Skip to main content

Washington Post Endorses New Nuclear Build and "Foolproof Plan" for Used Fuel

By Eric McErlain
From today's Washington Post:
Nuclear power can produce electricity without generating the greenhouse gases that contribute to global warming. Industry spokesmen claim nuclear power plants can do so cheaply and efficiently, even taking subsidies into account, and, if properly monitored, safely; Chernobyl-style accidents can be avoided. Given the environmental and geopolitical disadvantages of dependence on oil, gas and coal, these arguments are persuasive.

But the Energy Department must prove early on that it has a politically and technically viable plan for storing the deadly radioactive waste that nuclear power plants produce. That has been a smoldering problem for the agency, which for years has tried to build a permanent waste storage site inside Nevada's Yucca Mountain. All the while, nuclear waste continues to pile up on sites next to reactors, in many cases close to population centers.

[...]

The federal government needs a foolproof plan to dispose properly of the waste. Otherwise, Americans won't have confidence in nuclear power.
Thanks to our friend Norris McDonald for the pointer.

Technorati tags: , , , , , , ,

Comments

Randal Leavitt said…
First things first. People have to understand that slightly used fission fuel is not waste. It is not dangerous, it is easily managed, and there is not much of it. Knowing the truth goes a long way toward making the correct decisions about what to do with this stuff. It should be stuffed back into a fast reactor and burned for another hundred years before being transmutated and spread around the community to raise the background radiation level enough to significantly improve our health.
August 17, 2006 at 5:37 PM
M said…
there can be no "fool proof plan" for used fuel. the reality is Nuclear power is to dangerous to be next "super fuel" after oil.
August 17, 2006 at 11:28 PM
Anonymous said…
I just can't allow such an overly simplistic, second-grade comment to go unanswered.

mr. x, nothing is foolproof. Not solar, not wind, not horse and buggy, certainly not coal-- how many miners do we bury every year? How much sulfur, mercury, and CO do we breathe every year?

Any examination of the big picture includes a realistic look at cost/benefit, and a rational look at risks and precautions.

In the equation of energy security, providing power for exploding populations and development in the third world, and reducing greenhouse emissions, nuclear MUST play a role. And yes, so must clean coal, solar, and wind.

mr. x, a comment like that is the equivalent of scrawling a message on a bathroom stall.
August 18, 2006 at 11:49 AM
Stewart Peterson said…
Kirk:

>>It is worth considering the value of a fuel cycle that does not produce transuranics, and a waste stream that keeps all unburned fuel and actinides out of the waste altogether.

Like the IFR?
August 18, 2006 at 4:02 PM
Anonymous said…
SPENT NUCLEAR FUEL IS SOLID!!
It is wholly inaccurate and misleading to refer to spent nuclear fuel as "radioactive sludge." The editor correctly pointed out that the progress of Yucca Mountain has hit roadblocks--but could it be that the number one roadblock is misplaced public fear due to misunderstanding of the nature (and physical state) of nuclear fuel? This confusion is widespread and is continually fueled by editorials such as this.
October 4, 2006 at 5:42 PM
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Activists' Claims Distort Facts about Advanced Reactor Design

By
Below is from our rapid response team . Yesterday, regional anti-nuclear organizations asked federal nuclear energy regulators to launch an investigation into what it claims are “newly identified flaws” in Westinghouse’s advanced reactor design, the AP1000. During a teleconference releasing a report on the subject, participants urged the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to suspend license reviews of proposed AP1000 reactors. In its news release, even the groups making these allegations provide conflicting information on its findings. In one instance, the groups cite “dozens of corrosion holes” at reactor vessels and in another says that eight holes have been documented. In all cases, there is another containment mechanism that would provide a barrier to radiation release. Below, we examine why these claims are unwarranted and why the AP1000 design certification process should continue as designated by the NRC. Myth: In the AP1000 reactor design, the gap between the shield bu...
23 comments
Read more

How many nuclear plants does it take to meet the world's energy needs?

By
Several weeks ago Joshua Pearce at Clarion University in Pennsylvania released a study titled “ Thermodynamic limitations to nuclear energy deployment as a greenhouse gas mitigation technology .” In the study he stated... nuclear energy production would have to increase by 10.5% per year from 2010 to 2050 to both replace fossil-fuel-energy use and meet the future energy demands. This line, of course, made the headlines and has been picked up by several outlets and blogs . When looking into his calculations for this statement, he made one assumption error that overstated the above sentence by nearly a factor of three. Page 121, Section 4.1 of the study states: Richard Smalley pointed out that in 2004, the global economy consumed the equivalent of 220 million barrels of oil per day, which converted into electricity terms is the equivalent of 14.5 TeraWatts (TW), or 14,500,000 MegaWatts (MW) (2005). … With a nuclear plant having about 1000 MW (1 GW) of capacity, we would need 14,500...
7 comments
Read more

What Happens During a Refueling Outage?

By
You may have noticed over the past few weeks that a number of nuclear plants are shut down for refueling outages or are resuming operations after just returning from one. This type of routine outage usually occurs in the spring or fall when electricity demand is low so that nuclear reactors can replace about one-third of the spent fuel rods with new fuel and conduct other routine maintenance and repairs at the plant. To get a better sense of how refueling works at a nuclear energy facility, I spoke with Marcus Nichol, NEI’s senior project manager for used fuel storage and transportation, and asked him to explain the basics. Why does a nuclear plant need to replace one-third of its fuel? Nichol: The main purpose of a refueling outage is to replace older fuel that is depleted—meaning it can no longer efficiently produce energy from nuclear fission reactions—with new fuel. This “used fuel” has typically been used in the reactor for four-and-a-half to six years before it is pe...
6 comments
Read more