The FuTure oF nuclear Fuel cycle - MIT Energy Initiative

license. However, fuel reprocessing plants are assumed to have a lifetime of only 40 years,
after which they are retired to allow for new technology to be built.
Key assumptions about industrial capacity for recycling
The dynamic simulation starts with an initial installed capacity of 100 GWe at the start of
2008, and spent UO 2 fuel inventory of 56,800 tHM. The minimum cooling time is 5 years
for all types of discharged fuel.
In the MOX (or TTC) option, the first thermal reprocessing plant starts operation in 2025,
and the separated plutonium is immediately used to make MOX fuel. In the options involving
fast reactors, the first thermal reprocessing plant starts in 2035, 5 years prior to the
introduction of the fast reactors in 2040.
As for the size of the thermal reprocessing plants, a single 1000 tHM/year unit is assumed in
all scenarios, this is 25% larger than the most recent plant built in the world (the Rokkasho
plant of Japan) but is smaller than the 1700 tHM/yr capacity of the La Hague plant that was
built in pieces over several decades. In addition, to make choices that trade off between
economies of scale and modularity, we assume different sizes of fast reprocessing units, as
suitable for the demand, with the values shown in Table 6.2.
Table 6.2 Fast Reprocessing Plant Unit Size
SCenario Fr Cr=0.0 Fr Cr=0.5 Fr Cr=0.75 Fr Cr=1.0 Fr Cr=1.2
Fast rep. unit size (thM/year) 100 200 200 500 500
Another parameter is the industrial capacity to build these processing facilities. The thermal
reprocessing plants are assumed to take 4 years to build and license after the need
is identified, which means that only one plant can start commercial operation every four
years 3 . This industrial capacity is doubled after 2050. As for the fast reprocessing plants,
initially (they are available after the year 2040) the industrial capacity is constrained to 2
years/plant, but is doubled after 2065. At that point, it is assumed that the licensing of such
facilities become faster than it was when they were first built. Finally, a minimum loading
factor of 80% is generally imposed for the reprocessing plants over their life time, meaning
that they are only built if a minimum of 80% of their capacity is needed over their lifetime
of 40 years. However, some exceptions have been allowed, and will be made explicit.
Waste management
The notion of waste is not intrinsic; certain materials are designated as waste when they are
no longer useful in the cycle, which depends on the particular fuel cycle scenario. CAFCA
only tracks the high-level wastes (HLW), indicated by the grey cells in Table 6.3, for the
scenarios considered (NA = Not Applicable).
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