Nuclear Waste: An Imagined Problem

I read an article the other day by William Tucker, author of the book, “Terrestrial Energy: How Nuclear Power Will Lead the Green Revolution and End American’s Long Energy Odyssey” (Bartleby, 2008). As some of you may know, I have a PhD in chemistry and worked early in my career as a research chemist for Exxon Corporation, trying to develop a commercial process to recover additional oil from reservoirs that have been depleted after conventional recovery methods. This was in the 60’s and even at that time the major oil companies were concerned about the depleted reserves of crude oil in the U.S. The Alaskan discovery at Prudhoe Bay in the 70’s gave us a breather, but as you can see the problem is still with us today?

As a scientist, I could never figure out why we didn’t put the effort into the use of nuclear power to meet our energy needs, particularly in the generation of electricity. This seemed obvious, since it is the most efficient, powerful, cheapest, and safest means of doing so. If the French have generated 75% of their electricity this way for the last 30 years, why couldn’t we? Good gracious, the French?

We have the technology to do this now, so why is it not even on Obama’s priority list? Obviously, the environmental lobby has convinced the liberal media and politicians that this is risky business because of the potential hazards posed by nuclear waste. The truth is, ladies and gentlemen, that there is no such thing as nuclear waste!

A typical nuclear fuel rod is made up of two forms of Uranium: U-235, the fissionable form which generates the energy upon degradation, and U-238, an inert form which remains as the carrier or packing material. Natural uranium ore contains only 0.7% of U-235 and must be “enriched” to 3% in order to qualify as reactor grade. To qualify for a nuclear weapon, the ore needs to be enriched to 90%, a difficult process, which only a few know how to do (Iran is trying right now!).

In a nuclear reactor, these fuel rods last for about 5 years before they are replaced. At that point, about 12 ounces of U-235 will have been converted to energy, enough to power the city of San Francisco for five years, with no carbon dioxide emissions or chemical waste of any kind. The depleted rods are then submerged in storage pools of water to block the radioactivity and after a few years they are stored in lead-lined casks, where they can sit for a century or so, if need be. Is this waste? Absolutely not; 95% is plain old U-238 which exists as 1% of the earth’s crust anyway, and could be put right back into the ground. The remaining 5% can be separated and 40% can be recycled as fuel and 60% has important use as medical and industrial isotopes. France actually reprocesses its recyclable material and the unused remains over the past 30 years sit beneath a single room at La Hague.

The truth is we send our depleted rods to Yucca Mountain in Nevada for storage and call it nuclear waste, when it really is material we could reuse for fuel and our $4 billion/yr. nuclear medicine industry, if we wanted to. If we had a significant nuclear industry, we would.

So, why don’t we build more nuclear power plants? I wish Greenpeace or Al Gore would tell me.