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

[RingDev]

Not quite. The US has coal. we have lots of coal. we have an ubsurdly large amount of coal. we have enough coal to not have to worry about centralized generation supplies, ever.

We even have technology (gasification, scrubbers, etc...) to make coal burning pass Kyoto.

Nuclear on the other hand, has some issue that have been glossed over. First off, spent fuel storage. This program would actually reduce that problem, so I think it's a great idea. Second, corrupt, incompotence, and lack of over sight. Check out the nuclear energy system in France. It's heavily governed, has strict regulation, design requirements, etc... In the US we have reactors that are in use beyond their expected life, storing significantly more spent fuel then designed, cutting corners on down time, bribing inspectors, and of all different designs and natures. Third, existing Nuclear power plants are heavily susidized by the government, which means the power they generate is not as cheap per kW as they claim.

I'm not saying Coal is perfect either, it is still significantly more dirty (even with gasification), it takes huge tracks of land to mine coal, and is getting more expensive as requirements to cut emissions and mercury are being increased.

Me, I like nuclear, but our current system is an accident waiting to happen. We should take after the French [shudder] and design the nuclear infrastructure of our country with safety and security in mind.

-Rick

IFR

[tsnorri]

According to Wikipedia, research on the Integral Fast Reactor was cancelled due to non-proliferation. Could the work continue now? To me, it seems quite an achievement, that the waste elements produced by the reactor had half lives of only a few decades.

Re:Makes sense

[AKAImBatman]

Second, corrupt, incompotence, and lack of over sight. Check out the nuclear energy system in France. It's heavily governed, has strict regulation, design requirements, etc... In the US we have reactors that are in use beyond their expected life, storing significantly more spent fuel then designed, cutting corners on down time, bribing inspectors, and of all different designs and natures.

In analyzing this point, it's very important to ask the question, "Why is the system this way?" The answer is quite simple: Almost no nuclear reactors have been built since the 80's. The last one was made operational in 1996, ten years ago. This situation is caused by the politcial football that Nuclear Power has become. Any new nuclear plants must face thousands of regulatory issues, environmentalist protests, impact statements, and political resistance. The resistance is so high to opening new plants, that the cost and time required to open a new plant makes it impossible.

Meanwhile, plant operators struggle to keep their existing plants online well past their expected lifetimes. Nuclear Plants continue to close left and right, and it is only slightly less problematic to replace them with dirty coal fired plants. One way or another energy producers are losing. Demand continues to rise while generating capacity lags behind. Someone has GOT to shove through the cruft and make it profitable again to open power plants. Unless that happens, Americans will not see any new nuclear power, especially not safe nuclear power.

Re:Makes sense

[ivan256]

We even have technology (gasification, scrubbers, etc...) to make coal burning pass Kyoto.

None of that technology would change the fact that half of our carbon gas emissions come from burning coal. Which would you rather get rid of, cars and trucking, making a 20something% dent in our emissions, or coal, getting rid of 50% of our emissions?

Not only that, but it's still unsafe. There have been more deaths by coal mine accident than nuclear power accident by far.

We should take after the French [shudder] and design the nuclear infrastructure of our country with safety and security in mind.

I completely agree. Though South Africa has some interesting technology going too.

Re:Makes sense

[drinkypoo]

We're killing the oceans. Even if you don't like seafood you should be concerned, because oceanic algae is the single largest contributor to oxygen levels. The rainforests, all put together, don't even begin to come close, because decomposition takes oxygen and the rainforests grow super fast, then fall down super fast (well, trees and other plants in them do anyway, they have much shorter lifetimes than your average european or north american forest-dwelling plants) and decompose. This enriches the soil, because some of the plants fix valuable nutrients.

And, if you're wondering why we care about them, rainforests act as filters (all that activity means there's more plant respiration per square foot there than in any other land-based environment) and they also help cool the globe. Plus, if you slash and burn, and then grow crops or graze food animals on the land, then you're depleting the topsoil which will eventually blow away after depletion and uncovering (and plowing) and leave us with desert where the rainforest used to be. This happened a whole lot in Egypt...

Re:Short sighted...

[RingDev]

I am FOR Nuclear power. I was just saying that coal consumption is not a concern. Maybe my phrasing was a bit strong. "...the Energy Information Administration (1995) estimated that the United States has enough coal to last 250 years" as per: http://energy.usgs.gov/factsheets/nca/nca.html

So yes, there is a finite limit to our coal supply, but if we are still primarily powering our country with coal 250 years from now, we will have other issues.

But as great as nuclear is, I think distributed generation is and true Green power is the way to go. For instance, if properly developed, the state of South Dakota could generate enough electricity from wind alone to power the entire western half of the country. Installing integrated photo voltaic roofing shingles (ie: Solar power) in all new residential buildings could reduce demand growth by 75%. Using bacterial scrubbers on coal plants can not only dramaticly cut emissions but they can also be recycled into low emission bio-diesel.

There are many great solutions, and I think Nuclear is one part of the puzzle, but anyone who immediately discredits a form, or puts all of their hopes on one form is either stupid, or has an agenda.

-Rick