The nuclear industry still has no solution to the 'waste problem'
Many people quite reasonably feel that the nuclear industry shouldn't continue operation without having a solution for the disposal of its radioactive waste. However, the industry has in fact developed the necessary technologies and implemented most of them - the remaining issue is to ensure that the proposed solutions are acceptable to the public.
Today, safe management practices are implemented or planned for all categories of radioactive waste. Low-level waste (LLW) and most intermediate-level waste (ILW), which make up most of the volume of waste produced (97%), are being disposed of securely in near-surface repositories in many countries so as to cause no harm or risk in the long-term. This practice has been carried out for many years in many countries as a matter of routine.
High-level waste (HLW) is currently safely contained and managed in interim storage facilities. The amount of HLW produced (including used fuel when this is considered a waste) is in fact small in relation to other industry sectors. HLW is currently increasing by about 12,000 tonnes worldwide every year, which is the equivalent of a two-storey structure built on a basketball court or about 100 double-decker buses and is modest compared with other industrial wastes. The use of interim storage facilities currently provides an appropriate environment in which to contain and manage this amount of waste. These facilities also allow for the heat and radioactivity of the waste to decay prior to long-term geological disposal. In fact, after 40 years there is only about one thousandth as much radioactivity as when the reactor is switched off to unload the used fuel. Interim storage provides an appropriate means of storing used fuel until a time when that country has sufficient fuel to make a repository development economic.
In the long-term however, appropriate disposal arrangements are required for HLW, due to its prolonged radioactivity. Disposal solutions are currently being developed for HLW that are safe, environmentally sound and publicly acceptable. The solution that is widely accepted as feasible is deep geological disposal, and repository projects are well advanced in some countries, such as Finland, Sweden and the USA. In fact, in the USA a deep geological waste repository (the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant) is already in operation in New Mexico for the disposal of transuranic waste (long-lived ILW contaminated with military materials such as plutonium), although Nevada is showing classic Nimbya resistance to the proposed Yucca Mountain repository. These countries have demonstrated that political and public acceptance issues at a community and national level can be met.
The nuclear industry therefore has clearly defined waste disposal methods for all waste produced and is making progress in many countries to achieve public acceptance of the approved programmes. It is important that other governments in nuclear energy-producing countries now follow the lead set by these countries on the issue of long-term disposal of high-level radioactive waste.
With the availability of technologies and the continued progress being made to develop publicly acceptable sites, it is logical that construction of new nuclear facilities can continue. Nuclear energy has distinct environmental advantages over fossil fuels. As well as containing and managing virtually all its wastes, nuclear power stations do not cause any pollution. The fuel for nuclear power is virtually unlimited, considering both geological and technological aspects. There is plenty of uranium in the Earth's crust and furthermore, well-proven (but not yet fully economic) technology means that we can extract about 60 times as much energy from it as we do today. The safety record of nuclear energy is better than for any major industrial technology. All these benefits should be taken into account when considering the construction of new facilities.
Further information
Waste Management in the Nuclear Fuel Cycle
Waste Management in the Nuclear Fuel Cycle Appendix 1: Treatment and Conditioning of Nuclear Wastes
The transportation of this waste poses an unacceptable risk to people and the environment
Nuclear materials have been transported safely (virtually without incident and without harmful effect on anyone) since before the advent of nuclear power over 50 years ago. Transportations of nuclear materials cannot therefore be referred to as 'mobile Chernobyls'.
The primary assurance of safety in the transport of nuclear materials is the way in which they are packaged. Packages that store waste during transportation are designed to ensure shielding from radiation and containment of waste, even under the most extreme accident conditions. Since 1971, there have been more than 20,000 safe shipments of highly radioactive used fuel and high-level wastes (over 50,000 tonnes) over more than 30 million kilometres (about 19 million miles) with no property damage or personal injury, no breach of containment, and very low radiation dose to the personnel involved.
Further information
Transport of Radioactive Materials
Waste Management in the Nuclear Fuel Cycle Appendix 1: Treatment and Conditioning of Nuclear Wastes
Plutonium is the most dangerous material in the world
Plutonium has been stated to be 'the most toxic substance on earth' and so hazardous that 'a speck can kill'. Plutonium is indeed toxic and therefore must be handled in a responsible manner. Its hazard is principally associated with the ionising radiation it emits. However, it is primarily hazardous if inhaled in small particles.
