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Publicatie Laka-bibliotheek:
THORP and the economics of reprocessing (1990)

AuteurF.Berkhout, W.Walker
Datumnovember 1990
Classificatie 2.05.8.35/08 (GROOT-BRITTANNIË - SELLAFIELD - THORP)
Voorkant

Uit de publicatie:

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

This Report compares the costs of reprocessing spent fuels at the new THORP 
reprocessing plant at Sellafield with the alternative of storing them prior to final 
disposal. It finds that even when the cost of constructing THORP is treated as a sunk 
cost, reprocessing has no decisive economic advantage over spent fuel storage.

THORP is one of three large reprocessing plants which will begin operating in the 
early 1990s, the other two being in France. Together, they will reprocess the majority 
of spent fuels produced by nuclear power reactors in Western Europe and Japan in 
the 1970s and 1980s.

The justifications put forward for these plants when they were designed in the 1970s 
are no longer valid. Natural and enriched uranium have become plentiful, and no-one 
expects plutonium-fuelled fast reactors to be constructed in any number before the 
middle decades of the next Century. The plutonium and uranium recovered from 
spent fuel is therefore no longer required for reasons of economy or supply security. 
In addition, it is now recognized that reprocessing complicates waste management 
by increasing the number and volume of waste streams.

Electric utilities in Western Europe and Japan have already largely paid for the 
construction of the new British and French reprocessing plants. Today, their 
economic judgements therefore depend on the future costs of operating and 
eventually decommissioning the plants, and of dealing with the resulting wastes 
and separated products. The costs attached to reprocessing have risen mainly due 
to the higher estimated costs of waste management and decommissioning, and to 
the costs of coping with unwanted plutonium. Most of these costs are passed directly 
on to utilities and thus electricity consumers under the terms of cost-plus contracts.

Using cost estimates favourable to the reprocessing option, the total future 
undiscounted liabilities arising from the first ten years of THORP reprocessing come 
to £2.4-3.7 billion at today's prices. (These figures do not include some costs, such 
as those relating to plutonium and nuclear waste transport, for which there are no 
published estimates.) This compares with the more predictable although still 
burdensome fuel storage, conditioning and disposal costs of £3.0-3.8 billion. If 
disposal is not anticipated, the economic advantage shifts decisively in favour of 
spent fuel storage: £0.9-1.3 billion against £1.4-2.4 billion for reprocessing.

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