Generating electricity using nuclear power includes processing uranium. After 40 years, the waste from the process can safely be put into containers for storage, though it is still dangerous to living things. After 10,000 years, the leftovers, the nuclear waste, will no longer be dangerous. Currently in the U.S., we leave the waste in ponds at the power plants and then put it in containers and bury it in the ground (a.k.a. “geologic depositories”).
“Nuclear reprocessing” means separating the waste—taking uranium that didn’t get used the first time out of the “trash” so it can be used to generate electricity. The uranium is chemically separated from the rest of the waste and one of the new leftovers is plutonium, the radioactive ingredient in nuclear bombs.
Other countries, like France, reprocess their nuclear waste even though plutonium is left over, usually in the form of a highly concentrated power. In the U.S., we’ve recently heard both 2008 presidential candidates say they support Americans reprocessing nuclear waste. (Private companies in the U.S. stopped doing so in 1976.)
One concern about nuclear reprocessing is individuals acquiring the powdered plutonium leftovers with which they can devise a nuclear weapon. But for reprocessing nuclear waste, it would be extremely difficult for an individual to develop a nuclear weapon. There is disagreement among scientists about whether the plutonium powder is too radioactive to steal.
“. . .Commercial-scale reprocessing facilities handle so much of this material that it has proven impossible to keep track of it accurately in a timely manner, making it feasible that the theft of enough plutonium to build several bombs could go undetected for years,” reports the Union of Concerned Scientists website. (more…)