Comparisons between toxic substances are not straightforward since the effect of plutonium inhalation would be to increase the probability of a cancer in several years time, whilst most other toxins lead to immediate death. Best comparisons indicate that, gram for gram, toxins such as ricin and some snake venoms and cyanide are significantly more toxic. Consider also that all the cleaning products that we have in our kitchen are toxic if we absorb them, whilst some of the products that are spread onto crops are toxic as well.
Further information
Plutonium
There is a potential terrorist threat to the large volumes of radioactive wastes currently being stored and the risk that this waste could leak or be dispersed as a result of terrorist action
High-level waste (HLW) and used fuel is kept in secure nuclear facilities with appropriate protection measures. Most high-level wastes produced are held as stable ceramic solids or in vitrified form (glass), designed to ensure that radioactive isotopes resulting from the nuclear reaction are retained securely in the glass or ceramic. Their structure is such that they would be very difficult to disperse by terrorist action, so that the threat from so-called 'dirty bombs' is not high.
The US Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) has responded to suggestions that spent fuel is vulnerable to terrorist actions and should be put into dry storage casks after five years: "Nuclear power reactor spent fuel pools are neither easily reached nor easily breached. Instead, they are strong structures constructed of very thick steel-reinforced concrete walls with stainless steel liners. In addition, other design characteristics of these pools, not analyzed in the paper, can make them highly resistant to damage and can ease the ability to cope with any damage. Such characteristics can include having the fuel in the pool partially or completely below grade and having the pool shielded by other plant structures."
A report released on June 25, 2002 by the National Academy of Sciences, concludes that if a dirty bomb attack were to occur, "the casualty rate would likely be low, and contamination could be detected and removed from the environment, although such cleanup would probably be expensive and time consuming." The disruption caused by such an attack would result from public fear of anything 'nuclear', and thus "the ease of recovery...would depend to a great extent on how the attack was handled by first responders, political leaders, and the news media, all of which would help to shape public opinion and reactions."c
The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has identified medical and industrial radioactive sources as posing considerable concern in terms of potential terrorist threats from their use in 'dirty bombs'. The need for stronger controls to prevent the theft or loss of control of powerful radiological sources and hence ensure their safety and security has been highlighted as of paramount importance.
Further information
Making the Nation Safer: The Role of Science and Technology in Countering Terrorism, Committee on Science and Technology for Countering Terrorism, National Research Council of the National Academies, The National Academies Press (ISBN: 9780309084819)
IAEA Security of Radioactive Sources webpage (www-ns.iaea.org/security/sources.htm)
NRC Nuclear Security and Safeguards webpage (www.nrc.gov/security.html)
Nuclear wastes are hazardous for tens of thousands of years. This clearly is unprecedented and poses a huge threat to our future generations in the long-term
Many industries produce hazardous waste. The nuclear industry has developed technology that will ensure its hazardous waste can be managed appropriately so as to cause no risk to future generations.
In fact, the radioactivity of nuclear wastes naturally decays progressively and has a finite radiotoxic lifetime. The radioactivity of high-level wastes decays to the level of an equivalent amount of original mined uranium ore in between 1,000 and 10,000 years. Its hazard then depends on how concentrated it is. Compare this to other industrial wastes (e.g. heavy metals such as cadmium and mercury), which remain hazardous indefinitely.
Most nuclear wastes produced are hazardous, due to their radioactivity, for only a few tens of years and are routinely disposed in near-surface disposal facilities. A small volume of nuclear waste (~3% volume of total waste produced) is long-lived and highly radioactive and requires isolation from the environment for many thousands of years.
International conventions define what is hazardous in terms of radiation dose, and national regulations limit allowable doses accordingly. Well-developed industry technology ensures that these regulations are met so that any hazardous wastes are handled in a way that poses no risk to human health or the environment. Waste is converted into a stable form that is suitable for disposal. In the case of high-level waste, a multi-barrier approach, combining containment and geological disposal, ensures isolation of the waste from people and the environment for thousands of years.
Further information
Waste Management in the Nuclear Fuel Cycle
Waste Management in the Nuclear Fuel Cycle Appendix 1: Treatment and Conditioning of Nuclear Wastes
Nobody knows the true costs of waste management. The costs are so high that nuclear power can never be economic
Because it is widely accepted that producers of radioactive wastes should bear the costs of disposal, most countries with nuclear power programmes make estimates of the costs of disposal and update these periodically. International organisations such as the Nuclear Energy Agency (NEA) of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) have also coordinated exercises to compare these estimates with one another. For low-level waste, the costs are well-known because numerous facilities have been built and have operated for many years around the world. For high level-waste (HLW), cost estimates are becoming increasingly reliable as projects get closer to implementation.
