MIT: Uranium Supplies Adequate

By Kennedy Maize

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The supply of uranium should not be a show-stopper in any coming expansion of nuclear power, regardless of scope, according to a new study by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Because of the abundance of the basic material for nuclear fuel, says the report by MIT's Energy Initiative, U.S. policy should change its decades-long focus on "closing the fuel cycle" through the use of breeder reactors and reprocessing and accept that the open, once-through fuel cycle is here to stay.

The Supply Question

The study comes at a time when uranium prices on commodity markets are rising, reflecting short-term market conditions, not the long-term prospects for supplying fuel for nuclear power plants. Robert Vance, a nuclear fuel analyst for the Paris-based Nuclear Energy Agency, told the New York Times late last year that though uranium is not rare, spot shortages are common, as licensing and developing new mines can take considerable time.

"For decades," says the MIT report, "the discussion about future nuclear fuel cycles has been dominated by the expectation that a closed fuel cycle based on plutonium startup of fast reactors would eventually be deployed. However, this expectation is rooted in an out-of-date understanding about uranium scarcity." Since the 1970s, the U.S. and much of the rest of the world has based its nuclear energy policy on the eventual need for breeders, based on what now appears to be a misperception of coming uranium scarcity. Major aspects of policy on disposal of high-level nuclear waste have also seen reprocessing as a way to remove fissionable material as a key part of the fuel-cycle equation.

Ernest Moniz, director of the MIT energy program and co-chair of the study, said, "The failure to understand the extent of the uranium resource was a very big deal" in the formation of past nuclear energy policy. Moniz is an MIT physics professor and former Department of Energy official in the Clinton administration.

The George W. Bush administration built its nuclear energy policy around what it called the Global Nuclear Energy Partnership, aimed at reviving nuclear reprocessing, which had been dormant for more than 30 years in the U.S. The Bush policy was a response to the pending failure of the Yucca Mountain spent nuclear fuel site. Many in the nuclear industry were privately scornful of Bush's focus on reprocessing, but the president was said to be adamant about the benefits of the policy and his international program, which has now largely faded away.

That past policy focus is misleading, according to the new report, a follow-up to the group's 2003 report, "The Future of Nuclear Power." "There is no shortage of uranium resources that might constrain future commitments to build new nuclear plants for much of this century at least," says MIT. "The benefits to resource extension and to waste management of limited recycling in [light water reactors, LWRs] using mixed-oxide fuel as is being done in some countries are minimal. Scientifically sound methods exist to manage spent nuclear fuel."

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