International Solutions to the Spent Fuel Problem

Council for Security Cooperation in the Asia Pacific

Working Group on Confidence Building and Security Measure

A Report by Dr Ron Smith, February 2000

Director of Defense and Strategic Studies at the University of Waikato, New Zealand
International Solutions to the Spent Fuel Problem

Over the last few years the CSCAP Working Group on Confidence and Security Building Measures has discussed on many occasions the possibility of cooperative solutions to the problem of disposal of spent fuel and high level waste.  The purpose of this paper is to briefly review the content of the various proposals that have been made, report on their present status and make some suggestions for further policy development.  Of course, the attractiveness of international solutions to the spent fuel problem arises partly from the problems that national governments are having in disposing of waste material from civilian nuclear operations.  For this reason some account is given of the present state of affairs with regard to national repository proposals in the Asia Pacific region.  There are other factors that make international solutions attractive.  Prominent amongst these is the widely held concern about proliferation.  In so far as accumulations of spent fuel provide a ready resource from which nuclear weapons may be made, a central storage location under international supervision would have the potential to reduce anxiety[1].  There is also the matter of economy.  Deep geological deposition for all time is inevitably going to be very expensive[2].  Even the infrastructure to support long-term interim storage will be costly to provide.  For the smaller players, cooperation could thus be enormously beneficial from a financial point of view.   The time could well be right for the states of the Asia Pacific region to seriously consider establishing a cooperative institution which would have as its major focus the establishment of international facilities for the management and disposal of the backend products of civilian nuclear activity.  A proposal to this effect (through the formation of an Asia Pacific Nuclear Agency) forms the major part of the concluding section to this paper.

Part 1 – The problem

All around the world there are accumulating inventories of spent fuel and other high level waste from civilian power reactors (See Appendix 1).  Much of this is in the Asia Pacific region[3].   The material will be active and dangerous for a very long time.  There are well-understood health risks from human exposure to radiation and perceived proliferation risks from the plutonium content of the spent fuel rods, and from stockpiles of plutonium arising out of earlier reprocessing.  Spent fuel rods can be stored safely under water for decades.  Later they can be removed from these storage pools and held in dry storage. Both wet and dry storage is often on the site of the reactor in which the fuel was burned but it may be held at a central facility or at a reprocessing plant if it is to be reprocessed.   At the end, though, you have material that needs to be held securely for thousands of years.  This is presumed to be long after the reactor that produced it has ceased to operate.  Indeed, it may be long after nuclear exploitation in its present form  (or indeed in any form) has ended. The solution has usually been seen to lie in the establishment of a final repository for this material deep in the earth where human beings who may not understand its danger are extremely unlikely to stumble upon it.  On the other hand, we might presume a continued advance in technology and human understanding such that what is seen now to be without value and unalterably hazardous may become a valued resource or something which is easily transmuted into a less problematic form (isotopes of shorter half-life, for example).  Either way the requirement that the material concerned be held safely and securely in the interim remains.  What would be different would be the extent to which the characteristic of accessibility would cut across the requirement that human beings should not be able to stumble unwittingly upon the material or gain access for nefarious purposes.    

There are two distinct aspects to such a project – the technical and the socio-political.  Technically, there is the problem of determining what the desirable characteristics of such a disposal site would be and then identifying actual possibilities.   This is relatively straightforward.  Then there is the necessity to convince a public whose interests might be affected by such a development (and their political representatives) that the proposed development is safe and will impose negligible cost upon them.  On the whole, the experience seems to be that this socio-political aspect presents major problems.  Whether these are insuperable remains to be seen.  For some the key here is to take your time in a process which is as transparent as it can be.  The credo is ‘go slowly in order to go fast’[4]. The ultimate acceptance of the now functioning Waste Isolation Pilot Project (WIPP) facility at Carlsbad in southern New Mexico may suggest that such a strategy can be successful in the end.  On the other hand, the enormous difficulties that seem to be faced by the Yucca Mountain project (see below) point the other way.  The crucial requirement is that the public and their representatives (official and unofficial) perceive a beneficial interest and thus have a reason to seriously consider the evidence concerning safety and advantage.  This may be an interest in energy security as an underpinning of economic security (as in the case of Japan and the Republic of Korea).  On the other hand, the crucial factor may be a recognition of the importance of nuclear power generation in ameliorating the potential harm of global warming caused by the combustion of fossil fuels.  At the local level, the interest may be employment and infrastructure development.  This seems to have been a factor in the Carlsbad case where the local authorities appear to be enthusiastic supporters of a project that they are satisfied is safe and which has brought considerable local benefit.

