National Academy of Sciences Nuke GNEP

And so reprocessing and other nuclear foolishness is STILL a bad idea say the pros from Dover.

Bush Administration's Nuclear Plan Criticised - New Scientist

"You probably wouldn't offer to take your neighbour's trash unless you had a pretty clever way of getting rid of it. But that's what the Bush administration was accused of this week over its plan to reprocess other nations' nuclear fuel.

A report by 17 experts at the US National Academy of Sciences recommended scaling back the Global Nuclear Energy Partnership (GNEP), which aims to encourage worldwide adoption of nuclear power by sharing reactor know-how - but not reprocessing technologies that could be used to divert material for nuclear weapons. It would mean a handful of member countries including China, Russia, France, Japan and Australia would recycle spent fuel from nuclear power stations in other countries.

These reprocessing nations are relying on fledgling technologies that minimise by-products such as plutonium, but the report claims these are unproven.

The findings have been welcomed by the Federation of American Scientists. 'GNEP has the potential to become the greatest technological debacle in US history,' says Ivan Oelrich of the FAS."

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National Academy of Science Report Calls for Putting the Brakes on the Global Nuclear Energy Partnership (GNEP) Program - Strategic Security Blog (FAS)

"What has been most remarkable about the GNEP program is not simply the ambitious technical goals it sets, rather it is the extraordinary urgency with which the program is promoted. Currently, the GNEP program is planning on moving basically from lab-bench scale experiments to essentially commercial scale operation without intermediate pilot programs and engineering development. Sort of the missile defense approach to plutonium reprocessing. But the press office summary of the report states that '…the technologies required for achieving GNEP's goals are too early in development to justify DOE's accelerated schedule for construction of commercial facilities that would use these technologies…' Except for the political calendar—DOE may be trying to create facts on the ground, quite literally by pouring concrete, before the end of the Bush administration—I cannot figure out what motivates the big rush.

DOE often has a particular reluctance to do serious cost analysis before setting out on even multibillion dollar projects. (DOE seems to take a more empirical approach to cost studies: keep sending them money until they are finished with the project and when they are done they will tell you how much it cost.) The summary says 'DOE claims that the program will save time and money if pursued on the commercial scale, but the committee believes that the opposite will likely be true and found no economic justification.'"

National Academy of Sciences Nuke GNEP

And so reprocessing and other nuclear foolishness is STILL a bad idea say the pros from Dover.

Bush Administration's Nuclear Plan Criticised - New Scientist

"You probably wouldn't offer to take your neighbour's trash unless you had a pretty clever way of getting rid of it. But that's what the Bush administration was accused of this week over its plan to reprocess other nations' nuclear fuel.

A report by 17 experts at the US National Academy of Sciences recommended scaling back the Global Nuclear Energy Partnership (GNEP), which aims to encourage worldwide adoption of nuclear power by sharing reactor know-how - but not reprocessing technologies that could be used to divert material for nuclear weapons. It would mean a handful of member countries including China, Russia, France, Japan and Australia would recycle spent fuel from nuclear power stations in other countries.

These reprocessing nations are relying on fledgling technologies that minimise by-products such as plutonium, but the report claims these are unproven.

The findings have been welcomed by the Federation of American Scientists. 'GNEP has the potential to become the greatest technological debacle in US history,' says Ivan Oelrich of the FAS."

 -------

National Academy of Science Report Calls for Putting the Brakes on the Global Nuclear Energy Partnership (GNEP) Program - Strategic Security Blog (FAS)

"What has been most remarkable about the GNEP program is not simply the ambitious technical goals it sets, rather it is the extraordinary urgency with which the program is promoted. Currently, the GNEP program is planning on moving basically from lab-bench scale experiments to essentially commercial scale operation without intermediate pilot programs and engineering development. Sort of the missile defense approach to plutonium reprocessing. But the press office summary of the report states that '…the technologies required for achieving GNEP's goals are too early in development to justify DOE's accelerated schedule for construction of commercial facilities that would use these technologies…' Except for the political calendar—DOE may be trying to create facts on the ground, quite literally by pouring concrete, before the end of the Bush administration—I cannot figure out what motivates the big rush.

DOE often has a particular reluctance to do serious cost analysis before setting out on even multibillion dollar projects. (DOE seems to take a more empirical approach to cost studies: keep sending them money until they are finished with the project and when they are done they will tell you how much it cost.) The summary says 'DOE claims that the program will save time and money if pursued on the commercial scale, but the committee believes that the opposite will likely be true and found no economic justification.'"