OT-Yucca Mountian built on top of fault line

The anti-nuke crowd is in their glory and will do anything to close down existing plants and prevent more nuke plants. I want my atomic-powered flying car, dammit!

In their defense, I've seen studies where the brand new fuel in rods were less expensive than recycling the old fuel rods.

Fewer stupid regulations + dog/pony shows, more on-site recycling.

-- "A patriot must always be ready to defend his country against his government." --Edward Abbey

========= It is a typical governmental and mega-corporate mind set, e.g. General Electric, to throw away fuel rods that still contain c. 98% of the original energy. After all, its only the taxpayers' and shareholders' money...

As indicated in previous posts a liquid fluoride salt moderated/cooled thorium reactor can reprocess/recycle "spent" fuel rods, while extracting a very high fraction of the energy these still contain. The small amount of waste resulting from the LFTR is almost totally depleted in fissile materials [i.e. no risk of bomb making], the physical volume is much less and the residual radiation of the material has a much shorter half life. Additionally, many of the wastes generated, although slightly radioactive have very short half-lifes, and are commercially valuable, such as the rare earth metal Neodymium needed for "super-magnets" in many applications.

What appears to be required is not more "study," but the vigorous application of a size 13 boot with a copper toe.

-- Unka George (George McDuffee) .............................. The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there. L. P. Hartley (1895-1972), British author. The Go-Between, Prologue (1953).

============== Indeed, but the problem is with depreciation, amortization, overhead/burden rates, general & administrative charges, yada-yada-yada, corporate cost accounting can come up with any prices the "boss" wants.

A contributing factor is that much of the costs to store the "spent" fuel rods are externalized, for example the cost to safely store the "spent" fuel rods, operationally "forever." How much were the nuclear power companies to be charged for using the Yucca Mountain facility, or was this to be yet another taxpayer funded benefit for these companies?

One possible ameliorative measure would be to tax fuel rods made from new materials at a high rate, but fuel rods made from recycled materials at a lower rate to more than offset the supposed "savings" for scrapping/storing the "spent" fuel rods and using new fuel rods.

Even better would be the introduction of molten fluoride salt moderated/cooled thorium reactors which can almost totally consume the fissile materials in the existing "spent" rods with minimal need for processing/fabricating.

Based on the numbers I have seen about the number/weight of "spent" fuel rods currently in storage in the US, wide spread introduction of LSTRs would eliminate the need for any more uranium mining/processing for at least a century, and the US government has several thousand tons of Thorium in the strategic materials stockpiles. Additionally, thorium and most REE [rare earth elements] can be economically extracted from industrial waste such as fly ash and copper refining liquids.

Like the down east yankee observed "when you need a helping hand, try the end of your arm."

-- Unka George (George McDuffee) .............................. The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there. L. P. Hartley (1895-1972), British author. The Go-Between, Prologue (1953).

?Remember, if you ever need a helping hand, it's at the end of your arm, as you get older, remember you have another hand: The first is to help yourself, the second is to help others.?

Audrey Hepburn