I think you will find that it turns out to be a combination of the two win128, countries would pay to get rid of their waste.
In one document written by GE it stated that they basically thought that the price on the recovered Uranium and the recovered Plutonium as a cost to them would be, zip,zilch,nada, bugger all, the only cost incurred would be the processing of the material in an ARC, and then enriching/separating out only the desired Isotope which I believe may in fact be similar to enrichment i.e starting with natural Uranium at around 0.7 percent and taking it to between 3 and 5 around percent.
Reprocessing used fuel to recover uranium (as reprocessed uranium, or RepU) and plutonium (Pu) avoids the wastage of a valuable resource.
Most of it – about 96% – is uranium, of which less than 1% is the fissile U-235 (often 0.4-0.8%); and up to 1% is plutonium. Both can be recycled as fresh fuel, saving up to 30% of the natural uranium otherwise required.
The materials potentially available for recycling (but locked up in stored used fuel) could conceivably run the US reactor fleet of about 100 GWe for almost 30 years with no new uranium input.
So they don't have to purchase and Uranium or Plutonium, but they do have to put it through a recycling center and then separate out the desired Isotopes, so I guess if the price of Uranium was low and no Plutonium was require at that time to run a PRISM reactor? then they could possibly use just natural Uranium if the cost of it was low enough compared to what RepU would have cost to process?
That is they could just store the used nuclear fuel for future use maybe?
Like you say it would all depend on costs, supply and demand, if they get the used nuclear fuel for nothing and in fact are paid to take it, then that would help with any costs associated with having to put it through the Advanced Recycling Center fist and the use the LIS technology to separate out the desired Isotopes.
But this new advance in technology of stripping out the 240Pu from the Plutonium bundle using LIS technology if it comes off? which is a nuclear poison to 239Pu, this is just as game changing as the Silex process for Uranium and would have to be of great value to GLE, if they can get it to work and can make the Plutonium into a MOX fuel for Light Water Reactors?
The US is building a MOX plant at the moment at Savannah River, but it is a far costlier option, if they had the means of doing this much cheaper by using LIS technology then I believe they will.
In fact I believe that this in itself may be the reason why the US is taking a long hard look at the MOX plant being built at Savanah River now, they may end up closing that down if this new method is cheaper and easier to run, because the plant being built now cant do this as good or as cheap is my understanding, they have already spent many billions of dollars on it and they will spend a heap more before it is finished is what I am reading, if they can find a better way then they will use it.
I was initially concerned about the removal of the 240Pu, I was thinking that that would make it a problem for proliferation concerns, but I think still having some of the other actinides will cover that.
I suppose leaving the other Isotopes with the 239Pu would still make it very difficult to handle, which would still help with proliferation concerns?
N.B. With respect to any other technology coming along, I have thought long and hard on that, lets just say they did find another way using home grown technology? I reckon GLE would be between a rock and a hard place if they wanted to use that tech, because the Silex process has been proven and not just for Uranium, if the Yanks wanted to change to another tech then they would have effectively given up their rights to the Silex process, so effectively we could bring that back home and use it ourselves, or license it to another country like the UK or France maybe?
I really can't see GLE doing this somehow?
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