The Problem Of Atomic Waste (Part II)

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But let's assume the journey from power plant to reprocessing plant is safely completed. What happens then? Well, first of all, the fuel rods are chopped up by automated equipment and dissolved in acid so that the various elements can be separated chemically.

Now unfortunately, current reprocessing—plant design allows some gaseous radioactive isotopes to be routinely released from the plants into the atmosphere. In fact, it is here that the largest routine releases designed into the nuclear fuel cycle occur, and these add a small fraction of natural radiation to the burden of ionizing radiation that humanity must already bear.

But all is not pure waste. Plutonium 239 and uranium 25—both fissile and thus usable as reactor fuel—can be recovered at the reprocessing plant and shipped back to be recycled through the power plant. The rest of the high-level wastes become concentrated into a highly radioactive liquid ... about 10,000 gallons of it per power reactor per year.

You will note that we said above that "in theory" this reprocessing could occur. But there are, at present, no reprocessing plants in service in the United States! One such installation (a small capacity plant owned by Nuclear Fuel Services, Inc.) did operate from 1966 until 1971, when it was shut down for repairs and expansion.

While the Nuclear Fuel Services plant was in operation, its routine emissions were sometimes very close to the AEC's permissible limits. Today, however, that installation couldn't even come close to our newer, more stringent emissions limitations.

Though the plant was scheduled to go back into operation this year at three times its previous capacity, it was recently announced that the reopening would not take place ... because of the huge expenditures that would be necessary to enable the installation to comply with current safety standards. So, this highly radioactive structure—with the wastes that it still contains—is currently a ward of the New York State Energy and Research Development Administration ... a monument to the "power of the peaceful atom".

Another reprocessing plant was built near Morris, Illinois by General Electric at a cost of some $65 million. Unfortunately, it didn't work, and was abandoned without ever reprocessing any fuel at all! And yet another plant was scheduled to go into service near Barnwell, South Carolina in 1977 or 1978 ... but it hasn't done so yet.

In many ways, this so-called "back end" of the nuclear fuel cycle is actually the soft underbelly of the whole atomic power establishment. The shipment and,

especially, the reprocessing of spent fuel are hazardous and technically difficult enterprises. They must be accomplished almost entirely by automation, and the barriers between the radioactive materials and the environment tend to be much thinner during these processes than at the power plants themselves. Obviously—as dramatized by General Electric's $65 million flasco—less is known about how to operate a reprocessing plant than about how to run a power reactor. At this point, in fact, we don't even know if reprocessing plants can be designed with adequate safeguards against catastrophic accidents, tornadoes, earthquakes, and sabotage. In the meantime, spent fuel elements are constantly accumulated at power plant sites, while we wait for someone to solve the problems.

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