Based on the estimated total costs of managing nuclear wastes, many countries require that the operators of nuclear power plants set aside funding to cover all costs. Different mechanisms exist in different countries. Although the sum already deposited in dedicated funds are high, the costs of waste management do not drastically increase the price of electricity. Typically the spent fuel management and disposal costs represent about 10% of the total costs involved in producing electricity from a nuclear power plant. Thus, although the absolute costs of waste management are high, they do not render the nuclear fuel cycle uneconomic, because of the high ratio of revenue earned to waste volumes produced.
Further information
Waste Management in the Nuclear Fuel Cycle
The Economics of the Nuclear Fuel Cycle, Nuclear Energy Agency (1994), available on the NEA website (www.nea.fr/html/ndd/reports/efc)
Americans get most of their yearly radiation dose from nuclear power plants.
We are surrounded by naturally occurring radiation. Only 0.005% of the average American’s yearly radiation dose comes from nuclear power; 100 times less than we get from coal, 200 times less than a cross-country flight, and about the same as eating 1 banana per year.
A nuclear reactor can explode like a nuclear bomb. An American “Chernobyl” would kill thousands of people.
It is impossible for a reactor to explode like a nuclear weapon; these weapons contain very special materials in very particular configurations, neither of which are present in a nuclear reactor
A Chernobyl-type accident could not have happened outside of the Soviet Union because this type of reactor was never built or operated here. The known fatalities during the Chernobyl accident were mostly emergency first responders. Of the people known to have received a high radiation dose, the increase in cancer incidence is too small to measure due to other causes of cancer such as air pollution and tobacco use.
Nuclear energy is bad for the environment.
Nuclear reactors emit no greenhouse gasses during operation. Over their full lifetimes, they result in comparable emissions to renewable forms of energy such as wind and solar. Nuclear energy requires less land use than most other forms of energy
Nuclear energy is not safe.
Nuclear energy is as safe or safer than any other form of energy available. No member of the public has ever been injured or killed in the entire 50-year history of commercial nuclear power in the U.S. In fact, recent studies have shown that it is safer to work in a nuclear power plant than an office
There is no solution for huge amounts of nuclear waste being generated.
All of the used nuclear fuel generated in every nuclear plant in the past 50 years would fill a football field to a depth of less than 10 yards, and 96 % of this “waste” can be recycled. Used fuel is currently being safely stored. The U.S. National Academy of Sciences and the equivalent scientific advisory panels in every major country support geological disposal of such wastes as the preferred safe method for their ultimate disposal[6].
Most Americans don’t support nuclear power.
In a survey conducted in September 2013, it was found that 82% of Americans feel nuclear energy will play an important role in meeting the country’s future electricity needs, and half believe this importance will increase with time. In addition, 84% of respondents favor renewing operating licenses for nuclear power plants that continue to meet federal safety standards. Also, 77% believe that nuclear power plants operating in the United States are safe and secure, a four percentage point increase from last February.
Nuclear waste cannot be safely transported.
Used fuel is being safely shipped by truck, rail, and cargo ship today. To date, thousands of shipments have been transported with no leaks or cracks of the specially-designed casks.
Used nuclear fuel is deadly for 10,000 years.
Used nuclear fuel can be recycled to make new fuel and byproducts. Most of the waste from this process will require a storage time of less than 300 years. Finally, less than 1% is radioactive for 10,000 years. This portion is not much more radioactive than some things found in nature, and can be easily shielded to protect humans and wildlife.
Nuclear energy can’t reduce our dependence on foreign oil.
Nuclear-generated electricity powers electric trains and subway cars as well as autos today. It has also been used in propelling ships for more than 50 years. That use can be increased since it has been restricted by unofficial policy to military vessels and ice breakers. In the near-term, nuclear power can provide electricity for expanded mass-transit and plug-in hybrid cars. Small modular reactors can provide power to islands like Hawaii, Puerto Rico, Nantucket and Guam that currently run their electrical grids on imported oil. In the longer-term, nuclear power can directly reduce our dependence on foreign oil by producing hydrogen for use in fuel cells and synthetic liquid fuels
Many people quite reasonably feel that the nuclear industry shouldn't continue operation without having a solution for the disposal of its radioactive waste. However, the industry has in fact developed the necessary technologies and implemented most of them - the remaining issue is to ensure that the proposed solutions are acceptable to the public.
