"Nevertheless adequate design and operational safeguards have to be put in place and tested to ensure that the public, the environment and workers are fully protected in the event of an accident." He added that operational error can never be completely ruled out, and that's why engineering safeguards are required. "Lessons learned through many years of successful operations are constantly being incorporated," Hopkins wrote.

Repository needed?

"Reprocessing absolutely does not relieve the need for a geologic repository," said Vanessa Pierce, program director for the Salt Lake City-based activist group Healthy Environmental Alliance of Utah. Reprocessing is not really recycling, she said.

The resulting volume of waste is less, Pierce said, "but that's irrelevant" to the question of whether a repository is needed. The capacity of the government's planned repository at Yucca Mountain is not limited because of the size of the waste containers but by the need to control heat generated by the highly radioactive material, she said.

Even though reprocessing reduces the bulk of the waste to be stored, the material that is left, which is not usable in power plants, still generates significant heat, Pierce said.

"You still need almost the same amount of space even though you've got a smaller volume of waste. So it does virtually nothing to solve our need for a geological repository."

Fetter, the University of Maryland professor, said fission products left over after reprocessing "cannot be recycled" and must be stored in a repository. "Yucca Mountain would be needed even if we reprocessed all the spent nuclear fuel," he said.

"It is the heat of the waste that determines how much you can put into the repository." Reprocessing as practiced in England and France "doesn't reduce the heat of the waste at all."

EnergySolutions' Hopkins replied, "Reprocessing does require a long-term storage facility like that proposed for Yucca Mountain.

"However, recycling used fuels greatly improves the storage facility efficiency. If the U.S. simply continues operating its existing nuclear power plants, without recycling, then more than one repository will be required." Without recycling, Hopkins said, the current stockpile of spent fuel would fill the anticipated capacity at Yucca. "Recycling used fuel," he added, "avoids the need for additional repositories."

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