Bush Administration to Support Nuclear Recycling

Ironsides writes "The Washington Post is reporting the the Bush Administration is planning to re-enrich spent nuclear fuel so that it can once again be used in nuclear reactors. Included in the plan is a proposal to take spent fuel from other countries and re-enrich it for use as well as domestic spent fuel. This would be a break with a policy set forth by President Carter in an attempt to discourage nuclear proliferation. Currently $250 Million as been proposed for FY 2007 to start developing the technology."

Comments

Re:Makes sense

[Acy James Stapp]

Hell Yeah. Coal puts far more radioactives *into the air* than nuclear produces in a compact, easily stored form. Americans living near coal plants are exposed to *more* radiation than those living near nuclear plants. For a good summary, see
http://www.ornl.gov/info/ornlreview/rev26-34/text/ colmain.html

Acy

SciAm Article: Smarter Use for Nuclear Waste

[johndeerejedi]

There was a good Scientific American article in December 2005 about using fast reactors to use waste fuel from other reactors to produce power using pyrometalurgical techniques to process the fuel. I'm sorry but all Scientific American has is a preview of the article, entitled http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?articleID=000D556 0-D9B2-137C-99B283414B7F0000&ref=sciam&chanID=sa00 6 "Smarter Use of Nuclear Waste". The gist of the article is that current thermal reactors use only 5% of the enriched nuclear fuel (U235) and the waste includes a lot of Plutonium, U238, and other actinydes that the process in the article would consume. This pyrometalurgical processing also prevents taking out the Plutonium--it takes out the waste products, like Strontium. Since it can consume U238, Thorium, etc. it would be able to "burn" something like 95% of the nuclear fuel and the waste products would be short lived radioactive waste. I hope this is the procedure they are using, and not breeder reactors or conventional reprocessing.

Re:Makes sense

[Firethorn]

And I replied to your post up above, and I will do so again.

Look at the TWO WORST nuclear power accidents in the world.

Three Mile Island, with no recorded fatalities.

Chernobyl, of which I studied fairly extensivly in high school, was a combination of a number of factors:
1. Dangerous experimental design

• it's RBMK design had a positive void coefficient, and quite a high one. US reactors, other than some small early test reactors are not allowed to have this. In US reactors are designed so that the loss of cooling results in the reactor shutting down. In the RBMK design, the opposite happened.
  
• It was a weapon reactor, power was to be a side benefit

2. Improperly trained people placed in charge. The director came from a coal plant background, not nuclear. The technictians came from the soviet nuclear submarines, which were a much safer design(see void coefficient). They weren't trained on the differences.
3. A test was being done, resulting in the bypass of a number of safety systems.
4. No containment dome. US reactors are housed in concrete containment domes that will limit release of radiation if all else fails. Chernobyl doesn't have it. Instead it has the sarcophagus which was placed after the fact, quickly, in hazardous conditions. It suffers from this.

More at Wikipedia

Basically,Nuclear power has been shown to be extremely safe when handled correctly. For a severe disaster, the flaws would have to start in the very construction of the plant. Modern reactors would be orders of magnitude safer and efficient than our old reactors that still beat coal power in safety and pollution.

Re:Makes sense

[LordKazan]

agree with everything you said

here is a good example of an excellent reactor design: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pebble_bed_reactor