Countries with developed civilian nuclear industries also have plans for the ultimate disposal of the waste material from these industries but in most cases these have not yet got to the stage of actual working repositories.  Partly this is a matter of quite ubiquitous antinuclear and NIMBY (Not In My Back Yard) sentiment and partly the explanation is technical.  Spent fuel needs to be monitored for some decades after it comes out of the reactor, whilst the intense initial radioactivity and the associated heat generating capacity decline.  Whatever view is taken of its ultimate fate, it will be held above ground and probably close to the reactor that produced it for of the order of fifty years.  This relative lack of pressure to move to the next stage has made it easy to do nothing in the face of pressure from antinuclear and environmental interests.  Progress has thus generally been slow.  Of course, for states which got into nuclear power generation more recently, the imperative to answer the final repository question has been correspondingly weaker.  Part 2, below, surveys the state of play for the major players in the Asia Pacific region

Part 2 – National policies and progress

Australia

Australia has no nuclear generating industry but it does have a research reactor at Lucas Heights near Sydney that has been operating for 42 years.  It is presently looking at replacing this facility with a new reactor.  One of the issues surrounding this decision is the question as to what will ultimately be done with the radioactive accumulation from the previous one.  This includes 'conditioned' waste from the reprocessing of spent fuel which ultimately will be returned from overseas and the decommissioning wastes from the present reactor, as well as the low level wastes from general nuclear operations (like radio-isotope production).  The conditioned spent fuel from the Lucas Heights reactor is officially categorised as Long-Lived, Intermediate Level Waste (LL ILW), in recognition of the relatively low concentration of radioactive isotopes and consequent relatively low heat output.

In July 1999, Federal Industry, Science and Resources Minister, Nick Minchin, announced that a national repository for low level and short-lived intermediate level wastes would be built at a site in South Australia.  A site 40km west of the township of Woomera has now been selected.    This would replace the more than 50 temporary storage facilities around Australia, mainly at hospitals and universities.  At the time of the announcement, the Minister also kept open the possibility that a storage capability for 'long-lived intermediate waste' could be ‘co-located’ with this facility.  What is envisaged for the low level (and generally shorter-lived wastes) is shallow burial (around 20 metres depth) in an area ‘about the size of a football pitch’.  This is generally not thought to be satisfactory for higher level wastes. 

The situation in Australia is probably mirrored in a number of other countries in the region that also have research reactors.  It is particularly mentioned here because of its significance with regard to the Pangea proposal (see below for details) under which an extensive international facility would be built which could also have taken the wastes from Lucas Heights.  In terms of quantities the amount of this sort of material would be trivial but the possibility that the Pangea Company might have taken responsibility for its disposal was seen in some quarters as a way of getting the much larger approval[5].

Canada

In 1978 the governments of Canada and Ontario directed Atomic Energy of Canada to develop a concept for the deep geological dlsposal of nuclear fuel wastes.  By 1981 it had been decided that site selection would not begin until after a full federal public hearing, followed by approval of the concept by both governments.  In 1989 the review/hearing process began but it was still on the basis of a non-specific ‘concept’.  There was no identified site and no suggested implementing agency, although it was generally envisaged that the wastes concerned would be spent fuel rods or solidified high level waste from reprocessing and that the material would be placed in a stable geologic structure (probably granite) some 500 to 1,000 metres below the surface.

The panel charged with this review process reported in March of 1998.  It recommended a ‘step by step’ approach, with the first step being the setting up of a nuclear fuel waste management agency.  The panel also recommended that the search for a specific site not proceed at the present time. These recommendations were based on a judgement that:

 ‘The safety of the disposal concept may have been adequately demonstrated to the established technical community, but, in the Panel's view, this fact is not proven to be accepted by the broad Canadian public'.

It may well be that the ambiguous and fundamentally inconsistent conclusion cited above reflects deep divisions in the review panel themselves.

China

The present intention of the Chinese authorities appears to be to reprocess spent fuel from its civilian power reactors, or, at least to hold this material ready for a decision to proceed with reprocessing. There are already plans for  a civil reprocessing pilot plant in Gansu province (Lanzhou Nuclear Fuel Complex).  This, together with the fact that the civilian nuclear industry is relatively young (even for northeast Asia), will mean that China will not have a spent fuel/high level waste disposal problem for some time to come.  It thus has little incentive to participate in cooperative solutions from the standpoint of need.  This is not to say that it will not do so.  Certainly China has the geology, climate, land forms which would be appropriate for a deep underground permanent repository.  In fact geological studies are underway in the northwest to select an underground disposal site for high level waste.  In its world-wide study, Pangea Resources (see below) identified four suitable regions and one of these was in western China.  Whether China will take nuclear material from other states for long term storage or disposal, is another matter.  There are obvious sensitivities about this.  Certainly, the possibility that China would take waste from abroad was very firmly dismissed by a Chinese representative at the 1998 CSCAP CSBM meeting in Washington.  The common presumption that states should take care of their own waste was reflected in a memorable declaration, 'China will cook its food in its own kitchen'.

Japan

Preliminary studies for a possible deep geological disposal site have been undertaken.  Detailed plans exist at the conceptual level. In a report published in 1999 the Japan Nuclear Cycle Development Institute concluded that there was a ‘wide distribution of geological environments where deep underground final disposal is technically possible’[6] but no site for a Japanese repository has been chosen.  Indeed, a substantial antinuclear constituency and the well-recognised NIMBY sentiment mean that there is considerable nervousness about taking such a step.  To some degree, Japan is able to put the problem off by its policy of reprocessing spent fuel. Presently, this is being done overseas (in Britain and France) but Japan is building a reprocessing capacity of its own.  This is at Rokkasho-mura in northern Honshu.  However, even when this comes on stream it will not be able to handle all Japan’s spent fuel.  On the other hand, some local authorities are proving difficult to persuade to allow the use of MOX fuel in reactors in their region.  Unless this pattern changes, demand for MOX is going to be well within the capacity of the Rokkasho plant and the pressure will be rather on finding interim storage capacity for an increasing accumulation of spent fuel.  There is some suggestion that this particular problem has been solved.  There are well-developed plans for the construction of an interim storage facility by 2010, with a number of local authorities said to be willing to host such a facility[7].

