Grok blows it's own comments. Japan is
"funded" not doing it. and delayed. I would agree that France is
doing it and is the ONLY one doing it successfully. Oh and by
dirty I mean all the side reactive elements. They have to be
separated and disposed of. That is the majority of the cost of
reprocessing. All the others are doing other stuff like going
for a thorium cycle solution. But I was talking about the
USofA. We have been burned, literally, 5 or 6 times in
reprocessing plants killing people. That's why Carter stopped
it. All the companies that were commissioned to do it could not
keep their act together without irradiating people. They always
blamed the workers but real investigation finds that workers were
improperly trained or supported. Just one criticality incident
happened because the labels on the containers were held on with
scotch tape. In a wet environment. Labels fell off.
On 10/27/25 7:03 PM, Steve Jones wrote:
blatant Grok:
That
claim is partially true but misleading
and outdated. Yes, most countries do not
recycle spent nuclear fuel today—but not
because it's "too dirty" or "impossible." It's primarily due
to policy, economics, and proliferation concerns,
not technical impossibility. In fact, recycling is
done safely and routinely in several countries,
and the "dirtiness" is manageable with existing tech.
Let’s
break it down with facts:
1. Spent Fuel Recycling IS Done Today
Several
countries actively reprocess (recycle)
spent nuclear fuel:
Country
Facility
Status
France
La Hague
(Orano)
Recycles
~1,100 tons/year. ~96% of spent fuel is recycled
into MOX fuel.
Planned
to recycle 800 tons/year. Delayed but funded.
UK
Sellafield
Historically
reprocessed; now winding down but technically
capable.
India
Tarapur,
Kalpakkam
Reprocesses
PHWR & fast reactor fuel for thorium cycle.
France
recycles 96% of its spent fuel — the "dirty"
plutonium and uranium are separated and reused.
2. "Too Dirty"? — Not Really
Radioactivity: Yes, spent fuel is
highly radioactive — but so is mining uranium ore.
Reprocessing plants handle this with remote
operations, shielding, and vitrification
(turning waste into glass).
Waste from reprocessing: The volume
of high-level waste is drastically reduced (by
~90%). What’s left is vitrified and stored safely.
France’s La Hague has operated for 50+
years with an excellent safety record. No major
accidents. Workers’ radiation exposure is lower
than airline pilots.
Myth
busted: "Too dirty" is not a technical barrier
— it's like saying surgery is "too bloody" so we shouldn't
do it.
3. "Too Expensive"? — Depends
on Context
Factor
Cost Impact
Current
U.S. policy
Bans
commercial reprocessing (Carter-era, 1977). No
infrastructure = high startup cost.
Once-through
(U.S. model)
Cheaper
short-term (~$1–2 billion less
per plant lifetime).
Closed
fuel cycle (France)
Higher upfront
but saves uranium and reduces
waste volume.
Future
with fast reactors
Recycling
becomes cheaper than mining new
uranium (especially if U prices rise).
France’s
electricity cost is ~30% lower than Germany’s —
partly because they recycle and have stable nuclear fuel
supply.
4. Why the U.S. Doesn’t Recycle
1977 Carter Ban: Feared plutonium could
be diverted for weapons.
Cheap uranium (until recently) made
mining cheaper than reprocessing.
Yucca Mountain politics: Focused on
disposal, not recycling.
But: The ban was lifted in
1981, and private reprocessing is
legal — just not economical yet.
5. The Future: Recycling is Coming
Back
U.S. DOE funds advanced recycling
(e.g., pyroprocessing for fast
reactors).
Oklo, TerraPower, X-energy plan to use
recycled fuel or HALEU (from recycled material).
Russia’s BN-800 already runs on
recycled MOX fuel.
China is building a large
reprocessing plant (500 tons/year by 2030).
Bottom Line
Claim
Reality
"Nobody
recycles spent fuel"
False
— France, Russia, Japan, India do it routinely.
"Too
dirty"
False
— Managed safely for decades with remote tech.
"Too
expensive"
Context-dependent
— cheaper long-term with rising uranium prices or
fast reactors.
That has to be the largest hand
wave I've ever seen in this group. Recycling spent fuel
has so many issues that are being glossed over.
Recycling has completely gone away in the regular nuk
world because it is so bloody expensive compared to using
the fuel that is available easier via normal refining or
reusing dead weapons. They say that they can repackage
spent ( dirty ) fuel without much reprocessing. This is
_unproven_ except in very small test cases. Spent fuel
is a nightmare of contaminates.. That's why all the spent
fuel is just sitting in caskets on the reactor sites.
