171 



FUEL REPROCESSING AND WASTE DISPOSAL 



Commercial use of nuclear energy requires many auxiliary technical 

 services and products. One such service, the reprocessing of used nu- 

 clear fuels, received special attention during efforts of the United 

 States to stimulate commercial nuclear power in Europe. Since a key 

 U.S. incentive was the offer to repurchase plutonium or residual ura- 

 nium-235 from European power reactors, there naturally arose the 

 question of who would reprocess these fuel materials. The question 

 was made somewhat more complex by the domestic policy of the 

 United States, which sought to establish a self-sufficient nuclear in- 

 dustry. During the 1950s one missing link in the U.S. nuclear industry 

 was a capability to reprocess used fuels and to store the intensely radio- 

 active wastes separated from the used nuclear fuels. 



Domestic policy was announced by the AEC on February 18, 1957, 

 when it committed itself to contract with domestic reactor operators to 

 reprocess their fuel through June 30, 1967. However, as the AEC at 

 that time lacked statutory authority to extend this offer to foreign re- 

 actor operators, there remained a gap in the technical services needed 

 to promote nuclear power in Europe. In 1957 the Commission pro- 

 posed to the Joint Committee on Atomic Energy that the Atomic 

 Energy Act be amended to authorize the Commission to enter into con- 

 tracts to reprocess nuclear fuels from foreign power reactors, provided 

 that comparable services were available to the domestic nuclear in- 

 dustry. The Joint Committee, in favorably reporting this legislation, 

 amended it to require that the term of such reprocessing contracts be 

 limited to the term of the bilateral agreement in effect, or to compa- 

 rable periods offered to the domestic nuclear power plants. In recom- 

 mending this action, the Joint Committee underscored the principle 

 that while the United States could offer technical aid and assistance 

 through the Commission, it could not offer special terms and conditions 

 unavailable to the domestic nuclear industry. 83 



The new authority was not used until after nearly 5 years, when 

 the first return shipment of used nuclear fuel arrived from Sweden 

 and was sent to the AEC's Idaho Chemical Processing Plant. The 

 costs of processing and shipping were paid by Sweden, which in turn 

 received credit for the plutonium and residual uranium-235 recovered 

 from the fuel. 84 The intensely radioactive wastes left over from the re- 

 covery were stored at the Idaho plant with similar wastes from do- 

 mestic fuel. 



Later, when commercial nuclear fuel reprocessing plants began to 

 be built, the AEC negotiated bilateral agreements wherein it had the 

 option to decide whether the reprocessing would be done in its facilities 

 or in those of the domestic nuclear industry. In this way the AEC 

 hoped to expand the market for the U.S. fuel reprocessors. 



While much was made of the arrangements for fuel reprocessing 

 during the late 1950's, the unexpectedly slow growth of nuclear power 

 in Europe and the high cost of shipping the intensely radioactive, 

 used nuclear fuels combined to limit their return flow to the United 



83 The new authority was given to the Commission in Public Law 85-681, 72 Stat. 632. 



H U.S. Atomic Energv Commission. Annual Report to Congress of the Atomic Energy 



Commission for 1963 (Washington, D.C. : U.S. Government Printing Office, 1964), p. 236. 



