56 THE FIVE-YEAR OUTLOOK 



The future of nuclear power in the United States will 

 depend on changing economic and political factors, and 

 these factors will be strongly influenced by emerging 

 scientific and technological capabilities. Priority pro- 

 grams during the next 5 years will continue ( 1 ) to improve 

 the safety and operating efficiency of the present genera- 

 tion of light water reactors, (2) to develop provisions for 

 the permanent, safe disposal of high-level radioactive 

 reactor wastes; and (3) to pursue exploratory research and 

 development that will be required to commercialize ad- 

 vanced fission reactor systems. 



Additionally, the feasibility of designing nuclear reac- 

 tors for uses other than electricity generation could attract 

 attention. These possible uses include supplying process 

 heat for manufacturing and. significantly, for a synthetic 

 fuel industry. 



1979. It is worth noting the consensus of the Kemeny 

 Commission that the failure at Three Mile Island was not 

 with the nuclear reactor itself but. rather, with the coup- 

 ling between the reactor and the more conventional parts 

 of the plant where the steam produced by the heat in the 

 reactor core generates electricity. Moreover, as the Com- 

 mission pointed out. the control panels at Three Mile 

 Island were badly designed so that it was difficult for 

 operators to assess the problem that was developing in the 

 system and take the proper corrective action. Indeed, a 

 good deal of the control system could have been more 

 automated. Finally, the operators themselves were inade- 

 quately trained to deal with emergency situations." In 

 short, the conclusions of the Kemeny Commission re- 

 affirmed the inherent safety of light water nuclear reactors 

 (ENERGY). 



IMPROVING THE SAFETY AND EFFICIENCY OF LIGHT 

 WATER REACTORS 



Until the mid-1970s, the design of and the economics 

 associated with presently operating light water reactors 

 assumed that the spent fuel elements removed from the 

 reactors would be reprocessed to separate the remaining 

 uranium from the waste material, and that uranium would 

 thereby become available for new fuel elements. Presently 

 available reprocessing and recycling processes also sepa- 

 rate out plutonium. which can be used for nuclear weap- 

 ons (Outlook /, V. II. pp. 153-54. 160-61). This circum- 

 stance raised concerns about nuclear weapons prolifera- 

 tion and led. in 1977. to a moratorium on reprocessing 

 plants construction in the United States. Although the 

 President lifted this moratorium in October 1981. most 

 light water reactors will almost certainly continue to oper- 

 ate in a once-through mode for several years. For that 

 reason, there is considerable interest in improving the 

 efficiency of power plants, since even small incremental 

 gains can result in large economic benefits. Two ap- 

 proaches are being pursued: first, increasing the fraction 

 of usable fuel that actually undergoes fission by using 

 different fuel materials and core designs; second, using 

 higher temperature coolants and more efficient turbines 

 that can use a greater fraction of the heat produced in the 

 reactor core to generate electricity (ENERGY). 



Topics involving light water reactor safety that are 

 being explored by Federally supported research include 

 the man-machine interface in plant systems, improve- 

 ments in reactor containment and improved means to 

 minimize the release of radioactive gases into the bio- 

 sphere, in response to public concerns about this topic. 

 Studies aimed at an improved understanding of core melt 

 accident phenomenology and at better methodologies for 

 risk assessment are also being pursued. This refocused 

 attention on reactor safety derives in part from the wide 

 ranging public debate about nuclear safety that followed 

 in the wake of the Three Mile Island accident in March 



DISPOSAL OF HIGH-LEVEL WASTES 



Adequate, permanent disposal of high-level nuclear 

 wastes will continue to be both a policy and a technologi- 

 cal issue during the next 5 years. At present, spent fuel 

 elements removed from light water reactors are tem- 

 porarily stored at various aboveground locations, and 

 could remain in such locations indefinitely without con- 

 stituting a public risk. Since the 1977 moratorium on 

 reprocessing and recycling has been lifted, these elements 

 could ultimately be reprocessed to recover reusable, fis- 

 sionable materials. If such a procedure comes to be em- 

 ployed, the residual liquid, high-level, long-lived radioac- 

 tive wastes could then be dried and encapsulated in an 

 inert material such as glass, ceramic, or concrete prior to 

 being sealed into canisters for ultimate underground dis- 

 posal. Technologies for encapsulation in glass are well 

 understood. A 2-year pilot test has been completed in 

 France, though there are indications that certain ceramics 

 are superior to glass from the perspectives of cost and 

 process efficiency (NRC-8). The problem of isolating 

 bulkier solid, intact, unreprocessed fuel rods from the 

 environment prior to burial is somewhat different, and 

 research aimed at resolving this problem will be pursued 

 during the next 5 years (ENERGY). 



There are a number of candidates available for deep, 

 geological isolation of canistered wastes of either the 

 liquid or solid type. These include cavities constructed in 

 deep salt, basalt, or shale beds, volcanic tuff and granite, 

 or related crystalline rock formations. National policy 

 will focus on assessing the relative merits of these dif- 

 ferent geological options during the next 5 years, with 

 disposal in the deep ocean floors a more distant possibility 

 (NRC-8). Federal criteria for site selection and approval 

 for the disposal of different waste forms based on these 

 assessments will be refined during the next 5 years 

 (ENERGY). 



