The Nuclear Option

Breeders, of course, are not new. They were first developed 20 years ago in the United States, but shelved for fear that the plutonium they create would cause problems in disposal and proliferation. The breeder technology that France expects to have ready for commercialization in 30 years addresses these concerns. The reactors could be used to destroy the long-lived radioactive components of spent reactor fuel, creating a new way of disposing of this hazardous material more effectively and safely than is now possible. Waste treated by an advanced breeder would need to be buried only for a thousand years, greatly simplifying the safeguards needed in a repository.

Americans tend to see the French as an emotional people. However, on technical matters at least they seem to be considerably more rational. Their long-range nuclear-energy plan was developed with the involvement of their electric utility, the company that builds their nuclear reactors and their CEA (the equivalent of the U.S. Department of Energy). The contrast between how France and the United States handled the controversial issue of nuclear waste is stark. To settle the waste issue, France relied on the Parliamentary Office for Scientific and Technological Assessment (POSTA), a joint committee of their two houses of Parliament, whose membership is proportional to the representation of the political parties, a civil-servant staff and a high-level external scientific advisory committee. In 1991, the French Parliament, on the advice of the POSTA, passed a law giving the government 15 years to report back with their proposal for handling nuclear waste. In 2005 POSTA began a series of hearings on the government's proposal (I testified at one), including hearings in the area where their proposed repository would be located. The result was the Act of 2006 blessing the nuclear road map. The French public never protested en masse over nuclear power, perhaps because of the openness of French decision-making. In contrast, the United States has no coherent long-term policy and has not been able to site a repository even after 20 years of trying.

The United States still has the largest number of reactors (104), which supply 20 percent of the nation's electricity. It is still the best in the world at operating nuclear power plants—uptime has risen from 60 percent in the 1980s to more than 90 percent today, adding 50 percent to nuclear-electricity generation capacity without building any new plants. But the United States is no longer the leader in matters of policy, technology or manufacturing. France has assumed that role, and it is positioned well for a future of green energy.

Richter, a Nobel laureate, is professor of physics at Stanford and a member of the U.S. Department of Energy’s Nuclear Energy Advisory Committee. He has served as an adviser to the French government on nuclear power, and from November 2003 to March 2008 was on the board of directors of the U.S. subsidiary of French reactor maker AREVA. He no longer has any ties to the nuclear industry.

© 2008