By Rick Perry
The oral arguments before the Supreme Court earlier this month is a reminder that our nation has a 66-year-old nuclear energy problem – and there is a ready and available solution in recycling used nuclear fuel.
The Problem
Nuclear energy produces nearly 20% of our electricity. The fuel used to run our reactor fleet loses its intensity over time. That used, but not yet depleted, fuel is called Used Nuclear Fuel (“UNF”). There are 90,000 metric tons of UNF currently stored at reactor sites across 39 states in America, including approximately 4,000 metric tons in my home State of Texas.
In 1982, the federal government was made responsible by an act of Congress for removal and disposal of UNF from reactor sites, and has collected over $20 billion from reactor owners to pay for disposal of UNF. To date, the government has not removed any significant quantity of UNF from any site anywhere in America, including Texas, nor is there a current plan to do so.
As Secretary of Energy under President Trump’s first term, it became clear that any plan to move tonnage of UNF required some practical consent of the receiving state and local community, even if legal consent was not required by the 1982 Act.
The consequence of not solving this problem results in a financial loss to America and leaves the UNF at the numerous reactor sites across America. There have been private efforts to establish UNF interim storage facilities in West Texas and New Mexico. Though there has been some local acceptance of an interim storage facility in Texas or New Mexico, there has also been significant opposition. Resistance to those private interim storage proposals led to the NRC v. Texas case currently before the Supreme Court.
The Solution
We should rethink our approach. There are options we should consider other than storage of UNF, either temporarily on an interim basis or permanently. Our country should explore taking an entirely different path to achieve our ultimate goal: the removal of UNF from reactor sites. Recycling UNF makes much more sense than permanent storage and creates an energy source that is needed and currently unused.
The technology for recycling was first developed in the United States and has been used in France, Japan, Russia, the Netherlands, Australia, Italy, China, Germany, Belgium and Switzerland. I have personally toured many of these reprocessing facilities in other countries during my term as Energy Secretary.
The United States should establish a recycling policy so that the 90,000 metric tons of UNF in the country can be recycled and fabricated into mixed oxide fuel (“MOX fuel”). The resulting MOX fuel can be used in nuclear reactors to create reliable and clean energy.
Through establishing a recycling policy, the following four problems would be solved, and create economic opportunities:
First, the United States can solve the national problem of moving UNF away from reactor sites as it is obligated to do. Second, the U.S. can restart the discontinued payment program of the nuclear utilities for the removal of the UNF so that the Treasury can be replenished at the rate of $2 billion annually. Third, the concern of interim or long-term storage of UNF near our population centers is also addressed. Finally, MOX fuel can replace the 20% of U.S. nuclear fuel currently purchased from Russia.
The adoption of such a policy will create jobs and much needed energy for the grid as demand for energy skyrockets. Today, MOX fuel is widely used in Europe and Japan in their nuclear reactor fleet. America is behind its industrial neighbors in the treatment of UNF and needs to catch up.
Sometimes the greatest problems have simple and already discovered solutions.
Rick Perry is the former governor of Texas and 14th secretary of energy.
This article was originally published by RealClearEnergy and made available via RealClearWire.
Undoing Jimmy Carter’s “Once Through” policy of not recycling used reactor fuel will deal with the “waste storage” brought about by that policy. Carter had the damnfool notion that the US should set a good example, and deter proliferation by not recycling fuel.
He also killed breeder reactors that could replenish the fuel due to the production of weapons grade plutonium.
Happy to add to other land’s recycling efforts. And if we can reduce costs/risks of keeping stuff “temporarily” stored in the back 40 of virtually every past and present facility, KOSU.
Too bad it will only reduce, and not eliminate, the ultimate need for permanent storage. If we did both, we could add future fuel from future SMR’s, with little to no incremental risk to the thousands of gens we will be sticking with this stewardship. IOW, as Europe has realized, we’re already forked, so being a very little more forked….
Again, send it into the sun.
The reason why this is ridiculous should be obvious. Never hear of Challenger, or Columbia, or the Vanguard rocket program?
And how long ago were those? Who knows what will be possible in a decade or two.
In your world, space launches are now perfect and error free?
Pretty nearly so. Again, in a decade or two, who knows what will be possible.
