The recent signing of a bill by President Bush that provides $50 million for reprocessing spent nuclear fuel has rekindled a highly charged debate on how to deal with nuclear waste.
Reprocessing exacerbates the problem of nuclear proliferation, is not economical and does not solve the problem of waste disposal, said Allison Macfarlane, a research associate in the Program in Science Technology and Society at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
In the meantime, new technology for reprocessing spent nuclear fuel is being developed at a research center that is co-directed by a University of Wisconsin-Madison professor.