BEIJING
(AP) — Chinese scientists have mastered the technology for reprocessing
fuel from nuclear power plants, potentially boosting the supplies of
carbon-free electricity to keep the country’s economy booming, state
television reported Monday.
The
breakthrough will extend by many times the amount of power that can be
generated from China’s nuclear plants as fissile and fertile materials
are recovered to be new fuel, CCTV said.
Several
European countries, Russia, India and Japan already reprocess nuclear
fuel — the actual materials used to make nuclear energy — to separate
and recover the unused uranium and plutonium, reduce waste and safely
close the nuclear cycle.
The CCTV report gave no details on whether or when China would begin reprocessing on an industrial scale.
China
overtook the United States as the world’s largest energy consumer in
2009, years before it was expected to do so, according to the
Paris-based International Energy Agency.
But
it is heavily dependent on coal, a major pollutant. It has 13 nuclear
power plants in use now and ambitiously plans to add potentially
hundreds more.
Reprocessing
nuclear fuel costs significantly more than using it once and storing it
as waste. It is also controversial because extracted plutonium can be
used in nuclear weapons, although China has long had a nuclear arsenal.
U.S.
commercial reprocessing of plutonium was halted by then-President Jimmy
Carter because of nuclear proliferation worries. Then-President George
W. Bush proposed a resumption, but the National Research Council found
it not economically justifiable. President Barack Obama scrapped the
Bush effort.
Recovered
plutonium and — when prices are high — uranium can be re-used. Some
reactors can use other reprocessed components, potentially multiplying
the amount of energy that results from the original uranium fuel by
about 60 times.
Wang
Junfeng, project director for the state-run China National Nuclear
Corporation, told CCTV the Chinese scientists employed a chemical
process that was effective and safe.
“In
this last experiment, we made a preparation of standard quality uranium
products and standard quality plutonium products, so we can say we were
successful,” Wang said.
CCTV said the country has enough fuel now to last up to 70 years and the breakthrough could yield enough to last 3,000 years.
To
produce that amount of fuel, however, China would have to build a
hugely expensive and highly dangerous breeder reactor, said Matthew
Bunn, an expert on the Chinese nuclear program at Harvard University’s
John F. Kennedy School of Government.
Rather
than build a breeder reactor or even start reprocessing on a commercial
scale, China should simply store used fuel for the next several decades
while safer and less expensive technology emerges, Bunn said.
“Reprocessing
the spent fuel is much more dangerous,” Bunn said, adding that it
increased the risk of nuclear terrorism if recovered fuel were stolen.
CCTV
says the details of the process the Chinese scientists developed after
20 years’ work are being kept secret. The technologies used in other
countries also are considered industrial secrets and generally not
shared.
Bunn
said China build a pilot-scale reprocessing plant several years ago but
repeatedly postphoned using it, possibly because of technical problems.
“My interpretation of this statement is that they have resolved whatever issues were delaying that,” Bunn said.
China’s
total 2009 energy consumption, including sources ranging from oil and
coal to wind and solar power, was equal to 2.265 billion tons of oil,
compared with 2.169 billion tons used by the U.S., the IEA said.
The
consumption boom reflects China’s transformation from a nation of
subsistence farmers to one of workers increasingly trading bicycles for
cars and buying air conditioners and other energy-hungry home
electronics.
That
has also bestowed on China status as the world’s biggest polluter,
although Beijing has long pointed at developed nations in climate change
talks and resists international pressure for it to take a larger role
in curbing greenhouse gas emissions.
SOURCE: The Associated Press