Well, good afternoon everybody welcome. We're we're delighted you're here This is a rare opportunity that brings Ernie and me back together in each other's company. We work together gosh, how many years ago already this was back when When I was I was younger and you were a good-looking. I mean, I don't know how all that works out Yeah, I said it's it's a political configuration soon to be revisited because we got to know each other back in 1994 of course Congress Chates hands and things got really rock-and-sock them back then so it was a we're both just Rejoicing that we're not in government right now. I hate to say that actually it's it's one of the great advantages that think tanks and universities bring to America the ideal landscape is the capacity to Think freshly and to think freely, you know, I think one of the great problems that That governments have these days is that it's very hard to explore new ideas without them becoming politically Dangerous, you know as soon as you just open up the idea you're thinking about it It immediately becomes the substance of ranker political debate as people are trying to score points on each other And this is one of the one of the real dilemmas that we have Modern America has is how do we explore new ideas? for a national policy direction and Get it past to this bear pit of Washington, you know, and it's pretty hard for the government to do that kind of thinking and Thankfully we have fabulous institutions like MIT that are able to do some of this for us This is part of a remarkable series that MIT has done on energy You know about their coal work, you know about the This is the nuclear project, of course, it's been one of the early ones. It's been your first one was what? 2003, you know, and so it's it's substantially shaped the landscape of the Ideas industry. I mean we've been thinking and discussing debating Affirming things that were in that study, but I would say that the policy world shaped Where the policy world meets the political world? It has not we've not seen that kind of progress. We've seen if anything very static intellectual environment But that's now changing We don't know how it's gonna go. I mean it's changing fairly profoundly We've just as everyone knows we've shut down work on what senator Chick Hect once described as the nuclear suppository out and We think he simply was confused But there's an open debate about that But then okay, what does that mean? But what does that mean and You know for what 30 years we've Had kind of a worldview that there's an open fuel cycle and a closed fuel cycle and people have taken positions You know, it's a little like World War one, you know, everybody's in their trenches. Everybody's got their guns We're ready to fire as soon as we see any movement, right? Well, I mean we'd really need to put ourselves in a new space We need to think a little bit more freely and it's something so hard to be done Politically, you know this Pete from your experience, you know So what we need to do is try to bring forth people who have been thinking about this Bring them into the policy landscape in Washington to start an honest debate Where you still have a chance to think, you know sooner or later It's gonna be where people will stop thinking and just simply argue for their position But let's use this as an opportunity to think together and Ernie I want to say thank you to you pretty we've been friends for quite a few years. We've enjoyed This I've learned a lot from you. I don't think you've learned much from me and that's not because of you and This is going to be an extension of that today from you and your colleagues and thank you all for being here And let me turn it to you Ernie once you get us started. Thank you all for coming Thank you. Thank you John. I forgot I after you I put the microphone down quite a bit, but And I was very gracious and John and I as you can probably get a hint there have certainly had a lot of fun over the last 15 years and John has been of course an enormous contributor to our national security concerns In so many roles I do have one housekeeping thing to say I believe on the on the Open mind we have some press and I would just ask that Please put your phones on mute for the moment and then in the Q&A will we'll turn to the disembodied voices of of the distant distant press Thank you very much for Coming here today. We've been working at this future nuclear fuel cycle study for Two to three years let's say somewhere in that range when I'll describe the the the group a little bit As John mentioned, we've had a series of these future of nuclear power future of coal future of natural gas Soon future of solar energy future of the grid Studies where we try to combine a rigorous technically grounded analysis In the end with a view towards policy steps that can help enable these technologies to be major contributors in the energy mix Dressing climate and addressing security addressing all of our energy needs so We will try we hope we have brought that focus to this set of questions around the nuclear fuel cycle We've revisited nuclear Because since 2003 there have been a lot of changes some such as Clearly increased nuclear power deployment globally some like I Would maintain a heightened sensitivity and concern about climate change risk, but also a lot of confusion Yucca Mountain was just mentioned by by John Hamery. We've had GNEP. We've had a lot a lot of recycling discussions And so we just thought this was a very timely Contribution that we could hopefully make to the debate. So let me first note that as I said we have a large group at MIT In my colleagues here Charles Forsberg first is the executive director of the study Professor Mujid Kazami Co-chair of the study. I'd also like to recognize Two other members that I at least see here John Parsons in the back there who put his hand up to Note that he's the economist here in the front Monica Regal Budo who was a visiting scientist in nuclear engineering I believe she spends some time at Argonne National Laboratory as her day job But it was a visitor look at on fuel cycle fuel cycle technologies. If I've missed anyone, please Announce yourself. I'll just mention that on the right Names that probably none of you recognize but will in 10 or 20 years are the students who actually did it did all the work So it's been a great great effort Crossing many many disciplines We also have had an outstanding Understanding advisory committee chaired by by Phil former congressman Phil sharp now presidents president of resources for the future Number of other names who you recognize. I think Dick Mazzerve is there one member of our advisory committee and Dick will be happy to answer questions later on about the point Let me also note that we had a series of sponsors EPRI was our our lead a sponsor, but Many other sponsors Idaho NEI Riva GE Westinghouse energy solutions in NAC We appreciate the support very much I do want to emphasize that neither the advisory committee nor the sponsors necessarily Well, they're not responsible for all of the conclusions and recommendations Although I do think that that we have a good alignment and finally, let me just note that I think Well, we are extraordinarily Happy with this wonderful turnout and a lot of old friends can see here But let me also just recognize in particular Pete Miller here the assistant secretary for nuclear energy including Now bringing on into his embrace The responsibilities for waste management and principal deputy Pete Lyons Who many of you also know from the NRC in a previous incarnation? Etc. So and I am gonna one more I think I see senator my eyes are not good but senator Johnston Bennett Johnston Who was an advisor on everything even if not listed is also here. So anyway with that Oh my god, and my old boss Jack Gibbons now is here as well This We had better move on I think to the to the questions at hand what we're going to do is Go the following way. I will do a quick run through kind of a high-level narrative of our main conclusions findings some recommendations try to go through that fairly quickly and then Charles and Brigid are going to come up and go into more depth into three of the essential issues that underpin These recommendations not all but three of them on uranium resources the questions of long-term storage and then the questions of fuel cycle Evolution and choices, okay, so let me just start with that again quick Quick narrative, and then we'll have hopefully plenty of time for for Q&A So the first thing is that For the next several decades in the United States The once-through fuel cycle using light-water reactors is the preferred economic option and frankly given time