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- From: yodaiken@chelm.cs.umass.edu (victor yodaiken)
- Newsgroups: sci.environment
- Subject: Re: Is nuclear energy "polluting"? (was Re: Is car pooling for real?
- Message-ID: <50770@dime.cs.umass.edu>
- Date: 23 Jul 92 15:15:21 GMT
- References: <50719@dime.cs.umass.edu> <20200@sbsvax.cs.uni-sb.de>
- Sender: news@dime.cs.umass.edu
- Organization: University of Massachusetts, Amherst
- Lines: 37
-
- In article <20200@sbsvax.cs.uni-sb.de> dietz@mpii01036.NoSubdomain.NoDomain (Paul Dietz) writes:
- >In article <50719@dime.cs.umass.edu>, yodaiken@chelm.cs.umass.edu (victor yodaiken) writes:
- >
- >|> Similarly, used tires have potential value, as does auto exhaust. But,
- >|> for nuclear wastes to have real value a working nuclear fuel cycle must
- >|> be developed. As the French have shown, this is not a solved problem.
- >
- >
- >In what way have the French shown this? They have operating reprocessing
- >plants, and have produced and used (and sell) mixed oxide fuel containing
- >plutonium. Are you refering to their fast breeders? Note that it is
- >not necessary to use fast reactors, or for that matter to involve plutonium,
- >to achieve a breeding ratio > 1.
-
- The french have the largest investment in breeders, and this has
- not been a happy experience for them. As for the French reprocessing
- plants, they are, of course, under tight secrecy both in terms of
- safety problems and financial problems, so one cannot determine whether
- or not they are either safe or financially viable. The English reprocessing
- experience is a well known environmental disaster and it is not clear
- what the French are doing with the waste stream from their reprocessing
- plants.
-
- I understand that there are types of reactors which operate a complete
- fuel cycle without the use of fast breeder reactors, but as far as
- I know all such systems are either proposed or experimental. You
- suggest that the CANDU reactors may have a breeding ratio > 1, can
- anyone confirm this? How much unusable waste is generated during
- reprocessing for CANDU style reactors?
-
-
-
-
- --
-
-
- yodaiken@chelm.cs.umass.edu
-