In any case there will be a need to deal with the high level waste produced by reprocessing.  This is presently held at an interim storage facility also at Rokkasho-mura.  It is anticipated that it will be stored here for 30 to 50 years, after which time a final disposal facility will be ready.  Generally, there is a strong feeling in Japanese official circles that accumulated spent fuel and separated plutonium constitute a kind of strategic energy reserve, as well as being (from another perspective) a major and highly contentious disposal problem.

The newly established Japan Nuclear Cycle Institute (JNC) intends to develop a deep underground experimental laboratory to investigate HLW storage and disposal.  The operational start date for an actual repository is suggested to be between 2030 and 2040.

South Korea and Taiwan

Neither South Korea nor Taiwan presently reprocesses its spent fuel.  For well-understood political reasons there is unlikely to be any change in this situation in the immediate future.  Both administrations have considered the problems of building a national repository but clearly the economics of such a step would be daunting if they each proceeded alone.   Non-proliferation considerations also strongly point to cooperative solutions in this sort of case.

South Korea 

The Ministry of Commerce, Industry and Energy (MOCIE) announced in October 1998 a new plan for radioactive waste management after the failure of earlier disposal plans[8].  Under this the government is required to complete site selection for a spent fuel repository by 2016.  Responsibility for the programme has been transferred from the Ministry of Science and technology and KAERI, to MOCIE and the power utility KEPCO, itself, although the actual personnel responsible may have changed little.  The entity responsible for technical work is still the Nuclear Environment Technology Institute (NETEC).

More recently, there has been some suggestion that Korea might be looking at the construction of an interim storage facility.  Certainly, it appears that on-site spent fuel storage capacity will be full by 2006.

As far as permanent disposal is concerned, a detailed 'preliminary repository conceptual design' has been prepared in cooperation with Sandia National Laboratories[9].  This forms the basis for the further development of a 'reference repository system', which is to be followed (in 'Phase 3') by the establishment of a 'Korean Standard Repository'.  No site has yet been designated, although the concept design assumes some specifics in the way of geology.  The disposal site will be in granitic rock, at a place assumed to be between two large fault zones and at a depth of 500m below the surface.  The design capacity for the facility is 36,000 tons and the 'Total System Life Cycle Cost for the base case repository is 11.15 billion $US' to be spread over nearly 80 years).  This figure is largely based on estimates prepared by US authorities in relation to Yucca Mountain and work done by the Swedish Nuclear Fuel and Waste Management Company.

Taiwan

The utility, Taipower, is responsible for the management of all radioactive wastes.  As far as spent fuel is concerned, increased pool storage capacity has been created at the various reactor sites by 'reracking'.  It is hoped that this will accommodate fuel rods from the reactors until a series of interim dry storage facilities to be built at each site are completed around 2005/6.  According to decisions taken in 1991, the Taiwanese authorities gave themselves forty years (from that date) to investigate and build a final (permanent) disposal facility.  Since 1986 Taipower has had a 'nuclear backend fund' (from a levy on nuclear power production) to pay for this development.  The Corporation has also been pursuing the possibility of regional cooperation 'in parallel with domestic disposal problems'.[10] 

United States

The designated site for the ultimate disposal of spent fuel from the American nuclear power industry and high level waste from the American nuclear weapons programme is Yucca Mountain in the state of Nevada.  The site is approximately 100 miles north-west of Las Vegas and close to the Nevada nuclear weapons' test site.  Under the provisions of the 1982 Nuclear Waste Policy Act and the project timeline subsequently published by the US Department of Energy, viability assessments and environmental impact reports are to be completed by 2001 when a decision whether or not to proceed should be taken.  Assuming such a decision is made, emplacement of waste should begin in 2010 and be completed around 2033.

The waste material is to be held in a network of specially excavated tunnels at least 300m below ground.  

There is a number of problems.  The project is vehemently opposed by environmental groups and by the Nevada State authorities.  Persistent opposition has also come from the US Environmental Protection Agency.  Legislation to reduce the influence of the EPA was vetoed in 2000.  The same legislation (Nuclear Waste Policy Amendment Act, 2000) also provided for an interim storage facility near the Yucca Mountain site which might have taken waste from 2007.     

The original proposal for a deep geological repository envisaged that  emplacement would start in 1998.  Substantial sums of money have been taken from the nuclear utilities on the basis of this undertaking.  The companies are now threatening to sue the US Government to recover the cost of continuing to store spent fuel.  In response, the US Department of Energy is proposing to ‘take title’ of spent fuel without moving it and pay for its continuing storage.  This, too, is opposed.  The Minnesota Legislature has taken steps to prohibit the building of any further on-site storage at the Prairie-Island nuclear facility.

