Used Fuel Management: Redirection to Recycling

Abstract

The realization that CANDU reactors produce highly radiotoxic long-lived used nuclear fuel prompted the Hare Report in 1977. Forty years later the Hare recommendation of burial of the material in the granite of the Canadian Shield is still being pursued by the Nuclear Waste Management Organization (NWMO). Meanwhile, technology developments on fast-neutron reactors and recycling have indicated how this sparsely-used fuel can be ~100% reused and extensively detoxified. Recent studies, including those of the Ontario Ministry of Energy and the NWMO itself, have calculated the potential of hugely reducing the million-year radiotoxic transuranic fuel components within decades. The need for massive replacement of fossil energy as part of Ontario’s climate change efforts, suggests it is time to reexamine the necessity and indeed the appropriateness of discarding the used CANDU fuel at all. A redirection of used fuel management is needed to make use of such an enormous CO₂-free energy resource.