constants for change in your business Is pretty much what will happen? Certainly for some period the This is underpinned by several Important points by the way we do go back to the statement that in the end The analyses are most interesting of course in looking at a growth scenario Where nuclear power might might scale up substantially over the next half century and century? in that context It still remains a Recommendation we made in 2003 That the most important issue for moving in that direction would be Building some set of first mover plants in the United States and so accelerating the implementation of that program We don't want to lose sight of the fact that that is That is of course critical, but we're going to be moving on Sorry in this briefing and focus more on these questions of the fuel cycle There's no shortage of any resources that will be gone into in much more depth reiterate that the basic scientific the scientific basis for Geological isolation and the management of spent nuclear fuel is sound so we feel confident that This will be implemented would also re-emphasize that the resource extension and waste management benefits of What we'd call limited recycling kind of the once-through mocks is very very minimal and We do not Therefore suggest that that would be a near-term approach and finally comment that fuel cycle transitions and this will be Reinforced quantitatively by Mujid. They just take a very very long time and with the Presumed the pathway presumed for a long time plutonium-fed High conversion ratio fast reactors We would be having many Lwrs required to be built to service a growth based upon that technology and secondly in the growth scenario Dynamically in this century There would be very very little difference not very I mean I don't mean Like 30% I mean not orders of magnitude difference in things like transuranic inventories and uranium needs now on the transuranic inventories. This will be discussed They may be in very different places In the in the fuel cycle, but the total inventories are not materially different That's all in kind of reinforcing this high level message on the once-through fuel cycle second We believe that planning that is a planning horizon of the order of a century Should be built in to our fuel cycle design for managed or interim storage that this is a Optimum way of thinking about the fuel cycle going forward It doesn't mean that you couldn't do something else before a hundred years If you decided to go to a repository if you decided to to the process But as a planning horizon we feel first of all it is very important to build considerations of storage time into your architecture and we feel a century or so is the right kind of scale Besides having things like cooling off fuel This this can and should preserve options for disposal Reprocessing and recycle and why are options important because there are major uncertainties the major uncertainties are societal Such as what's the growth trajectory of nuclear power which has an enormous Implication for how you would choose a fuel cycle going forward. What are your non proliferation norms, etc? And there are also technical issues Including with closed fuel cycles, maybe thermal reactors end up being an approach Maybe you go to low conversion ratio, which we will basically recommend Maybe you go to different ways of starting your fast reactors We would suggest that today We really don't know whether spent nuclear fuel from light water reactors is a resource or a waste in Terms of future optimal fuel cycle choices One technical point and again, this will be gone into more detail is that conversion ratio of one or one plus Epsilon Is sustainable and has advantages as one thinks about the dynamics of fuel cycle development over the over the over the century in fact the presumption of 35 years ago or so That high conversion ratio Was was important really limited and constrain the the technology choices and and the opening up of that technology space Allows for many other Pathways some of which could have major Implications in the policy world such as the possibility of starting fast reactors with uranium relieving your constraints of Feeding the beasts with plutonium Not forcing for the light water reactor Construction and then treating spent nuclear fuel as a waste We're not saying that is the pathway, but that's an example of a very very different technology pathway Not a big stretch from what we're talking about technically that has quite different implications In fact, we would feel that in the nuclear business and this goes back And senator Johnston was there this goes back to The dynamics of Setting off in the fuel cycle directions in the United States was one in which We chose a constrained pathway in terms of requirements Whereas would argue in many businesses Maintaining options Expensively has enormous value and this is what this does Fundamentally and finally in terms of these highest level first messages and waste management clearly geological isolation Disposal is going to be needed for any fuel cycle choice and we should We certainly advocate moving as aggressively as we can to resolve issues like repository Citing with a public process, but our we want to make a few other points One is that in the United States our choices about different parts of the fuel cycle have been made largely independently What in fact there are strong reasons to link those decisions together The repository the geology the geochemistry the waste forms the fuel forms the reactor Etc. I should all be thought of In an integrated way it there are material Consequences for not doing so and the history of yucca mountain can be explored to exemplify some of those consequences Secondly our waste management system is rather unusual in that it has In many cases pathways defined by Source of the waste as opposed to composition and risk in the waste This has led to Orphans in our system it will lead to more orphans as we go forward We need to move to a risk defined waste management classification and and and system We also talk about a set of characteristics that we believe an effective waste management Organization should have and and see that these are drawn not only from pure thought but also from experience in Sweden and other countries things like The ability to engage in site selection in concert with governments and communities Management of the funds The ability to negotiate Removal of waste and spent fuel The ability to engage in policy and regulatory bodies In on fuel cycle choices and waste I mean up to now it's just been assumed You we think of a wonderful fuel cycle and the waste will get taken care of what we're concerned about is what goes back to the reactor Well, that's right. That's not right We need to have a view of what's happening with the waste streams continuity of management We would observe that none of these characteristics are recognizable in our Program at least up to date and that does lead us to recommend a quasi-government waste management organization if it can be Invested with these kinds of authorities. It makes no point to do it without providing the authorities And I'll just finally comment. Those are kind of the I would say the main That's the main Gestalt but let me comment briefly on two other issues and then turn it over to Charles and Brigitte on on proliferation Very important issue to which the responses are principally Institutional we do advocate some version of Of fuel leasing, but let's just emphasize here in this fuel cycle discussion that the absence of functioning waste management programs in the United States and in other major supplier countries is a real constraint on our Non-proliferation and security policy development because Fundamentally in any form of fuel leasing, let's call it involving small programs The supplier is engaged in managing the waste to spend fuel from the reactor So just to point out that in the security world as well The inability to resolve waste management is a serious serious constraint And finally on the on the R&D side our D&D side first of all especially since Pete Miller and Pete Lyons are here. We want to say that the It's objectively the case that we think that the 2010 Roadmap that DOE is produced has been a major step forward in terms of ordering priorities along The strategic questions that we face in developing nuclear power So it's not abandoning issues certainly of fast reactors and advanced fuel cycles But we need to work for example light water reactors is the workhorse We have a lot we could do in terms of improving light water reactors and fuels etc And I would say truth of the advertising at MIT. We are a partner in the