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Reprocessing FAQs
Commercial reprocessing plants operate in France, the UK, and Russia with a capacity of some 5,000 metric tons a year - - - - - List of nations with policy to reprocess spent fuel * Belgium
List of nations with policy to NOT reprocess spent fuel * Canada
[Source for above lists: POWER Magazine, April 1, 2013] - - - - - - - - - - Until Carter was president, US spent fuel was expected to be reprocessed, not buried Up until the mid-1970s the commercial nuclear industry was expected to operate
several nuclear fuel reprocessing plants to recover fissile plutonium from virtually all of the
commercial spent fuel from U.S reactors. These plants would use aqeous reprocessing
methods developed by the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC). The recovered plutonium
was to be used as mixed oxide fuel (PuO2 and U02) in water reactors and, later, as fuel in
breeder reactors. Each reprocessing plant had one or two storage pools to receive and store
the fuel temporarily until it was reprocessed. No long-term storage of the spent fuel from
comnmercial reactors was planned. Only two commercial reprocessing sites have received
spent fuel, West Valley, New York, and G.E.-Morris, Illinois.
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Reprocessing news
March 1, 2013 * [reprocessing-UK-Japan] Sellafield Nuclear Waste Cargo Safely Shipped to Japan, Julian Whittle, Cumberland News (thanx Nevada state ANP) - - - - - June 23, 2012 * [npp-spent fuel-Japan] Policy of reprocessing all spent #nuclear fuel may be axed; but country has no geologic repository, Japan Times, thanx @djysrv Jan 21, 2012 Retired DOE official Clinton Bastin blames 1973 oil embargo on US reneging on promise to provide nuclear fuel reprocessing technology to Iran Clinton Bastin has been writing letters to leaders including Barack Obama and Benjamin Netanyahu voicing his conclusions that Iran is not pursuing nuclear weapons capability and that claims to the contrary are from incompetents. Mr. Bastin discussed these matters in an interview published by the (LaRouche) EIR magazine last month. Here's some excerpts that deal with reprocessing: Q: What is your assessment of Iran's nuclear program? It's a nuclear power program. Iran made a commitment to full use of nuclear power in 1970, ordered five nuclear plants from the United States, which promised, but later denied, reprocessing technology. This resulted in Iran's cancelling the U.S. plants and ordering them from others, which were cancelled during the revolution. But Iran has stayed committed to nuclear power. Russia is building Iran's nuclear plant, which is ready to start operation. Because of the denial of reprocessing, Iran is reluctant to rely on others, so they wanted to enrich their own uranium, which is essential for nuclear power. That's what they're doing. ... ... The U.S. State Department promised Iran all the technology needed. But the reprocessing technology promised to Iran had failed in U.S. programs. I'd been transferred to Atomic Energy Commission headquarters to deal with those failures, and was given the staff paper to review for the transfer of technology that would be provided to Iran. I recommended that the reprocessing technology not be provided, and the AEC denied the transfer. That led, partially, to an early breakdown of relations between the U.S. and Iran, and -- in my opinion -- the oil embargo of 1973. I remember reading about Iranian oil ships that were at sea during long periods of time during that embargo. Source: Marjorie Mazel Hecht (Managing Editor of 21st Century Science & Technology magazine), November 18, 2011 interview of Clinton Bastin, edited into "Iran Has a Nuclear Power, Not a Weapons Program; Clinton Bastin, a nuclear scientist, chemical engineer, and former Department of Energy official, was interviewed on the recent IAEA report on Iran's nuclear program", EIR, Dec 2, 2011, pp. 38-43
(thanx to @SoNuke for tweeting link to an NWOupdate blog story highlighting this -- Top US Nuclear Expert Tells Obama: There Is No Weapons Threat From Iran", Jan 20, 2012)
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