nuclear-news

The Savannah River Site, with the unfinished MOX facility in the right foreground. In the background is Georgia’s Vogtle nuclear complex, where two reactors are operating and two new reactors are under construction. With the likely demise of the MOX project, their power won’t be needed at SRS. Photo by High Flyer, special to SRS Watch.

For decades, some in the U.S. government backed by a few in the nuclear industry and perhaps more in what I call the “nuclear priesthood”–those who have conducted their careers in the shadows of the nuclear industry and in academic settings where they can promote all things nuclear–have espoused the idea of reprocessing used fuel rods (also known as high-level radioactive waste) and creating MOX (plutonium-based) fuel for use in commercial nuclear reactors.

It’s always been a stupid idea environmentally–reprocessing is perhaps the dirtiest of all nuclear industry processes–and an even stupider idea economically…