simulation hub For example established at Oak Ridge very very important initiative focused on improving Light water reactors and their contributions to nuclear power. So we have we are very supportive of that the We in the end About a billion dollars a year as an appropriate R&D budget with about a third of that Dedicated to rebuilding or building a research infrastructure without which the kinds of things that we're talking about can't happen So that we believe is is a program. We all understand these are not exactly flushed times In the congressional appropriations process But I'll be thinking this is the kind of scale that we need to build up pretty quickly If we are going to use the time wisely in the next one or two decades to establish the technology space Narrowed down the time will come for a large-scale Demonstrations, but right now we think there are many many options to be defined. So with that, let me turn it over to Charles and and and we'll see and then we'll open up to questions. Thank you I'm going to discuss two subjects today uranium resources and spent fuel storage At first like to discuss our conclusions on uranium resources Our basic finding is there's no shortage of uranium that might constrain future commitments to build new nuclear plants For much of the century Having said that the central importance of understanding uranium resources is Efficiently high that we recommend an R&D program to provide a higher confidence in our projections of uranium resources For the remainder of this century Not we did a cost assessment of uranium resources versus cumulative use I'd like to mention a couple of the highlights now some background information First a light water reactor needs about 200 tons a year and the cost of this uranium is two to four percent of the cost of the electricity two to four percent and That means that substantial increases in uranium prices fifty to a hundred percent Have small impacts on the cost of electrical power from a nuclear power plant You know a 50% increase in the uranium cost is you know one to two percent increase in the cost of electricity very important point to understand Second we evaluated the cost of uranium mining versus cumulative worldwide uranium production inputs for our assessment included uranium resources estimated versus ore grade the economics of scale and Technological learning over a period of a long time of decades or centuries Last I'm just going to give one single point of Comparison our best estimate is is that a 50% increase in uranium cost that is about a 1% or 2% cost increase in the cost of nuclear power Would occur if you if the nuclear enterprise worldwide expanded by a factor of 10 and All of those reactors operated for a full century Gives you a quantitative feel of what our assessment was Now I'd like to point to some other experimental data That I think you may find a very interesting as you know uranium's a metal like copper zinc nickel iron Cobalt and if you take a look at the prices of 25 Metals over the last century you see this curve which shows the time and the dollars per ton of various Various metals inflation adjusted over time now obviously you cannot read those fine lines From where you are in the audience But the noteworthy feature about all of this cost data over a century is that the prices Inflation-justed have not increased for all of these particular metals And in many cases such as a copper the production of those metals went up by a factor of a hundred or a Factor of a thousand in a century and yet the price did not and of course this reflects Technological learning and a variety of other factors factors that we think are also applicable to uranium that brief discussion I would now like to turn to the broader issue of spent fuel management Our basic finding spent fuel storage reduces repository cost and performance uncertainties fuel cycle transition times require a half century or more and Storage provides the time to decide whether LWR spent fuel is a waste or a resource and because of those three factors We have come to the recommendation that planning for long-term interim storage of spent nuclear fuel on the scale of a century should be an integral part of Fuel cycle design you may not in fact keep it in storage for a century You may make a decision in 10 or 20 years, but the planning basis Planning basis should be on the now on the time frame of a century Let me go a little further to details of why we came to that conclusion first issue Repository programs sport store spent fuel to reduce repository size cost and performance uncertainties as shown to the in the graph to the right the decay heat from spent fuel Decreases with time and as that decay heat decreases with time the cost of your repository goes down the size of your repository goes down And your performance uncertainties go down In short because of this every repository program in the world has concluded that spent fuel should be stored for 40 to 60 years before disposal and countries that carefully thought through the fuel cycle Sweden with the once-through fuel cycle France with the Partial recycle built spent fuel storage facilities in the 1980s With the explicit goal to store that spent fuel for several decades before disposal or other operations the short it was viewed as a requirement a requirement a technical requirement for waste management in Fact we have the same requirement in the United States Let's take a look at the proposed Yucca Mountain repository system now As you know by law, this is a repository. It's not a spent fuel storage facility because it's been declared a repository by law But let's take a look at what was sent in as the licensing document to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission The operating schedule for this repository is that we would spend three decades filling it and For the following 50 years after the repository was filled We would keep the tunnels open and operate the ventilation systems to cool the spent fuel Cooling the spent fuel storing the spent fuel until the decay heat decreased In effect Yucca Mountain would become a repository when the fans were shut off and the repository was closed Which would be a minimum 50 years after the last ton of spent fuel went into the repository So although the sign says repository on the door the technical reality The technical characteristics of spent fuel drove the designers to have in effect a 50-year underground storage capability built into Yucca Mountain Second observation of which professor Cosamy will address it takes 50 to 100 years for a fuel cycle transition If we talk about fuel cycle transitions a century is the time frame of relevance And I will leave that professor Cosamy to go into that in third additional detail Last it will be decades before we know whether LWR spent fuel is a valuable resource or a waste LWR spent fuel of course has a high energy content It is equivalent to a super strategic petroleum reserve and that says we should be cautious before we throw it away At the same time we have to acknowledge that spent nuclear fuel LWR spent fuel in particular could be a waste There are alternative strategies to start up fast reactors sustainable with sustainable fuel cycles using low enriched uranium And we have some reasons to believe that these alternative strategies May be more economic and if they're more economic than an LWR in fact becomes spent fuel becomes a waste a couple of other conclusions on spent fuel Particularly spent fuel at decommission sites We made the following finding the burden of spent fuel storage is small at an operating site However, this is not true for decommission sites where there are no longer normal reactor operations associated with spent fuel handling storage and security in addition Spent fuel storage limits reuse of these sites these sites have valuable characteristics transmission grids availability of water good Transportation and the spent fuel storage on a decommission site limits the future use of those particular sites Because of these considerations we recommend that the US move towards centralized spent fuel storage start sites Starting initially with spent fuel from decommission sites and in support of a long-term spent fuel management strategy now like to briefly talk and discuss spent fuel storage options a central finding either distributed storage that is at the reactor or centralized long-term storage or Storage in a repository Retrievable retrievable repository is technically sound so there are at least three major options with different policy and economic implications and we and we need to recognize that we have choices choices here There's not just one choice for spent