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Bush Administration to Back Reprocessing

By Eric McErlain
From today's Wall Street Journal (free feature):
The Bush administration plans to announce a $250 million initiative to reprocess spent nuclear fuel, a first step toward reversing a 1970s policy that rejected reprocessing as too dangerous to pursue.

The administration's decision to put the money into its fiscal 2007 budget to test new technologies is part of an effort to jump-start the nuclear-power industry at a time when energy prices are high and concerns about global warming make nuclear power plants more acceptable.

According to nuclear industry officials and others briefed on the proposal in recent weeks, the program could be announced as early as next week in President Bush's State of the Union address. If the technology works, it could vastly reduce the amount of spent nuclear waste that would have to be buried in underground storage, such as at Nevada's Yucca Mountain, set to open after 2012.
More later.

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Comments

Anonymous said…
Why not have the government return to the utilities the $24 billion that has so far been paid for a national geological repository owned and managed by the Federal Government, and tell the utilities to solve their own waste problem? Also include in such a bill before Congress a requirement for coal and natural gas plants to secure and safely dispose of their waste, too, including COx, SOx, NOx, mercury, etc. In that way government involvement in nuclear power generation can be removed, the regulatory playing field leveled among the different types of electricity generators, and the Free Market can decide on what's the best, most economical path to take. Of course, this means that anti-nukes can't be permitted obstruct progress on local spent fuel repositories or local spent fuel reprocessing facilities indefinitely when safety reviews verify compliance with applicable regulation, especially because such obstruction hinders the Free Market system with no added value to public health and safety.

I really like what Rod Adams writes about this issue at:

Yucca Mountain:
Right Answer; Wrong Question
http://www.atomicinsights.com/FTROU/02-02-02.html

Common myths . . .Is Nuclear Waste A Huge Problem?
http://www.atomicinsights.com/apr95/waste_myth.html

Regards,

Paul W. Primavera
January 27, 2006 at 9:26 AM
Anonymous said…
What is UREX+? How different is that from Purex? Although UREX+ is said to be for extracting uranium from spent fuel, MOX fuel is recycled to LWR and uranium is storaged, according the recycle scheme published.
January 30, 2006 at 7:34 PM
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