Part 3 – International solutions

PACATOM

The PACATOM proposal as it was presented in 1997 and 1998 envisaged an intergovernmental organisation that would facilitate cooperation between the states of the region in respect of the peaceful uses of nuclear power.  One important consequence of this cooperation would be increased mutual confidence and feelings of security produced by greater transparency in nuclear activities of the participating states. Six specific potential areas of cooperation were enumerated[11].  They included safety cooperation (facility design and emergency response), research on nuclear technologies, inspections, cooperation on the nuclear fuel cycle (common recycling facilities, or spent fuel storage/disposal facilities).   

It was pointed out in CSCAP meetings held around this time that a number of these functions were already being discharged quite satisfactorily by existing organisations (such as WANO and IAEA) and that PACATOM would thus be merely duplicating this activity.  Discussion was also overtaken by the Asian financial crisis so that it seemed inopportune, too, on economic grounds.  It may now be appropriate to re-consider a more limited cooperative institution of this kind, which might focus specifically on the storage, or ultimate disposal of spent fuel.

The original suggestion (in the Manning paper referred to above) was for the establishment of a regional waste site (or sites) on the Asian mainland or on an uninhabited off-shore island.  This would have the virtue of being economic, especially for the smaller players, like Taiwan and Korea.  It would also allow for the generalisation of best practice and perhaps make a contribution to non-proliferation by providing for the establishment of a ‘plutonium bank’, in which separated reactor-grade plutonium would be 'deposited'.  It would be available for 'withdrawal' by the owners but, of course, this could not be done without the fact that it was being withdrawn being known.  Possibilities for a new 'PACATOM' are explored in Part IV, below.   

Internationally-Monitored Retrievable Storage

  The concept of an internationally monitored storage system for nuclear materials first came to the attention of the CSCAP CSBMs' Working Group through a paper presented at the May 1998 meeting by Dr Lewis Dunn of Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC).  The presentation was based on a (then) recently completed report by SAIC, prepared for the United States Department of Energy and the Office of the Secretary of Defense.  A variety of possibilities was envisaged, ranging from a system of national storage facilities subject to oversight by an international monitoring regime, to a fully developed international spent fuel organisation, which would run one or more storage sites.  It was also envisaged that an international storage site (or sites) might be established by a fully commercial organisation.  This would, of course, be subjected to expert, independent supervision.

The crucial virtue of such a scheme was seen to be the contribution it could make to reducing proliferation anxieties.    Other advantages might be to generally strengthen nuclear materials protection standards and enhance transparency.  The SAIC study also envisaged a possible regional version of the Internationally Monitored Retrievable Storage system, centred in East Asia.

The Pangea Proposal

Pangea Resources International is incorporated in Baden, Switzerland. With a wholly owned subsidiary company, Pangea Resources Australia Pty. Ltd., with an office in Perth, Australia.  Pangea Resources is owned by British Nuclear Fuels Limited and Panterra Resources Limited.  The company is studying the feasibility of developing and operating a deep geologic repository to take spent fuel, high level waste and long lived intermediate level waste from anywhere around the world.  Consideration primarily of geological and climatic factors led the promoters to choose a potential repository host region in inland Western Australia (hence the establishment of an office in Perth).  Pangea Resources has also identified (in general terms) what it considers to be suitable repository host regions in both Southern Africa and Argentina, but their interest is focussed primarily on Australia for the time being (See Appendices 2 and 3 for Pangea-supplied maps).  No specific repository sites have been selected to date in any of the potential host regions.

The company envisages building a repository complex, ‘several hundred metres below ground’, which would be accessed by ramp and which would accommodate, in separate workings, the high level and intermediate level wastes.  The complex would be some distance from the coast and the entire development would entail building a port and a dedicated rail-line.  The potential market for such a project is seen to be very large.  The company estimates a world-wide accumulation by 2015 of some 250,000 tons of spent fuel and high level waste.  Notwithstanding that the major nuclear nations have national plans for ultimate storage of their high level waste, Pangea claims that the project could increase the GDP of Australia by 1% and bring a revenue over forty years of $200 billion.  The Pangea repository proposal is for the disposal of about 75,000 tons of spent fuel, which they estimate to be about 30% of the current world inventory.

The Pangea proposal for Australia was leaked in December 1998 and received a generally hostile reception from the media and from politicians.  A spokesperson for Federal Industry Science and Resources Minister, Nick Minchin, said that there was no intention to take nuclear waste from overseas[12].  Similarly, Labour Opposition Leader, Kim Beazely, said that countries using nuclear power had to find ways of dealing with waste themselves rather than dumping it in Australia.  Antinuclear and environmental groups were similarly vocal, although they did not always appear to understand the issue (particularly, that the project primarily concerned residues from civilian operations).  Dr Denborough, of the Nuclear Disarmament Party, said that the waste ought to be ‘buried under the Pentagon, as this was the place where most nuclear weapons had been planned’[13].  By January 1999 the focus of interest had moved to Western Australia with a rumour that a toxic and radioactive waste dump was to be built in the north of the state, inland from Port Hedland.  The evidence for this was that roads in the area were being upgraded.  Pangea deny any link with the so-called 'road to nowhere'.

