I read a very interesting article today about recycling and reusing nuclear waste. You know, that stuff the government has terrified us about for years and has buried in Yucca Mountain . Whenever the notion of more nuclear power plants comes up the first thing that happens is the chatter about the waste. What will we do with all the waste?
Come to find out, we can reprocess this material with relative ease and effectiveness. The problem is the government has made that process illegal.
In the beginning of all this it was touted as a possible danger that other countries would steal this reprocessed material to make nuclear devices to threaten our country. Apparently, from what I read, they could make their own nuclear plants and their own nuclear waste with no need to steal from us so a ban on reprocessing was not really necessary.
The world and the global warming are pushing for environmentally clean ways to make electricity. While windmills and solar panels are clean and do help, they are not efficient. Until solar panels become much smaller, you need such a large area of them for such a small amount of electricity it’s not yet practical. You’d need to cover the earth with windmills to get enough energy from them and the environmentalists would yell about destroying animal habitats. Currently, solar and windmills provide one half of one percent of our total energy consumption. To date the most efficient generator of electricity is nuclear power plants. France is the leader of this type of energy since 88 percent of its nation’s power is nuclear, with Great Britain, India, Japan and Russia, right behind. All of these countries have thriving nuclear industries. And they are not burying the waste, but reprocessing and reusing it.
But the USA is still in the fear mode. President Obama is reported to be closing Yucca Mountain, which would be a good idea if he planned to reprocess and reuse this resource, but he is not. He intends to bury it permanently. Reprocessing would create much needed jobs, not only to reprocess but facilities would have to be built, people trained, etc., and nuclear waste would stop being trucked all over the country since reprocessing centers can be built nearer the nuclear plants.
I’d feel safer about that than the system we have today. This would give us give us better energy that is not oil related and isn’t that what even the environmentalists are shouting about?
I have not been a proponent of nuclear power plants, but then I did not have all the facts. Most Americans don’t have all the facts and remain terrified of anything nuclear although our Navy has been using nuclear energy for many years with little difficulty. Do you hear much about that? Did you know that nuclear waste can be reprocessed and reused? I doubt it.
If what I read is true, I say we all email or write to President Obama and ask him not to bury Yucca Mountain but to legalize the reprocessing and make use of a resource just waiting to be utilized.