Management of Commercially Generated Radioactive Waste - U.S. ...

4.103
disposal alternatives. The rock melting, well injection, transmutation, and space injection
alternatives have somewhat higher costs for shipment to interim storage, interim storage,
and treatment since the spent fuel is dissolved and management of additional waste streams
is required. The high transportation costs of the island, subseabed, and ice sheet alterna-
tives are a result of the required land and ocean transportation.
The mined geologic and very deep hole concepts have significantly lower predisposal
costs than the other alternatives, $103/kg HM. The island, subseabed, and ice sheet alter-
natives have higher costs, $150/kg HM, because of the expensive transportation requirements.
The other alternatives have higher predisposal costs because of the cost of managing the
additional waste streams generated. These range from $175/kg HM for the rock melting and
well injection alternatives to $320/kg HM for transmutation.
4.9.2 Reprocessing Fuel Cycle Predisposal Costs
A brief description of the predisposal operations for the reprocessing fuel cycle
required for each of the disposal options is found in Table 4.1.2. Costs associated with
these operations are shown in Table 4.9.2. Spent fuel storage and transportation costs
could be considered as reprocessing costs rather than as waste management costs if spent
fuel is reprocessed. For consistency and conservatism, the costs of spent-fuel storage and
shipment are included as waste management costs in this Statement. Without these costs, the
predisposal costs of the reprocessing cycle alternatives are comparable to or less than the
once-through cycle costs.
Waste treatment costs of the reprocessing cycle alternatives are comparable with two
exceptions: 1) costs for the rock melting and well injection alternatives are lower since
high-level waste solidification is not required, and 2) costs for the transmutation alter-
native are higher because of repeated chemical partitioning and target fabrication
operations.
Transportation costs for the rock melting and well injection alternatives are less than
other options since the high-level waste is not transported offsite. However, the cost of
interim storage of the high-level liquid waste for these two alternatives is much higher
than the cost of solidified high-level waste storage employed in the other alternatives.
Transportation costs for the island, subseabed, and ice sheet alternatives are significantly
higher than for other alternatives because of the oceanic shipments of high-level waste.
Total predisposal system costs of the mined geologic, very deep hole, rock melting,
well injection, and space injection alternatives are similar, e.g., $168/kg HM. The costs
of the island, subseabed, and ice sheet alternatives are 185/kg HM or about 10% higher and
costs of the transmutation alternative (>$400/kg HM) are more than 100% higher than any
other alternative.