You missed Carter's most significant blow to nuclear power. He banned the reprocessing of spent fuel in the U. S. as part of his non-proliferation policy. Well, that certainly worked well, no new players in the arms race. It doesn't take a "nookier" engineer to know that if spent fuel is hot enough to be dangerous, it is a richer source of new fuel than any natural ore.
The French have reprocessed as a matter of course as long as they have used nuclear power. Instead of arguing about how deep hole to bury it in where, we need to be turning spent rods into new ones with a greatly reduced volume of waste to be sequestered.
The infamous Three Mile Island melt down just shows how poor our risk assessment is. The actual exposure to radioactivity for anyone outside the perimeter fence was less than that of a single medical X-ray. No one I have found bothered to collect statistics, but it is a certainty that more people were killed and injured in traffic accidents during the panicky evacuation of 200,000 deluded nuclear-phobes from the Harriburg area than even the gloomiest, least substantiated forecasts of radiation linked cancer deaths. Actually, if any of those ecavacuees fled to stay with uncle Ed in Denver, they exposed themselves to twice as much radiation increase than they would have received camping out beside the perimeter fence.
The anti-nuke crowd also state that chernobyl is a reason why we shouldn't use nuclear power. Never mind that soviet style nuke reactors is not the safest ones in the world.
From what I know about Jimmy Carter, he knew nothing about nooky, and was definitely not a nooky engineer. :-)
Yes your right it was a stupid decision on Carter’s part, a pointless gesture to nuclear wannabees n the world. “We’ll sell you nuclear power, but don’t you reprocess the spent fuel.”
Yes Jimmy that will work. Everywhere except India, Pakistan, Israel, North Korea (we didn’t sell to them but I believe they had the same restrictions), probably Turkey and others.
While I don’t believe that the ban on reprocessing has really been a burden on Nuclear Power, the ban with the added failure to the government to build a waste depository for spent fuel has been a great financial burden.
Many if not most plants have had to build onsite storage facilities. Those that haven’t will have to in the future.
France had little choice but to go into nuclear in a big way. France has no native energy resources to speak of.
All of France’s fossil fuels are imported as is her Uranium. Her Phoenix breeder reactor program set up in the early 70’s was one of France’s few success stories. With 80% (last I heard) of her electric generation coming from nuclear power France is a world leader in nuclear power
Nuclear is a major profit center for France as well. France is the “Go To” country for fuel reprocessing and fuel fabrication for much of the world.
I don’t like France but I have to respect their nuclear know how, which is another reason to hate Jimmy Carter. He did nothing during the Three Mile Island to dispel the irrational fear that crippled Nuclear power in this country for decades. The after effects are just now beginning to dissipate.