Letter: When it comes to nuclear, waste not and want more

There’s no such thing as nuclear waste! This term was invented to stop civilian nuclear power.

Spent fuel from nuclear power plants is a precious resource. About 96 percent of it can be recycled into new nuclear fuel. No other fuel source can make this claim. Once fossil fuels are burned, all that is left is ash or airborne pollutants which nuclear energy does not produce.

Thus, nuclear is a truly renewable resource. Furthermore, unlike wind, solar and other so-called alternative energy sources, a nuclear fission reactor actually breeds more fuel than it consumes.

In the Atoms for Peace days of the ’50s and ’60s, it was assumed that spent reactor fuel would be reprocessed into new reactor fuel. The plan was for the United States to use a closed nuclear fuel cycle. Uranium was to be mined, enriched and processed into fuel rods; then burned as fuel and reprocessed, to start the cycle again.

“Burying” spent fuel (as planned for Yucca Mountain) was not in the Atoms for Peace picture. Why bury a fuel source that could provide thousands of metric tons of uranium-238, fissile uranium-235, and plutonium-239 useable to make new reactor fuel?

This story was originally published November 30, 2017 at 2:59 PM with the headline "Letter: When it comes to nuclear, waste not and want more."