fuel storage Having said that we also have a recommendation and that is we recommend an RD and D program should be devoted to confirm and Extend the safe storage and transport period We believe storage is safe for a very long time But all of the supporting experimental data required to give high confidence in those conclusions does not currently exist in this I prudent practice like looking at uranium resources is to take a look at this and make sure we have a high confidence level in terms of long-term policies With that I will turn to professor Cosamy who will describe the results of some of our systems analysis studies As you can tell my two colleagues said we don't want to deal with numbers you deal with them So I hope I don't bore you but I'm gonna describe the results of a system simulation of the nuclear energy Evolution over a century starting from roughly where we are today and the focus is of course on the US but we do keep in mind the international conditions as We get to certain parts of this It is important to realize that Very few times did we take a look at the whole thing in our Choices for the future in order to make the right choices for optimizing the entire system more often the evolution of our energy Sours has been Optimized by a component, you know like what a reactor. This is the way best way to do it the fast reactor This is the best way to do it the repository. This is the best way to do it and the fact of the matter is Every decision that's important in one component will have an effect on the other components and System studies have to be part of the overall assessment of the evolution of nuclear energy And what are we concerned about we're concerned about, you know the availability of the fuel resource how much transuranics are being produced and What sort of infrastructure for the industry for recycling that we have to build in and so forth This is the characteristics that we will be pointing out from the results of our study We had to concentrate on few choices. There are many variations that one can Interrogate and in fact, we have done some variations, but the main fuel cycles that we looked at are the Today's reactors light water reactors with the open fuel cycle from mine uranium the limited recycle in thermal reactors I'll say the French way where you get plutonium recycled in light water reactors Or you can look for fast reactors to do some recycling in the future depending on the desired objective You have to design the reactor to either be a burner of plutonium with a conversion ratio of point seven five Or a self-sustaining reactor with a conversion ratio of one or a breeder Which can produce more energy than a more fuel than it consumes and we looked at a GE produced design in the past all of which were metal fuel reactors And we think use the same principles and therefore they have a consistency in between them There are many assumptions that have to be applied when you do a system studies I will not bore you with Discussing all of them, but we assume that the range of growth in nuclear energy Realistically is going to be between 1% and 4% over the century You could argue that maybe you know some some higher numbers could have been used but Still 4% means that you need to add four reactors per year today Maybe ten reactors per year in 2050 and that's a considerable addition The advanced reactors will come at a later time for mox recycling. We said 2025 for fast reactors We said 2040 and we played with the timing for introduction of those and there is some effect But frankly in the overall system. It's not a big one Another important consideration is we did assume that uranium will be recycled with Plutonium for the fast reactors. So the numbers that you will see reflect Uranium recycling as well as plutonium recycling. So if you look at the demand for nuclear energy under the three Scenarios you see some numbers here With the various fuel cycle choices. Let's concentrate on the medium or the base case of 2.5 percent growth and That means approximately 250 gigawatts in 2050 If we were to turn to mox in 2025 only about 40 gigawatts would come from mox and if we start the fast reactors in 2025 only about 20 Gigawatts will come from fast reactors Whereas of course at the end of the century much more will come from the fast reactors But notice that under any scenario two observations under any scenario we have here fast reactors will supply No more than half actually less than half the total energy at the end of the century So the light-water reactors are with us for the entire century And they are the backbone of the system as it develops as you can see here This is how much installed right water capacity. It's increasing all the time no matter what scenario we are Addressing the other thing that I should point out is there is very little difference in terms of penetration or demand for The advanced technologies between building them with a self-sustaining conversion ratio of one That's the middle number in the fast reactor rows Or the last number to the right, which is the breeder that can produce 1.2 3 Times the fuel that it consumes so the difference And the implications being then when you look at the uranium needs is that there will be little difference in the reduction for you the uranium that would be needed by the end of the century between building a Self-sustaining conversion ratio of one reactor and a breeder conversion ratio 1.2 3 reactor there are technical reasons for it and maybe we'll get into it in the discussion, but The Assumption that has been made a long time ago that the fast reactor technology is best going after the highest possible breeding ratio turns out to be not necessarily needed and one of the reasons why When wants to look at a conversion ratio of one or self-sustaining reactor is that there are more types of Reactors that can accomplish this than going to the highest ratio for conversion So rather than confining our choices of technology by going to the largest breeding ratio Perhaps we are better off looking at a number of options for a self-sustaining reactor The other thing that you notice is that the size of the recycling Infrastructure that's needed is about the same no matter what the Choice of the fast reactor mission is It's roughly speaking, you know, this is of course recycling of spent fuel from light-water reactor and Recognizing that there's only 1% plutonium in the light-water reactor spent fuel You need to process essentially in order to get all the plutonium out to fuel any fast reactor that is starting With with the plutonium In fact, if we depend on mocks alone towards the end of the century, you will need a larger industrial infrastructure for recycling if you look at the Total a transuranic in the system the variation between the ones through system, which is the black line and the best of these systems which is actually the Burner the blue line over conversion ratio of point seven five you can see that it is within about 30 percent so a The total true in the system varies somewhat according to the advanced reactor or the advanced cycle that's adopted But if we go after a breeder of 1.2 3 Notice that the total true in the system even exceeds the ones through system When you look at the total meaning what's in the reactor? What's in the cooling? pools and What's in the manufacturing and so forth? So If the purpose of the introduction of the advanced technology is to reduce the transuranic burden in the system, we have to be careful About the technology that is chosen and the impact is going to be relatively small even with the best burner that one can have The this just shows that we go from a system where true is dominantly in interim storage. That's the orange area to Where it is in the Needed cooling storage. This is the green area our code or our model assumes a minimum of five years of storage is needed before we can recycle and the second largest inventory is in the cores of the fast reactors, which is the red area as you see So what what if we? Attempt to go away from the traditional ways that we have been thinking about for fast reactor introduction And we look for enriched uranium as a way to start the fast reactor This goes along with the idea that we only need to be on the self-sustaining side So the enrichment needed with the uranium to start fast reactors is within the commercially acceptable Limit of 20% that's possible to do then and within that range You so you find that we can introduce more fast reactors because we're not constrained by the availability of plutonium And we end up in fact saving more uranium by the end of the century By starting fast reactors with enriched uranium as opposed