclear power as a low-carbon option that could be deployed at a scale that is material for mitigating climate change risk, namely, global deployment at the terawatt scale by mid-century."

It added, "Because of the significant changes in the landscape, we have undertaken this study ... to bring a sharper focus on the key technical choices available for an expanded nuclear power program in the US and the near-term policy implications of those choices."

According to MIT, "In the US, fuel cycle policies have been in a state of confusion." It said, "To enable an expansion of nuclear power, it must overcome critical challenges in cost, waste disposal, and proliferation concerns while maintaining its currently excellent safety and reliability record." MIT added, "In the relatively near term, important decisions may be taken with far reaching long-term implications about the evolution of the nuclear fuel cycle - what type of fuel is used, what types of reactors, what happens to irradiated fuel, and what method of disposal for long term nuclear wastes. This study aims to inform those decisions."

The report states, "A key message from our work is that we can and should preserve our options for fuel cycle choices by continuing with the open fuel cycle, implementing a system for managed light water reactor (LWR) spent fuel storage, developing a geological repository, and researching technology alternatives

Related articles by Zemanta

• MIT researchers rethink the nuclear fuel cycles, Yucca Mountain (blogs.nature.com)
• MIT Report Endorses Centralized Interim Storage for Spent Reactor Fuel (nytimes.com)
• MIT Finds Plenty of Uranium to Fuel Nuclear Renaissance (spectrum.ieee.org)
• To Triple World Nuclear Power, MIT Calls for Research to 'Preserve Our Options' (news.sciencemag.org)
• MIT: We've Got Plenty of Uranium (fastcompany.com)
• Enough Uranium for Now, Analysts Say (green.blogs.nytimes.com)
• Incentives, Fuel Strategies Needed in Nuclear, says MIT (greentechmedia.com)