Nobody wants to tackle getting it any kind of usable form.
I
think the waste (spent fuel) disposal issue was
bigger than people remember. Big NIMBY
problem. Remember Yucca Mountain?
The
other issue is commissioning time and cost. You
can spin up a solar farm in like 6 months, with
almost no regulatory issues unless you need a
zoning variance. Just make a deal with the
landowners. I’ll drive by a field and see some
pickup trucks and a crew putting in stakes, a
month later I drive by and there are solar
panels, and a month after that it’s hooked up to
the grid. After the fact people will whine on
Facebook they are taking good farmland for
solar, but actually that land grew corn to make
into ethanol for blending with gasoline. So you
can grow corn to fuel gasoline cars or grow
electricity to fuel EVs. Different means, same
result.
From: AF <[email protected]>On Behalf Of Bill Prince Sent: Monday, October 27, 2025 11:30
AM To:[email protected] Subject: [AFMUG] ***SPAM*** Re: now
we're blowing up boats in the Pacific
Don't forget Chernobyl.
The exclusion zone around Chernobyl is a
restricted area in Ukraine and Belarus established
after the 1986 nuclear disaster, with an initial
radius of about 30 kilometers (18.6 miles) that
was later expanded. Today, it covers an area of
approximately 1,600 square miles (4,143 square km)
in Ukraine, with a separate zone on the Belarusian
side called the Polesie State Radioecological
Reserve.
bp
<part15sbs{at}gmail{dot}com>
On 10/27/2025 9:14 AM, Robert
wrote:
Nuclear,
A handful of acres... Now who's smoking
crack... Try at least 2 miles square with
buffer zones and towers and aux
facilities... Diablo Canyon, which is a more
recent plant, doesn't need towers due to ocean
water cooling, and it's exclusion area is 2
miles on a side. Now if you want to talk
pie in the sky they are saying the new plants,
which there are none, are going to be 1/2 mile
exclusion. But again, you want to live/work
within that space?
Solar isn't any worse than Nuk and a whole lot
less support facilities and no shutting down
the land use for the next 50-100 years. Some
solar facilities are being raised off the
ground by 10 feet to make the areas below
usable, which is a benefit to the land
owner.
Around N. Nevada, the electrical companies are
throwing up panels left and right. Getting
BLM land isn't that expensive and the power
goes right next door to the server farms.
Redwood Industries, the massive lithium
recycling company is taking the battery packs
that are 99% ok and fixing the couple bad
cells and packaging them into lower cost power
banks in containers.
My knock on Solar is that the weather is getting
worse and the damage to the facilities is, in a
lot of cases, worked around instead of being
repaired. Easier to just throw up more area
than repair large scale damage for a year
because old panels are a pita to fix...
On 10/27/25 7:47 AM, Bill
Prince wrote:
AIs don't smoke.
bp
<part15sbs{at}gmail{dot}com>
On 10/26/2025 5:34 PM,
Steve Jones wrote:
How much meth was
smoked before this post?
You ever see the land
lease and neigbor contacts on these?
Nuclear, a handful of
acres
Same solar 4 to 6000
acres
Same wind 100s of
square miles
24x7 vs good times
Once we bust the NRC
and get gen3 reactors online, we will
start giving salmon their habitat back
On Sun, Oct 26,
2025, 12:29PM Bill Prince <[email protected]>
wrote:
Petro-dollars are quickly
becoming worthless. We've reached
the point where renewables (mainly
solar) are the fastest, cheapest
way to get power to the grid. That
will be the main driver going
forward. Just in the first half of
this year China has put up over
200 GW of solar power. That is
roughly equivalent to 200 nuclear
reactors. They did that in six
months, and it would have taken
decades if it was nuclear.
A barrel of oil is now around
$60, and we are going into a glut,
which will drive the price of oil
downward. If the price gets much
below $50, then all of a sudden
all the shale-oil becomes a loser,
and will get shut down.
It will be interesting how this
plays out, but I'm not betting on
oil.
bp
<part15sbs{at}gmail{dot}com>
On 10/25/2025
5:30 PM, Jan-GAMs wrote:
It doesn't work that way. The
petrol-dollar assholes will just
get the government to make it
illegal and force us to use gas.
On 10/24/25
19:46, Steve Jones wrote:
George
and Gracie did a skit
"If we
had some eggs, we could
have ham and eggs, if we
had some ham"
IF we actually got
functioning Fusion,
the greatest benefit
would be being able to
just forget about all
these places... Take
away the petrodollar
and they would blow
away in the desert
winds...