to plutonium This has some policy implications, of course that We know about should we go after recycling Technology now or in the future or can we even dispense with it because? It might be that what we have as spent fuel is only a small fraction of the total uranium That's available globally so I won't go through all the conclusions. I think that I've said many conclusions already, but I do want to say that we've done a lot of sensitivity analysis and Perhaps it's important to point out that the controlling factors in the evolution of the system are The rate at which a nuclear power Will be needed or will be growing and the second one is if we're going to go with the traditional Plutonium initiated reactors is the availability of the fuel to initiate the advanced technologies The industrial details of the infrastructure play a role, but it's a smaller one when to start and the Appropriate capacity whether it's a 500 metric ton per year or a thousand metric ton per year make smaller difference another thing I'd like to point out is that We really need a system analysis Study with more details that assess the role of self-sustaining reactors of different technologies So that we are able to move forward with a more robust perhaps technology for Closing the fuel cycle and making the A nuclear energy available for a long time in the future Thank you very much Okay, so thank you Charles Mujid. I hope get a flavor then of the Directions that we think are important and the floor is open for questions. We'd appreciate it if you could identify Yourself and then one of us will respond Tom say who you are DC I Have some problems with your analysis in what you will admit it Principally You did a good analysis of uranium Costs rejected into the future on the basis of the history But you did not do the same for either reprocessing or capital costs of reactors and the More importantly the capital cost difference between fast reactors and light water reactors and I would just point out that The cost of reprocessing in 1970 was $30 a kilogram About a hundred and fifty dollars a kilogram in today's dollars. It's gone up by an order of magnitude Reactor costs the same way. So had you considered those Factors you wouldn't have in your analysis systems analysis the need for fast reactors and Marks recycle and so forth Parametric study you would at least you would call to the reader's attention the fact that Fast reactors are priced out of the market and you see no way that they will get back into the market Otherwise you're teaching fairy tales at MIT rather than science and engineering Actually, could we get a I'll start an answer But can we get a microphone deck of John Parsons in the back? So he may want to respond to some of these economic issues as well So Tom the we actually do Discuss that I guess we are not We don't feel quite so certain about the trajectory of the cost differences of light-water reactors and fast reactors I think frankly, we don't have all that much experience and Your your statements have some basis but but Of limited very limited history. So so so that is an issue and indeed An issue that we will certainly be pointing out is that for example take this case of The uranium-fed fast reactors if one goes that route, right? on the one hand that Removes a constraint at the rate at which you could build fast reactors But it may not be so eager unless the cost gets under control. So those factors are are Certainly in there. I guess our view is that that's a long way to really understanding What those costs will be in the long in the longer term? John did you you want to add? Comments on that John John again was did did a lot of the economic analysis Great, so let me just say a couple of things first of all We do have an economic analysis is your microphone on John. I think so, okay We do have an economic analysis in the study Not just of the cost of uranium, but of the costs the full costs of these different fuel cycles And the preliminary report behind what's in the study is already on the website at MIT So it's there in the study though We will emphasize as Ernie just did a moment ago that the cause the capital costs for a fast reactor and the costs for reprocessing are extremely uncertain Just as Ernie was mentioning we only have a little bit of experience with them and so that That we do the analysis we have the numbers But the question is what is future research going to shape in terms of the capital costs for fast reactors And in terms of reprocessing technology that's People can put a number on that now, but what the future will be is really going to be determined by future research In fact, let me just add to enter to reinforce Tom bit, but really is in The end our main point. I mean these studies about which fuel cycles could go what the dynamics would be Clearly economics. I mean as you well know, we always view the economics of these choices as being quite crucial but in the end We're saying is there is a lot of uncertainty in the costs of these technologies in the drivers of Nuclear power deployment in the Nature of the technologies which many of which can have strong policy implications Etc. But in our view the good news is That we actually have time to do a much more serious exploration of that space than We have historically and certainly in the last years We've had very very little work frankly on the relevant on the relevant issues So our our view is in fact, we are not favorable My I had a last line on my on my last slide that said Demonstration something like demonstration projects can be considered in time and in time means after we have explored this reasonable technology space gets an indication about where economics and Engineering performance are headed. So really our view in the end is look. I think that these these Fuel cycle simulations. I think bring out some important messages that have not been emphasized like for example In any of these fuel cycles things like transuranics are not magically Changed in terms of their total inventory Uranium uses are not is not magically changed in this in this But what actually gets deployed will depend upon the answers to your to your questions and we should use the time in our view Effectively, I would I would like to add one one point to that one of the conclusions We came to is that you don't need a high conversion ratio for a sustainable fuel cycle You can go from one point two to one point three down to one point zero Why is that important if you want a high conversion ratio breeder reactor? You're talking about a sodium cooled fast reactor the traditional pathway toward a sustainable reactor if you bring the conversion Ratio down to about one you have at least four Reactor options of which the sodium cooled fast reactors one But another one is a hard spectrum light water reactor that is a light water reactor with a slightly modified core And there are also two other two other options Because you changed the ground rules the goal from a conversion ratio of one point two or one point three to one You opened up the option space And it is my personal belief that when we start looking at some of those options We're going to find that some of those options have substantially lower economic costs than the traditional vision of a fast reactor or sustainable fuel cycle It's changing the ground rules changes the choices of technology changes the economics question there Sharon squastoni from CSIS I usually look at this from a perspective of non-proliferation and one of the problems we've Had over the years is convincing other countries to follow our lead and so while what you say is very reasonable about these sustaining reactors most of the countries that are Looking at fast reactors now have already sunk billions of dollars into reprocessing so Do you have any thoughts on how to convince those countries to choose one technology over another? Okay, well, I'll take a crack at that First of all, I am not a great believer in the power of the arguments of following our lead first of all there's a good historical evidence on my side and But I just don't think that that's a A Logical approach particularly in the modern in the modern world Where there are lots of nuclear supplier countries lots of countries that move forward in various directions and frankly a Perhaps unpleasant Fact and I'll come back to the proliferation, but I'm not this leadership issue. Why I don't really put much stock in that is that You know in the in the in the in the in the days when Some might have had the illusion that that would be an effective argument I would argue it was coupled to the fact that we were also a very very large market for Technologies, I don't