Nuclear power plants are clean and less expensive to deliver, but they have an ugly side effect:  toxic wastes with 1,000 year life spans that must be stored in secure fascilities at tax payer expense.  If the total cost were considered, it wouldn't pencil out so well. 

 

 

Can we take these fuel rods that contain all this Plutonium, separate out the Plutonium and whatever Uranium was not used, and make more fuel rods? You bet. In fact, we actually end up with more fuel after the process than what we started with. Why is this not being done?

Can we do the same thing to produce nuclear fuel? The answer is a resounding Yes!

This type of reactor, called a Breeder Reactor, actually produces more fuel than it consumes. A reactor designed to use a mixed Plutonium fuel is basically the same as the Uranium reactor we have already discussed. However, the neutrons that sustain the reaction contain more energy - they are commonly known as "fast" neutrons.

In order to regulate the internal neutron flux, the primary coolant typically is one of the light metals like Sodium. Since Uranium-238 is one of the more abundant elements in the Earth's crust, Breeder Reactors make it possible to have an essentially unlimited source of fuel for nuclear reactors - which means an unlimited supply of electricity.

At its best, the Breeder Reactor system produces no nuclear waste whatever - literally everything eventually gets used. In the real world, there actually may be some residual material that could be considered waste, but its half-life - the period of time it takes for half the radioactivity to dissipate - is on the order of thirty to forty years. By contrast, the half-life for the stuff we presently consider nuclear waste is over 25,000 years!

Imagine a transformed energy landscape, where there is no nuclear waste problem, no power shortages, a safe and inexhaustible supply of inexpensive electricity. France has constructed and used Breeder Reactors like this for many years. So have the British and the Japanese. So why not the United States?

 

THE WHOLE ARTICLE IS WORTH READING REALLY...