“The new energy measure would also remove the prohibition President Gerald Ford placed on reprocessing spent nuclear fuel in October 1976.”
That is KEY! We only use about 5% of the fuel’s capacity before it needs to be reprocessed. So we have a lot of usable fuel in those spent fuel casks and spent fuel pools. Let’s do it!
The French and Japanese have been reprocessing fuel rods for years. They kept working on the technique/equipment, etc. after we shelved the effort at the end of 1992. Thanks to propaganda from the environmental movement, Chernobyl and no courage from the political leaders, no nuclear plants have been built in 30 years.
The Sierra Club and National Resources Defense Council are just as anti-U.S as those a$$hats in the Middle East.
I don’t think your numbers are right, but the basic idea is true.
The fuel starts out with 5% fissionable uranium. They told me in license class that the spent fuel still has 60% of the original fissionable uranium in it. So a little reprocessing will still go a long way.
IIRC, Chem-Nuclear had a reprocessing plant ready to be licensed in the 70s. They abandoned it and took a write-off after Carter’s ban on reprocessing.