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• Debate:Nuclear energy

Supporting evidence

Patrick Moore, a prominent environmentalist and founding member of Greenpeace, "Going Nuclear A Green Makes the Case", Washington Post, 4/16/06 - "It is incorrect to call it waste, because 95 percent of the potential energy is still contained in the used fuel after the first cycle. Now that the Unitd States has removed the ban on recycling used fuel, it will be possible to use that energy and to greatly reduce the amount of waste that needs treatment and disposal. Last month, Japan joined France, Britain and Russia in the nuclear-fuel-recycling business. The United States will not be far behind."

Mark Brandly. "The Case for Nuclear Power". Virginia Viewpoint. October, 2001 - "Early nuclear scientists predicted tremendous benefits of nuclear power due to the possibility of recycling fissionable waste products into new fuel. Recycling nuclear fuel, as France does, increases the power generating potential of the industry and nearly eliminates the waste problem. According to the Nuclear Energy Institute, only 3% of spent fuel is actual fission byproduct waste. Most of the spent fuel, 96%, is unused uranium, which can be recycled to generate more electricity."

Jay Lehr. "Making the Case for Nuclear Power". The Heartland Institute. February 1, 2005: "Spent Fuel Useful

Domenici accurately lays the blame for the decline of the nation's domestic nuclear program at the feet of former President Jimmy Carter. The man who majored in nuclear engineering at the U.S. Naval Academy halted all U.S. efforts to reprocess spent nuclear fuel and develop mixed-oxide (MOX) fuel for our civilian reactors.

According to a report on the Public Broadcasting Service program Frontline, 'Early nuclear scientists knew how to get the most energy out of uranium: by recycling its fissionable waste products into new fuel. But because reprocessing involved the separation of plutonium, the specter of nuclear terrorism arose. To avoid this risk, President Carter banned reprocessing of commercial reactor fuel in1977.

'In many ways, this action signaled the beginning of the end of the American nuclear power industry,' the report noted.

Carter believed such a U.S. policy of restraint would serve as an example to the rest of the world. In fact, however, other countries did not follow suit.

Domenici explains, 'these countries did not follow our example because our policy was considered to be both economically and technically unsound. Our failure to address an incorrect premise has harmed our efforts to deal with spent nuclear fuel and the disposition of excess weapons material as well as our ability to influence international nuclear power issues.

'By the end of the twentieth century,' Domenici continues, 'eighteen countries had developed nuclear fuel cycle capabilities without U.S. involvement. We lost our leadership role in the development of safe, proliferation-resistant technology.'"

"Anti-nuclear arguments" [and their answers. Formal.standard]: "The waste problem hasn't been solved. [response:] The fuel for a nuclear power plant consists of hollow rods containing pellets of fissionable material - uranium oxide enriched in U-235 for the most common reactor type - the light water reactor. After 18 months to two years in the reactor, there is too little fissionable material to allow the reactor to continue to run at full power. The fuel rods are then removed and replaced by new rods. This takes about a month. When removed from the reactor, the fuel rods are extremely radioactive and are continuing to generate heat. In fact, about 1/2 percent of the total energy is generated after the fuel rods are removed. At present it isn't considered worthwhile to try to make use of this heat, and the rods are stored under water. The water can absorb and dissipate the heat, but the rods remain intact and continue to confine the radioactive material.

After five or more years in "swimming pool" storage, the fuel rods can be moved for reprocessing or for long term storage. There is no harm in leaving them in the pools for much longer times, but then enough storage has to be provided. What to do next is causing a lot of dithering in the U.S. and some countries---but not in all countries.

The normal solution is to move the rods to a reprocessing plants. There they are dissolved in suitable acids and the constituents separated. There is some leftover uranium which is depleted in U-235, at least relative to fresh fuel. It could be put into an enrichment plant again, but apparently this isn't done. There is plutonium, which is suitable for use as reactor fuel. This is the best thing to do with it. The plutonium from a power reactor contains a substantial fraction of Pu-240 which fissions spontaneously. For this reason, plutonium from the spent fuel is not used in nuclear explosives.

The major constituent of the spent fuel consists of fission products. These are elements of middling atomic mass and many of them are still very radioactive and will remain radioactive for hundreds or thousands of years. The elements that are most radioactive decay the fastest, so the amount of radioactivity is constantly reduced. Still it takes about 500 years for the overall level of radioactivity to be less than that of the original uranium ore.

The 500 years is mainly a talking point. No-one would want to live in a uranium mine, but at least it enables one to distinguish reasonable concern from unreasonable panic.

After the fuel is reprocessed, it is important to keep the fission products from contact with people. The French solution is to make a glass out of the products and store the waste in caverns cut in granite. This will surely work. There is 1.5 cubic meter of waste produced in a year by a 1,000 megawatt reactor after reprocessing. The waste is then often encased in glass which increases the volume. In any case, the caverns don't have to be dug very fast.

The proposed American solution was similar, and the favored place to store the waste is the Nevada Test Site which has already a lot of fission products from bomb tests. However, this solution has been stalled temporarily by environmentalist politics in successive administrations and by objections from the state of Nevada. 2002 Note. A bill has passed Congress and has been signed by the President to overcome the Nevada objections. There will be lawsuits, but it is thought that wastes can be stored starting in 2010.

In the meantime American waste remains in the "swimming pools". There is no harm in this, and the fact that there is no physical harm in delay encourages more and more delay. There is the political and psychological harm that delaying an important decision is used as an argument against nuclear energy.

Actually the American situation is complicated by the Carter Adminstration decision to refrain from reprocessing and dispose of the plutonium along with the fission products. This decision is wasteful and gives rise to arguments about proliferation, because someone might get the plutonium. The theory behind Carter's decision was that it would influence other governments to refrain from extracting plutonium from their wastes. No other government has been influenced, but reprocessing has not been resumed.

Let me reiterate that the main point of these Web pages is to show that progress is sustainable. It is not to recommend particular decisions about how to sustain it. Certainly nuclear power can provide the energy necessary to sustain progress."

William Tucker. "No Such Thing as Nuclear Waste." Wall Street Journal. March 13, 2009: "There is no such thing as nuclear waste. Ninety-five percent of a spent fuel rod is plain old U-238, the nonfissionable variety that exists in granite tabletops, stone buildings and the coal burned in coal plants to generate electricity. Uranium-238 is 1% of the earth's crust. It could be put right back in the ground where it came from."

"Of the remaining 5% of a rod, one-fifth is fissionable U-235 -- which can be recycled as fuel. Another one-fifth is plutonium, also recyclable as fuel. Much of the remaining three-fifths has important uses as medical and industrial isotopes. Forty percent of all medical procedures in this country now involve some form of radioactive isotope, and nuclear medicine is a $4 billion business. Unfortunately, we must import all our tracer material from Canada, because all of our isotopes have been headed for Yucca Mountain."

"What remains after all this material has been extracted from spent fuel rods are some isotopes for which no important uses have yet been found, but which can be stored for future retrieval," says Tucker