The story of recycling nuclear waste, accompanying risks and associated values
Project description
The future of energy supply is confronted with two main challenges: the availability of resources and climate change. On both counts, fossil fuels are not a very attractive option. An increased need for alternative energy resources is therefore foreseen in the upcoming decades, e.g. wind energy, solar energy and nuclear energy. After being ruled out in many countries after the Chernobyl disaster in 1986, nuclear energy has recently made a serious comeback in the public and political debates about the future of energy.
The main advantage of nuclear energy is the capability of producing a large amount of energy with relatively small amounts of fuel and the lack of greenhouse gases. Nuclear energy has, however, serious disadvantages as well, such as accident risks, security concerns, proliferation threats and nuclear waste. The waste is perhaps the Achilles’ heel of nuclear energy, as it remains radioactive for hundred thousands of years.
After irradiation in a nuclear reactor, spent fuel could either be treated as waste to be disposed of directly – the once-through option - or it could be recycled in order to reuse uranium and plutonium: reprocessing. Reprocessing substantially diminishes the waste radiotoxicity and its volume. These two different approaches to spent fuel outline the main dissimilarity between these fuel cycles: the Open Fuel Cycle (once-through) and the Closed Fuel Cycle (reprocessing). Applying reprocessing in production of nuclear energy diminishes several long-term concerns with respect to nuclear waste, but it simultaneously brings up other ethical concerns for the present generation.
Assuming that nuclear energy should at least be considered as an option in the future of energy supply, how should the relevant moral values be incorporated in decision-making with respect to the fuel cycles? How should the value trade-offs between the present generation and future generations be made in an ethically acceptable way?
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Research partners
On this project there will be close collaboration with the 3TU.Centre for Sustainable Energy Technologies.
Key publications
Taebi, B. and Kloosterman, J.L., To Recycle or Not to Recycle? An Intergenerational Approach to Nuclear Fuel Cycles. Science and Engineering Ethics, 2007. 13(4).