Today, safe management practices are implemented or planned for all categories of radioactive waste. Low-level waste (LLW) and most intermediate-level waste (ILW), which make up most of the volume of waste produced (97%), are being disposed of securely in near-surface repositories in many countries so as to cause no harm or risk in the long-term. This practice has been carried out for many years in many countries as a matter of routine.
High-level waste (HLW) is currently safely contained and managed in interim storage facilities. The amount of HLW produced (including used fuel when this is considered a waste) is in fact small in relation to other industry sectors. HLW is currently increasing by about 12,000 tonnes worldwide every year, which is the equivalent of a two-storey structure built on a basketball court or about 100 double-decker buses and is modest compared with other industrial wastes. The use of interim storage facilities currently provides an appropriate environment in which to contain and manage this amount of waste. These facilities also allow for the heat and radioactivity of the waste to decay prior to long-term geological disposal. In fact, after 40 years there is only about one thousandth as much radioactivity as when the reactor is switched off to unload the used fuel. Interim storage provides an appropriate means of storing used fuel until a time when that country has sufficient fuel to make a repository development economic.
In the long-term however, appropriate disposal arrangements are required for HLW, due to its prolonged radioactivity. Disposal solutions are currently being developed for HLW that are safe, environmentally sound and publicly acceptable. The solution that is widely accepted as feasible is deep geological disposal, and repository projects are well advanced in some countries, such as Finland, Sweden and the USA. In fact, in the USA a deep geological waste repository (the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant) is already in operation in New Mexico for the disposal of transuranic waste (long-lived ILW contaminated with military materials such as plutonium), although Nevada is showing classic Nimbya resistance to the proposed Yucca Mountain repository. These countries have demonstrated that political and public acceptance issues at a community and national level can be met.
The nuclear industry therefore has clearly defined waste disposal methods for all waste produced and is making progress in many countries to achieve public acceptance of the approved programmes. It is important that other governments in nuclear energy-producing countries now follow the lead set by these countries on the issue of long-term disposal of high-level radioactive waste.
With the availability of technologies and the continued progress being made to develop publicly acceptable sites, it is logical that construction of new nuclear facilities can continue. Nuclear energy has distinct environmental advantages over fossil fuels. As well as containing and managing virtually all its wastes, nuclear power stations do not cause any pollution. The fuel for nuclear power is virtually unlimited, considering both geological and technological aspects. There is plenty of uranium in the Earth's crust and furthermore, well-proven (but not yet fully economic) technology means that we can extract about 60 times as much energy from it as we do today. The safety record of nuclear energy is better than for any major industrial technology. All these benefits should be taken into account when considering the construction of new facilities.
Further information
Waste Management in the Nuclear Fuel Cycle
Waste Management in the Nuclear Fuel Cycle Appendix 1: Treatment and Conditioning of Nuclear Wastes
The transportation of this waste poses an unacceptable risk to people and the environment
Nuclear materials have been transported safely (virtually without incident and without harmful effect on anyone) since before the advent of nuclear power over 50 years ago. Transportations of nuclear materials cannot therefore be referred to as 'mobile Chernobyls'.
The primary assurance of safety in the transport of nuclear materials is the way in which they are packaged. Packages that store waste during transportation are designed to ensure shielding from radiation and containment of waste, even under the most extreme accident conditions. Since 1971, there have been more than 20,000 safe shipments of highly radioactive used fuel and high-level wastes (over 50,000 tonnes) over more than 30 million kilometres (about 19 million miles) with no property damage or personal injury, no breach of containment, and very low radiation dose to the personnel involved.
Further information
Transport of Radioactive Materials
Waste Management in the Nuclear Fuel Cycle Appendix 1: Treatment and Conditioning of Nuclear Wastes
Plutonium is the most dangerous material in the world
Plutonium has been stated to be 'the most toxic substance on earth' and so hazardous that 'a speck can kill'. Plutonium is indeed toxic and therefore must be handled in a responsible manner. Its hazard is principally associated with the ionising radiation it emits. However, it is primarily hazardous if inhaled in small particles.
