On 8-Jul-09, at 12:54 PM, Gordon Edwards wrote:

http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v460/n7252/full/460152b.html

Adieu to nuclear recycling

President Barack Obama should be applauded

for his decision to scrap commercial reprocessing.

Editorial in NATURE MAGAZINE - Nature 460, 152 (9 July 2009) Emphasis
added

This week, US President Barack Obama has been grabbing headlines with

his efforts to revitalize the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty ? a US/
Russian

agreement to reduce the nuclear arsenals of both nations.

Such efforts will be applauded worldwide, but another decision by the
Obama

administration deserves equal acclaim. On 29 June, the president quietly

cancelled a lengthy environmental review that was the first step in
allowing

the resumption of commercial nuclear reprocessing in the United States.

Nuclear reprocessing chemically separates uranium and plutonium from
spent

nuclear fuel so that it can be reused in specialized reactors. The
same technique

can be used to purify material for nuclear weapons, and it is partly
for that

reason that the United States decided to halt reprocessing in the 1970s.

Obama's predecessor, George W. Bush, sought to reverse that decision. He

thought that reprocessing could be part of a broader approach that
would see

used fuel from non-nuclear-weapons states brought to the United States
for

reprocessing. As part of the Global Nuclear Energy Partnership
programme,

Bush advocated the construction of a demonstration commercial
reprocessing

plant, and an environmental review was already under way when Obama came

into office.

Such a plant, had the plans been allowed to continue, would have been
both

costly and counterproductive. Proliferation worries aside,
reprocessing is complex,

expensive and creates a liquefied stream of highly radioactive waste
that is

difficult to dispose of. The technology is likely to be needed within
the next two

decades, so Obama is right in his decision to allow research into ways
to improve

reprocessing, while constraining the programme to one of basic science.

The decision to halt commercial nuclear recycling sends a clear
message that the

United States is committed to nuclear non-proliferation. Such
decisions, together

with diplomacy such as that taking place in Russia, are deliberate and
encouraging

first steps towards building an international consensus on reducing
the threat from

nuclear weapons.