SPENT FUEL MANAGEMENT IN SOUTH KOREA: THE ILLOGIC OF PYROPROCESSING

The 1974 U.S.-South Korea Agreement on Cooperation on Atomic Energy comes up for renewal in 2014 and South Korea is lobbying for the new agreement to give it prior consent to reprocess -- specifically to pyroprocess -- its spent fuel. The Korea Atomic Energy Research Institute (KAERI) argues that separating the transuranics and recycling them in sodium-cooled fast-neutron reactors until they are fissioned is essential to the management of South Korea’s spent-fuel problem. The U.S. State Department is reportedly resisting this proposal because of its opposition to the proliferation of national reprocessing programs and because it would make it impossible to persuade North Korea to end its reprocessing program. Pyroprocessing is implausible for the management of South Korea’s spent-fuel, however, because it is unlikely that the required number of fast-neutron reactors would be deployed to fission the ten tons of transuranics that would be discharged each year by the 40-GWe fleet of light-water reactors that South Korea expects to have on line by 2030. South Korea would not be the first country to reprocess in the expectation of the commercialization of fast-neutron reactors. Since the 1970s, several major industrialized countries have invested about $100 billion in trying to commercialize this reactor type and none has succeeded because of the high cost, poor reliability and safety issues of sodium-cooled reactors. France, India, Japan, Russia and the UK have together accumulated 250 tons of separated civilian plutonium – as much separated plutonium as was separated for the Cold War nuclear arsenals. KAERI proposes only to build one 0.6-GWe “demonstration” fast-neutron reactor prior to 2050. The problem of siting one or more geological repositories would remain in any case. South Korea’s spent-fuel management problem today is one of local opposition to extended storage of older spent fuel at the reactor sites. Pyroprocessing would provide an interim off-site destination for the spent fuel that cannot be stored on site. Surely there must be a less costly and provocative way to arrange interim storage for South Korea’s spent fuel!