On
10/24/25 9:28 AM, Ken
Hohhof wrote:
Yemen has a 10 year old civil war, partly a proxy
war between Iran
and the Saudis.
Yemen was formed
by the merger of
North Yemen and
South Yemen, the
latter was a
former British
colony.
The Houthis are technically a “movement” but they
control the
capital and much
of the territory
and have their own
government
structure. The
internationally
recognized and
Saudi supported
government moved
to Adan in the
south after the
Houthi revolution
or coup. It looks
to me like the
split might be
roughly the former
North Yemen under
control of the
Houthis and the
former South Yemen
under control of
the
internationally
recognized
government. I
seem to remember
that the Houthis
were threatening
to take control of
the whole country
when the Saudis
intervened. But
the Saudis were
mainly just
bombing stuff.
The Houthis are Iranian puppets so you could
compare them to
Hezbollah, but
maybe more like
revolutionaries,
they control a
good chunk of
Yemen. Not nice
people.
But Yemen is a mess. I think I read the British
left because of
widespread
terrorism and that
was decades ago.
If a giant
sinkhole swallowed
the whole place,
we would probably
say good riddance.
From: AF <[email protected]>On Behalf
Of Bill
Prince Sent:
Friday,
October 24,
2025 10:08 AM To:[email protected] Subject:
Re: [AFMUG]
now we're
blowing up
boats in the
Pacific
Are the Houthis an
actual country, or
just another
Al-Qaeda kind of
group?
bp
<part15sbs{at}gmail{dot}com>
On
10/24/2025 7:53
AM, Ken Hohhof
wrote:
So are the Houthis justified sinking vessels in
the Red Sea from
companies and
countries that
support Israel’s
war in Gaza?
From: AF <[email protected]>On Behalf
Of Carl
Peterson Sent:
Friday,
October 24,
2025 9:40 AM To:
AnimalFarm
Microwave
Users Group <[email protected]> Subject:
Re: [AFMUG]
now we're
blowing up
boats in the
Pacific
The Daily had a really good bit on this yesterday.
Not
particularly about
blowing up boats
but about the
competing
interests in the
Trump
administration
re Venezuela.
It's a great 30
min listen.
Background: Maduro lost the last election in a
landslide
(30%/70%) but
refused to
cede power.
TLDL:
Trump wanted to cut a deal and was working on it but
Rubio won out
and is focused
on
regime change.
On Thu, Oct 23, 2025 at 9:33PM Steve Jones <[email protected]>
wrote:
Heh
On Thu, Oct 23, 2025, 9:13PM Chuck McCown <[email protected]> wrote:
Might
be safer to
have a Maple
Leaf flag.
You could
always run the
stars and
bars, at least
they would
presume you
would be armed
and would
fight.
From: AF [mailto:[email protected]]
On Behalf
Of Mark
Radabaugh Sent:
Thursday,
October 23,
2025 7:41 PM To:
AnimalFarm
Microwave
Users Group
<[email protected]> Subject:
Re: [AFMUG]
now we're
blowing up
boats in the
Pacific
So that American flag on the back is going to protect
me from the
various other
countries that
decide to even
up the score?
From: AF [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf
Of Mark
Radabaugh Sent:
Thursday,
October 23,
2025 6:57 AM To:
AnimalFarm
Microwave
Users Group
<[email protected]> Subject:
Re: [AFMUG]
now we're
blowing up
boats in the
Pacific
Someday I would really like to be able to sail around
the Caribbean
and South
America
without having
to worry about
being randomly
blown out of
the water for
no reason at
all. “Well,
the US said it
was OK to kill
people in
international
waters”.
Mark
On Oct 23, 2025, at 1:31AM, Jason McKemie <[email protected]>
wrote:
It seems very telling that when they blew up a boat
and people
survived, they
sent them back
to their home
country vs
prosecuting
them. You
can't
introduce that
testimony into
the public
record.
Replying to myself, which
is perhaps a
sign I should
be in therapy,
but I just
realized one
reason why the
Coast Guard is
underappreciated or at least unknown compared to Army, Navy, Air Force
and Marines.
They are part
of DHS not
DOD.
But now that DOD is
calling itself
the Department
of War, maybe
DHS is just
fine.
Although one
is Hegseth and
the other is
Noem, so flip
a coin.
Coast Guard is also much
smaller, has a
smaller
budget, and a
much smaller
PR budget. No
money to toot
their own
horn.
