In article ,
Tim Williams wrote:
"Gary Coffman" wrote in message
.. .
More importantly, most of it isn't "spent". Only about 3% of the fissile
material in a "spent" rod has fissioned. By using reprocessing, almost
all of the remaining fissile material could be recovered and reused
(and if breeder technology were used, more fissile material would be
recovered than was originally present in the rods). That means the
amount of *real* high level waste, stuff with no commercial value, is
much smaller than the already tiny amounts we're talking about.

So why don't they reprocess it too? BS? Expense? Too much radiation?
Poisonous chemicals? (Hell, industry's been using those for centuries,
that's never been a reason...)

I don't know too much about chemicals but I bet even I could chemically
seperate uranium and plutonium from the other, dramatically different
products.

Tim


Probably politics. Someone somewhere probably passed a law that says only
the government can do that and they won't do it because the general public
is so ill informed that any move that brings nookular stuff into the
spotlight will cause outrage and cost votes.

Likewise, I wonder what would happen if some little country out there were
to build and run breeder reactors to make plutonium and then make power
plants that ran on the plutonium. It would go a long way to break the
plutonium == bomb mindset and intorduce the idea that all this "waste"
isn't, yet.

-- Joe

--
Joseph M. Krzeszewski Mechanical Engineering and stuff
Jack of All Trades, Master of None... Yet