Used CANDU Fuel Waste Consumed and Eliminated: Environmentally Responsible, Economically Sound, Energetically Enormous

Abstract

The 43,800 tons of currently stored CANDU nuclear fuel waste can all be consumed in fast-neutron reactors (FNRs) to reduce its long-term radioactive burden 100,000 times while extracting about 130 times more nuclear energy than the prodigious amounts that have already been gained from the fuel in CANDU reactors. The cost of processing CANDU fuel for use in FNRs plus the cost of recycling the FNR fuel is about 2.5 times less on a per kWh energy basis than the currently projected cost of disposal of 3.6 million used CANDU fuel bundles in a deep geologic repository.