mean only nuclear energy technologies other technologies It was easy to be a technology leader when you had an enormous Domestic market We face and I'm not talking now again only nuclear I'll come back to that But I think right now there's a big issue about being technology leaders or technology takers As we look at the energy technology path forward Now so going back to nuclear. So what do we do? I think that We have to We have to present a Real value proposition in fact our our view and there'll be more about this in the full report Is that when it comes to something like fuel I said some version of fuel leasing the version that we prefer? is one that is based upon first of all commercial contracts to the extent possible always backed up by a hierarchy of Institutional and increasingly international Coverage is for security supply etc. Etc Financial incentives And they can be creative in the paper we published in 1994 I just mentioned with the current deputy secretary of energy the for example, we noted that one might combine climate and proliferation concerns with a way of attaching carbon credits to new nuclear construction in countries that took certain kinds of agreements around Enrichment and reprocessing we also argued that we should seek these agreements for finite periods of time Maybe 10 years at a time renewable so there is no issue of giving up birth rights to to enrichment technologies to use an example Right, so I think there are many things that we have done or Could do excuse me that could do That would be more about presenting a value proposition to countries particularly with small programs as opposed to carrying on with an illusion of Follow what we're doing Especially since we tend to be very inconsistent in what we're doing Particularly in the international proliferation sphere where I'm sorry I mean my many of my friends may be opposed may be offended but Let's face it. We're all over the map so Thank You Matt walled New York Times Would we be driven should we be driven to reprocessing to reduce the longevity of waste and the toxicity of waste as Was given under the GNIP Proposal and does this mean we can finally stop worrying about thorium? I Think Ultimately, we know that we are likely to need the recycled fuel in order to increase the fuel resources and We don't need to rush it and our report Emphasizes there is time to therefore develop the Processes that are needed in order to get the best Features whether it's economics security and so forth so The answer to your the first part of your question is we certainly should be engaged in looking at the options and Trying to see how we can evolve into a better selections for the future Not necessarily into deployment, but certainly in an R&D and if necessary, you know larger scale The second part of your question with regards to thorium is why it's not necessarily directly addressed in the report In the append yeah, there is one appendix on thorium. We point out that there are Good things and bad things about it, but that with advantages you get complications that Will not make it Attractive in the short term as long as we have the uranium plutonium cycle The main Advantage usually that's wanted out for thorium is we don't produce as much plutonium in the cycle very often however The same People who argue for it discount the presence of the uranium 233 which is Just as fissionable a material although, you know, it may have more radiation Associated with its extraction. So if you if you look just from the point of view of what do you get for complicating the cycle by looking at Thorium when we have plenty of uranium We don't think it's an easy Food to introduce in the marketplace for some time One footnote to the question the answer to Sharon Which is that I said it earlier, but it's just to repeat it it bears repeating because the value propositions that I was talking about are Complicated by our inability to manage our waste It constrains our actions and I've been to Matt's question just add one other comment and We didn't make a big point about it in this summary report, but we should emphasize that We have often this goes back to the first question that we have often equated reprocessing and recycling and We also would argue that there was a possibility in the future again. We don't know Until Lisa's looked at more carefully, but there could also be a motivation to reprocess or partition the spent fuel Even if you don't recycle for waste management reasons We we have often accuses having a fetish on deep boreholes the But for example, you could imagine a very very small package That you could extract for a deep borehole disposal as a waste management Approach so it's again We just think there were lots of options that haven't been been explored and I will say in favor boreholes At least this is a case where the size of the package actually matters As opposed as opposed to a repository Available lots of it in other words no rush we have done a hundred years to develop the fuel cycle But the other side of the energy community the environmental side Tells us that we will be in big trouble with climate change By the middle of this century with population will be 50 percent greater and We will not have solved very many problems. We'll be delivering I think And by 2100 people like James Lovelock tell us we could have a tough time We could all be in a different community of life Let's clarify two points First of all, I speak I can't speak for the group on this wasn't a part of our conversation but I personally at least Think we're in trouble with climate change right now and But we should distinguish the issue of nuclear power plant construction as a carbon more or less carbon-free source Versus what one does in some sense with the back end. So in fact if you remember our first statement on our first slide was get on with the job of first mover plant Construction as that is the critical gate if there is or is not to be an expansion of nuclear power in the United States Secondly just to clarify We don't want our statement we have time to be taken in the wrong way We mean we have time before we commit to any of these major new fuel cycles But we don't have time to make those Decisions properly In a relevant time frame unless we start with serious Exploration of the technology space in a way that we have not done before and start that very very soon So so don't get us wrong on that. We we're not saying Just exhale and sit back We're saying you got to be aggressive now in looking at what is a much bigger option space as with Charles was emphasizing Relaxing some of the constraints that we've had and how we think about it We have a lot more options that may be a lot more attractive in the future starting here Peep air with climate wire taking a subject that's come up at the president's Blue Ribbon panel how realistic are the choices for? Central large interim storage and does the Yucca Mountain history undermine public confidence in a serious way About the options for centralized storage If so, what should we do with Yucca Mountain? One of the points we point out is it we in the United States cited a geological repository called the waste isolation pilot plant for certain types of defense trans-uranic waste The Swedes in the fins have developed sites For repositories with public acceptance that in the Swedish case, of course two communities were competing for the repository The French look like they're fairly close in addition There are a half dozen geological repositories in Europe for hazardous chemical waste So the issue isn't whether you can cite a geological repository lots of people have been doing that The question is how you do it and we observed as we listed in one of the earlier slides the characteristics of programs that are successful and the observation that those characteristics are not seen in US programs and You know our central recommendation in here is is that let's take a look at what people have had success in in the United States such as the waste isolation pilot plant and overseas and Form our programs with the characteristics that match those that actually work Now let's let's learn from experience. That's the bottom line and I I don't think it's a mission impossible It does imply however major changes on how we approach waste management and major major changes In how you cite a centralized storage facility over the traditional. Let's draft somebody's strategy I would just make another point Pete that Look I look what we're not in this our report is not about getting into the specifics of The current Yucca Mountain debates. I mean we certainly state that geological isolation is absolutely required in the future