10% of US Energy Derived From Old Soviet Nukes

Nrbelex writes "The New York Times reports that about 10 percent of electricity generated in the United States comes from fuel from dismantled nuclear bombs, mostly Russian. 'It's a great, easy source' of fuel, said Marina V. Alekseyenkova, an analyst at Renaissance Bank and an expert in the Russian nuclear industry that has profited from the arrangement since the end of the cold war. But if more diluted weapons-grade uranium isn't secured soon, the pipeline could run dry, with ramifications for consumers, as well as some American utilities and their Russian suppliers.'"

Comments

There would BE no supply problem...

[DesScorp]

... if we'd use common sense and recycle the fuel, as many other nuclear nations already do. The whole terrorist argument against this was bogus from the start. Recycle the damn fuel, and you can reuse 93 percent of it.

Re:We should do more

[kevinNCSU]

I'm a big supporter of nuclear power but to be fair Nuclear power kills fish too nearly any way you wing it. Those puppies need water cooling so most are built near large bodies of water. Even if they cool their water properly (cooling towers or canals) so that they don't mess the fish up by raising the temperature of the body of water at all there's no getting around the fact that those intake pipes are going to suck in some fish and other larger animals can often get stuck on the mesh.

I know one plant was required to build a "slide for life" to get some of the fish out of the intake. Got the fish out all-right, but their fate wasn't much delayed. The birds on the other hand, thought it was the best fucking invention ever.

Re:So... the solution is more nukes?

[twistedsymphony]

Considering that we have between the US and Russia close to TWENTY thousand warheads, if we take even 20% of that collectively, that'd be enough for another 15-20 years. By which time one would think we'd have gotten our act together on these other more renewable resources.

sounds quite optimistic to me.

Re:In Post-Soviet Russia...

[Zordak]

FTFA "But if more diluted weapons-grade uranium isn't secured soon, the pipeline could run dry, with ramifications for consumers, as well as some American utilities and their Russian suppliers."

Gotta end sometime, but was fun while it lasted

Yeah, too bad we can't, you know, mine the stuff or something.