Nuclear Science

U.S. efforts to develop a technology, known as waste transmutation, that might be able to reduce the volume and the radioactivity of nuclear waste have lagged because the Energy Department (DOE) believes that the technology is too costly and unnecessary. Such radioactive waste, the legacy of commercial nuclear power and nuclear weapons production, will have to be buried in a deep geological repository. In essence, any practical application of transmutation is at least decades away, and several roadblocks would likely slow or prevent application should it be pursued. These include current funding constraints; the high cost and the long time needed to develop and implement transmutation; and the technical, institutional, and public challenges that would need to be overcome. Moreover, DOE's waste managers, industry representatives, and others now believe that transmutation is neither necessary nor cost-beneficial.

GAO found that: (1) the advanced liquid-metal/integral fast reactor (ALMR/IFR) concept is well advanced in comparison to the other proposed concepts, will remain relatively stable in geologic repositories, will cost up to $4.2 billion to develop, and will need to overcome many technological challenges for it to be successfully implemented; (2) the Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) accelerator transmutation of waste (ATW) concept offers many size and safety advantages, will require three development phases totalling $2.72 billion, could begin operation in 2016, and will need additional research to overcome its major technical challenges; (3) the feasibility of the nonaqueous version of ATW cannot be determined, since it is still in the early stages of development; (4) the Phoenix transmutation concept offers substantial capacity and energy generating advantages and will cost up to $20 billion to develop, take up to 20 years to implement, and will not transmute as much nuclear waste as other concepts; (5) the particle-bed reactor nuclear waste burner concept offers cost, capacity, and safety advantages, will cost under $2 billion to develop, will require 16 years to implement, and will need to be demonstrated, since it is only in its conceptual stage; and (6) the DOE clean-use of reactor concept is in the early stages of development and will transmute and dispose of nuclear waste more rapidly than the other concepts, but it will need to demonstrate that its benefits outweigh its significant cost and technical risks.