ABSTRACT
The Carter administration recognized the principle in announcing in October 1977 that the United States is prepared to accept a limited amount of foreign spent fuel, when to do so would contribute to meeting nonproliferation goals. President Carter's announcement is a step in the creation of such a system; a similar step by another country, say Canada, either parallel with the United States or, better, through joint action of the two governments, would help things along. If at some point in the future, however, the United States should decide that commercial reprocessing can be done without serious proliferation risk, then the spent fuel could be returned for appropriate refund or other compensation. The accumulation itself gives environmentalist opponents another point of leverage in blocking further construction. For many utilities and governments, much of the interest in the reprocessing of spent fuel is related to the need to dispose of accumulating spent fuel.
