In May 2006, the Prime Minister told a press conference in Canada: "....we follow very closely the American led initiative for the Global Nuclear Energy Partnership [GNEP] - ... and I think the two countries can work together in partnership to make sure that we not only follow the development of that initiative, but also ensure that the initiative does not work in a way that in any way affects our own interests or the legitimate exploitation of our uranium reserves."

However, a US report on the GNEP by the Institute for Policy Studies, in collaboration with Friends of the Earth USA and the Government Accountability Project, contains no good news about GNEP:

"The U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) Global Nuclear Energy Partnership (GNEP) is being promoted as a program to bring about the expansion of world-wide nuclear energy. Crucial to the

GNEP plan is the use of a new, unproven type of chemical reprocessing of spent fuel from power reactors in the United States and possibly other nations....

..Unlike direct disposal of spent nuclear fuel rods, reprocessing involves chemical separation of radioisotopes and creates multiple waste streams. It also releases large volumes of radioactivity into the environment, typically by factors of several thousand compared with nuclear reactors.

Unprecedented amounts of long-lived radioactive wastes could be disposed in the near surface and pose increased contamination risks for thousands of years. For instance, the amounts of cesium-135 that could be disposed under GNEP could be several thousand times greater than generated after decades of U.S. nuclear weapons material production. With a half-life of 2.3 million years... this represents a long term safety concern.

The Energy Department's troubled experience with defense high-level wastes should also serve as a cautionary warning. With an estimated liability of more than $100 billion, and after 25 years, DOE has treated less than one percent of the radioactivity from past reprocessing for geological disposal.

(For the full detail please see:
  www.ips-dc.org/reports/070423-radioactivewastes.pdf">www.ips-dc.org/reports/070423-radioactivewastes.pdf  
1.36 Mb PDF file).

• Abstract
• Executive Summary
• Introduction
• "Once Through" and "Closed" Nuclear Fuel Cycles
• Nuclear Waste Disposal Problems
• Defense High-Level Wastes
• Storage and Reprocessing
• Radioactive Wastes from Reprocessing
• Costs
• Endnotes

• Figure 1 GNEP Surface Disposal Plan
• Figure 2 PUREX Process
• Figure 3 Historical and Projected Spent Fuel Discharges
• Figure 4 Radioactivity in DOE High-Level Wastes
• Figure 5 Actual vs. Expected Radioactivity in SRS HLW Canisters
• Figure 6 UREX+1 Process
• Table 1 PUREX Waste Streams
• Table 2 UREX+ Waste Streams
• Table 3 Estimated Radioactivity in Spent Nuclear Fuel

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