What if there were a way to get around nuclear energys big problem— radioactive waste?
America gets one-fifth of its power from nuclear power plants. Nuclear is far and away the cheapest and most reliable alternative to carbon-emitting coal. Yet we all know that nuclear energy carries one great big negative: the problem of nuclear waste, the radioactive residue from enriched uranium. Now, suppose there were a solution to this problem? A solution that reduced the amount and the toxicity of nuclear waste by 80 percent or more? That would be useful, right? Well guess what—it’s doable. Better yet—it’s done. This week, I visited a facility in Normandy where France reprocesses the water from France’s 58 (soon to be 59) nuclear reactors, as well as waste from reactors in other European Union countries and Japan. Used uranium is removed from reactor cores and chemically manipulated to restore its radioactivity. This process creates new fuels—and only small amounts of waste byproducts. The process can be repeated a third time and perhaps a fourth. Yet in the United States, where
