Spent nuclear fuel rods are more Energizer Bunny than sloth. In fact, says Dale Klein, associate vice chancellor for research at the University of Texas System, in this news release, 95 percent of the energy in a spent rod is reusable. But in the United States, it's often just called waste and treated as such.
Reprocessing fuel rods to save energy also cuts down on the ultimate amount of radioactive waste, and makes what is left less toxic. Countries in Europe and Asia, including France, the United Kingdom, India, Japan, China and Russia, have all put time and effort into this goal. But in the United States, where about 2,000 metric tons of radioactive waste are produced each year, development of reprocessing methods stopped in the 1970's. That makes the nation nearly forty years behind the world's other nuclear energy users and, according to Klein, “the underlying technological capability and intellectual capital needed to compete internationally have diminished to near irrelevance.” Yikes.
Those concerned about the safety of nuclear power insist that we don't know how to dispose of it correctly, or that radioactive materials are bad in any amount and hence plants pose environmental or health threats. Discovery News producer Tracy Staedter wrote an article which delves into this question more deeply; you can read it here.
Klein says otherwise, that we can safely handle and take care of nuclear detritus without reason to panic. He also refutes concerns about rod reprocessing as a security issue due to recycled fuel being a source of plutonium, which could potentially be used in nuclear weapons. His exact words, all of which were reported from the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science this past week, were:
"While it is true that the plutonium in recycled nuclear fuel is fissionable, no country in the world has ever made a nuclear weapon out of low-grade plutonium from recycled high burn-up nuclear fuel," he said. "It just doesn't work for a strategic or a tactical nuclear weapon."
Still, the decades-long disadvantage in technological innovation is discouraging.
Photo: Matthias Kulka/Corbis
Tags: Energy, Energy Efficiency, Nuclear Science, Reuse, Saving Energy,
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