Your vast overstatement of the dangers of nuclear technology is leading you to take absurd positions. There are two sides to the "so called climate debate" - the science and the cranks. There are no scientific organizations of international standing that dispute climate change - no national academy, no scientific society, no major research organization (such as Austrialia's CSIRO) and as far as I am aware no national meteorological office. Not one. Furthermore there is no such body that asserts that environmental degradation on that scale is not a very serious problem. The science of climate change is on vastly firmer foundations than the science of low level radiation exposure to the extent that there is significant doubt as to whether the latter does any discernible harm at all. There may well be a threshold exposure below which there is no harm. We may never know because purported harm is so small that it simply disappears into statistical noise. You would hobble what has proved to be the best tool there is to reduce emissions - nuclear power - not based on firm science, but on imagined harm on a huge scale to future generations for which there is very little scientific basis.
It's not the technology, it's the business and politics behind nuclear that's led us to where we are. It's a program that's now over 50 years old and there still isn't any system in place for the long-term, safe and secure storage of spent fuel. The fact that we're not even looking into fuel reprocessing highlights how corrupt the industry is. There's a hell of a lot more money to be made in the mining and processing of uranium ore than there is in reprocessing "spent" fuel that still contains 97% of the original uranium that went into it. So, instead of recycling the fuel we already have we introduce more and more each year. Again, without any program in place to deal with it once it's "used." And then there's the issue of subsidies. If we were to permit new reactors to be built again not a single one of them would be able to be constructed entirely from private funds. Every single one of them will need billions from the government in subsidies to build them. I'm not talking about a little cash here either, every reactor proposal to date has required significant taxpayer money to be included in order to build them. It's a mature technology. If it can stand on it's own by now then it's time to move past it. Show me one balanced study that doesn't ignore the higher temperatures that existed during the Middle Ages or the higher CO2 levels that existed millions of years ago. Show me one study that factors in the total CO2 from natural as well as manmade sources. Show me one study that rationally looks at the loss of glaciers due to drier air as a result of deforestation in the same way that Arizona's cities are 15% more humid today due to the presence of lawns. You can't because no one will fund those kinds of studies.
"used" fuel rod = 3% used?! :eek: If that figure is true, that really is shocking. Before this recent Fukishima incident I was basically pro-Nuclear. But the more information I receive, the worse is gets.
I could not agree with you more. The official attitude to safe used fuel management has been poor. There is plenty of blame to go around here and both government and industry have not performed very well. There are in fact solutions to the used fuel issue. There are at least three: 1. Pyroprocessing of spent fuel. This separates uranium, plutonium and other transuranic elements from the spent fuel which are then recycled and fabricated into new fuel. The rest is fission products, initially highly radioactive and quite dangerous, but with short half lives rendering them harmless after about three hundred years. This waste stream stream is very small - a few percent in mass of current "once through fuel cycle" high level waste. Unlike PUREX reprocessing, it cannot separate out plutonium from the other actinides and cannot be used for the the production of bomb making material. There has been quite a lot of research in the US in this area, and I really am at a loss to account for the foot dragging. This is not pie in the sky stuff. For some years GE-Hitachi has been keen to build an industrial scale used fuel recycling facility called ARC. This combines pyroprocessing with advanced Gen IV fast spectrum reactor technology based on the EBR-II research program. The reactor design is called PRISM and is a complete commercial scale design. In such a facility the spent fuel could be split into three recycle streams - natural uranium for CANDUs, uranium for re-enrichment for PWRs and metal fuel containing uranium, plutonium, americurium etc for PRISMs. The crying shame is that work on this could commence tomorrow, with a very real prospect of effective recycling within a decade. 2. Looking a little further into the future molten salt thorium fueled reactors have huge potential. On-line continuous reprocessing should yield waste streams of a size and nature similar to ARC. The technology is fundamentally safe for many reasons. I admit to having a preference to this technology. The Chinese think so too, which is why they have initiated a serious R&D program. Meanwhile, the US just sits on it's hands.... 3. Just store the stuff safely until effective recycling programs are in place. Options 1 and 2 are both consistent with a remarkable future of "a lifetime of energy in the palm of your hand" - a future where a piece of uranium or thorium the size of a golf ball would supply all the energy for the lifetime of one individual. The waste stream should be of similar mass. Nothing can match that for tiny environmental footprint. I say - lets get on with it ASAP.
+1 Lol they're kooks. They'll try and tell you this latest nuclear disaster is ..No Big Deal. Chernobyl....No Big Deal Fukushima....No Big Deal It's all a media exaggeration. LOL
It's true... Accumulating fission product poisons This is the reason that nuclear reprocessing is a useful activity: solid spent nuclear fuel contains about 97% of the original fissionable material present in newly manufactured nuclear fuel. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neutron_poison#Accumulating_fission_product_poisons
Poor??? It's friggin' non-existent, they simply don't care. It's bad enough that we socialize losses and privatize gains in the financial sector. But, they don't have anything on the nuclear industry who's managed to socialize construction, privatize gains, localize waste and socialize accidents/disasters. While any of those ideas has potential you can't call any of them a "solution" since none of them are a commercial reality. Again, industry offered to do those things but, only if Congress foots the bill for construction and agrees to socialize any mishaps because no insurance company on the planet will underwrite their operation.