"Bert Robbins" wrote in message
. ..

"Doug Kanter" wrote in message
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"Calif Bill" wrote in message
ink.net...


We have a cure for the energy problem. NUCLEAR POWER PLANTS! But the
enviro's got the building of same, outlawed.

No knee-jerk reactions, OK? Forget Yucca Mountain.

As it stands now, we are unable to control nuclear waste. I did not say
"dispose of". I said "CONTROL", meaning assure that is secured against
misuse. When we can do that, then MAYBE we can build nuclear power plants
the was Starbucks builds coffee shops.

What do France and Japan do with their nuclear waste? I believe that 80%
of France's electricity is generated from nuclear power plants and I
believe that Japan's is somewhere above 30%.




I don't know what they do with it. In some cases, they (and other countries)
got fuel from us, and for some years, there's been an effort underway to
have them voluntarily return the spent fuel so (in theory) we can store it
safely. The program's moving too slowly, not because of any political
resistance, but simply because politicians are too busy with more exciting
things that hold the public's interest.

The February 2006 issue of Scientific American contains the best article
I've ever seen on the subject. It's definitely worth your effort to run out
and find it today. I'd summarize it for you, but I haven't finished reading
it. My son keep sticking the magazine in his book bag and taking it to
school to read during lunch.

Excerpt from web site - but it's hardly the juicy part:

Thwarting Nuclear Terrorism
Many civilian research reactors contain highly enriched uranium that
terrorists could use to build nuclear bombs
By Alexander Glaser and Frank N. von Hippel
The atomic bomb that incinerated the Japanese city of Hiroshima at the close
of World War II contained about 60 kilograms of chain-reacting uranium. When
the American "Little Boy" device detonated over the doomed port, one part of
the bomb's charge--a subcritical mass--was fired into the other by a
relatively simple gunlike mechanism, causing the uranium 235 in the combined
mass to go supercritical and explode with the force of 15 kilotons of TNT.
The weapon that devastated Nagasaki a few days later used plutonium rather
than uranium in its explosive charge and required much more complex
technology to set it off.

Despite the production of more than 100,000 nuclear weapons by a few nations
and some close calls during the succeeding 60 years, no similar nuclear
destruction has occurred so far. Today, however, an additional fearful
threat has arisen: that a subnational terrorist organization such as al
Qaeda might acquire highly enriched uranium (HEU), build a crude gun-type
detonating device and use the resulting nuclear weapon against a city. HEU
is uranium in which uranium 235, the isotope capable of sustaining a nuclear
chain reaction, has been concentrated to levels of 20 percent or more by
weight....continued at Scientific American Digital