There's a solution to the nuclear waste problem,
one we've known about for decades
hotair.com
27 May 2023 ~~ By John Sexton
Way back in October 2021, Vox
released a video about nuclear power featuring Cleo Abrams. The gist of the video was that New York’s then-recent decision to shut down Indian Point nuclear reactor was a bad idea. As Abrams pointed out in a 10-minute clip, shutting down nuclear reactors is completely counter-productive, especially for anyone who believes climate change is a problem that has to be dealt with immediately.
What happened when NY shut down Indian Point? The state suddenly lost a major source of electric power which was soon replaced by power created by burning more natural gas. As Abrams
pointed out there’s no explanation for the push to shut down perfectly good nuclear power plants except for decades of lingering and largely irrational fear, an unfortunate leftover from the 1970s which the left has never quite relinquished.
Cleo Abrams doesn’t work for Vox anymore but she is still making videos. This week I came across one which feels like a follow up to that one from 2021. It’s titled, “The Big Lie About Nuclear Waste” and once again it’s an argument that one of the big problems people point to with nuclear power is largely a problem because of how we’ve approached it. In fact, there is a solution for nuclear waste which we’ve know about for many decades. Here’s the clip, which is about 14 minutes long, and then I’ll have a bit more commentary below.
~Snip~
I don’t know does this feel biased to you? I mean, in the first sentence they accuse Reagan of nuclear weapons proliferation and then they spend the next two graphs quoting a union president from a press conference set up with Ralph Nader. By the way, the story doesn’t redeem itself later on because the whole thing is only 5 paragraphs. So what you see above is nearly all of it.
Anyway, the partisan hackery aspect of the story probably didn’t interest Cleo Abrams but it was of interest to me.
Commentary:
Generation IV reactors will completely nullify any sincere concern about nuclear waste. What is left over amounts to a few pounds and has a half-life of a few decades.
Generation IV Nuclear Reactor information paper, including the Generation IV Forum. Information from the World Nuclear Association, the global private-sector organization providing information on nuclear power, nuclear energy, and the use of nuclear energy in meeting the needs of the world's...
world-nuclear.org
The technology works, they can reprocess all the stored fuel that is currently in Yucca Mountain and reprocess it to near nothing. That’s what makes Generation IV so vital for the nuclear industry.
Japan as already implemented the construction of the Gen IV power plants.
Democrats are so enamored with Solar and Wind power they can't see the forest for the trees.
Then aain you can’t have a neo-feudalist Maoist/Marxist society with cheap, abundant energy.
Of course, our EPA will resist and throw every barrier they can come up with to stop the reinvestment in modification of existing plants and building of new.
The solution for nuclear waste has been known since the 1980s, but politicians especially Democrats and have thwarted the solution at every turn, eventually demanding scientists accurately predict the stored radiation waste safety for the next one million years.
I;ve been a proponent of nuclear power and for decades have absorbed as much information on the subject as a lay person is able. That said there are big drawbacks with waste. Many smart people say Thorium reactors are the solution to the waste problem as a thorium reactor will burn waste fuel down to a small percentage.
Problems is, there are no working Thorium reactors. It’s all theory. If this country had spent the money we have on the unworkable green energy programs on reactor technology we very well have been the world leaders in a technology that leaves very little waste but produces massive amounts of energy to power the future.
Instead, fearmongering Maoist/Marxist Democrat Communists have led the sheep down a garden path of unworkable green energy that will end in the destruction of our quality of life. It’s all going according to plan. They fill their pockets while subjugating us to satisfy their power fetish.
www.cnbc.com
