Mike Marlow wrote:

dpb wrote:


Again, while conveniently hiding behind the facade that it's a problem
when the real problem is that there's no legal way to do anything
about any of it in the US owing to political constraints as opposed to
anything technical.



Not hiding. Have not heard anything from the nuclear industry that
genuinely mitigates the risk. Reprocessing does not, though it does change
the risk. It's not purely political - though I will agree and give you that
the politics behind it are a significant factor.


....


What _SPECIFIC_ risk are you talking about? What was the risk at Yucca
Mtn that's so horrific (other than Harry losing his powerful position in
NV and DC if he gets out of the way)???

Carter killed reprocessing because he could not separate the weapons
proliferation issue from that of commercial fuel reprocessing (that
nasty bogey-man word "Plutonium" again). We see how well that worked;
it stymied any further development on the technical front as nobody is
going to invest in an area that is guaranteed to not even get considered
owing to government decree and the areas of the world that were worried
about as far as rogue weapons didn't care what the US did anyway and
went on their way (N Korea, Iran, ...).


Meanwhile, owing to those decisions, spent fuel continues to simply
accumulate at the reactor sites as there is no alternative allowed or
allowable at present. The current situation is _all_, fundamentally,
political in how we got to this quagmire because every alternative has
been closed to date by intervention from DC.

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