At this time, Minister Minchin reaffirmed government opposition to such a project but did concede that the Australian Government was looking for a site to dispose of the country's own nuclear waste.  The Premiers of West Australia and South Australia also ruled out support for a waste repository in their respective states.  However, not all politicians are against such a project.   West Australian Liberal Senator Ross Lightfoot told ABC Radio that there was support for the project within the government.  He conceded that ministers might be reflecting what the majority of the people of Australia want (but) ‘The majority of people of Australia are probably wrong’.[14]  In a later speech, Senator Lightfoot urged Australians not to dismiss the plan out of hand. 

If the plan can be proved to be safe, then it would be a hugely profitable new industry.  It would be far better for a geologically and politically stable country like Australia to be managing nuclear waste rather than to take the risk that some of our near neighbours may decide to accept the massive profits from this industry.[15]

However, the Pangea proposal for Australia still faces enormous obstacles.  The Western Australia legislature has passed a ‘Nuclear Waste Storage (Prohibition) Act' and the South Australian government is considering similar legislation, although the prime target here seems to be the proposal (mentioned above) to establish a storage facility for indigenous ‘intermediate level’ wastes.  For the time being Pangea remain optimistic.  They accept that there is 'substantial entrenched opposition' but insist that the company 'is taking a long term view, and is not being put off at this time by statements of Government policy opposing its proposal.  It may need the appearance of some substantial new factor (such as Australia, itself, adopting nuclear energy for power generation) to alter entrenched attitudes.

Russia (The NPT – Minatom Project)

This is a joint project between the Russian atomic energy agency, Minatom, and the Non-Proliferation Trust, incorporated in Washington.  The proposal is to establish, on a commercial basis, an interim storage for up to 10,000 tons of spent fuel.  Favoured sites are at the Mayak nuclear processing plant or near the central Siberian city of Krasnoyarsk.  As the trust’s name suggests the major justification for the project is in terms of non-proliferation but other advantages are claimed for what would also be a solution to the nuclear fuel storage problem which many East Asian countries face.  Amongst those mentioned specifically in this context are China, Germany, Japan, Spain, Switzerland and Taiwan[16]No American spent fuel would go to Russia.  It should also be noted that this is not a long-term solution since the proposal is for 'an initial storage period of forty years'.[17]  Revenue from the project would be used to construct a geological repository that would then be the final disposal site.  Claimed virtues of the NPT-Minatom project also include money available for a nuclear cleanup in Russia and sums to be devoted to improving security for fissile material stockpiles, and to generally provide employment for technical persons.  There is also talk of contributions to the care of Russian senior citizens and orphans.

The proposal is strongly opposed by a variety of organisations, including the Bellona Foundation of Norway, Greenpeace, and local environmentalists, who have reasserted that proposals of this kind would be contrary to present law in Russia, which forbids the importation of foreign nuclear waste[18].  This legal obstacle seems now to have been removed by an overwhelming vote in the Russian Duma (December 2000).  The relevant legislation still needs approval from a parliamentary upper chamber and there are further procedural votes required in the Duma but no problem is anticipated in regard to either of these steps.  More generally, Greenpeace also doubt whether the Russians are sincere in their commitment to use some of the revenues from such a project to clean up nuclear pollution sites. The fact that the proposal is an interim one (40 years) is also seen as a major problem since these wastes need to be safely accommodated for much longer than this – say thousands of years.  Furthermore, there is some indication that Minatom envisage something more than mere storage.  They want to reprocess the spent fuel.  In this connection, it has been reported that a deal has been struck to import the major components of an unfinished German MOX fuel fabrication plant[19].  From the point of view of adding value to the operation, this makes sense but reprocessing itself raises further political problems.  Certainly the American end of the NPT partnership is implacably against reprocessing but the fact that the Russian authorities are planning to extend their MOX fabrication capability, and perhaps take spent fuel beyond what is envisaged in the NPT-Minatom proposal, is the cause of some scepticism in the United States. 

Transportation Issues

 The adoption of an international solution to the spent fuel problem would inevitably entail increased international movement of nuclear material and much of this would be by sea.  This is not necessarily a problem.  There are available specialised ships and specialised operators (most notably Pacific Nuclear Transport Limited) and notwithstanding periodic outbursts of anxiety the safety record for such shipments is extremely good.   Indeed, PNTL claim that over all their years of shipments between Europe and Japan there has never been an accident that involved the release of radioactive material. The risks associated with sea transportation have been much studied[20] and there are strict standards (both for the transportation casks and for the ships) laid down by the International Atomic Energy Authority and the International Maritime Organisation.  Nonetheless, the establishment of an international repository, especially one away from the main nuclear power production areas, would have major implications for sea transportation and would more directly involve a wider range of stakeholders.  The Pangea proposal, sketched above, to take 75,000 tons of spent fuel (over some 40 years) would require of the order of one thousand shipments[21].  All those involving spent fuel from Northeast Asia would pass through the South Pacific Ocean and Tasman Sea.  A repository established in Argentina or southern Africa would have similar implications, except that the transportation distances would be even larger.  Presumably, cargoes for Africa would still go through the Tasman Sea.  Of course, the situation would be different if a significant proportion of the nuclear waste material came from beyond the Asia Pacific region.