You want to put nuclear waste on rockets? Any possible, maybe unforeseen (ei, entirely predictable) issues with that?
Shortsighted. Look to the future.
Speaking of being short sighted, I would say that your solution personifies that description.
Not.
Jeff you’re embarrassing yourself… give it a rest.
Hmmm. According to this chart, a fully expended Falcon Heavy can deliver 13,600 kg to Mars for a per-launch cost of $90 million, or $6,618 per kilogram. Sending stuff on a one-way trip to the sun should be roughly equivalent. So to dispose of 90K metric tons by this means would cost roughly $595.5 billion.
Much cheaper and safer to load the stuff into deep-sea lawn darts and drop them into subduction zones. All the waste will be recycled over the next few million years. The “lawn dart” proposal was made back in 2011 by Willis Eschenbach. The US probably still has a stockpile of 16″ naval shells for the WWII battleships, especially the 2,700 lb armor piercing ones. Remove the TNT, add an inertial guidance system and control fins, fill the inside with vitrified waste and bob’s your uncle.
But as long as you are going to open the existing dry cask storage containers anyway, it is most sensible to reprocess spent fuel rods to separate remaining fissionable isotopes and create new MOX fuel as Perry proposes. The value of the fuel would cover a substantial part of the reprocessing and disposal cost.
Addendum: According to this 2016 article, there is a stockpile of 15,595 16″ naval shells in at an army facility in Crane, IN. That would be enough to make a good start, and we were going to spend money to demilitarize these anyway.
You’re assuming the costs won’t come down dramatically in the near future. I don’t think that’s a valid assumption.
re: subduction zones. It was also an idea in a sci-fi book series, don’t remember by whom. Also a good idea.
I agree re-processing should happen whenever possible.
Why spend billions of dollars getting rid of something that is so useful?
Until reactors are in wide use that can actually use such fuel, it will remain nuclear waste. Are there any SMRs commercially active?
Mr. Alberts: In the US, dems are stumbling around but they would pull together to stop shooting nuclear waste into space. Once you allow for dumping stuff that’s toxic to humans into the sun, it’s a short step to treat environmentalists as payload! That would result in huge loss of dem fundraising!
There is no need for permanent storage. All of the long lived radioactive atoms are potential fuel.
All of the short lived ones are gone in a few years, so were never a problem.
Existing stockpiles of Slightly Used Nuclear Fuel (SUNF) contain 270 years of electricity demand in the US
The current water-cooled reactor design for 96% of the 440 reactors worldwide, only uses 3% of the electricity potential of Slightly Used Nuclear Fuel (SUNF).
Published February 3, 2025, at America Out Loud NEWS
Co-authored by Ronald Stein, Oliver Hemmers, and Steve Curtis
https://www.americaoutloud.news/existing-stockpiles-of-sunf-contain-270-years-of-electricity-demand-in-the-us/
Yes, and the little that is left can be safely stored at Yucca Mt. That is a great site and could be reopened. Our safety experts concluded that contrary to the putting the SNUNF at the nearly completed Yucca Mt. site is about 1000 times safer than what we are doing now. It would also be retrievable if needed.
I approve – and I’m a Nevada resident, albeit nearer to Reno. I also have a degree in physics, which means 1) I’ve had to study a little nuclear physics, and 2) I learned more about nuclear physics than some politician who took two months training to serve on a submarine (and didn’t serve on one) and believed himself a nuclear expert. Well, actually, he does seem more expert in that field than the climate “scientists” who are screaming “CAGW has already started” have in the field of climate science.
Is there a specialty in political climate science taught in universities? Light on climate science, heavy on societal manipulation?
There is a course in climate science economics.
Bogus of course.
So if and when the UNF is recycled, what condition is it in? Still radioactive? Still dangerous? Or not? Less so?
As I understand it, the more dangerous, “hotter” components have a shorter half-life, so the longer it sits, the greater the proportion of the waste that is more stable and less dangerous. For instance, Iodine 131 has a half-life of 168 hours, while the useful fissionable isotopes plutonium 239 and uranium 235 have half-lives of 24,000 and 704 million years, respectively.
Why are you worried about SUNF? We have had it around for 70 years. Can anyone name a single person that has been harmed by SUNF? I am much more worried about the residue from wind and solar in only 20 years.
