Nuclear industry wants Canada to lift ban on reprocessing pl

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Nuclear industry wants Canada to lift ban on reprocessing plutonium, despite proliferation risks

By Gordon Edwards, Susan O’Donnel, Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, - March 11, 2024 -

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Plutonium is “the stuff out of which atomic bombs are made.”

Plutonium can also be used as a nuclear fuel. Reprocessing is any technology that extracts plutonium from used nuclear fuel. In Canada, the nuclear industry seems determined to close the nuclear fuel cycle by pushing for a policy to permit reprocessing—thereby seeking to lift a 45-year-old ban.

In 1977, Canada tacitly banned commercial reprocessing of used nuclear fuel, following the lead of the Carter administration, which explicitly opposed reprocessing because of the possibility it could lead to increased proliferation of nuclear weapons around the world.[1] That unwritten policy in Canada has held sway ever since.[2]

New documents obtained through Canada’s Access to Information Act reveal that, behind closed doors, the nuclear industry has been crafting a policy framework that, if adopted, would overturn the ban and legitimize the extraction of plutonium from Canada’s used commercial nuclear fuel.

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