Recycling: The Necessary Future of Canadian Used Nuclear Fuel Management

Abstract

Canada is undergoing a major change in the make-up of its fleet of nuclear reactors: the addition of small modular reactors (SMRs). The implications of the need for enriched fissile fuel for SMRs, particularly for high assay low enriched uranium (HALEU), as compared to our current use of natural uranium in our CANDUs, have largely been ignored. Without enrichment facilities, a historical Canadian choice, Canada will be dependent for its nuclear energy on foreign fuel suppliers. This has major geopolitical ramifications, with commercial HALEU currently supplied only by Russia. However, the transuranic elements in Canada’s current 60,000 tonnes of used CANDU fuel can be recycled, economically and with minimal working waste, to supply cost-effective homegrown enriched starting fuel, even the equivalent of HALEU, for Canadian SMRs, especially fissile-breeding fast-spectrum SMRs, of a total power of 24,000 MWe. This assures Canada’s nuclear energy sovereignty and independence as well as its long-term nuclear fuel security. A bonus is the elimination of the transuranic “million-year” radiotoxic hazard from Canada’s used fuel stockpiles and the need for their permanent disposal. But it cannot be done without recycling of current and future used nuclear fuel.