The recent pattern of occasional shipments of nuclear material through the South Pacific en route from Europe to Japan has been the cause of considerable reaction particularly from New Zealand and some of the smaller island states of the region.  The level of concern may have been maintained by the fact that the consignments that passed were different on different occasions (High Level Waste, MOX and, earlier, separated plutonium).  A familiar pattern of spent fuel cargoes passing without incident may have a diminishing impact, particularly if it is initiated with a considerable effort in public education.  On the other hand, New Zealand and the South Pacific Forum countries have taken a very strong line on nuclear shipments through the region and this has been reflected in discussions in the CSCAP Maritime Cooperation Working Group.  It is also reflected in the acceptance for first reading in the New Zealand parliament, in July of 2000, of the New Zealand Nuclear Free Zone Extension Bill.   The purpose of this legislation is to ban both cargoes of nuclear materials and nuclear propelled vessels from the New Zealand 200-mile exclusive economic zone.  The bill is unlikely to proceed further than the appropriate select committee. This is because the major parties recognise that (amongst other things) it would breach New Zealand's international law obligations but the fact that a first reading was permitted (by these parties voting for the legislation) speaks volumes for the state of antinuclear sentiment in New Zealand.  Even those politicians who know better cannot resist pandering to it.

By contrast the Australian government has refrained from associating itself with this kind of sentiment and has not supported South Pacific Forum initiative to push for tighter controls on nuclear shipments.  Australian policy is simply to satisfy itself that all nuclear cargoes are shipped in strict accordance with internationally agreed standards.  It has been much criticised by Greenpeace and others for this stance.  Opposition in Australia has increased of late with a shipment of Australian nuclear waste (from Lucas Heights) leaving Sydney at the same time as fresh shipments from Europe to Japan (and scheduled to pass through the Tasman) were announced.      

The Suzuki Criteria[22]

Discussions of possible repository sites frequently focus substantially on matters of climate and geology, to the relative neglect of wider social and political matters that may often turn out to be equally important.  In a paper delivered to a workshop of Asian Nuclear Experts earlier this year, Professor Suzuki of the University of Tokyo sought to redress this imbalance by presenting the full range of criteria that might be appropriate to siting decisions.  He points out (as has already been mentioned) that the size of a country's indigenous nuclear power programme has crucial implications for the economics of developing geological disposal.  Again, when looking for an international nuclear waste repository site, land area and population density is as important as geological environment.  But it is the political and societal factors in potential host states that provide the most interesting criteria.  These include the character and stability of the regime and public and official attitudes to nuclear activities within the state concerned.  Equally the existence of an appropriate infrastructure would be essential if sophisticated nuclear operations are to be undertaken.  Ideally, this would include a skilled workforce (especially in regard to nuclear operations) and experience of working with IAEA safeguards standards.  Another specific criterion would be the degree of commitment to non-proliferation.  This, in turn, might well determine the final criterion, that of US agreement.  The fact is, that much spent fuel around the world has come from US-design reactors, or is otherwise subject to US consent in regard to its disposal.  United States' government approval for any cooperative scheme for interim storage or final disposal is thus essential.

Professor Suzuki rates a range of potential host countries according to these criteria.  Not surprisingly, countries that score well on some criteria, score poorly on others.  Australia has the geology, the open space and the political stability but (as indicated earlier) official institutions are generally antagonistic to the prospect of hosting an international repository.  On the other hand, the Russian government may be keen, and the geology may be quite suitable, but their claim is weaker in respect of political stability and the state of the infrastructure.  Clearly, if an international cooperative solution to the spent fuel problem is to be found it will entail substantial compromise on the matter of the Suzuki criteria.  It should be noted also that many of these latter criteria are decidedly less objective than judgements about geology and land space and thus more contestable.  They are also less permanent features and the fact that they have a greater capacity for causing offence may make them more difficult to use.  Again, on the matter of compromise, it is clear that some criteria are more susceptible to this than others.  Geology and land area are clearly unalterable features, whilst infrastructure may change only slowly.  By contrast the political character of a regime may change quite rapidly and in both directions.  Policy settings (such as opposition to reprocessing) can be changed over night but in practice they often exhibit a tenacious permanence.

Important though these criteria are, Suzuki argues that the way they are utilised is more important.  He stresses the importance of transparency and flexibility in all aspects of the planning process.  Particularly he advocates the principle, 'go slowly in order to go fast'.   Of course we understand what is meant here but literally the principle is nonsense.  You do not achieve speed in a cumulative process by performing each step slowly.  In the case of nuclear projects that inevitably generate great opposition, to resolve to go slowly is only to play into the hands of those whose sole object is obstruction and delay.  That said, it is of course true that an appearance of haste can suggest panic or that there is something to hide.  Undue haste may also provoke an adverse reaction that then causes a long halt.  This is the sense of 'more haste less speed'.      

Part 4 – Possible courses of action

Ultimate disposal or interim storage?

