The dangers of reprocessing nuclear waste
We recently had a post about former Greenpeace cofounder, Patrick Moore’s support of a “nuclear renaissance” in America. One of Moore’s arguments was that nuclear power plants in America have removed and reprocessed weapons grade materials from the former Soviet Union, thereby keeping those materials from potentially entering the black market.
In our analysis, we pondered what would happen to all of the radioactive waste that would result from increased nuclear energy production. Environmental Capital had a post yesterday looking at this issue. Currently, the Bush Administration favors a process that would recycle used fuel rods. However, this plan is controversial because the reprocessing method can create weapons grade plutonium. Additionally, although the most potent nuclear waste is recycled, there is an increased amount of lower grade nuclear waste not reused that must still be stored.
Again, we come back to the point we made last week about the inevitability of human error, given enough time… If reprocessing fuel dramatically increases the amount of weapons grade plutonium in the world, this naturally will increase the odds that human error or poor judgment may lead to increased weapons proliferation. If reprocessing nuclear waste actually increases the amount of weapons grade material in the world, this would cut against one of Moore’s key arguments in favor of nuclear energy. (Although it is not clear to us that Moore has advocated reprocessing civilian nuclear waste.)
Photo credit.
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