UN Nuclear Chief Says Recycling Nuclear Waste ‘Difficult’ After Biden Looks to Fund Reprocessing Projects

International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Director-General Rafael Mariano Grossi speaks with journalists after he and a part of the IAEA mission came back from a Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant at a Ukrainian checkpoint in Zaporizhzhia region, Ukraine, on Sept. 1, 2022. (Anna Voitenko/Reuters)

Rafael Grossi, director-general of the UN International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), has downplayed the chances of nuclear reprocessing becoming a reality in many nations.

In an interview with Reuters, Grossi said he doesn’t see many nations looking seriously into reprocessing as it is a “very difficult technology” that requires a lot of infrastructure. However, if countries were to pursue it, the IAEA would work to make sure that such activities would remain safe, he said.

“Nobody will be doing reprocessing without the IAEA being involved,” Grossi insisted, while calling any recycling of nuclear waste undertaken by North Korea an exception.

Reprocessing is opposed by many experts who warn that militants might target such supply chains to seize materials that can be used to develop a crude nuclear bomb.

The IAEA chief’s statements come after the Biden administration announced last month that it is funding projects seeking to recycle nuclear waste from power plants, including via reprocessing. During reprocessing, uranium and plutonium in spent nuclear fuel are converted into new fuel.

Under the Biden administration, the Department of Energy (DoE) plans to spend $38 million on a dozen projects that explore nuclear fuel recycling.

Projects will be developed under the purview of DoE’s Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E), an agency that supports research into high-risk projects that are potentially transformative.

According to Jenifer Shafer, a program director at ARPA-E, proliferation concerns are “precisely the challenges” that they are trying to address.

“One possible route is by preventing production of pure plutonium streams,” she said, according to Reuters. Another method is “actively monitoring” the special nuclear material throughout the reprocessing stage to improve nuclear material accountancy, Shafer added.

Powering America, Nuclear Waste

Nuclear energy, which accounts for 50 percent of America’s domestic clean energy production, makes up almost a fifth of the country’s electricity.

At present, most of the used nuclear fuel produced in the United States is stored at more than 70 reactor sites across the country. Clean energy generated from spent nuclear fuel is estimated to be enough to power over 70 million households.

In 1977, President Jimmy Carter prohibited reprocessing due to concerns about proliferation. In 1981, President Ronald Reagan lifted Carter’s moratorium. However, reprocessing did not take off as high costs prevented the reopening of plants.

Nuclear waste is categorized into three types based on its radioactivity: low, intermediate, and high. Around 90 percent of the total volume of nuclear waste contains only 1 percent of radioactivity.

In contrast, high-level waste, which makes up just 3 percent of the total nuclear waste, accounts for 95 percent of the radioactivity.

While many countries, including the United States, treat used nuclear fuel as waste, other nations, such as Japan, Belgium, France, and Germany, have programs that recycle plutonium to generate electricity. Almost 97 percent of used nuclear fuel is estimated to be usable in certain reactors.