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Nuclear fuel is already being recycled [1]

['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.']

Date: 2023-09-29

Every time I mention nuclear energy, I get two questions:

1. What about the waste?

2. What can be done about the waste?

1. What can be done about the waste? This answer is relatively simple. Store it safely until we need it. This is already being done. I would refer you to Dr. Conca, who is charged with storing some of those wastes. He has lots of u-tube videos on this. You may want to start with this one: Used Nuclear Fuel You really do not need to see the video though. There is simply no evidence that used nuclear fuel has caused any health problems.

Additionally, folks should be willing to see how small the amount of nuclear waste really is. In the U.S. there is about 88 million tons of it. This would easily fit on an American football field, to a height of about 30 feet. This is not insignificant, but it is easily manageable.

2, What can be done about what to do with the wastes. The answer is simple. Use them.

This is already being done, but not yet on a scale to equal the creation of the waste. Countries such as France, Japan, Germany, Belgium and Russia have all used plutonium recycling to generate electricity, whilst also reducing the radiological footprint of their waste.

In the U.S. this idea is just being launched, although the idea of how to do this has been around for decades. In Denmark, a private company is planning to use spent nuclear fuel to power thorium reactors. Copenhagen Atomics has ambitious plans to create an assembly line that can produce a reactor every day. These are small 100mwt reactors. Still, that adds up quickly. But, if one assembly line can do this, it should be possible to multiple the production rather quickly.

Now, there still will be some radioactive wastes after recycling. These will be on a much smaller scale per mw than that of current reactors. They also will be relatively quickly decaying (so somewhat hot). It is expected they would decay to background soil level radioactivity in 300 years.

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[1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/9/29/2196316/-Nuclear-fuel-is-already-being-recycled

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