Introduction 1  transition period 2 3 4 1 5 6 7  intergenerational justice  just  our 8 9  Partitioning and transmutation 10 11  justified Future Rights, Present Obligations: Intergenerational Justice  intergenerational justice  intergenerational distributive justice 12 13 14 15 17  assumed 18 19 2 20 23 24 25  assumed future 26 27 21 28 29  sustainable development 30 31 32 33 34 35 3 36 37 4 11 38 40 Nuclear Fuel Cycles: Open and Close 5 Open Fuel Cycle (OFC): Once-through Option 235  fissioned 235 238 235 235  enrichment 4 239  minor actinides  major  minor 1 41 1 Fig. 1 Radiotoxicity of spent fuel, vitrified waste (HLW) and fission products, compared with regard to the radiotoxicity of uranium ore needed to manufacture the fuel  Closed Fuel Cycle: Recycling Plutonium and Uranium 235 238 239  reprocessing  mixed oxide fuel MOX 42 2 4  vitrified waste 6 41 1 Fig. 2 An overview of the open and closed nuclear fuel cycle; the solid lines represent the OFC, the dashed lines the CFC   closed 2 2 238 239 43 The Future of the Closed Fuel Cycle; Maximal Recycling  partitioning and transmutation 10 10 11 Waste Management, Interim Storage, Long-term Storage and Repositories Irrespective of the fuel cycle choice, the remaining waste in a nuclear reactor after the (optional) treatments needs to be disposed. In waste management, a distinction is made between storage and disposal: storage means keeping the waste in engineered facilities aboveground or at some ten of meters depth underground, while disposal is the isolation and emplacement of the waste at significant depth (a few hundreds of meters) underground in engineered facilities, called ‘geological repositories’.  interim storage 39 44 5 38 39 45 5 Risks and Associated Values 46 47 48 49 Sustainability: Supply Certainty, Environmental Friendliness and Cost Affordability 11 Supply Certainty  resource efficiency  supply certainty  efficiently  supply certainty 49 5 50 238 239 8 51 52 Environmental Friendliness: Radiological Risks to the Environment  environmental friendliness 53 53 54 3 Fig. 3 Ethical values (first row) and their specification (second row) related to the OFC and CFC. A plus sign represent an improvement of the ethical value and has a positive connotation, a minus sign is a drawback of the value  3 55 52 Affordability  cost effectiveness  affordability  durability  reasonably durable  affordable It is also arguable whether durability should be accepted as sustainability. This is an ongoing debate about different interpretations of the notion of sustainability. In a moral discussion, it is probably more just to separate economic considerations from other aspect of sustainability. However, for the sake of our analysis we follow here NEA’s analysis and accept sustainability conceived as durability. 56 52 47 47 48 In the previous reasoning we considered reprocessing as a broadly applied technology, which will create the need to build new reprocessing plants. Economic affordability appear totally different if we base our analysis on the existing reprocessing plants, as many small consumers of nuclear energy reprocess their spent fuel in France or Great-Britain. These countries do not have excessive initial expenditures for their CFC. Public Health and Safety: Short-term and Long-term Radiological Risks 6 52 57 Security and Proliferation Hazards 239 58 Proliferation is also a potential hazard in countries capable of enriching uranium. One of the main tasks of the IAEA is to annually report to the United Nation’s Security Council about nuclear energy possessing nations. Although both the OFC and the CFC need enriched uranium in the reactor, the short-term proliferation concerns of the CFC are considerably higher, due to the separation of plutonium during reprocessing. 239 10 3 Value Conflicts in Fuel Cycles and Future Generations 3 3 Value Conflicts  cleanness 47 59 60 8 Intergenerational Justice and Nuclear Waste Management 6 7 As illustrated, the CFC mostly has long-term benefits and compromises public health and safety as well as security of the contemporary people. Does the aim to avoid “undue burdens on future generations” mean that we are supposed to diminish waste radiotoxicity and its volume as much as possible? To what extent should we accept the increased risks and hazards to the present generation in order to accomplish the latter? 