New MIT report recommends storing spent nuclear fuel rather than reprocessing it
APR 26, 2011
DOI: 10.1063/PT.5.025255
New York Times : In a study released today, scientists at MIT predict that the US’s spent-fuel management system will be reevaluated in the wake of Japan’s recent problems at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant, writes Matthew Wald for the New York Times. One of the problems encountered at Fukushima was the loss of cooling water in at least one pool of spent radioactive fuel. The MIT report suggests that rather than maintaining such pools in order to reprocess the spent fuel for its plutonium, nuclear reactors should continue to use uranium because it is plentiful and instead store the spent fuel to preserve the option of reprocessing it at some later time. Nuclear waste burial has met with resistance in the past, as evidenced by the problems encountered trying to develop Yucca Mountain, in the Nevada desert, as a burial site.
© 2011 American Institute of Physics
