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Is an International Nuclear Fuelbank a Good Idea?
An anonymous reader writes "A roundtable at the Bulletin of the Atomic Sciences explores the notion of nuclear fuel banks which would offer nations a guaranteed supply of low-enriched uranium if they renounce the right to enrich on their own. From the article: 'The basic idea behind an international fuel bank is that it would, in a reliable and nondiscriminatory way, make emergency supplies of market-priced low-enriched uranium available to states that sign up to participate. States that opt for membership in a fuel bank would gain increased confidence that their access to reactor-grade fuel would not be interrupted. In return, they would renounce the right to enrich uranium and reprocess spent fuel on their own. Such an arrangement could be appropriate for a number of states. But for others, it might be less than ideal.'"
What you would essentially be asking states to do is give up energy independence. It's a nice idea if you strongly trust every other nation in the world. The trouble is, even most allied nations these days harbor low-level suspicion of each other. That is to say nothing of all the ongoing conflicts and near-conflicts that exist. We're still living in a time of independent nation states that look after their own interests and try to avoid getting too pissed off at each other, so compulsory use of a central fuel repository is asking a lot of your average nation.
I swear they give me mod points to shut me up.
So states will line up for their handouts and conduct enrichment programs in secret, denying that they do so. Where's the difference from today ?
Nullius in verba
Those that sign up, will be at the mercy of the UN (useless nations), bank on it.
Which is to say they will face no restrictions what so ever, and will be free to use the nuclear material for any purpose they want with no fear of anything but a stern "talking to".
This probably amounts to a promise of refueling from the original reactor manufacturer, because most of these are one-off designs or made
to specifications such that fuel rods can only be manufactured by one source. So realistically, you only have one country you have to remain
on good terms with, and that is the country that supplied your reactor. Even if there was a fuel bank, they are not likely to be trusted with any
significant amount of fuel, and would simply serve as an intermediary to process orders.
So if you piss off the country that made your reactor the chances are you still would get no fuel, unless you could go to the UN and have
them deliver a vicious tongue lashing to the country withholding the rods.
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
As a species, we get together (good luck on that) and relinquish uranium and plutonium for any use on planet, and instead create a thorium based nuclear economy. Take all the uranium and plutonium and use it to build and power cities on the Moon and Mars. The cities on Moon can then beam collected solar energy back to earth in the form of microwave, collected by a network of geosynchronous satellites. Anyone who agrees to using Thorium now get's a share of the solar power coming from the moon so they have abundant Nuclear power now. Abundant Solar power later, and the threat of global thermonuclear war is eliminated (at least until the folks on Mars decide to nuke earth for holding back on the cream puff shipment or whatever.)
The problem is simple. People claim to want clean, unlimited power. They don't. They want bombs. They want to make certain that if you nuke them, they can nuke you back. The solution is to give up the right to nuke anybody, so everyone can live with the threat of having ones home converted into a blue ashtray eliminated. Sadly there is a certain amount of trust required for this to work, and nations with good sources of yellow cake need to trade these for free thorium technology. Its really simple. Society is sick and we can either cure or perish from the illness together.
Guaranteed by whom? What are they offering up as collateral; their firstborn sons? Yeah right. Why would any sane nation accept (i.e. Iran) such a proposal?
Well, any sane nation with a viable enrichment program might be a hard sell(which is an issue, since those are the customers that they actually want); but if I were Benevolent President for Life by the Unanimous and Wholly Uncoerced Assent of the People of some backwater hellhole or other, I could easily imagine that it might make decent economic sense to set up the cheapest, nastiest, scariest-looking bunch of fleabay-sourced enrichment apparatus that I could knock together, and then oh-so-magnanimously agree to halt the project in exchange for cheap, premade nuclear fuel and perhaps a little bit of 'development aid' for my fourth-best palace...
They want to build nuclear weapons.
Bingo. Iran has already been caught enriching uranium far beyond what is necessary for power plant fuel. They have already been offered a guaranteed supply of fuel from a consortium of countries, including both the USA and Russia, but they have turned it down because they would have to agree to inspections. They are not worried about fuel, they want to build weapons. This proposal would solve nothing, because it is not addressing an actual problem.