Comparisons between toxic substances are not straightforward since the effect of plutonium inhalation would be to increase the probability of a cancer in several years time, whilst most other toxins lead to immediate death. Best comparisons indicate that, gram for gram, toxins such as ricin and some snake venoms and cyanide are significantly more toxic. Consider also that all the cleaning products that we have in our kitchen are toxic if we absorb them, whilst some of the products that are spread onto crops are toxic as well.
Further information
Plutonium
There is a potential terrorist threat to the large volumes of radioactive wastes currently being stored and the risk that this waste could leak or be dispersed as a result of terrorist action
High-level waste (HLW) and used fuel is kept in secure nuclear facilities with appropriate protection measures. Most high-level wastes produced are held as stable ceramic solids or in vitrified form (glass), designed to ensure that radioactive isotopes resulting from the nuclear reaction are retained securely in the glass or ceramic. Their structure is such that they would be very difficult to disperse by terrorist action, so that the threat from so-called 'dirty bombs' is not high.
The US Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) has responded to suggestions that spent fuel is vulnerable to terrorist actions and should be put into dry storage casks after five years: "Nuclear power reactor spent fuel pools are neither easily reached nor easily breached. Instead, they are strong structures constructed of very thick steel-reinforced concrete walls with stainless steel liners. In addition, other design characteristics of these pools, not analyzed in the paper, can make them highly resistant to damage and can ease the ability to cope with any damage. Such characteristics can include having the fuel in the pool partially or completely below grade and having the pool shielded by other plant structures."
A report released on June 25, 2002 by the National Academy of Sciences, concludes that if a dirty bomb attack were to occur, "the casualty rate would likely be low, and contamination could be detected and removed from the environment, although such cleanup would probably be expensive and time consuming." The disruption caused by such an attack would result from public fear of anything 'nuclear', and thus "the ease of recovery...would depend to a great extent on how the attack was handled by first responders, political leaders, and the news media, all of which would help to shape public opinion and reactions."c
The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has identified medical and industrial radioactive sources as posing considerable concern in terms of potential terrorist threats from their use in 'dirty bombs'. The need for stronger controls to prevent the theft or loss of control of powerful radiological sources and hence ensure their safety and security has been highlighted as of paramount importance.
Further information
Making the Nation Safer: The Role of Science and Technology in Countering Terrorism, Committee on Science and Technology for Countering Terrorism, National Research Council of the National Academies, The National Academies Press (ISBN: 9780309084819)
IAEA Security of Radioactive Sources webpage (www-ns.iaea.org/security/sources.htm)
NRC Nuclear Security and Safeguards webpage (www.nrc.gov/security.html)
Nuclear wastes are hazardous for tens of thousands of years. This clearly is unprecedented and poses a huge threat to our future generations in the long-term
Many industries produce hazardous waste. The nuclear industry has developed technology that will ensure its hazardous waste can be managed appropriately so as to cause no risk to future generations.
In fact, the radioactivity of nuclear wastes naturally decays progressively and has a finite radiotoxic lifetime. The radioactivity of high-level wastes decays to the level of an equivalent amount of original mined uranium ore in between 1,000 and 10,000 years. Its hazard then depends on how concentrated it is. Compare this to other industrial wastes (e.g. heavy metals such as cadmium and mercury), which remain hazardous indefinitely.
Most nuclear wastes produced are hazardous, due to their radioactivity, for only a few tens of years and are routinely disposed in near-surface disposal facilities. A small volume of nuclear waste (~3% volume of total waste produced) is long-lived and highly radioactive and requires isolation from the environment for many thousands of years.
International conventions define what is hazardous in terms of radiation dose, and national regulations limit allowable doses accordingly. Well-developed industry technology ensures that these regulations are met so that any hazardous wastes are handled in a way that poses no risk to human health or the environment. Waste is converted into a stable form that is suitable for disposal. In the case of high-level waste, a multi-barrier approach, combining containment and geological disposal, ensures isolation of the waste from people and the environment for thousands of years.
Further information
Waste Management in the Nuclear Fuel Cycle
Waste Management in the Nuclear Fuel Cycle Appendix 1: Treatment and Conditioning of Nuclear Wastes
Nobody knows the true costs of waste management. The costs are so high that nuclear power can never be economic
Because it is widely accepted that producers of radioactive wastes should bear the costs of disposal, most countries with nuclear power programmes make estimates of the costs of disposal and update these periodically. International organisations such as the Nuclear Energy Agency (NEA) of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) have also coordinated exercises to compare these estimates with one another. For low-level waste, the costs are well-known because numerous facilities have been built and have operated for many years around the world. For high level-waste (HLW), cost estimates are becoming increasingly reliable as projects get closer to implementation.
