Regional Cooperation for Nuclear Spent Fuel Management in East Asia: Costs, Benefits and Challenges–Part I

Abstract

East Asia is home to some of the most dynamic economies on earth, but also a locus of current and historical national and international conflicts. Some of the largest economies lack domestic energy resources, and nuclear power has been adopted as a perceived key to energy security. Lacking, however, is a concerted strategy for managing nuclear spent fuel at the regional or even, for the most part, national levels. Regional cooperation on spent fuel management offers many benefits, as well as challenges. This two-part paper explores four different “scenarios” of regional spent-fuel management, ranging from a national “go-it-alone” option to regional cooperation on uranium supply, enrichment and “back-end” spent fuel management. Results for physical flows of nuclear materials and other inputs and outputs, and for the relative costs of each scenario, are presented. Results suggest that the costs of scenarios that include reprocessing are higher than those without reprocessing, and costs for increased dry-cask storage (reducing the amount of fuel stored in high-density spent fuel pools) are likely to be a tiny part of overall nuclear fuel cycle costs. As result radiological risk and attendant political, social and legal concerns should drive decisions regarding spent fuel management, not costs.