Sunday, February 20, 2011
Spent nuclear fuel is anything but waste
Just read this article: Spent nuclear fuel is anything but waste and seriously, I'd find it hard to agree more. Our current use of the once-through cycle, and the fact that we haven't broken ground on a new reactor in over three decades borders on the insane. (I will grant, Nuclear reactors aren't currently terribly economical, but if environmental regulations more closely tracked actual risk, that would be... err.. vastly altered.
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2 comments:
Why the beard in the picture? It's kind of scary.
The article's got it wrong. The up-front costs of reprocessing are huge --- on the order of $20 billion. The marginal costs of reprocessing per kw-hr are almost as high as for mining and enrichment. And the you have to build a permanent repository anyway, just a few years later.
He's probably right about on-site disposal --- but that makes the case for reprocessing worse, not better.
I should blog about this. I can send you a copy of the Areva case I wrote, if you'd like.
(And seriously, use your Facebook picture. This guy doesn't look like you at all --- and he's a little scary.)
I should see if I can hunt up a picture of me with the long hair and long beard. This picture is way less scary.
Not sure what you think the article has wrong, with a once-through cycle, you're throwing away 95% of the fuel value of your fuel. It may not be cost-effective right now, but to dispose of the stuff in a deep geologic repository is insane. And we're not even researching how to bring that cost down. And if you can keep reprocessing and just dispose of the actinides and fission products, long-term waste storage becomes a) smaller, and b) sheds it's radioactivity sooner.
I did update the picture though :)
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