But would add that the the idea of Consolidated central storage we recognize also has the kinds of challenges that you You mentioned and we've seen that with the for example the ongoing saga with the Utah Proposal Which was NRC approved but has other the local communities were not adequately engaged perhaps But I think as we think about a few of those sites Let's face it. We have to think about what is let's call it a architecture for Fuel cycle facilities in the United States and One can certainly imagine in the near term if our recommendations on our D&D were followed That there could be some logic in coupling serious new research research infrastructure in the relatively near term With those with those storage sites and then if Decades down the road that were to develop into a large Reprocessing infrastructure. They would this clearly a logic for having kind of major a few major fuel cycle parks But those are those are discussions that are beyond technical analysis. Shall we say and Need to be discussed politically. I'll see we were yes, it was here and then there and then there Micah low on fall with the national academies This may give you an opportunity to elaborate a little bit on earlier answer that you gave You said that the system all the pieces of the system depend on each other choice you make in one place affects all of the other pieces In nuclear the a facility is a big commitment. It's a big capital investment It's a commitment over a long period of time you Sighted periods of 50 to 100 years But goals and circumstances and technologies change over that time period Does this create a sort of constrained future? That seems sort of an unforgiving kind of Circumstance, and I wonder how we should think about deployment of nuclear power within a World that works that way a technology system that works that way. Do we have to have facilities that are extra flexible? You know, I think that This is a feature that affects Practically all energy production technologies Cold plans and other plans, you know, the investment is such that you want it to operate for decades and Society it changes its perceptions of what the issues are and What environmental equality means and so forth. So I think that that changing environment is a fact of life that one has to work with And in planning for the future even with nuclear power It is wise to expect tightening of the environmental quality needed in the products and That that is one way to deal with it but if you're saying should we invent things that are for example mobile so that if the society in Let's say Arizona wants to ship some of their production means across the borders to another state It's a little bit too cumbersome to come to deal with it And I don't think it will actually facilitate a wider Investment in this technology although I would point out that the Russians have convinced themselves that Reactors on barges are a way to produce Electricity that can be moved from one location to the other but so far the market hasn't seen many orders I would maybe I've had two things one one of course is that again in In a way that is not characterized discussion in nuclear in the nuclear industry or the nuclear fuel cycle This this value of options I think remains very important And of course the value of the whole point of the of the options is you would like to maintain your options at low cost For as long as possible to make a good decision That's one point second point is that in the end when you integrate the really big money is is in the nuclear reactors Right. I mean a nuclear reprocessing plant, you know rickshaw can cost a lot of money But it's also servicing 40 reactors you know and and one of the Disadvantage of nuclear clearly which I think is behind your question a little bit is the enormous capital capital commitment that's made But the other side of the coin is if you build your reactor on budget And on schedule etc Once you've produced it it's going to dispatch Because it also has a very very low marginal cost So, you know generally, you know you build a nuclear reactor and you operate it. Well, it's going to Produce a steady stream of income So I don't know and I think if you have the reactors and then there are the policies that are or are not a requiring let's say a Recycling strategy. Well, that becomes an essential service to this very very large capital install base So I'm not sure that's the the main the main issue Let me add one thing actually There was a project that MIT recently that looked at the flexibility of the fast reactors to change its conversion ratio within the same plant and indeed one could start let's say with At the time when Plutonium is desirable with a higher conversion ratio and if society said no we want to get rid of it You can change the core into a design that consumes The plutonium so to some extent it is possible to adapt to the requirements around you That you cannot start By addressing from the beginning And finally I just mentioned that one one of the students on the project Lara Peer point actually your PhD thesis is Looking at trying to develop the methodology for understanding decision-making in the complex interface of private And public interests that would be present in advanced fuel cycle development. There's a question over there. Thank you Yes, Christopher Payne with the Natural Resources Defense Council I didn't see I may have overlooked it, but I didn't see any reference in your current report to the standardization goal That originally informed the 2010 program and is that because you you believe that that would not ultimately affect the economics of deploying advanced LWR's I mean they're five they're five designs in the US market now if the South Koreans come in they'll be six and it seems as though The opportunity for any one supplier to gain this kind of scale that would really drive down costs on a unit basis That doesn't seem to be present the more suppliers you add to the market So you can get a microphone to John Parsons there. Also, let me before John Let me just say that I think you know that that question is very important Chris, but Our focus was more on the fuel cycle issues and so we do not address that quite so explicitly but John Yeah, when we have discussed the ones through fuel cycle and LWR's we certainly support the idea of standardization I think the question is not so much Imposing a requirement that there only be one design in the United States But rather supporting the idea that there be as with the current licensing system the option to License the design once and have anybody who orders that design not ask for 250 changes specific to their individual site that's a problem that still is trying to be worked through in the industry today and We agree that trying to push that standardization is essential to the economics of keeping the capital costs down Getting the construction done on time and on budget, but it's we don't want to you we shouldn't confuse requiring imposing on the market one design as opposed to allowing standardized designs to compete and maybe one ends up dominating the problem in the US in the past was that each individual utility at each individual site asked for Specifications unique to their site that had that's what has to stop in order for construction to be done in a disciplined fashion International investor We just issued a report on Nuclear Asia and by our casual observation. We know six new nations are actively planning developing and building nuclear facilities We also noted that none of these were homegrown technologies Almost every one of them working with an outside partner We're both the skill set technology transfer and very large the financing was being supplied from outside their Individual nations we're in an era of low-cost capital. So on this question of economics We didn't see the decision-making being guided at all by the economics of the issue But rather by other strategic consideration and more to my question then we also didn't see this intensive concerns With the fuel cycle at the at the outer edge of this in other words Globally when you look do you just see that this is more of a Western and a developed nation concern? Rather than a concern of the many other nations that are starting to experiment with this Let me take this question to at least point out the fact that The the waste problem is a problem of Isolation of radioactivity in the long term When doesn't feel at least I don't feel that the public is also told that The total Waste or spent fuel produced by a single plant Over 60 years of operation Can be stored in dry casks within three acres Over 60 years of operation one plant can Store the fuel in three