Two unavoidable essential requirements for a Canadian long-term waste-free nuclear future: Recycling of used fuel and fast-spectrum fissile-breeder SMRs

Abstract

The development of CANDU technology with natural uranium as fuel 65 years ago was a brilliant step in utilizing nuclear energy. Nevertheless, although offering an industry-best energy yield of 0.74%, this technology still leaves the remaining 99.26% heavy atoms unused, all being valuable non-carbon fuel. Refurbished CANDU technology continues fueling with now rapidly exhausting Canadian uranium reserves. Therefore it is crucial also to adopt two Canadian- developed methodologies that permit the extraction of 130 times more energy from the same fuel, enough energy for millennia: 1) fuel recycling technologies, e.g. pyroprocessing developed at the Argonne National Laboratories (ANL) by Saskatchewan-born Charles E. Till, and 2) fissile-breeding fast-spectrum reactors, such as first built by Kitchener-born Walter Zinn, also at the ANL, to recycle existing used-CANDU-fuel components. Such recycling provides Canadian-grown HALEU-equivalent enriched starting fuel for all SMRs. Crucially, it avoids dependence on foreign fuel suppliers for Canada’s future nuclear energy needs. Moreover, it effectively eliminates the million-year radiotoxicity of heavy atoms in Canada’s used fuel stockpiles, substituting stable or short-term-radioactive fission products, e.g. useful medium- sized valuable platinum-group-metal catalysts, scarce rare earth atoms, or costly noble gases. Such a beneficial about-turn questions the current design, or even need, of the World’s and Canada’s deep nuclear fuel waste repositories.