Based on the estimated total costs of managing nuclear wastes, many countries require that the operators of nuclear power plants set aside funding to cover all costs. Different mechanisms exist in different countries. Although the sum already deposited in dedicated funds are high, the costs of waste management do not drastically increase the price of electricity. Typically the spent fuel management and disposal costs represent about 10% of the total costs involved in producing electricity from a nuclear power plant. Thus, although the absolute costs of waste management are high, they do not render the nuclear fuel cycle uneconomic, because of the high ratio of revenue earned to waste volumes produced.
Further information
Waste Management in the Nuclear Fuel Cycle
The Economics of the Nuclear Fuel Cycle, Nuclear Energy Agency (1994), available on the NEA website (www.nea.fr/html/ndd/reports/efc)
Americans get most of their yearly radiation dose from nuclear power plants.
We are surrounded by naturally occurring radiation. Only 0.005% of the average American’s yearly radiation dose comes from nuclear power; 100 times less than we get from coal, 200 times less than a cross-country flight, and about the same as eating 1 banana per year.
A nuclear reactor can explode like a nuclear bomb. An American “Chernobyl” would kill thousands of people.
It is impossible for a reactor to explode like a nuclear weapon; these weapons contain very special materials in very particular configurations, neither of which are present in a nuclear reactor
A Chernobyl-type accident could not have happened outside of the Soviet Union because this type of reactor was never built or operated here. The known fatalities during the Chernobyl accident were mostly emergency first responders. Of the people known to have received a high radiation dose, the increase in cancer incidence is too small to measure due to other causes of cancer such as air pollution and tobacco use.
Nuclear energy is bad for the environment.
Nuclear reactors emit no greenhouse gasses during operation. Over their full lifetimes, they result in comparable emissions to renewable forms of energy such as wind and solar. Nuclear energy requires less land use than most other forms of energy
Nuclear energy is not safe.
Nuclear energy is as safe or safer than any other form of energy available. No member of the public has ever been injured or killed in the entire 50-year history of commercial nuclear power in the U.S. In fact, recent studies have shown that it is safer to work in a nuclear power plant than an office
There is no solution for huge amounts of nuclear waste being generated.
All of the used nuclear fuel generated in every nuclear plant in the past 50 years would fill a football field to a depth of less than 10 yards, and 96 % of this “waste” can be recycled. Used fuel is currently being safely stored. The U.S. National Academy of Sciences and the equivalent scientific advisory panels in every major country support geological disposal of such wastes as the preferred safe method for their ultimate disposal[6].
Most Americans don’t support nuclear power.
In a survey conducted in September 2013, it was found that 82% of Americans feel nuclear energy will play an important role in meeting the country’s future electricity needs, and half believe this importance will increase with time. In addition, 84% of respondents favor renewing operating licenses for nuclear power plants that continue to meet federal safety standards. Also, 77% believe that nuclear power plants operating in the United States are safe and secure, a four percentage point increase from last February.
Nuclear waste cannot be safely transported.
Used fuel is being safely shipped by truck, rail, and cargo ship today. To date, thousands of shipments have been transported with no leaks or cracks of the specially-designed casks.
Used nuclear fuel is deadly for 10,000 years.
Used nuclear fuel can be recycled to make new fuel and byproducts. Most of the waste from this process will require a storage time of less than 300 years. Finally, less than 1% is radioactive for 10,000 years. This portion is not much more radioactive than some things found in nature, and can be easily shielded to protect humans and wildlife.
Nuclear energy can’t reduce our dependence on foreign oil.
Nuclear-generated electricity powers electric trains and subway cars as well as autos today. It has also been used in propelling ships for more than 50 years. That use can be increased since it has been restricted by unofficial policy to military vessels and ice breakers. In the near-term, nuclear power can provide electricity for expanded mass-transit and plug-in hybrid cars. Small modular reactors can provide power to islands like Hawaii, Puerto Rico, Nantucket and Guam that currently run their electrical grids on imported oil. In the longer-term, nuclear power can directly reduce our dependence on foreign oil by producing hydrogen for use in fuel cells and synthetic liquid fuels