What is DUPIC?
DUPIC, or the Direct Use of spent LWR Plutonium in CANDUs, is a manufacturing process that turns an American-style light water reactor’s spent fuel pellets into Canadian fuel pellets for use in Canadian reactors (CANDUs). Canadian reactors are much more efficient than light-water reactors and can directly use what is traditionally thought to be spent fuel.
There is no change made to the composition of the “spent” fuel. This is not reprocessing; reprocessing recycles, but DUPIC reuses. Canadian reactors are simply more efficient and can get more energy out of the same amount of enriched uranium.
This means that a Canadian reactor could be built next to an American reactor and run off its waste, doubling the power generated without creating any more waste. There are 110 sites in the United States storing thousands of tons of “spent” fuel rods–mostly less than 3% used. They aren’t going to just disappear; the rods have to be processed somehow.
Integral fast reactors, molten salt reactors, and other systems that completely consume the fuel have yet to be completely perfected. Certainly, placing “spent” fuel in Yucca Mountain that is only 3% spent is incredibly wasteful. DUPIC–and similar systems that would do the same things–represent ready-for-prime-time technology using existing equipment. Increasing the fuel efficiency of nuclear power from the current 3%-5% to 6%-10% wouldn’t solve the waste problem, but it would give up to forty years of extra time to develop permanent solutions.
Canadian waste-eating reactors would consume most of the remaining plutonium at nuclear power plants, reducing even further any already-remote proliferation hazards. Furthermore, CANDUs using DUPIC would run on the part of the waste that poses the most long-term danger (the transuranics). DUPIC and technologies like it are a common ground between people who would like to see more nuclear power and those who want to prevent construction of a repository. As such it provides a great opportunity–if only it were legal.
State Reactor Statutes
Many states enacted well-intended laws in the 1980s to prevent construction of new reactors until there was a federal solution to the waste problem, as the government was assumed to be the only organization capable of making a difference in this supposedly huge task. Unfortunately, as the technology did not exist at the time, they inadvertently banned construction of reactors that don’t contribute to the waste problem–or which could even help solve it! We propose the addition of a simple clause in these statutes:
New reactor construction is allowed only if
(a) the radioactivity of said reactor’s spent fuel is equal to that of natural uranium, or
(b) said reactor does not increase the total volume of spent fuel.
Part (a) would apply to extremely-advanced reactors such as the Integral Fast Reactor or Molten Salt Reactor, which could potentially create no long-lived waste. These are further away from the market, although working prototypes of both have been built and withstood stringent testing.
Part (b) would apply to reactors such as the Advanced CANDU Reactor (ACR) class of Canadian reactors that could run on DUPIC fuel rods. These reactors wouldn’t process the fuel, only use it more efficiently.
Such an amendment could hardly be said to weaken these statutes, which were designed to prevent dramatic increases in nuclear waste production until a system was devised to manage it. Excluding what turned out to be the only practical solution doesn’t make sense, from any perspective. As these statutes stand, they encourage the burning of coal by eliminating its only clean and economical competitor while also making a geological repository (read: dumping) the only option for disposal of “spent” fuel that hasn’t even really been used yet. This unbelievably wasteful practice is known as the “once-through cycle,” and leads directly to Yucca Mountain. Pro-nuclear people overwhelmingly would rather see Yucca Mountain never open, simply because it is unnecessary. The only way this can be made possible is by increasing the fuel efficiency of nuclear power, and making these basic efficiency improvements legal must be the first step.
Ask yourself, your community, and your elected officials:
Why do reactor bans cite nuclear waste when there are waste-eating reactors?
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This page was written by Stewart Peterson on May 28, 2009
