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

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...