It's Not 'Waste': Nuclear Fuel Is Renewable

摘要

The first thing to know about nuclear waste is that it isn't "waste" at all, but a renewable resource that can be reprocessed into new nuclear fuel and valuable isotopes. The chief reason it is called "waste," is that the anti-technology lobby doesn't want the public to know about this renewability. Turning spent fuel into a threatening and insoluble problem, the anti-nuclear faction figured, would make the spread of nuclear energy impossible. And without nuclear energy, the world would not industrialize, and the world population would not grow—just what the Malthusians want. The truth is that when we entered the nuclear age, the great promise of nuclear energy was its renewability, making it an inexpensive and efficient way to produce electricity. It was assumed that the nations making use of nuclear energy would reprocess their spent fuel, completing the nuclear fuel cycle by renewing the original enriched uranium fuel for reuse, after it was burned in a reactor.