 Spent fuel is a potential resource as much as a waste.  It contains significant amounts of fissile Plutonium 239 and this can be recovered and re-used in the form of Mixed Oxide (MOX) fuel. Indeed, this is already happening in many parts of the world and reactors are already being designed to work entirely on MOX.  Presently, the economics of reprocessing are unfavourable, due to the low cost of uranium fuel but this may not always be so.  There are also other factors, such as energy security, that come into the equation and fuel costs are anyway a very small proportion of total costs in the case of nuclear power.  More speculatively, it might be said that the concentration of radioactive isotopes (other than Plutonium 239) in spent fuel, represents a potential resource in itself.  The history of technology has many examples of materials that at one time appeared to have no use but which later (when a use was found) turned out to be valuable.  Technological developments may also throw up economic processes for transforming high level waste so that it presents less of problem.  Much of the present difficulty in gaining public acceptance for permanent repository proposals lies in the apparent need to secure the material against radiation leakage tens of thousands of years into the future[23].  A treatment that shortened the average half-life of the isotopes in the waste (transmutation) could transform this aspect of ultimate disposal.  Again, this is very speculative.  Some commentators even doubt the possibility in principle of developing such technology but it surely cannot be excluded.  All of this points to the adoption of an interim storage strategy.

Should we also look to a limited proposal in the first instance?  This might be a proposal to only take certain wastes, such as military wastes or high level wastes from reprocessing.   Alternatively, the limitation might be to begin with an experimental or pilot-scale proposal.  If the name is any guide the low-level repository for defence wastes near Carlsbad certainly started out as a pilot project.  WIPP stands for Waste Isolation Pilot Project.  That no longer seems to be the understanding.  WIPP will be taking the full range of low-level wastes (both direct handling and remote handing, and corrosive as well as merely contaminated) from sites all across the United States.  On the other hand, there may be suspicion of a programme that calls itself ‘interim’ or ‘experimental’.  What happens after the end of the interim period or after the pilot project is completed, or if the 'experiment' somehow fails?  Is it possible that the results are unsatisfactory but the activity cannot end because no one else will take the material?  Interim or experimental solutions really need broadly the same grounds for acceptance as long term solutions do.  Having regard to the likely cost of establishing this kind of facility and the concomitant cost of upgrading supporting infrastructure, experimental or interim proposals would be most feasible where the infrastructure was already substantially present or the elements of a suitable facility were already in existence.  This seems to be the case with the NPT-Minatom proposal described earlier.  Otherwise, it might mean that an interim international spent fuel storage facility would be above ground – say as an extension of the existing high level waste storage at Rokkasho-mura.

Where to go now

On present evidence it seems likely that the Pangea proposal will fail in Australia.  Despite the claims by the company of economic benefits to the country, there is little will in political circles to rationally address the proposal on its merits.  The company's alternative sites (in southern Africa and Argentina) score well on geography but would be well down on most of the other Suzuki criteria.  These sites also have the most extensive implications for sea transportation of nuclear materials and this (as indicated earlier) might raise other difficulties.  Similarly, the NPT-Minatom proposal faces considerable obstacles.  Again, there are transportation problems, this time relating to land transport.  Even if this scheme does go ahead in its present form it would take only a small fraction of the world's present accumulation of spent fuel.  Together these (admittedly preliminary) judgements suggest that neither of these schemes can presently be relied upon to produce a solution to the problem of what the Asia Pacific states will do with their spent fuel and high level wastes.

A new organisation?

The time may now be right to reconsider a cut-down version of the PACATOM proposal.  The states of the region might establish an Asia Pacific institution that would have as its principle function the development of cooperative spent fuel/HLW storage or disposal facilities.  So as to avoid confusion with earlier proposals and the European model from which the name PACATOM was taken, the organisation might call itself the Asia Pacific Nuclear Agency (APNA).  Apart from this central function APNA would also take over some of the transparency and confidence building functions developed earlier by this working group. 

Bearing in mind the Suzuki principles, the organisation might begin by developing a single facility that would be limited in scope and limited in duration.  If it were successful it could be followed by other cooperative schemes, also run by APNA but in different locations.  Essentially the facility should provide for above ground interim storage on an internationally monitored basis for (say) 100 years[24].  The fact that it was on the surface would substantially lessen dependency on geological factors and thus widen the range of possible sites.  The capacity of such a repository would need to be such as to make the project economic and, clearly, the plan would need to address the question as to what happens when the 100 years have elapsed.  One possibility here is to include a levy that would go towards the development of a longer-term repository.  We simply do not know what possibilities technological development will bring.  It is thus undesirable to attempt to commit over a long time period, if it can be avoided.  Whatever may be said about the supposed evils of consigning present problems to generations to come, there are some things that simply have to be left to the future.   The crucial requirement is that the material be left in a form that can be dealt with and that it is safe during the storage period.  Objections to proposals for above ground storage of this kind tend to turn on social uncertainties.  What happens if the structure of society breaks down and crucial knowledge is lost?  This is a situation that has been envisaged in many a Hollywood film.  To judge by the social conditions that are frequently depicted in such features, the existence of a few nuclear dumps would be the least of our worries.  One might also ask how likely such a catastrophic loss of technology really is.

An alternative cooperative project might draw a clear distinction between spent fuel and separated plutonium, on the one hand, and vitrified high level waste on the other.  It is much easier to recognise potential value in the case of the former and these materials have proliferation implications that vitrified high level waste does not have.  This anti-proliferation aspect would also make the project more politically attractive.  On the other hand, too great an emphasis on this would be counter-productive.  The biggest obstacle to setting up any repository scheme, anywhere in the world, is public apprehension about things nuclear.  Any cooperative initiative would need to be careful to avoid this.  A second reason for making the distinction (between spent fuel and HLW) is that future storage for spent fuel is a problem that all the nuclear states in the region have, whereas only Japan and China (on present policy) will accumulate HLW. 

