BEIJING - Chinese scientists have mastered the technology for reprocessing fuel from nuclear power plants, potentially boosting the supplies of carbon-free electricity to keep the country's economy booming, state television reported Monday.
The breakthrough will extend by many times the amount of power that can be generated from China's nuclear plants as fissile and fertile materials are recovered to be new fuel, CCTV said.
Several European countries, Russia, India and Japan already reprocess nuclear fuel - the actual materials used to make nuclear energy - to separate and recover the unused uranium and plutonium, reduce waste and safely close the nuclear cycle.
The CCTV report gave no details on whether or when China would begin reprocessing on an industrial scale.
Reprocessing nuclear fuel costs significantly more than using it once and storing it as waste. It also is controversial because extracted plutonium can be used in nuclear weapons, though China has long had a nuclear arsenal.
U.S. commercial reprocessing of plutonium was halted by then-President Jimmy Carter because of nuclear proliferation worries. Then-President George W. Bush proposed a resumption, but the National Research Council found it not economically justifiable. President Obama scrapped the Bush effort.
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