Who said I was worried? I’m just asking questions to learn something about which I know nothing. Is that OK with you?
The hotter isotopes are separated out leaving a few grams of highly radioactive waste per tonne of SUNF. These isotopes can then be glassified and stored for a long time in a salt mine. You can then mix the U235 and PU239 with copious amounts of U238 and some control coatings to make very good reactor fuel.
There will still be the screaming from the BANANAs over the transport and storage of the small amount of highly radioactive waste, but with the right law structure in place they can be overcome.
By definition hotter means shorter half life. No need to glassify, just store them away for a few years, and the problem solves itself.
There are a few that have less activity but extremely high energy gamma releases when it happens.
You would probably still vitrify the fission products. It’s what France does.
The uranium and plutonium are still radioactive, but that is what makes them useful as fuel.
The other radioactive stuff is short lived and just needs to be stored somewhere for a couple of years.
All of the waste from France’s nuclear fuel recycling program going on for almost half a century sits under the floor of one building. It is encased in glass. The radioactive material in it will decay away in centuries instead of tens of millennia.
Tom Halla and Rick Perry are correct. President Carter’s action has endured for 40+ years while accomplishing nothing positive for the US of for non-proliferation. Reprocessing depleted fuel and processing Uranium mining tailings are great ways to diminish the waste disposal problem while recovering useful energy. We have just seen reports of small reprocessing units that are sized properly for individual plant cleanup, and the spent fuel in the casks is effectively partly refined raw Uranium. The pilot project should be a high priority for the Administration.
Nuclear power, including SMRs, MSRs, and thorium technology are the way to a fossil fuel free power grid.
And we’re maybe gonna need that in 2000 years or so.
I suspect the AI revolution is going to refocus the necessity of nuclear. Already, Microsoft is leasing a part of Three Mile Island for obvious reason. Renewable energy is a dead end technology which is just a novelty for those who have no interest in a return on investment. Too bad, these tech firms could not see this beforehand, although they likely did, but afraid to rock the boat. Judging by what I have been reading of late; renewable energy is on a slow spiral downward. As these subsidies dry-up economic reality sets in. Never could understand why a business would engage in a business decisions which intuitively speaking was a loser for shareholder value. I suppose the subsidies must have been quite enticing.
Hmmmm . . . I haven’t heard that TMI Unit 1 has resumed production of electricity, only that Microsoft has signed a power purchase agreement that they will buy all the electricity that it produces if that old nuclear reactor restart ever occurs.
Furthermore, Constellation Energy, the current owner of TMI, is seeking a $1.6 billion federal loan guarantee to restart Three Mile Island Unit 1. Why Constellation isn’t seeking that loan guarantee directly from Microsoft Corporation, the main—perhaps only—beneficiary of restarting TMI-1 stinks to high heaven and sets off the warnings bells for “Solyndra . . . here we go again!”
Sweet deal for Microsoft: heads I win, tails you (the taxpayer) lose.
“Microsoft: heads I win, tails you (the taxpayer) lose.”
Sort of describes their operating system ! 😉
From article:”…has collected over $20 billion from reactor owners to pay for disposal of UNF.”
Money was collected but the work was never done? Why has no one asked for the funds back? Why has Rand Paul demanded return of the money? Why didn’t Rick Perry pay it back when he was head of agency he wanted to close down? So many questions.
Why not complete and open Yucca Mt.?
Nukes are renewable energy. The greenies should endorse it.
What’s often referred to as “nuclear waste” can indeed be seen as a resource for future energy production, particularly through the use of fast neutron breeder reactors. These reactors can extract energy from isotopes like uranium-238 and even plutonium, which are typically left unused in conventional reactors. This approach significantly increases the efficiency of nuclear fuel use while reducing the volume of long-lived radioactive material requiring storage.
This perspective reflects a shift from viewing spent nuclear fuel as waste to recognizing it as a potential asset. It aligns with innovative strategies for a more sustainable and efficient nuclear future.
There’s is zero reason for Yucca Mountain to be controversial. The citizens of Nevada have an opportunity to capitalize on the unique geology by developing their valuable resource.
Leveraging the unique geology of Yucca Mountain could be framed as a national benefit, not just for nuclear fuel storage but for reprocessing as well. This would be a fundamental step for advancing the nuclear energy industry.
