nuclear-news

The News That Matters about the Nuclear Industry Fukushima Chernobyl Mayak Three Mile Island Atomic Testing Radiation Isotope

America’s faith based doctrine on nuclear waste disposal

Christina Macpherson's websites & blogs

The United States of America has a touching religiosity – quite heartwarming, in this cynical age.

So it is not surprising that the USA is the one country in the world that has expressed its religious faith in nuclear power in a government regulation – the Waste Confidence Rule

The  Waste Confidence Rule contains a “predictive” safety “finding” that simply stipulates spent reactor fuel can be disposed of safely at some unspecified time in the future, whenever it becomes “necessary” to dispose of it.

Warms the cockles of your heart, don’t it?

January 6, 2012 - Posted by | Christina's notes

1 Comment »

  1. “In September 2010, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission issued final revisions to its “Waste Confidence” rule. The rule expresses confidence that used nuclear fuel can be safely stored for at least 60 years beyond the licensed life of any U.S. reactor, without significant environmental impacts, and that sufficient repository capacity will be available when necessary.” http://www.nei.org/newsandevents/nei-backgrounders/myths–facts-about-nuclear-energy/myths–facts-about-used-fuel

    Notice that the rule is about a 60 year period–very short from the nuclear waste standpoint. And “waste” is regarded as a resource, not something to be discarded:

    “Used fuel assemblies from U.S. commercial nuclear reactors are energy-rich resources that contain 90 percent of their original potential energy. By recycling the used fuel to make new fuel (as done in a number of countries), the remaining energy can be put to use.”

    We have known how to destroy the radioactivity in spent fuel, simply and economically, for at least 40 years:
    http://scripturalphysics.org/4v4a/YourKidCanDestroyNuclearWaste.pps
    http://scripturalphysics.org/qm/adven.html

    Getting it done is mostly a matter of political will, not technical expertise.

    Anyway, commercial nuclear power is on its way out. The rapid advances in solar and windpower are making that very clear.

    Brian Fraser's avatar Comment by Brian Fraser | January 6, 2012 | Reply


Leave a comment

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

« Previous | Next »