[Tribune7]

French technocrats had never thought that the waste issue would be much of a problem. From the beginning the French had been recycling their nuclear waste, reclaiming the plutonium and unused uranium and fabricating new fuel elements. This not only gave energy, it reduced the volume and longevity of French radioactive waste. The volume of the ultimate high-level waste was indeed very small: the contribution of a family of four using electricity for 20 years is a glass cylinder the size of a cigarette lighter.

That's a big step to solving the problem.

[so_real]

I read that too. But they didn't disclose the recycling costs or by-products produced in recycling, which I thought was interesting. Furthermore, there are 296,000,000+ people in the U.S., or 74,000,000 families of four and the U.S. already has two times the number of reactors as France. That amounts to 7,400,000 deadly "lighters" produced every single year for which "scientists don't know how to reduce or eliminate the toxicity, but maybe in 100 years perhaps scientists will." And that does not take into account by-products of recycling or increased demand in the future. Nuclear has its place, but there are some pretty large issues yet to be addressed to make it acceptible long-term. Just my opinion.