MADAM CHAIRWOMAN AND MEMBERS OF THE COMMITTEE: It is an honor to be invited here today to discuss the economic aspects of nuclear fuel reprocessing. Together with colleagues at Harvard University, I recently completed an in-depth study of this issue,¹ the results of which were published recently in the journal Nuclear Technology.² In the course of this study we conducted an exhaustive search for information on historical and projected costs of reprocessing and other nuclear fuel-cycle services. We also examined previous studies of fuel-cycle economics by the Nuclear Energy Agency of the Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), the governments of France and Japan, the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and others. Our conclusions are therefore well-grounded, and we have made our results transparent by documenting all of our assumptions and methods and by making spreadsheet versions of our economic models available on the web so that anyone can reproduce and check our results. With this background, let me turn to the specific questions raised in your letter to me.

Under what conditions would reprocessing be economically competitive with the once-through fuel cycle?
In the once-through fuel cycle, spent nuclear fuel discharged from light-water reactors is placed in a deep geological repository, such as the one being built at Yucca Mountain in Nevada. The main alternative, as practiced in France and planed in Japan, is to reprocesses spent fuel to separate the unburned plutonium and uranium other radionuclides. The recovered plutonium is used to produce mixed-oxide (MOX) fuel for existing light-water reactors, and the high-level radioactive wastes are vitrified and stored pending disposal in a deep geologic repository. It is important to note that reprocessing does not eliminate high-level wastes or negate the need for a repository.