From the U.S. Government Accountability Office, www.gao.gov Transcript for: DOE's Planning around Spent Fuel from Nuclear Reactors Audio interview by GAO staff with Gene Aloise, Director, Natural Resources & Environment Related GAO Work: GAO-12-70: Nuclear Fuel Cycle Options: DOE Needs to Enhance Planning for Technology Assessment and Collaboration with Industry and Other Countries Released on: November 16, 2011 [ Background Music ] [ Narrator: ] Welcome to GAO's Watchdog Report, your source for news and nformation from the Government Accountability Office. It's November 16th, 2011. Growing demand for electricity and concerns about greenhouse gas emissions have heightened interest in nuclear power, but the radioactive spent fuel that nuclear reactors generate continues to cause concern. A group led by Gene Aloise, a director in GAO's Natural Resources and Environment team, recently reviewed the Department of Energy's planning around nuclear fuel cycles. GAO's Jeremy Cluchey sat down with Gene to learn more. [ Jeremy Cluchey: ] What are we talking about when we talk about nuclear fuel cycles? [ Gene Aloise ]: Well, we're actually talking about the lifecycle of the nuclear fuel that goes into the nuclear reactors starting from the mining and milling of uranium, which is done all over the world and in the United States, the conversion of the fuel, the enrichening of the fuel, the fuel fabrication, and, finally, putting the fuel into the reactors and burning it. And the fuel gets burnt for about 2 year cycle and then it's taken out of the reactor, and this is where the problem begins--is where do you put the stored spent nuclear fuel, which is highly radioactive and very dangerous. [ Jeremy Cluchey: ] Why is this concept of nuclear fuel cycles something that DOE is focused on? [ Gene Aloise ]: DOE's concentrating on this because there's a worldwide push to go nuclear, to not to use fossil fuels, to conserve energy; there's what they call the nuclear renaissance, and before Fukushima [phonetic spelling] and the accident in Japan happened, there were many plans on the table to build new nuclear reactors. And overseas that push is really still on to build nuclear reactors in China and India, and the United States is concerned that who's ever building--whatever country's building these nuclear reactors--do it in the most nonproliferation-efficient manner because you always have to remember a nuclear reactor started out of the weapons program and you can't ever separate the two of those. [ Jeremy Cluchey: ] Your team looked at DOE's efforts in this regard in terms of how they approached the selection of fuel cycles and technologies. What did you find? [ Gene Aloise ]: Well, we found that in 2006 DOE had embarked on a program called the Global Nuclear Energy Partnership, which it was going to share with other countries around the world, but really they were way too far ahead of the game. The technologies they were talking about were not even on the drawing boards yet. Congress in 2009 killed that program. So to its credit DOD, DOE, excuse me, revamped its program and started to develop a new global nuclear plan for reactor development, and what we did was look at the plan as it stands now: what were its strengths and what were its weaknesses. On the plus side DOE is taking a scientific approach to looking at what are the new nuclear fuel cycles out there, what are the fuel cycles of tomorrow, and how can they be made proliferation resistant. On the negative side the plan had a lot of gaps. In talking about--when they talked about collaborating with industry it really didn't have a lot of details on how it was going to do that, and that's important because with whatever plan DOE comes up with, in terms of here's the way to go in a nuclear fuel cycle, it has to have industry's buy-in. If it doesn't have industry's buy-in, they've done a lot of research for nothing. [ Jeremy Cluchey: ] One of this report's recommendations comes from your experience looking at the nuclear programs of France and the United Kingdom. What did you learn there and how do you think DOE could benefit from their experiences? [ Gene Aloise ]: Well, France--in the United States we have what is called an "open fuel cycle" and that is we--after the fuel is taken out of the reactor we take it out and put it in spent fuel storage ponds and it sits and eventually it will go to a deep geological repository. France, on the other hand, has a "closed fuel cycle" where they continue to use their fuel over and over again to get the most efficiency out of it. But there are problems with that because when you reuse the fuel you're separating plutonium from uranium and plutonium can be used to make nuclear weapons. The bottom line from what we learned over there is, yes, you can burn up more nuclear fuel if you recycle, but the costs are really high to do that. [ Jeremy Cluchey: ] What else is GAO recommending in this report? [ Gene Aloise ]: When DOE talks about collaborating with nuclear industry we need to see more details about what exactly are its plans to do that--to get industry's buy-in. Second, when they talk about--when DOE talks about collaborating with other countries--what are its plans to do that? And then there are challenges with nonproliferation internal to DOE. We thought a memorandum of understanding between several agencies within DOE might fix that. So those are some of the recommendations in our report, which, by the way, DOE agreed with. [ Background Music ] [ Narrator: ] To learn more, visit GAO's website at gao.gov and be sure to tune in to the next edition of GAO's Watchdog Report for more from the congressional watchdog, the Government Accountability Office.