Michael Giberson
William Tucker, author of “Terrestrial Energy: How Nuclear Power Will Lead the Green Revolution and End America’s Long Energy Odyssey,” has an essay in today’s WSJ pinning the U.S. nuclear waste problem on decisions by Presidents Ford and Carter to abandon reprocessing of spent nuclear fuel.
The reasons for abandoning reprocessing – mostly fear that plutonium would end up as bombs in terrorist hands – are no longer such a concern (because other sources would be more convenient, should someone want to develop a bomb, than a U.S. reprocessing facility). Reprocessing dramatically reduces the waste disposal problem.
Tucker says, “France, which completely reprocesses its recyclable material, stores all the unused remains — from 30 years of generating 75% of its electricity from nuclear energy — beneath the floor of a single room at La Hague.” (Maybe the Nuclear Energy Institute could offer to store the unused material from reprocessing in the basement of their Washington, D.C., offices?)