Reprocessing cost

In 1992 Japan accepted 1.7 tons of Pu that had been reprocessed in France as the initial shipment of 30 tons of reprocessed Pu planned over a 10-year period. The cost of the contract, 4 biUion, for these 30 tons yields a reprocessing cost of 133,000/kg. 

Terms for settlement were based not on actual AEC reprocessing costs, but estimates by ORNL for a conceptual reprocessing plant6with a capacity of one ton per day, operated 300 days peryear, i.e., 80% time operating efficiency (TOE). Capitol cost for the conceptual plant was about 20 million unit reprocessing cost was about 20 per kilogram of uranium. 

The chemistry of the Purex process has been extensively investigated, and it seems very difficult to find new major improvements. However, some improvements in some process details may contribute to a decrease in reprocessing costs, especially if several changes are made simultaneously. Examples of such changes are presented in next sections. 

Fuel cost and performance is an important part of the economy of power reactors. Approximately 20% of the expense of the electrical production in a power reactor can be attributed to the cost of the fuel. This is due about equally to the expense of the consumption of fissile material and to the production and, when applicable, reprocessing costs or intermediate storage costs. In the fast breeder reactors, it is anticipated that fuel costs would be substantially lower because of a higher bum-up. 

If subsequent batches in the pipeline are separated by interfaces, the transition costs may depend on the product sequence as e.g. reprocessing costs may differ for different mixtures. Therefore, a sequence-dependent economic lot sequencing problem (sELSP) has to be formulated to represent the case of interface separation. To reformulate (3.8), let 4 " denote the transition costs for subsequent batches of products and t. 

MirHassani (2008) proposes a comparatively simple pipeline scheduling model considering only interface reprocessing costs to determine optimal schedules. In this model the pipeline is subdivided into equally-sized segments. Similarly, the time horizon is subdivided into equal periods of time. However, in contrast to most other models, a branching pipeline is modelled. I.e. the depots are not located at a serial main pipeUne, but connected via a sub-pipeline that branches from the main pipeline. Figure 3.8 depicts both types of pipeline systems with one source (51) and three depots (D1,D2,DS). 

Two cases have been used in evaluating the fuel cost. The base case assumes that the fuel is reprocessed and fabricated using the ALMR reprocessing and fabrication evaluations directly, in which case the cost per kg is the same as for the ALMR, or US 5.2 million per tonne. The alternative case assumes that SSTAR is fuelled with uranium in which case the reprocessing cost is replaced with the cost of enriching the fuel to 20%. In this case, the cost of fuel is assumed to be US 7.1 million per tonne. 

Core S/A Parameters FBR Programme Plant Sizes / Fabrication and Reprocessing Costs... 

Still other fuel cycle prospects have been studied and It seems most probable that when fuel reprocessing costs fall due to larger scale operations and when the price of uranium rises, most of the power will be derived from thorium. Prom each kilogram of uranium mined It is possible on such cycles to derive 40 or 50 MWd as shown in AECL-I916 (1964) and AECL-2274 (1965) (refs 4, 5). Even at a net station efficiency of 30, which would by then be low for new reactors, the contribution to fuelling cost from uranium would be only 15-6/(7 2x40) = 0.054 mlll/kWh for every 6/lb U O0 ( 15.6/kgU) In the price of uranium. 

HWRs with a good neutron economy (such as the Swedish BHWRs) have very low fuel cycle costs. Pig, 10 shows the capitalized cost advantages earning from the fuel cycle for BHWRs optimized for natural uranium compared to LWRs. It will be seen that this Is substantially Independent of reactor output, but quite strongly dependent on uranium price, normalized fabrication costs per kg and reprocessing costs per kg. 

On the other hand, as discussed later, uranium prices and plutonium credits are expected to rise over the life of the plant whilst fabrication costs per kg and reprocessing costs per kg should fall as a result of technical progress and the increasing scale of plants. The latter feature affects the cost of natural uranium plants with their relatively low burn-up (9000-10,000 MWd/tU) more than enriched reactors such as LWRs. If account of all these factors is taken the minimum economic size of HWRs is substantially reduced and HWRs which have costs equal to those of LWRs at the beginning of their life reach substantially lower costs than LWRs at the end of their life (and integrated over the whole life) as illustrated in Fig. 11,... 

BHWRs optimized for slightly enriched uranium have still lower costs than natural BHWRs in the size ranges of current Interest at present fuel fabrication and reprocessing costs but, due to their high burn-up, they do not benefit as much as natural uranium BHWRs from future reduction in these prices. Nor do they benefit as much from probable future Increases In the value of plutonium. Thus, taken over a practical working life, large natural uranium units should achieve the better overall economy. 

A review of LWR reprocessing costs has been given (Rothwell, 2009), which estab-hshed an estimate reprocessing cost range for a facility of between 500 and 4000/ kgHM. 

Rothwell, G., 2009. Forecasting hght water reactor fuel reprocessing costs. In Proceedings of the Global Conference, Paris, France, September 6—11, 2009, Paper No. 9228, pp. 2959-2964. 

Clearly, an expression can be derived which will relate the fraction of material used and the reprocessing cost, to show the savings which can be obtained and, conversely, the true cost of polymer actually used if no reprocessing is practiced. Allowance can also be made for changes in processing rates. 

Although the estimated reprocessing costs for the liquid fuel reactor of 10/kg seem feasible, how a twofold increase in these reprocessing costs would effect total fuel cycle expenditures was also studied. As shown in Table VII this will result in +10% increase in the expenditures around the year 2010. 

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