Direct annual payments to Nevada’s residents, modeled after Alaska’s Permanent Fund Dividend, could transform the perception of the project—from a liability to an opportunity for economic empowerment. It would incentivize local support and underscore the site’s strategic importance. By having the U.S. Treasury fund these access fees, it ensures that every taxpayer contributes to the initiative while acknowledging the significant role Nevada plays.
PU239 which is created by neutron absorption by U238 and an emission of an electron is already used as a reactor fuel in experimental reactors. It works great, but the NRC won’t license it for commercial use because of reasons that have nothing to do with data. It is all a left over of the “non-proliferation” mind-set of the Carter years. U 238 makes great armor piercing rounds, but PU239 can be used in bomb making (like U235 as well) so there is an emotional response that rejects anything mentioning plutonium out of hand.
From the above article:
— Rick Perry, former governor of Texas and 14th US Secretary of Energy
Spoken like a true politician and bureaucrat wanting to sell something to the public by misrepresenting/overlooking the relevant facts!
First off, as to his statement in his second-to-last paragraph above:
is not supported by objective facts. Here are some that counter Perry’s claim:
— Global usage: About 10% of the world’s reactors are licensed to use MOX fuel.
— MOX fuel provides almost 5% of the new nuclear fuel used today
— MOX fuels about 10% of France’s nuclear program
— MOX fuel is used in 44 reactors worldwide; however, as of December 2024, there are approximately 440 commercial nuclear power reactors operating in 32 countries . . . that equates to only 10% of commercial nuclear reactors using MOX, as noted in the first dashed line above. I don’t think anyone would consider a 10% penetration rate equivalent to “widely used”. Of course this percentage would be much lower if one included the non-commercial reactors used by the world’s superpowers to power their military naval vessels (including submarines) . . . according to Google’s Generative AI: “While MOX fuel is used in civilian reactors, there’s no evidence to suggest that any country uses it in their naval reactors.”
Now, from https://world-nuclear.org/information-library/nuclear-fuel-cycle/fuel-recycling/processing-of-used-nuclear-fuel :
— “Over the last 50 years or so the principal reason for reprocessing used fuel has been to recover unused plutonium, along with less immediately useful unused uranium, in the used fuel elements and thereby close the fuel cycle, gaining some 25-30% more energy from the original uranium in the process.” IOW, the return from reprocessing is not the 10-20 times more nuclear energy that is oft-claimed to still be available in used nuclear fuel.
— “A secondary reason is to reduce the volume of material to be disposed of as high-level waste to about one-fifth.” IOW, reprocessing used nuclear fuel (UNF) is NOT total recycling . . . it results in one-fifth (20%) of the original volume being high-level waste that cannot be further reprocessed and must be carefully handled and stored or disposed somewhere.
— There is lots of talk about how “fast (neutron) breeder nuclear reactors” might be able to process currently unusable long-lived radioactive actinides so that they end up as short-lived fission products . . . but so far there are only two such reactors operating commercially, both in Russia, and it is unclear if they are financially feasible or how efficient they are in “burning down” the long-lived actinides.
— “Reprocessing used fuel to recover uranium (as reprocessed uranium, or RepU) and plutonium (Pu) avoids the wastage of a valuable resource. Most of it – about 96% – is uranium, of which less than 1% is the fissile U-235 (often 0.4-0.8%); and up to 1% is plutonium. Both can be recycled as fresh fuel, saving up to 30% of the natural uranium otherwise required.” {my bold emphasis added} So, again, reprocessing UNF may have some benefits, but it is not the panacea that Rick Perry would have one believe based on his article above.
— Finally, receiving barely passing mention in the above article, there is a strong NIMBY reaction from each of the 50 states to the idea of having a nuclear waste reprocessing facility located within their borders. The political “impossibility” of finding a site for a nuclear waste reprocessing facility within the US very likely outweighs the technical “improbability” of making such a facility financially viable. Storage is one thing; reprocessing is another thing altogether.
ToldYouSo: “ …… Finally, receiving barely passing mention in the above article, there is a strong NIMBY reaction from each of the 50 states to the idea of having a nuclear waste reprocessing facility located within their borders. The political “impossibility” of finding a site for a nuclear waste reprocessing facility within the US very likely outweighs the technical “improbability” of making such a facility financially viable. Storage is one thing; reprocessing is another thing altogether.”
