"John Williamson" wrote in message
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On 21/01/2014 06:57, harryagain wrote:
"John Williamson" wrote in message
They have been reprocessing used fuel at Sellafield and other places for
many decades now. They extract plutonium and other radioactive isotopes
from used fuel rods and turn it into MOX fuel to be used in the 30
reactors that are currently using it in Europe, with another 20 licenced
to do so.
That's right. They separate usful fuel from the dross.
But the dross remains.
(The dross is what we are discussing)
Which could easily be disposed of, if the anti-nuclear lobby were not so
adamant that it not be stored within 8,000 miles of them. The dross, as
you call it, is much less radioactive and more easily stored than what
goes into the process, too.
But, as has been shown, you are so anti-nuclear that you refuse to read
anything positive about the nuclear industry, preferring to use energy
production methods that have been proven to increase greenhouse gas
production relative to burning coal as well as large amounts of chemical
and radioactive waste. However, as that waste is produced many thousands
of miles away from you, you seem not to care about it. I rather think that
if someone were to open a neodymium production facility near your home
that you might think differently.
Transatomic are a spinoff from MIT, who have a good reputation for doing
good engineering. Bill Gates also has a startup doing work on recycling
nuclear fuel. The only new thing about Transatomic is that their reactor
should be able to use old fuel rods directly. They're hoping to get
round
the current hysteria in the USA about reprocessing used fuel.
At least it will give predictable power 24/7.
The USA has reprocessing centres'
Similar to ours.
But nowhere to permanently store the dross.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deep_ge..._certain_sites
The lack of permanent storage is due to the hysteria being whipped up by
the anti-nuclear lobby. Many suitable sites have been identified, but
NIMBYism rules.
The lack of permanent storage arises be causes they don't even know if it's
possible yet.
Yet they still plough on down the road to nowhere.