acres so when new countries consider nuclear and They probably consider that what's important for them is to be able to deal with this either Locally, and if it's only three acres They might be able to find the land until there is a regional or an international agreement to facilitate taking that spent fuel and either Disposing of it or reprocessing it I'm somewhat familiar with the UAE model, and I think they preserved both options in their planning for the future I mean to be honest I This is a gross Generalization, but I think in many of those countries you're referring to it's not clear of that the Waste management pathway has been particularly deeply thought through Okay, thanks very much. There's much to be appreciated in this study But I'd like to address your subtitle Interdisciplinary because it appears to be a very good engineering study what I seem to be a seeing a quick glance is a lack of Interdisciplinary considerations for example the The decision about whether or not to recycle has never been driven Anyplace that I'm aware of by a belief that we're running out of uranium it's been Driven by other policy related decisions political security Religious whatever you want to call it, so I'd like to ask to what extent you Countries will go unnamed So I'd like to ask You know the the extent to which the other departments of MIT your your incredible social sciences department humanities contributed to the study Related to that is the the statement that you make in here that We don't know if spent fuel is a waste or resource And it seems to be an implication that someday a light bulb is going to go off and it'll be obvious that it's one of the other Again, there's a lack of historical perspective In every country that I know of the country has made a policy decision first to declare the spent fuel a waste or to declare it to be a resource and then to make the engineering and the fuel cycle decisions based on that declaration and so if we're waiting for somehow Somebody to come along and all of a sudden everybody's going to come to a consensus waste versus resource I think we're going to have a long wait We we advocate await The and to answer your first question Steve and solar be here as a political scientist and could discuss his work in public attitudes John Parsons who's there as an economist And I'm Completely a mess But I'm not an engineer So look, I think we well, okay, we this is this study is Frankly is more engineering grounded than some of the other studies that we have done We think that was kind of fit to purpose for the scope of our study I Would like to make one comment about this waste versus resources Which I think is actually how the real world is going to ultimately progress You know there's uranium all over the world And what we do is we mine the uranium in the that has high or assay or there's a lot of it And we can get at it if it's in the middle of the Arctic Circle We sort of ignore it and I think when you start talking about spent fuel over the very long term What you're going to have is a similar situation Ultimately you will recycle spent fuel with a high fissile assay that's easy to Reprocess and there will be some spent fuel you say low fissile assay Really a problem fuel it's going to be trash So I think if economics has anything to say about this We're going to end up somewhere in between where there will be a Some categories of spent fuel that get reprocessed and some categories of spent fuel where the answer is bad idea I don't think you're going to actually end up with my personal perspective I don't think you're gonna end up with a yes. No answer I think you're gonna end up with that depending upon what's in a specific fuel assembly and with different answers in different countries as We already have frankly. Yeah, so let me let me add to your previous answer to Ellen One of the names of there is John doige. Oh, he's an institute professor. He can be in any department I'm sorry. I forgot John Okay, there's this question and then I'm going to ask also if there are any calling questions from from distributed press, but let's know Anybody know okay, but let's start here anyway with this question. Yeah Oh, no, no, I'm sorry. The gentleman that's standing was I think I think was first I'm sorry Henry Okay Henry Sikolsky with a non-proliferation policy education center. Yeah, I noticed on page X the word economics is actually in bold and Since you hail from Massachusetts where the original Tea Party occurred. I thought it would be appropriate To think a little bit about economics and you make a statement here you say well seven to ten need incentives but that's for reactors and Then you say we believe the nuclear energy that nuclear energy should be able to compete on the open market as should other energy options Oh Man we very good very good now two questions How much in the way of loan guarantees? Do you want to have out there for those seven to ten plants? Please give me a number? second How do you use the market with regard to this back end? You seem to argue elsewhere in this report That you think the federal government should be heavily involved Walk us through how you're going to use market mechanisms to make things disciplined with regard to this back end. Would you I don't know John I don't if you want to comment on some of the economic issues, but let me just say any that on the well the first question on the loan guarantees Again in 2003 we recommended Financial financial incentives for the order of let's call it ten ten plants the Principle that we put forward was that we felt the amount of coverage or amount of incentive should basically cover real first mover additional costs That is not been reflected in the Legislation as is being it being implemented Well Given number the principle that we put forward in 2003 would have led to substantially lower At least tax incentives then are being Covered by the loan guarantees, but it's a very very different instrument That we had recommended so I'm really not going to give a specific number but sorry To the hundred million that's right, but okay, but you know but Tom I'm sorry I'll give that number so we said two to three hundred million But that was in the context of and a production tax credit So a loan guarantee is obviously different and it would cover a higher fraction of the cost I'm my concern is Driving it to such a high level That there is not adequate risk-sharing In in the private sector partner, that's something that can be argued. Yeah That would be John Parsons will work on that you can talk with him, right, right? I Was hoping to say I already forgot the rest of the question the the the I think the issue is look well again I'm not all my I mean my colleagues could give their own opinion, but it seems to me in the end that if we are to move Towards these kind of more advanced closed fuel cycles Sooner rather than later and by sooner again, I don't meet in 20 years But but not a century if that's to occur my feeling is it will occur based upon requirements judged as important for waste management and If that's the case then the policy structure Essentially put in place in the government There would be regulations to be met and then the private sector Can risk its capital to execute the program? John again to come Yeah, just on this question of Whether nuclear should compete economically and how do you deal with the government on the back end? I think there's a little bit of a false dichotomy between the government having a significant role and whether there's competition economically in every industry the government has to define the acceptable solutions has to define the requirements for safety and waste management and things of that sort and There's no reason why that's at odds with ultimately Companies doing the economics companies managing the process inside the system That's defined by the government and there's certainly a role in Technologies such as this one for the government to do certain amounts of research at the front end and to Understand the system so that it can properly define the rules and the space and the waste regulations within which Companies will operate Charles described systems for a successful waste management system Which include in the specifications that Charles provided? opportunities for the systems to be managed in a commercially responsible Fashion those two things do not have to be at odds I'm going to apologize and say that I think it's three o'clock and And Ask We really appreciate the interest and the content and more questions, but we will be here for another hour or so There's a reception and we'd love to engage in in discussion. Thank you very very much