61 38 39 62 6 7 63 38 64  our waste 7 Underlying Assumptions and Possible Counter-arguments So far we have argued that decision-making on the fuel cycles could best take place within the framework of intergenerational justice. This conclusion is based on the analysis in the foregoing chapter, in which we illustrated the choice between the OFC and the CFC mainly as a choice between the present and future generations. Obviously, there are a few assumptions at the basis of this analysis. Below, we will discuss some of these underlying assumptions and provide some possible counter-arguments and evaluate their validity. Defining Short-term as 50 years  turning point 3 47 48 49 50 3  undiscovered resources 50  affordability All Released Pu will Eventually be ‘Destroyed’ destroyed 41  consumption  cashed 58  civilian plutonium 52 58 65 Irrespective of Bunn’s reasoning’s validity regarding nuclear theft, we can easily state that separated plutonium for the purpose of reprocessing contains more proliferation concerns than plutonium ‘embedded’ in spent fuel. The latter needs advanced and very expensive technology to separate plutonium, which is not accessible outside the legal authorized and controlled way of the IAEA, which supports the argument that separated plutonium involves more security and proliferation concerns. 3 2  can How Long does the ‘Long-term’ Last in Case of Radiological Risks?  radiological benefits The question raises here whether this challenges our analysis. The trade-offs needs still to be made between the short-term and long-term radiological risks. The CFC is rightly associated with less long-term risks: perceived from now or after 50 years, there will be less long-term risks in remote future. The analysis is still valid, but these long-term benefits will reveal after a much longer period of time than the proposed 50 years for supply certainty. To sum up, 50 years is not applicable to all comparisons, but the line of analysis will not change as a consequence. The CFC and the Transition Period  transition 50 47 48 52  transition period 66  sustainable 66 If we agree that the CFC is—under some assumptions—more environmentally benign in the long run and if the latter is the outcome of our trade-offs, we can argue that we should use the CFC for the transition period, no matter how short or how long this period is. The long-term burdens as a result of nuclear energy deployment will be there anyway, the CFC enables one to diminish those burdens to some extent. There are also no technical restrictions to deployment of the CFC in short periods of time, except the time needed to build a reprocessing plant. However, the argument we presented with respect to actually destroying plutonium holds stronger if one is in favor of applying nuclear energy to bridge a transition period: within that same period, all plutonium should then be destroyed. Choosing Between OFC and CFC. Is not that a False Dilemma? In our analysis we presented two different methods in the production of nuclear energy. Prior to our analysis, we stated that the questions with respect to desirability of nuclear energy will be beyond the scope of our paper. We also listed the state-of-the-art in the production of nuclear energy, being responsible for 16% of world’s energy production, and focused on existing moral conflicts. Under these assumptions, there are two methods to produce nuclear energy, namely the OFC and the CFC. The question raises here whether there will be a third fundamentally different option, or in other words, whether the choice between the OFC and the CFC is a false dilemma? Future developments of nuclear energy mainly concern effort to reduce radiotoxicity of waste, such as the P&T presented in this paper. These options are to be considered as an extended CFC and are not essentially different. We still need to deal with the trade-offs as we described in this paper.  unacceptable risks Why do not we Talk about Justice Among Contemporaries? 50  burdens  benefits  intragenerational justice  just  just  whole  Inter Conclusions 11  our  intergenerational justice In our analysis we used lots of estimations with regard to uranium resources, waste radiotoxicity and the radiological risks of the waste. How valid are these estimations if we include the uncertainties encompassing our analysis? Estimations and predictions are the key problems in dealing with the future, especially when we talk about the remote future. These uncertainties need to be further investigated in future studies in order to test the validity of provided analysis. It is also recommendable to quantify the probabilities of these risks in order to compare them in a more appropriate way. Do the decreased risks to the public and the environment in the remote future equal the increased risks to the present generation? In this paper, we approach the choice between the fuel cycles perceived form the perspective of intergenerational justice. Advocates of he OFC should argue why they are willing to transfer all the risks for a very long period of time (200,000 years) to future generations and accept all the accompanying uncertainties for their descendants. Supporters of the CFC should underpin their acceptance of additional risks to the present generation. More importantly, they should make it plausible that separated plutonium during reprocessing is eventually “destroyed”. Proliferation remains the leitmotiv in these discussions, as it is the main objection against the CFC.