The Atomic Energy Commission of Japan's New Nuclear Policy-Planning Council states in its 12 November 2004 Interim Report that by reprocessing spent nuclear fuel "the inherent radioactive harm from the high level waste...after 1,000 years has elapsed will be one eighth of that if the spent fuel had been disposed of directly". (See full quote at the end of this article1.)
Informed readers will recognize that this is a preposterous statement. However, for those who are less familiar with reprocessing, it is important to understand that reprocessing simply separates spent nuclear fuel into 3 streams: uranium, plutonium and everything else. There is no reduction in the total radioactivity, nor in the 'inherent radioactive harm' as a result of reprocessing. All of the radioactivity remains. The only change is that, whereas before all of the radioactivity was contained in the spent fuel, now it is divided up between the above three streams.
The claim in the Planning Council's Interim Report that the inherent radioactive harm after 1,000 years has elapsed will be reduced to one eighth only refers to the radioactivity that will remain in the third stream, the high-level waste (HLW) stream, after 1,000 years. It doesn't include the radioactivity of the separated uranium, nor of the plutonium. Nor does it include radioactively contaminated process waste, including some TRU-contaminated waste2, which is not collected with the HLW. These wastes haven't gone away. There is no plan to use the uranium. The plutonium hasn't disappeared either, though the Planning Council hopes that it will be burnt as MOX fuel in Light Water Reactors. But even then the problem isn't solved, because there is still plutonium in the spent MOX fuel. Indeed the isotopic composition of spent MOX fuel makes it even more difficult to deal with than spent uranium fuel.
A further point that needs to be made is that when speaking of the 'inherent harm' of the radioactive waste, one shouldn't just consider its absolute radioactivity. It is also necessary to consider how and when the radioactivity will leak out from the place where it is buried. Eventually some of this radioactivity will find its way back into the environment. However, the Planning Council's Interim Report doesn't address this problem.
The discussion of the volume of the high level waste suffers from the same logical inconsistencies. It is true that the volume of the HLW is reduced if the term 'high-level waste' is defined narrowly, but there are still large volumes of other waste. Different countries categorize TRU-contaminated waste differently, but it certainly isn't low-level waste. It cannot be dismissed as if it were of no consequence. There are masses of uranium with nowhere to go and we doubt if much of the plutonium will ever be used as MOX fuel. Even if it is, there is still the problem of what to do with the spent MOX fuel. The Interim Report avoids this issue. Some of the radioactivity is simply released into the atmosphere. All the radioactive noble gases escape in this way. If the total volume of radioactive waste is added up, according to Japan Nuclear Fuel Ltd it works out to be six times more than the volume of the original spent fuel. If the waste produced when the reprocessing plant is finally dismantled is included, there are estimates that the volume of radioactive waste will be hundreds of times greater than the volume of the HLW canisters.
CNIC's representative on the Planning Council was not the only council member to point these inconsistencies out, but their comments were ignored. The fact that the Interim Report is based on such fundamentally flawed analysis suggests that 'analysis' is not the correct word to describe the document. It is rather a 'rationalization'. The Interim Report is an attempt to rationalize government policy - a very irrational attempt we believe.
Note 1: The following quote is translated from the Interim Report of the Japan Atomic Energy Commission's New Nuclear Policy-Planning Council (12 November 2004). Click here to find the full report, including a brief commentary by CNIC.
2. Assessment of the Basic Scenarios
(2) Evaluation of factors which can be used to compare the policy significance of the scenarios
"...from the point of view of 'environmental compatibility', by not directly disposing of the spent fuel with the uranium and plutonium contained therein, by reprocessing the spent fuel and extracting that uranium and plutonium, and by dealing with this uranium and plutonium by [re]using it, the inherent radioactive harm from the high level waste (glass canisters) after 1,000 years has elapsed will be one eighth of that if the spent fuel had been disposed of directly. The volume of high level waste would be reduced to between 30% and 40% and the space required to bury it would be reduced to between a half and two thirds of that if the spent fuel had been disposed of directly."
Note 2: TRU stands for 'transuranic' element, i.e. an element with an atomic number larger than that of uranium. Some TRUs, as well as some other radioactive elements such as Iodine-129 and Carbon-14, remain in filters and solutes, etc.. These are generally lumped together as TRU-contaminated waste, often simply referred to as 'TRUs'.
