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Nuclear Alchemy
Accelerated Transmutation of Nuclear Waste and Pyroprocessing

$400 million

"This is a lot of money to wager on the successful completion of such an extremely complex enterprise, especially when the net gain calculation is based on uncertain economic and technical assumptions." Kazimi et.al. A Review of the LANL Project on Accelerator-Driven Transmutation of Waste (ATW), Massachusetts Institute of Technology, February 20, 1998.

The U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) national labs have embarked upon another expensive and complex nuclear research project, which proponents claim would reduce the toxicity of commercial irradiated nuclear fuel. Accelerated Transmutation of Nuclear Waste (ATW) combines particle accelerators, a new type of nuclear reactor that contains liquid lead, and a nuclear fuel reprocessing technology known as "pyroprocessing." Pyroprocessing is a vestige of the nuclear breeder reactor program killed by Congress in 1994. The DOE labs continue to throw money at reprocessing spent nuclear fuel in the U.S., despite the fact that reprocessing increases the threat of spent fuel to the environment. The technology also poses nuclear proliferation risks because it separates out materials that can be used in nuclear weapons.

Green Scissors Proposal
Terminate the ATW and pyroprocessing programs for a savings of over $400 million over the next five years.

Current Status
In 2000, the DOE began to use pyroprocessing for treating DOE-owned spent fuel from shutdown plutonium breeder reactors, even though a 1999 DOE cost study found that this option will be $161 million more expensive than the safer alternative of repackaging the fuel in high-integrity cans.
In fiscal year 2001, at least $26 million will be spent on personnel at Idaho's Argonne National Laboratory-West. Congress has appropriated a down payment of $34 million to Los Alamos National Laboratory and the University of Nevada-Las Vegas to establish a new program for "advanced accelerator applications," which will be devoted primarily to ATW research.

Project Hurts Taxpayers

The capital outlays are outrageously large. It is estimated that capital costs to implement the ATW project will be at least $65 billion. This taxpayer money will be wasted in an effort to deliver a technology that is dependent on unproven technologies with vastly uncertain risks and liabilities. The operating and decommissioning costs are $215 billion.

This concept includes technologies that are uncompetitive and technologically unworkable. Proponents have compared the cost of this program to sodium breeder reactor technologies, which were in fact terminated because they were uncompetitive.
This project is corporate welfare. Corporate partners in this project include Westinghouse, Bechtel and Northrup-Grumman. If this were an economically feasible method of dealing with nuclear waste, these companies would develop it on their own.

Project Hurts the Environment

This project will not obviate the need for a nuclear waste repository, according to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. ATW and pyroprocessing will generate new forms of radioactive wastes, which will need to be properly dealt with.
The lead-bismuth reactors promoted by this program are an unproven technology. In fact, fears of corrosion caused the U.S. to abandon research into lead-cooled reactors for use in submarines, while Russian submarines using lead cooling systems have experienced significant problems.

Pyroprocessing increases the risk of nuclear proliferation. A National Academy of Sciences report commissioned by the DOE explained that the process "could be redirected to produce material with nuclear detonation capability." The report also raised questions about interim storage of the waste streams and other aspects of pyroprocessing.

Contacts

• Anna Aurilio, U.S. Public Interest Research Group, (202) 546-9707.
• Ed Lyman, Nuclear Control Institute, (202) 822-8444.