Nuclear power looks for comeback in U.S.

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Unfunded mandates

It needs to fully pay for waste disposal and storage of spent nuclear material, along with all other costs, without any subsidies or writedowns or government participation

Keep in mind that a large part of the "waste" you're talking about is perfectly good fuel. Only a few percent of the uranium gets converted before the rods load up with various undesirable isotopes. At that point, the rods have to be pulled from the reactor.

Unfortunately, US Federal law prohibits recovering the majority of uranium in the "spent" rods, along with the plutonium and other perfectly useful isotopes. The real waste is a relatively small amount of short half-life isotopes.

The cost of throwing away the majority of fuel and requiring it to be treated as long-lived hazardous waste is purely a creation of US foreign policy, and it only makes sense for the US Government to carry the cost of such an economically-stupid policy rather than pass it on to the industry that would much rather be less "wasteful."

Posted by: Yagotta B. Kidding   Posted on: 09/14/07 You are currently: a Guest | Members login | Terms of Use

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