🚀 go-pugleaf

> The problem of high level nuclear waste has not been resolved anywhere in
> the world, after four decades of nuclear electricity generation. The early
> confidence that nuclear scientists would somehow solve the waste problem,
> just as they had built the atom bomb, has evaporated

The high level waste is a rather simple engineering problem. The difficulty
is the politics.  The "Oh my, we can't leave this to our decendents"
argument has a lot of people scared.  You can put that stuff back in the
ground in a safer condition to humanity than it was as original ore.


> In the United States, sound science has been overtaken by political
> considerations in the rush to relieve utilities of the liabilities
deriving
> from the spent fuel accumulating at reactor sites. The Yucca Mountain site
> is the only one under investigation. Yet calculations done for this site,
> including those by Department of Energy contractors, indicate that
radiation
> doses could be hundreds or even thousands of times above presently
> allowable limits. There is pressure to relax standards and change
calculation
> methods
> instead of improving the repository program. "

It has gone from "NOT IN MY BACK YARD" to "Not in ANYONES Back Yard".  Even
when a community group starts looking at supporting a depository, the
outside forces converge.



> It is dying .  When was the last order in the US?  In spite of all the
happy
> talk about "inherently safe reactors"  the people with money aren't lining
> up to buy another round of nuke juice.   The _REAL_ nuclear fuel isn't Pu
or
> uranium.  It's money, lots and lots of money.  Wall street won't give it
to
> you.  The banks won't give it to you.  The utilities won't give it to you.
> As a taxpayer I won't give it to you willingly.  As the current batch of
> reactors face decommissioning fund shortfalls the public will be very wary
> of nuclear power.  Bad timing that these "stranded costs"  are surfacing
> just when the nuke power industry is fighting for air.

All true.  There MAY be a rebirth of nuclear.  IF the global warming
alarmists have it right (And I am frankly very suspicous that they don't),
then it will be sooner than later.  If not, it will be decades into the
future.

Although a comment on your stranded costs point.  During the days of
building generating capacity under the regulated days, companies had a
mandate to serve the need.  Thus, they built plants based upon the best
guess of what the future would be, and gained approval from the regulating
authority to build them.  NOW, when the winds are blowing toward
deregulation, there is a lot of howling about the stranded costs. The
stockholders invested the money to build those plants.

 Folks, the rules changed at the behest of the politicians. If stranded
costs are disallowed, it's tantamount to confiscation.  It will be
politically popular, but it still does not make it "right".

dewey