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US To Build Nuclear Power Plants
An anonymous reader writes "President Barack Obama has announced more than $8bn in federal loan guarantees to begin building the first US nuclear power stations in 30 years. Two new plants are to be constructed in the state of Georgia by US electricity firm Southern Company."
Where is all the waste going? The political horse trading by the Obama administration promised to shut down Yucca Mountain, toileting over $9 billion.
Is anyone doing the math??
Kriston
... that we aren't pumping money into thorium reactors. Their advantages are enormous. Waste storage time is reduced and you can use one to "burn" old nuclear waste. They cannot suffer from China Syndrome, since they need a sustained beam of neutrons to keep the reaction at critical. And in terms of proliferation, they don't lend themselves easily to building nuclear weapons, whereas conventional uranium reactor technology isn't too hard to adapt to building of simple atomic weapons ("enrich more and build a donut and plug bomb.")
is it breeder reactor? liquid thorium blanket? what generation reactor? the article say nothing on that. i'd like to see some progress in reactor tech being implemented by the US.
Does anyone take into account the speed at which science accelerates? Isn't it likely that in 20-50 years we'll have tech that can just deal with the waste?
We already have the tech to deal with this issue. It can be handled in two ways. One is to reprocess it into new fuel rods which can then be used in the reactor from which it came. Two, it can be used as is in fast breeder-type reactor where it becomes enriched and then consumed as fuel. The combination means, rather than attempting to dispose of rods which contain 90%-97% usable fuel (aka, huge waste), something like 3% winds up needing disposal and much of that has a very short half life compared to what would have otherwise been thrown out.
Sadly, US law forbids reprocessing of fuel on US soil. So option one is out. Option two is not possible as I'm not aware of any certified fast breeder reactors. Certification alone, thanks to the massive red tape forced on us all by loony environmentalist, costs billions of dollars. As a result, perfectly safe designs are simply not certifiable because no one has the years to spend billions of dollars with yet another decade of more red tape and construction before they can even hope to reclaim their investment.
Its a really great example of why laws need to be changed and environmentalist need to be shot. Buses and cliffs are also an acceptable substitute; though it may be difficult to find room because of the large number of lawyers already in line.