[Starvid]

I have read up a bit on reprocessing and it seems the process is pretty good! Earlier in this thread I stated that reprocessing made uranium use something like 10-50 % more efficient. The real number according to the World Nuclear Organization, is 30 %. Not bad at all.

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', ' ')Reprocessing to recover uranium and plutonium avoids the wastage of a valuable resource because most of the used fuel (uranium at less than 1% U-235 and a little plutonium) can be recycled as fresh fuel, saving some 30% of the natural uranium otherwise required.

[turn74]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('gg3', 'W')hat France does with nuclear waste: Recycles it into new nuclear fuel.

20-something years ago I was opposed to nuclear power because at the time it appeared there was no viable solution to the waste problem. Since that time France has demonstrated a track record recycling their nuclear waste. I changed my opinion of nuclear power based on the evidence. As well, new reactor designs basically eliminate the operational safety issues associated with previous designs, but even the old designs are safe compared to most of our industrial infrastructure. There will not be another Chernobyl.

Wind? yes!, solar? yes!, but wind is limited to at most 20% of grid capacity due to the issue of intermittency and grid stability. So we still need a source of "firm and dispatchable power," and nuclear is the best we have at this time.

Sixty plants in 15 years translates to 20 per year. If France can do that, we in the USA can do it too, starting in the areas that are most heavily dependent on oil and natural gas for power (that includes California).

We have spent 200 billion dollars ($200,000,000,000.00) per year, total presently over $400 billion, on the Iraq quagmire, clinging to the old paradigm. The United States government could have *given that money away* to the utilities to build nuclear reactors and windfarms, and it would have translated into 400 gigawatts of electric power ($1-million per megawatt for nuclear and wind).

That's 400 new reactors, or (using the 80/20 ratio) 320 reactors and 80 large wind farms.

That's also ten or twenty years of major construction activity, with plenty of skilled jobs at dignified wages building and operating and maintaining these installations: a basis for solid long term economic progress and a sustainable middle class.

Wind farms can be built more quickly (dig a hole, plant a pole, string the wires, repeat:-), so by now we would have most of the 80 gigawatts of wind coming on line while the concrete is still being poured for the reactors, and we would be reducing our dependence on foreign oil at every single step along the way. And we would not have over 2,000 dead soldiers, 15,000 wounded soldiers, uncounted Iraqi casualties, a seething cauldron of terrorists breeding more each day, and the National Guard unavailable for emergency service in the biggest natural disaster in American history.

That's the difference between a competent national government, and an incompetent administration whose idea of faith is mutually exclusive with reason. We could have had a viable future. Instead we have a bunch of incompetents running the country into the ground.

On a purely emotional level, it must be highly satisfying to look over the treetops and say "That's where our electricity comes from." And a half mile from town no less! Think of living in a place where you never have to worry about electricity. In ten more years that will seem like an enormous luxury to us in the US.

France will remain viable. And they will also keep their 35-hour work week while we in the United States typically work 50 hours a week for a standard of living that is only better in terms of transient baubles, and hardly sustainable in terms of fundamentals, as we shall soon see.

To reframe an old political meme, French fries, cooked in a nuclear-powered fryer, *are* freedom fries.

[deconstructionist]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('i', 'i')f we did not spend that rediculous sum of money on the war in iraq, the oil markets may have been opened up to trading in euros, causing the obliteration of the value of the dollar. then that 400 billion spent on wind energy development would not buy nearly as much. now if we were spending on the war and at the same time building an alternative energy future so that we could eventually stop making war... that would be a bit nicer twist on an unarguably horrible story...

[richardmmm]

realistically it's only a temporary fix, evetually you'll run out of uranium products.

and i can't see a plane with a reator on board being too safe.

then of course there is always the possibility of a failure as time goes by and you have more and more reactors.

i mean you only need one to go pop, the landmass is not huge and basically you can cement over the whole of france and probably switzerland and parts of spain, germany and italy as well.