The Bush administration is requesting $405 million in FY2008 for the
Global Nuclear Energy Partnership (GNEP), a program to restart reprocessing
of commercial spent nuclear fuel in the United States. Reprocessing is the
separation of plutonium, uranium and other elements from spent fuel. GNEP
has serious implications for U.S. non-proliferation policy, budgetary
priorities, radioactive waste programs, and public health and safety, and
is likely to be a contentious issue in the upcoming FY2008 Energy and Water
appropriations bill.

When the Department of Energy (DOE) first presented GNEP to Congress, the
program was largely framed as a long-term research and development program
to develop "advanced recycling technologies." Only one year later, the DOE
is proposing to build a commercial-scale reprocessing facility and a
full-scale fast reactor using existing technologies similar to those used
in Europe and Japan. The DOE plans to select one or more sites in 2008.
In South Carolina there are two potential sites that the DOE is
considering.

The DOE and other GNEP proponents point to the fact that other countries,
including the UK, France and Japan, reprocess nuclear waste as
justification for why the United States should also do so. These programs,
however, have not been economically or technically successful, nor have
they solved the problem of nuclear waste in those countries. Two speakers
will review the U.S. and foreign experience.