The US Department of Energy has two large-scale nuclear-chemical processing plants — one at the Savannah River Site in South Carolina now in production operation, and one at Hanford in Washington State, soon to be in production operation — which convert radioactive defense wastes into solid stable glass. These operations are, by definition, not commercial in nature. They are being performed in response to a public policy decision that these wastes are dangerous to the environment, they have no further value for other purposes, and so must be disposed of regardless of the costs involved.
The process of vitrifiying these radioactive defense wastes is the closest thing to nuclear fuel reprocessing one can do without actually doing nuclear fuel reprocessing. The reason here is that all the wastes being vitrified are the product of previous nuclear fuel reprocessing operations done at each of these sites for purposes of supplying plutonium to the nation’s nuclear arsenal.
All the radiological safety issues one must deal with in performing nuclear fuel reprocessing must also be covered when doing defense waste vitrification. Moreover, an argument can be made that these vitrification processes carry more nuclear safety risks than does spent fuel reprocessing.
My estimate is that 80% of the nuclear-chemical processing infrastructure needed to safely reprocess our stock of civilian spent nuclear fuel is already present at each of these two US-DOE sites. Adding a modern chemical separation facility to each site would give each a civilian fuel reprocessing capability.
Each of these two sites currently has the post-processing waste management facilities needed to deal with those nuclear wastes which are permanant and have no further value. What would we do with those valueless permanent wastes once they’ve been packaged for disposal?
The logical thing is to bury them in the bedded salt of the Salado Formation using US-DOE’s currently operational WIPP facility at Carlsbad, New Mexico. Only a small fraction of the salt available at WIPP is now being utilized for defense waste purposes, leaving more than enough room for the permanent wastes which would come out of a civilian fuel reprocessing operation.
OK, why don’t we do this, why don’t we use the Savannah River Site and the Hanford Site for this purpose?
The nuclear fuel cycle in the US is currently a profitable commercial business. The most fundamental reason we don’t reprocess is that the ‘problem of spent nuclear fuel’ isn’t a true problem. SNF can stay on the surface held in perfectly safe interim storage for a hundred years or more to await the day when demand for nuclear power in the US reaches a point where reprocessing of civilian spent nuclear fuel becomes a profit-making enterprise for private industry.
Uhhhh . . . did you mistakenly direct your comment to me instead of to Rick Perry who didn’t mention in his above article any of what you claim?
You appear to be unaware of—or gloss over—the fact that only special non-commercial-design U-235-fueled nuclear reactors are used to obtain weapons-grade plutonium upon reprocessing their used nuclear fuel.
From https://world-nuclear.org/information-library/nuclear-fuel-cycle/fuel-recycling/plutonium#PluteAndWeapons :
“It takes about 10 kilograms of nearly pure Pu-239 to make a bomb (though the Nagasaki bomb in 1945 used less). Producing this requires 30 megawatt-years of reactor operation, with frequent fuel changes and reprocessing of the ‘hot’ fuel. Hence ‘weapons-grade’ plutonium is made in special production reactors by burning natural uranium fuel to the extent of only about 100 MWd/t (effectively three months), instead of the 45,000 MWd/t typical of LWR power reactors. Allowing the fuel to stay longer in the reactor increases the concentration of the higher isotopes of plutonium, in particular the Pu-240 isotope, as can be seen in the Table above. For weapons use, Pu-240 is considered a serious contaminant, due to higher neutron emission and higher heat production. It is not feasible to separate Pu-240 from Pu-239.
“The operational requirements of power reactors and plutonium production reactors are quite different, and so therefore is their design. No weapons material has ever been produced from PWR, BWR, or PHWR power reactors (96% of the worldwide fleet by capacity). An explosive device could be made from plutonium extracted from low burn-up reactor fuel (i.e. if the fuel had only been used for a short time), but any significant proportions of Pu-240 in it would make it hazardous to the bomb makers, as well as probably unreliable and unpredictable. Typical ‘reactor-grade’ plutonium recovered from reprocessing used power reactor fuel has about one-third non-fissile isotopes (mainly Pu-240).”
