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.
I was a concrete worker on one of the, maybe THE last plants built, Shearon Harris, New Hill NC. Appropriate NC should be on the leading edge of a new and long overdue push to build. As it was Shearon Harris was scaled back from four reactors to two.
The spent fuel storage onsite was designed to safely house all the fuel projected to be used over the life span of the facility in water filled containment. The nuclear waste "problem" is waved like a red flag by the nuclear opponents. My point is that we are looking at the problem from the wrong end of the telescope when we look only at the option of finding a deep enough hole to put the stuff away in for 100,000 years+.
I am reminded of a consultant called in by a battery company which had been cited by EPA for dumping cadmium waste in a local river. He looked at samples of silt downstream and told them instead of looking at it as a hazmat disposal problem they should mine it! Way better concentrations of free cadmium than found in any natural ore.
I am convinced there is a core group of "environmentalists" who use their issues in pursuit of a rebulatorily based command and control economy. If such an economy cannot be sold based on discredited economic theory, scaring the hell out of the electorate will do. ANWR? We gonna kill all the caribou (absurd). Nuclear? The waste will crawl out of storage and our great grandchildren will have three eyes and gills.
I share your general opinion of the French, but they do nuclear right. They settle on a limited number of repeated designs, if less than cutting edge, at least safe and reliable. We, both from engineering and regulatory sides, were re-inventing the wheel every time we built a plant. The French give regular tours of nuclear facilities as part of the school curriculum and for the general public. The result is that their people do not reflexively run screaming into the night as soon as the word "nuclear" is mentioned.
Granted, being utterly destitute of domestic energy options, the French had little choice. That we have had the luxury of being able to afford the environmental vapors that have had too much limiting influence on our domestic policy does not mean that is how we should plan our future.