Have a great day,

Jay

The French have less than 100 plants, only 50 some but they will build more. Here is a good source for the names, info about the FRENCH reactors at each plant site: http://www.insc.anl.gov/pwrmaps/map/france.php

The French have only one experimental sodium reactors (breeder) at Phenix. It is going to be shutdown soon. They are building the Jules Howowitz research reactor and it will take some time for its completion.

France recycles its light water reactor fuel. Their PWR designs only use about 3% of the total uranium fuel available in the uranium only fuel pellets. France recycles their fuel to retrieve the unused uranium, and then use the "waste" plutonium to make new MOX (mixed oxide) fuel. This recycling has allowed France to have 80% of its electricity to be produced by nuclear plants, with 1/3 of the fuel coming from recycled, reprocessed used fuel. This means they do not have to mine more uranium ore. The French and British have recycled used nuclear fuel now for 30 years and they use it in their MOX fuel in their current operating water reactors (not breeders!)

The FRENCH are leaders in separating Pu from Uranium in a not-so-proliferation-resistant process called PUREX, for Plutonium extraction. Also the French put all the waste fission products in high-tech glass logs to isolate the “nasty stuff” isotopes. That's how they have reduced the volume of their spent fuel waste (after reusing the fuel a few times!!!)

By recycling fuel (like France, G. Britain, Japan)but by NOT separating the minor actinides from the Plutonium, the US would have a "proliferation resistant" method to be able to use the uranium fuel more effectively, and in fact burn the transuranic isotopes (Pu, Np, Am, etc.), produce more power, and significantly reduce the toxicity of the used fuel, and the space needed for permanent storage in a repository (Yucca Mountain).

President Jimmy Carter said “no” to plutonium and fuel reprocessing, BUT the US DOE has figured it out. By using a UREX+ (uranium extraction, keep Pu and minor actinides together to prevent make the recycled fuel usable for weapons, essentially denaturing it like alcohol is denatured (methal vs. ethal alcohol) process, and collaborating with the FRENCH, the DOE has started research again into recycling technologies. Notice that the FRENCH learned the UREX/PUREX process from the US laboratories before Jimmy Carter stopped the research, and now that we have begun again, we in the US are 30 years BEHIND the French and Japanese…..

This DOE program is called the Global Nuclear Energy Partnership (DOE’s program to recycle fuel). But Congress may kill it with the budget fiasco they are causing.

For Mr. Loris:

Haven't you heard? The private industry IS building a recycling plant at the Savannah River Laboratory in Georgia, to make MOX fuel (Duke Power, Cogema, Shaw, AREVA (the US and French company)using the Weapons-grade Plutonium from the US stock pile, to use it as fuel, hence "swords into plowshares". In fact, this private consortium will build, and operate the facility, and the MOX fuel will be used in US light water reactors. The DUKE power plants already have 4 fuel assemblies in the Catawba plants (fabricated in France of course!) producing power as part of a demonstration! Everything you want to know about this is available at the NRC website: http://www.nrc.gov/materials/fuel-cycle-fac/mox/l…

For Jim, Maui who wrote: "What about plasmagasification? I have read that it will even consume nuclear waste safely. The by-product of the “burned” waste is steam, which is used to power steam turbines for more electricity."

Where did you get this crazy idea? Nuclear waste in a plasma could never be used to make steam directly in a turbine….yikes!

Yes there is/was a huge plasma/accelerator device called Archimedes that was going to separate waste streams on two collectors, but the company FOLDED after a DOE project stopped up at Hanford, Washington: Please see these papers that describe the Archimedes Filter concept: http://www.wmsym.org/abstracts/2003/pdfs/399.pdf and http://epsppd.epfl.ch/StPetersburg/PDF/O1_006A.PD…

General Atomics bought the unit from the defunct company, and couldn't get funding at DOE to continue R&D (no budget, Congressional stupidity to fund "carbon sequestration" and "clean coal" oximoronic projects instead). GA has announced that the plasma/accelerator will be dismantled.

But the plasma/accelerator filter technology may be useful someday to MAKE advanced fuels, on a smaller size….only if DOE gets the funding in the Nuclear Energy area vs. other Congressional pet projects….

You wrote: "Also, the nuclear waste can’t be thrown back into the reactor to create more energy; a reprocessing plant must be built, which has extremely high front-end costs."

Actually, the used material from the light water reactors that are common around the world can be used with just a bit of physical reshaping in the heavy water reactors used in Canada, South Korea, and several other nations.

Google DUPIC to find out more. If you want a really good source, try

http://www.nuclearfaq.ca/CANDU_fuel_cycles_Boczar…

While it’s a bit more complicated than this, the simple reason is that the incentive chain is broken. Also, the nuclear waste can’t be thrown back into the reactor to create more energy; a reprocessing plant must be built, which has extremely high front-end costs. If we haven’t built a nuclear reactor in over three decades, the private sector has little incentive to build a reprocessing plant unless it’s economically rational for the long-term.

"U.S. says sub leaked radiation in 3 Japan ports

Governments say radiation from USS Houston too small to cause harm"

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/26069222/

My gut says that if we got the money out of the political system these guys would find a solution to not only this, but a whole bunch of our problems.

Darvin Dowdy asks a very interesting question above. Why can't we find a use for it?

Jack Lohman

They use a much more efficient breeder reactor. Why are americans so dumbed downed?

While I agree that there are egregious examples of businesses with poor track records, there are also plenty of examples of nationalized enterprises that do not function very well either.

Perhaps the best balance is a competitive private industry with a strong government referee that enforces standards. Most of us feel pretty safe on aircraft, for example, even though the act of flying has its inherent dangers.

An inherent part of using fission for power generation is that there are some leftovers, but compared to all other reliable, human controlled energy sources the waste product volume is tiny. That is important because it makes it feasible to completely contain and isolate the waste stream. That is not possible with the deadly waste products of fossil fuel power systems.