July 7, 2018 – John Shanahan
Comment #2 to Bloomberg BNA about “New Nuclear Tech Won’t Help U.S. Avoid ‘Profound’ Climate Problem” This short article covers vast complex topics about energy from wind, solar, fossil fuels, and nuclear, reprocessing of used nuclear fuel, challenges of facing catastrophic manmade climate change and man-made rising oceans flooding coastal cities around the world. It doesn’t get much worse than that. Broad statements claiming to be solutions are made by people with little expertise in the fields they are proposing solutions for. For example, Senator Ed Markey (D-Mass) describes challenges of “impacts of climate change on dangerous nuclear waste.” “As plants like Pilgrim shutter across the nation and plan to store spent nuclear fuel on site for years—even decades—to come, it is imperative that these plants and the [Nuclear Regulatory Commission] regulations fully consider the impacts of climate change on dangerous nuclear waste,” Markey said in an April 25 statement. If the ideas in this article are implemented and the reasoning about catastrophic manmade climate change, etc., and dangerous nuclear waste turn out to be wrong, the consequences of going without fossil fuels, permanently disposing of hazardous nuclear waste (used nuclear fuel), and not using the approximate 99% available energy in the uranium ore stored in depleted uranium and used nuclear fuel will certainly be a disaster for humanity. If the world’s climate continues doing what it has been doing, which is in the range of past history and all natural, fossil fuels and nuclear will be a tremendous benefit for mankind and the environment. Used reactor fuel and depleted uranium are energy resources, not wastes. Used reactor fuel and depleted uranium are assets and not liabilities. They need used fuel reprocessing and fast reactors. The volume of used actual nuclear waste would be reduced and the effective isolation period would be reduced from over 1,000,000 years to 500 years or less. The value of the deplete uranium and used nuclear fuel based on energy content and coal or natural gas equivalent is more than 150 trillion dollars. See article by nuclear engineer, Kenneth Kok, “Used Nuclear Fuel/Depleted Uranium – Is It a Waste or a Resource?” It is posted here:
1