As the United States works to expand its nuclear fleet for the first time in three decades and extend the life of current reactors, thorny questions remain to be answered about the life cycle of nuclear fuel, Reuters reported Wednesday, citing a former nuclear regulator.
Following the Obama administration’s rejection of Yucca Mountain as a permanent site for used nuclear fuel, the government should move toward creation of an centralized interim storage location and push for the recycling of spent fuel, Dale Klein, a former chairman of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, said at the Gulf Coast Power Conference in Houston.
Klein said he is optimistic that most of the new reactors seeking construction licenses from the NRC currently will be built in the next 20 years or so.
Merchant projects, such as those proposed by an NRG Energy-led joint venture and Constellation Energy Group, will face a more daunting challenge to secure the billions needed to finance new reactors, Klein said, compared to projects sponsored by utilities, such as Southern Co., SCANA Corp., FPL Group, Progress Energy and others that operate in regulated markets where they can more easily recover the huge investment needed through captive customers, during or before actual construction.
Klein, who stepped down from the NRC at the end of March, said both steps — centralized interim storage and fuel recycling — would bring the U.S. more in line with worldwide nuclear industry practices.
While the country is “back to square one” on the issue of permanent nuclear fuel storage, a centralized interim storage location would be more efficient than keeping used fuel at existing nuclear plants, Klein said.
“It is certainly more efficient for regulation and it’s what the rest of the world does,” he said.
Klein said an interim storage site could be the solution for spent fuel for 50 to 100 years. Choosing a site will be challenging, but “it can be done safely and will benefit the state that takes it,” Klein said.
