Except for the practical constraints on technology implementation. You can't pass a law allowing reprocessing and expect there to be any successful reprocessing efforts for at least two years. In all likelihood, it would be end up mostly implemented in new plants and would be prohibitively expensive in old plants nearing the end of their lives.
My understanding is that reprocessing is usually done at specialized facilities that take in used fuel rods from many power plants, rather than being done at each individual plant; it would be impractical for each nuclear power plant to do it's own reprocessing on-site. For instance France has 59 nuclear power plants, but all the reprocessing is handled at only two facilities, La Hague and Marcoule. All the plants send their used rods to one of those two facilities, which reprocess the fuel and send it back to the plants for re-use. So the age of the power plants shouldn't have anything to do with the cost or feasibility of reprocessing used fuel from those plants; reprocessing fuel from a 40-year-old plant would be no more expensive than reprocessing fuel from a brand-new plant.
It's true that there would be a gap of several years between a decision to allow reprocessing and the beginning of serious reprocessing operations, but would that gap be sufficiently large to necessitate, or even allow, the construction of a Yucca Mountain-type facility to store the fuel before reprocessing began? That type of facility requires many years to construct.
Last edited by Syme; 05-11-2009 at 11:21 AM.
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