dpb wrote:



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)???

Just the nature of the waste, and the fact that today, our storage strategy
relies on the hope that nothing will go wrong - no earthquakes, no outside
factors, that will disturb what is a fairly fragile storage strategy, and
that at some point we'll have a better plan.


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, ...).

I get that part, and I've not disagreed with that point, but I can't lay it
all at the feet of the political decisions. Other countries have not been
as hogtied as the US, and have proceeded with reprocessing, but while their
waste issue are different (somewhat) than ours, they are also in some
respects, the same waste issues. So - the French (which I continue to rely
on for my examples, because I understand them to have committed more to
nuclear than anyone else), are wrestling with waste issues even today. So,
it appears that reprocessing, though offering a perfectly valid economical
benefit, still suffers the issue of what to do with the stuff.



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.

Not so much, as I understand it. Again - France is still dealing with what
to do with their spent fuel.

--

-Mike-