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GAO: Clarification of HLW definition could save DOE billions
A clearer definition of what constitutes high-level radioactive waste could save the Department of Energy’s Office of Environmental Management “tens of billions of dollars” in waste management costs and accelerate its cleanup schedule by decades, according to a report by the U.S. Government Accountability Office.
DOE-EM’s efforts to manage waste resulting from legacy spent nuclear fuel reprocessing have been hindered for decades by the ambiguity of the statutory definition of HLW as laid out in the Atomic Energy Act and Nuclear Waste Policy Act, the report states. While admitting that the DOE has taken steps to overcome this ambiguity, the GAO says that the department has not fully evaluated all available opportunities to treat and dispose of waste more economically as either transuranic or low-level radioactive waste.
Paul J. Meier, Gerald L. Kulcinski
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 39 | Number 2 | March 2001 | Pages 507-512
Fusion Economic Studies | doi.org/10.13182/FST01-A11963286
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
This study summarizes a recent life-cycle net energy analysis (NEA) on a modern natural gas turbine power plant for comparison against DT fusion and conventional technologies (coal, fission, and wind). The NEA results are used as the basis for developing a life-cycle greenhouse gas (GHG) emission rate. The GHG emission rate for DT fusion is 9 metric tonnes of CO2 equivalent emitted per gigawatt electric hour produced (T/GWeh). This rate compares favorably against gas turbine (464 T/GWeh) and conventional coal (974 T/GWeh), and competitively against fission (15 T/GWeh) and wind (15 T/GWeh). The implications of this research for U.S. GHG mitigation are discussed. In evaluated scenarios, the installed nuclear and renewable capacity in the U.S. must quadruple by 2050 to maintain a Kyoto based emission target, with fusion and/or other renewable sources comprising 43-59% of U.S. capacity.
