Nuclear Fuel Leasing

For nuclear power to have a meaningful impact on reducing carbon emissions from electricity generation, a significant fraction of electricity generation must come from nuclear power plants. This will require a global nuclear enterprise many times larger than currently exists, according to nuclear energy experts Victor Reis and Matthew Crozat.

An expansion of nuclear power will require the management of challenges associated with its use. In particular, the global expansion of nuclear power must not contribute to the proliferation of nuclear power and radioactive wastes produced must be safely stored for long periods of time, according to Reis and Crozat.

To address these challenges, the concept of nuclear fuel leasing has gained attention. This involves nations with established fuel cycles producing and delivering nuclear fuel to states with nuclear reactors and then taking the used fuel back after it has been irradiated. These fuel cycle states could use advanced reprocessing and reactor technologies to recycle and efficiently dispose of the resulting wastes without creating separated plutonium, according to Reis and Crozat.

In their ESTC Award-winning article, Reis and Crozat created a model for simulating fuel cycle interactions between nuclear entities to investigate fuel leasing arrangements. The model was also adapted to evaluate proliferation and economic implications of an international leasing program.

The results of the analysis, according to the authors, illustrate some important connections with respect to the possibility of nuclear fuel leasing:

• A significant expansion of nuclear power based on current-technology thermal reactors with an open fuel cycle will generate a staggering amount of spent fuel. Disposing of this fuel represents a continuing political as well as technical challenge.

• Proliferation concerns largely stem from the fuel processing technologies used to manufacture reactor fuel and recycle plutonium in spent fuel. By consolidating the fuel processing infrastructure in states with which there is little proliferation concern, the risks associated with the global expansion of nuclear power can be minimized.

The modeling and analysis by Reis and Crozat in this article helped to provide the conceptual and analytical underpinnings for the new U.S. Global Nuclear Energy Partnership (GNEP) initiative. In fact, Reis and Crozat have joined the Department of Energy in support of GNEP.

Victor Reis and Matthew Crozat's article "Nuclear Fuel Leasing, Recycling, and Proliferation: Modeling a Global View," appeared in Nuclear Technology.