[my bold emphasis added in the above quoted excerpts]
The devil is in the details.
Sorry Beta, but “ nuclear-chemical processing infrastructure needed to safely reprocess our stock of civilian spent nuclear fuel is already present at each of these two US-DOE sites.”
is not the correct operation.
Having worked in the mid 1980’s on the Savannah River Vit Project, they were not processing any spent nuclear fuel. There were 40 some years of mid level sluge in half buried tanks, that were starting to leak.
Current fuel burn up has been estimated at 2%+, with proven Fast Breeders easily able to consume the 98% waste. Of the plethora of SMR’s being imagined, some are fast neutrons. The worry in the past was Plutonium, but there is enough bomb-grade fuel around right now to make that a non-issue (!?). OKLO’s AURORA fast neutron spectrum metal-cooled unit hopes to be online at Oak Ridge by 2027.
The non-proliferation BANANAs will throw a fit about the plutonium mention regardless of the amount already in circulation.
the Aurora reactor by Oklo is indeed a small-scale pilot project. It is a small modular reactor (SMR) with a thermal capacity of 1.5 MW and an electrical output of 0.5 MW. This advanced fission reactor uses a fast neutron spectrum and metallic fuel design, which allows for higher fuel efficiency compared to traditional reactors.
And maybe a commercial unit in about 2037 IMHO.
The plutonium that is produced in commercial reactors is not suitable for making bombs.
Rick Perry being a politicians loves to solve invented problems. Other invented problems include CO2, PM 2.5, PCB, and DDT.
As an engineer, I have been responsible for cooling spent fuel and keeping people from eating it. Pretty easy job. Like watching paint dry.
I also worked on Yucca Mountain. I noted that the equation for the decay of radioactive atoms for the was wrong in one calculation. I was surprised that when the calculation was revised the answer did not change. The important factor is how slowly heavy metal move through the environment.
Yucca mountain has not been built because we do not need to.
The reason we do not reprocess spent fuel in the US is because we have lots of uranium.
true, but how long will the cooling pools have space before that new batch every two years has nowhere to go?
Edited to add: It is probably cheaper to just build another containment pool building at a nuclear site than to reprocess the spent fuels, but still seems like a major waste of resources.
Used fuel is only stored in cooling pools for a limited time. It is then packed into dry casks (steel and concrete) and stored in open yards. All the used fuel from 36+ years of Plant Vogtle reactors 1 and 2 is still onsite today. You can see the dry cask storage yard here. I count 38 casks in an area pre-marked for about 100, with room to expand into at least 300 more. And the existing storage yard is a very small part of the whole Vogtle facility — less than the area taken by one of the two cooling towers next to it. There is a lot of unused space in the current campus.
This is correct. Limited time is about 5 years before air cooling remove decay heat.
It is still a waste of perfectly good U235, U238, and PU239.
Mr. P: Stopped people from eating it??!! You must have worked at the Springfield Nukular plant owned by Mr. Burns!
It is true that the so-called “waste” is not a problem where it is now; however, Yucca Mountain does have some advantages for the long term: (1) the material is all located in one place, (2) it would be classified and records kept of what’s there, so that (3) we know what material is available if and when the process of recycling it begins either through MOX or (even better) through fast-spectrum reactors that can burn the actinides.
Currently, the stuff is all over the place (sixty-some sites) and the records are not all that good.
Furthermore, Yucca Mountain is to serve as a disposal site for navy and DOE waste, which is not going to be recycled.
When the WIPP underground geologic repository in New Mexico went into operation in the mid 2000’s, Yucca Mountain instantly became a boondoggle. More than enough room is available at WIPP for any volumes of military and civilian nuclear waste we can reasonably predict might be generated in the next hundred years and beyond.
Yucca Mountain has no advantages over other alternatives for managing nuclear material, whether that material is being held in interim status on the surface pending a decision on either reuse or else final disposal, or whether the material truly is waste which has no future purpose or value.
The NRC has already granted licenses for interim surface storage of SNF to sites in Texas and New Mexico. These have been blocked temporarily by lawsuits. However, each is more suitable than Yucca Mountain in terms of location and access to transportation infrastructure.
