Posted on 12/15/2016 7:56:56 AM PST by afraidfortherepublic
We had a fuel reprocessing plant. Jimmy Carter shut it down about day 1 and it was sold for pennies on the dollar to Japan.
Might have a hard time getting money to try that again.
The PURPOSE for forming the DOE was to wean America off of the use of foreign oil.
It's now nearly 40 years later and the DOE has a budget of well over 30 BILLION dollars and thousands of employees who do little or nothing except BLOCK America's efforts to explore, develop, and sell our own energy reserves.
Hopefully Perry will begin to dismantle this cancer on America's energy needs.
Low cost energy and an abundance of it would do as much to turn America around as the jobs it would create.
Yucca Mountain?
Yucca Mountain is a freaking dormant volcano.
It’s still on the geologically active list.
Why would a sane person store nuclear waste there?
They surely can come up with a way to recycle this stuff at a reasonable cost if not profit.
“Luckily, the US is about the only country that stopped reprocessing fuel”
Should have said “Unfortunately”, or “Stupidly”.
True, but due to the handwriting being on the wall about the likely fate of the plants, the best qualified personnel began to look for "other opportunities", and as the quality of personnel dropped, safety issues began to crop up.
I actually minored in nuclear science en route to my PhD in chem in the 1970-73 frame, and considered a job in the nuclear industry, as what turned out to be the last reactor built in the US (River Bend), was under construction at the time.
The propaganda war waged against that plant was astounding. One of my chem profs was an extreme liberal, and he bashed the plant in his classes at every opportunity. One of his arguments was that the reactor vessel would suffer "radiation embrittlement" and fail, with a catastrophic radiation release. Plant is still up and running today, and "it ain't happened yet".
So, I'm told, are they at Savannah River. The real danger is theft. The waste, I'm assured, is not too dangerous on its own, but gathered into a "dirty bomb" by an enemy agent could spread contamination for miles.
It’s a salt dome.
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