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The US Congress should discourage efforts to advance the technology to make fuel for nuclear reactors, say Francis Slakey and Linda R. Cohen - the risks outweigh the benefits.
The world is heading towards the development of nuclear-enrichment technologies so cheap and small that they would be virtually undetectable by satellites. The risks incurred from such technologies are simply not worth the benefits.
Over the past 60 years, technologies that enrich uranium to make fuel for nuclear reactors have shown exponential improvements in efficiency. Such improvements benefit the world in terms of cheaper nuclear energy - a technology that is increasingly in demand as the world battles against climate change. But they also come with a heavy price: an increased risk of proliferation. It is far easier to covertly build a small, lower-energy enrichment facility than a large, energy-intensive one.
In our opinion, the newest laser enrichment technology - called separation of isotopes by laser excitation (SILEX) - offers more potential risks than benefits. The efficiencies it promises are not crucial for expansion of the nuclear power industry, either today or in a future in which greenhouse-gas emissions are tightly capped and the nuclear industry favoured. Capital costs and, most important, regulatory policies will determine the size of that industry. Yet the development and potential misappropriation of an enrichment facility too small and efficient to be detected could be a game-changer for nuclear proliferation.
Global Laser Enrichment, a subsidiary of GE Hitachi Nuclear Energy, has applied for a licence from the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) to operate a full-scale commercial SILEX plant in North Carolina. This is open to public petition until 15 March, and a final decision is expected to take at least another year.
Numerous analysts, as well as the authors of a recent report from the American Physical Society (Technical Steps to Support Nuclear Arsenal Downsizing), have called for the NRC to examine proliferation risks as part of its licensing process. We again urge it to do so. We believe that such a barrier would discourage commercial research and development in this area.
Separation anxiety
To assess the costs and benefits of a new technology, its efficiency must be measured. To make reactor fuel, the concentration of fissile uranium-235 must...