Moreover, Yucca Mountain’s volcanic tuff has a distinct disadvantage in comparison with the bedded salt of the Salado Formation at the WIPP facility in that that the measures needed to make volcanic tuff a suitable host media for nuclear waste are much more expensive than those needed for bedded salt.
Yucca Mountain was killed because it no longer made the slightest bit of sense to spend billions on it. Much more likely than not, spent nuclear fuel will either be reprocessed or reused in some way. The US-DOE knew this, the Congressional staffs which understood the reality of the whole situation knew this. And so they were more than happy to let Harry Reid do the honors of putting the project out of its misery.
The assertion that poor records management is a problem for SNF is nonsense. The assertion that SNF represents a danger to the public is nonsense. If our stock of SNF stays at the plant sites where it now resides for another hundred years, it’s no big deal from any kind of environmental management or nuclear safety management prespective.
A bit of trivia! I visited Yucca Mountain as a tourist while working on Yucca Mountain. I have also driven by in my motorhome going north to the Hanford area for the summer.
When you enter the Nevada Test Site, where we test nuclear weapons underground is to the right.
We know what happens to things that are not problems when left for ground water to transport them. Nothing!
When I finished my work on Yucca Mountain, the next step was for POTUS Clinton to make a choice but he left for Bush to decide. That way Hiliary could say Bush made a mistake.
Since my company had the contract for design I thought I would have worked on it. However, because of 9/11 I ended up leading an integrated safety analysis teams (process safety) considering terrorism.
Also thanks to Bush, I ended up back in new reactors. Obama refused to fund the NRC review. Federal reminded Obama to follow the law or get Congress to change it.
After coming back from working the our new reactor in China I retired. Harry Reid is dead not Yucca MT.
” (even better) through fast-spectrum reactors that can burn the actinides.”
Is that a paper reactor proposed to solve an invented problems?
Paper reactors only harvest money from the the federal government.
LWR make electricity and power USN ships.
Very nice Rick. I have zero confidence in the government and am baffled why you might have confidence in it. The government has already been given the task of dealing with the waste. They were paid and yet nothing has been done. The government doesn’t fix things they screw things up. It is madness to suggest that the nuclear power companies hand over billions more to the government. You would get more use out of those billions turning it into toilet paper. The government has one job here, instruct the energy community to move forward with your plan and keep everyone else from interfering with it.
Bob: You say the gov’t was paid but “nothing has been done.” I don’t agree, much money was spent on contractors with connections to a Sen. Harry Reid, to build a site Sen. Reid would never let open. Also, much money spent on studies that support the project, only to be suppressed by gov’t employed enviro-activists. Also lots of money spent on bottled water and tents for the few enviro-protesters not already on the gov’t payroll. I too wish gov’t would do less!
See my comments regarding Yucca Mountain’s cancellation here and those concerning the MOX project’s cancellation here.
Yucca Mountain wasn’t needed. The MOX project in South Carolina was so royally screwed up by US-DOE and its contractor team it was beyond salvage.
Yucca Mountain is a dead issue and deservedly so. If a MOX effort is to be restarted, the whole thing must be done over from scratch.
I remember reading that Ukraine recycles fuel at one of its nuclear power plants.
Here, I suspect methods are known but nuclear regulators don’t want to let go so companies could do it.
Uranium is readily available of course but the question is how to safely store spent fuel.
(A tribal group may be close to making a deal with Canadian government to store spent fuel on their reserve somewhere, I presume in mountainous terrain. Old underground mines might be considered.)
The US was building a facility to manufacture MOX fuel in South Carolina, but the project was abandoned during the Obama era, throwing away billions of spent tax dollars. This facility was intended to produce fuel from old nuclear weapons, but the technology developed for that could be adapted to produce fuel from used commercial nuclear fuel.
The MOX project was shut down in the first Trump administration by Rick Perry no less. And the reason MOX was shut down was that both the technology and the field implementation of the plant design had been so royally screwed up by Obama’s US-DOE and by the MOX contractor team that the plant was beyond salvaging.
Friends who were working the MOX project before it was cancelled tell me that what is left over from the original MOX effort — both the plant design and the legacy equipment — is useless for a renewed MOX program. The whole thing must be redone from scratch using a new design constructed by a new contractor team which is capable of doing disciplined nuclear fabrication and construction work.