China's Spent Nuclear Fuel Management

YUN ZHOU of the Belfer Center's Project on Managing the Atom and International Security Program reviews China's current nuclear fuel cycle program, spent fuel management and reprocessing policy to forecast the spent fuel and associated storage requirements until 2035 when the first commercialized Chinese fast neutron reactor is expected to be operational.

In a working paper for the Centre for International and Security Studies, "China's Spent Nuclear Fuel Management", she explores China’s long-term options for managing the back-end of its nuclear fuel cycle by examining China’s spent fuel storage capability, uranium resources, fast reactor R&D capability, and the cost and proliferation risks of each option.

The study concludes that China can and should maintain a reprocessing operation to meet its R&D activities before its fast reactor program is further developed and that China could benefit from a decision-making framework that allows for more flexibility and greater variability in order to account for the long timescales inherent in nuclear development.