From: AF <[email protected]>
On Behalf
Of Ken
Hohhof Sent:
Wednesday,
October 22,
2025 10:50 PM To:
'AnimalFarm
Microwave
Users Group'
<[email protected]> Subject:
Re: [AFMUG]
now we're
blowing up
boats in the
Pacific
Yeah, but if it’s on the
ocean, I’d
prefer to see
a Hawaii Five
0 style
chase. With
McGarrett in a
speedboat, and
at the end he
says “book
‘em, Danno”.
Besides, I think the
Coasties are
an
underappreciated
branch of the
US military.
From: AF <[email protected]>
On Behalf
Of Steve
Jones Sent:
Wednesday,
October 22,
2025 8:31 PM To:
AnimalFarm
Microwave
Users Group
<[email protected]> Subject:
Re: [AFMUG]
now we're
blowing up
boats in the
Pacific
I prefer to see cartels bombed. When they started
moving the
fent, they
chose bombs. A
little nose
candy here and
there, some
dope, a little
crystal, even
some heroin
was
manageable.
But these
ducks decided
to move shit
that one
mistake kills.
Fuckbag
dealers are
putting it it
club drugs and
on vicodins.
Kids don't
have a chance
to make a
mistake.
Bomb the shit out of them. Sink their boats, cut their
life jackets,
chum the
waters, I
don't care as
long as they
die. They
don't want to
give our kids
a second
chance, their
adults deserve
as terrible a
death as
possible.
Idgaf about
human rights,
they don't,
and I have no
interest in
the high road.
Turns out drug dealers sometimes get shot, who knew?
Maybe they
were
delivering
critical
supplies to
orphanages,
because
speedboats
with three
engines mean
urgent care is
being
delivered
expeditiously?
Generally deployed from a
ramp on the
back of a
larger cutter
along with
helicopters.
These things
vaguely remind
me of the WWII
PT boats.
I would not want to try
and outrun the
Coast Guard.
From: AF <[email protected]> On
Behalf Of Adam
Moffett Sent: Wednesday,
October 22,
2025 4:24 PM To: 'AnimalFarm
Microwave
Users Group'
<[email protected]> Subject: Re:
[AFMUG] now
we're blowing
up boats in
the Pacific
Yes, and that's the primary argument against this
practice. If
we have solid
intel that
they're
carrying
drugs, and we
know where
they are, then
as soon as
they enter our
territorial
waters we can
board the boat
and arrest
them. The
Coast Guard
doesn't need a
warrant or
even a
specific
reason to
board a boat.
Some of those
boats are
faster than
Cutters, but I
don't have
solid info on
how often they
actually
escape when
they're
already being
tracked. It's
hard to
imagine they
really get
away often
because the
Coast Guard
also has
helicopters,
and they're
allowed to
continue a
pursuit into
international
waters (and
onto land) as
long as the
pursuit
started in US
waters.
Regardless of how often they really get away, it's not
normal to blow
up someone's
boat as a law
enforcement
action. We
also don't
execute drug
traffickers,
and even when
the state
executes
someone
there's a
trial first.
but.....
post-911 we treat foreign terrorist organizations as
enemy
combatants
the executive branch gets to decide who counts as an
FTO. The sec
of state, sec
of treasury,
and attorney
general all
have to agree,
but they also
all have the
same boss.
Nobody can really stop the executive branch from
declaring an
FTO.
Congress could pass a bill to override someone's
listing as an
FTO, but to
date they've
never done
it.
The courts could overturn an FTO listing, but for a
lot of reasons
it's almost
impossible.
So effectively the President and/or their cabinet has
a completely
legal pathway
to authorize
military force
against just
about anyone,
and there's
very little
anyone can do
about it.
It's not that
I have
sympathy for
drug
smugglers,
it's that all
we can do is
take someone's
word for it
that it was a
drug
smuggler. If
anyone is
totally
comfortable
with that then
I'm curious
what your
rationale is.
From: AF <[email protected]>
on behalf of
Ken Hohhof
<[email protected]> Sent: Wednesday,
October 22,
2025 3:00 PM To: 'AnimalFarm
Microwave
Users Group'
<[email protected]> Subject: [AFMUG]
now we're
blowing up
boats in the
Pacific
I thought the
Coast Guard
was able to
intercept
boats and
board them,
arrest people
and confiscate
cargo. I seem
to remember
they
specifically
acquired high
speed boats
that were a
match for
anything a
drug runner
might have.
