Choosing a reprocessing technology requires focusing on what we value

“Technology decisions for reprocessing must take into account technology and policy decisions for the entire fuel cycle” – Chairwoman Biggert before the House Committee on Science, Subcommittee on Energy. How will these decisions be enabled to take both technology and policy into account? This paper presents a set of alternatives for selecting a Light Water Reactor legacy fuel reprocessing technology for the United States based on policy values and technological attributes. Seven example policy value scenarios are modeled showing how dependent technology selection is to values. While four of the scenarios result in the COEX process being selected, the results demonstrate that different technologies could be selected with changes in policy values.