On this basis APNA might begin with a regional, above ground, storage facility for (say) 10,000 tonnes of spent fuel and separated plutonium to serve the needs of Japan, Korea and Taiwan, plus China, if China wished to become involved.  Such a facility would be monitored for performance and the material would be retrievable if performance was not satisfactory.  It would by no means take all the spent fuel in the region but it might take sufficient for it to be very worthwhile for the three or four countries involved.  China and Japan might separately cooperate on a regional High Level Waste repository, which could be of the deep geologic kind.  Both of these projects would be on such a modest scale (having regard to the size of the accumulated stockpile) as to be describable as 'pilot' projects, and thus meeting Professor Suzuki's desiderata.  At this stage a cooperative venture of this kind ought not to be seen as an alternative to existing national programmes, although if it were successful it might supplant national schemes in some cases, particularly those of Korea and Taiwan.

A cooperative storage project of this kind would need to be not only transparent but also proactive.  It should not apologise for itself.  As well as being a service to the countries of the Asia Pacific, it should be seen as an opportunity (perhaps bringing employment and development to a less-developed region) and a positive virtue (in its contribution to combating climate change and promoting security).  Like holding the next Olympics, it should be a possibility to be sought, rather than an imposition to be feared.

Such an opportunity might be of particular interest to China, notwithstanding periodic assertions that China would not take waste from outside the country.  The development of a major interim storage facility in the far west of the country, perhaps followed by a deep-geological repository for permanent placement, could bring substantial development to the region and, potentially, a considerable amount of money.  For China, itself, it could be an important source of foreign exchange, as well as being seen as a valuable contribution to non-proliferation.  If it restricted itself to wastes from NE Asia, a site in China would also have the virtue of having the shortest lines of international (sea) communication.  A facility such as this could be developed and financed by the Pacific region states through an Asia Pacific Nuclear Agency, as outlined above, or the actual development could be sub-contracted to a commercial organisation that would build and operate it.  This would leave to APNA a general supervisory and promotional role (in conjunction with the governments concerned).

If China were not willing to participate in this way (or at all) the problem would fall back on site acceptability.  Again, the ideal would be for the facility to be seen as an opportunity rather than something that was imposed on an unwilling populace.  To this end the aim should be to offer a total concept that would be so attractive that municipalities and district administrations would positively clamor to be considered as the location.  The extreme case would be something like the development of a nuclear 'Disneyland'.  The inspiration for this notion is the visitor centre at BNFL's Sellafield plant in Cumbria, which (it is claimed) is the second most popular tourist destination in the region (and the region is the Lake District).  At the very least, the facility would be open for tours, with interactive displays and illustrated explanations of what is going on.  These would include extensive tracking and monitoring displays but might also include background information about what is being done and why, and how the activities at the site fit into the wider context of nuclear power generation.  The facility could include 'rides', both virtual and real, through basic nuclear processes.  Even without this, an opportunity to walk through the dry storage 'hall' and inspect the casks, with their IAEA safety seals, might be of considerable interest[25].  However extensive the 'Disneyland' feature might be, it would be essential to set up a NEWNET-type network in the locality.  This is an internet-accessible, radiation-monitoring system for public information and education of the sort first established in the Los Alamos district of the United States.  It has been so successful in engendering public confidence and feelings of security that it has been extended to other parts of the United States and, through CSCAP, to NE Asia.  Overall, a cooperative repository of this sort ought to be a test of active transparency, marketing itself as a modern, environmentally-sensitive, attraction - interesting and important, fun and safe.  

A cooperative final repository of the Yucca Mountain or Pangea kind would be a different proposition altogether.  It would raise acute questions about siting and about responsibility for the facility over a very long term.  A repository of this sort would inevitably have to be situated in some distant and inaccessible location.  It could be very economically attractive to a country willing to host it but it might have greater acceptability problems stemming from the very long time horizons envisaged.  On the other hand, the well-worked out Pangea proposals for a repository in Australia and the very detailed studies undertaken for the proposed Yucca Mountain repository show that safety and environmental concerns can be satisfactorily addressed[26].  Although it is taking only low level material, the now fully operational WIPP site also shows that such repositories can pass all regulatory hurdles.  Some sort of permanent disposal may be an appropriate solution for the relatively small amounts of High Level Waste but for reasons adduced above, it may not be desirable as a response to the much larger, spent-fuel problem.  An experimental repository for HLW only, could be a valuable, small-scale cooperative experiment, to be conducted in parallel to the interim spent fuel project.

The countries of the Asia Pacific Region face common problems in dealing with the disposal of materials from the back end of the nuclear cycle and in gaining public acceptance for nuclear activities generally. In these circumstances an urgent investigation of the possibilities for cooperative action could be a serious policy option.     

Appendix 1

World Accumulation of Spent Fuel by 2010

(from SAIC data)

Appendix 3. The desert basins of Western and South Australia

NOTES