On 3/18/2011 1:07 PM, Robatoy wrote:
On Mar 18, 12:56 pm, wrote:
On 3/18/2011 9:45 AM, dpb wrote:





On 3/18/2011 2:58 AM, Just Wondering wrote:
...

Other countries recycle their spent nuclear rods, resulting in far less
radioactive waste. Why doesn't the USA?

Primarily we never got started because Mista' Ca-ahter (peanut farmer,
nuclear Navy, fairly decent woodworker to keep us on topic ) couldn't
distinguish (didn't understand) the difference between reprocessing for
weapons (nuclear proliferation) and commercial nuclear power and made
two sweeping edicts part of his policy platform --

1) Canceled the Breeder Demonstration project at Oak Ridge, and

2) Executive order that NRC would not consider the application of GE for
licensing a facility at Barnwell for reprocessing commercial nuclear fuel.

We're still paying the consequences for both...

As in it accomplished nothing regarding nuclear proliferation (N Korea,
Iran as prime examples) and we still have no coherent spent nuclear fuel
policy (other than continue to let it accumulate up at the reactors in
the spent fuel pools).



(BS NucE/MS NucSci, retired, w/ 30+ years w/ reactor vendor and
consultant to utilities, various US national laboratories, DOE and
commercial clients...)

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We don't really know about Iran's capabilities. BUT... if you lived
next door to Israel, who does have nuclear capability without ever
having signed on to any non proliferation treaties, wouldn't you want
to be able to deter an aggressor with weapons of similar ilk? Only
countries with nuclear capability don't get bullied, so who can blame
any nation for wanting those weapons? Aimadinnerjacket might be a
nutbar, but he knows what he needs.
North Korea? They haven't proven conclusively to possess The Bomb....
sure a big bang in a mine and a little radiation 'seed'... a whole ot
of smoke and mirrors...but HEY, we got to keep the little people in
the Homeland scared of the boogie man, and Iran and NKorea sure come
in handy for that....

I wasn't saying anything specific about my judgment on who
should/shouldn't have nuclear capability but sure; I personally am much
more comfortable w/ the Israeli's possible ( ) abilities in that
regard than I am w/ either DPRK or Iran (or Pakistan/India or most of
the former USSR satellites, for that matter).

OTOH, as events demonstrated, what the US chose to do wrt commercial
nuclear power (or, in this case, chose _not_ to do) in not reprocessing
spent commercial fuel had no bearing whatsoever on the decisions of
outside governments as to what course to follow in their own best
interests as they perceived those to be.

I only brought it up as the demonstration that the directives of Mr
Carter didn't produce the desired result on the one front and completely
stopped the handling of spent commercial nuclear fuel on the other.
Clearly, a "lose-lose".

AFAIK, the IAEA and others concluded that the DPRK tests were, in fact,
legitimate albeit relatively small based on seismology and radiation
signatures afterward.

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