2020- 2022 Policy Process | Green Party of Canada
Where GPC membership collaborates to develop our policies
G21-P053 Banning Reprocessing of High-Level Nuclear Waste/Irradiated Fuel in Canada
Submitter Name
Ann McAllister
This proposal was discussed in the workshop during Phase 2 of the VGM. However, there was not enough time for this proposal to be voted on in plenary by the members during Phase 2. Therefore, this proposal will not be included in the ratification vote.
Proposal
Canadian Greens will support a ban on all technologies and methods for reprocessing irradiated nuclear fuel, as well as commerce in, and transport and use of, irradiated fuel and fissile materials to protect humanity and the biosphere from contamination and the fabrication, proliferation and use of nuclear weapons.
Objective
To protect the health, environment and security of present and future generations by banning the reprocessing of high-level nuclear waste (irradiated fuel) and extraction of plutonium, uranium and other fissile materials from that waste; as well as to prohibit the commerce and trade in, and transport and use of, high-level nuclear waste for reprocessing purposes.
Benefit
Protect humanity and the biosphere from: a) hazards from accessing irradiated fuel for reprocessing; b) new forms of difficult-to-manage nuclear wastes created during reprocessing; and c) sabotage or theft of, transport of, and commerce in irradiated fuel and extracted fissile materials that could be used in nuclear weapons.
Supporting Comments from Submitter
Health and environmental risks associated with spent fuel reprocessing. Edwards, Gordon: Health and Environmental Issues Linked to the Nuclear Fuel Chain. Section C. 24. Biomedical effects of fission products. http://ccnr.org/ceac_C.html#table.20
Paragraphs 1 to 3 explain how reprocessing irradiated, or waste, fuel releases radioactive gasses and dust that are extremely difficult to contain, and the health harms these emissions can cause.
Economic and environmental dangers from reprocessing nuclear fuel. Ramana, M.V. Lesson from India: why reprocessing spent fuel from nuclear reactors makes little sense. 2015. The Economic Times.
Accident risks, unmanageable amounts of effluent, and the exorbitant costs of building and operating reprocessing plants have caused most nuclear nations, except Russia and India, to move away from reprocessing nuclear fuel.
Ramana, M.V. and F. von Hippel: China must avoid costly trap of reprocessing nuclear fuel. 2013. China Dialogue. https://chinadialogue.net/en/energy/6200-china-must-avoid-costly-trap-of-reprocessing-nuclear-fuel/
China should not reprocess nuclear fuel because it is prohibitively expensive, does not significantly reduce the amount of radioactive waste, and produces wastes that are extremely radiotoxic and hard to manage.
Contribution of commerce in plutonium to nuclear weapons. Edwards, Gordon: Proposed nuclear projects in New Brunswick would revive dangerous “plutonium economy”. 2020. NB Media Coop.
Paragraphs 10 to 12 explain why reprocessing irradiated nuclear fuel is so hazardous, polluting, and destabilizing to national and international security.
Contribution of waste fuel reprocessing to making nuclear weapons. Edwards, Gordon: “Concerns about the plutonium economy”. Excerpts from Flowers, Sir Brian: “Nuclear Power and the Environment”, 1976.
http://ccnr.org/Flowers_plute.html
This report’s conclusions are relevant today as federal and provincial governments advance policies to develop and export small modular nuclear reactors domestically and internationally, and extract uranium and plutonium in New Brunswick.
Green Value(s)
Ecological Wisdom, Sustainability, Social Justice, Non-Violence.
Relation to Existing Policy
Adds to current GPC policy 1998 - Environment.
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Ann and all, there's a great difference between the different approaches to recycling irradiated nuclear fuel.
If the objection is "a ban on all technologies and methods" that implies GPC is going to fight equally against the approaches with the biggest environmental impact (such as France's approach dissolving irradiated fuel into nitric acid, which involves large volumes of water) or pyroprocessing/electrochemistry approaches where the molten salt's where the chemistry takes place ultimately itself becomes a fuel.
If you want to review one possible approach...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KfWB4CsQwyw
...that's an online fuel reprocessing system, for a thorium fuel cycle. That's probably the most technologically advanced way to tackle recycling fuel... do it right inside the reactor... so a very low level of "technological readiness". But it is the best example I have of electrochemistry, and why one would want to extract individual fission products.
Moltex SSR-W is New Brunswick's upcoming approach, and they also use Molten-Salts and pyroprocessing, though not inside an operating reactor... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wpzhQXu-zAw
...the presentation they give is specifically to address environmental and proliferation concerns. I've seen GPC leadership mischaracterize Moltex on this. Plutonium is NOT EVER isolated. Furthermore, the Plutonium itself is REACTOR GRADE and NOT weapons grade.
If GPC is to oppose recycling of irradiated fuel, are you sure you want to so obviously state "a ban on all technologies and methods"?
GPC may be opposed to combustion which contributes to global warming, but we don't "oppose all combustion". There's clearly better and worse forms of combustion.
Irradiated fuel recycling has better and worse options.
Dr. Gordon Edwards wrote this in an email regarding these recycling options...
"It may be that, one day, after all the power reactors have been shut down
and folks have weaned themselves off of nuclear power, some version of these
concepts may be useful for waste management purposes. But not now! To do
it now would just be unleashing the dogs of nuclear expansionism, leading to
a mad flurry of activity that the whole world will end up regretting."
...which makes me think he views the better recycling options as being the very worst.
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