EVEN as it campaigns against Iran’s nuclear programme, the Bush administration seems ready to overturn a 30-year domestic ban on reprocessing spent nuclear fuel. It also wants to reprocess spent fuel from other countries, arguing that the US is a safer place to keep extracted plutonium.
Reports last week indicated that the US Department of Energy is proposing the use of a new technology known as UREX. Developed by the Argonne National Laboratory in Illinois, the procedure can reprocess spent fuel and produce a mix of plutonium and uranium, which can be used to fuel reactors.
Many fear that this…
