On Jan 20, 12:15 pm, newenglandbike <[email protected]> wrote: > The trade-off for nuclear power is a legacy of radioactive waste that > will last for hundreds of thousands of years. Not to mention that > the mining of uranium is an environmentally catastrophic process, > displacing roughly 100,000 tons of radioactive rock containing > thorium, polonium, radium, etc. for every 20-30 tons of uranium, > contaminating water supplies and the soil with radionuclides. It's > basically cancer in your drinking water. Mining is powered by fossil > fuel. The availability of high-grade ore is in the tens of years by > some estimates. It's not a solution, it's a serious problem. > > On Jan 20, 11:34 am, [email protected] wrote: > > A lump of uranium goes a long way.... > > Sent from my Verizon Wireless BlackBerry
A lot of uranium is now being mined w/o turning a shovel. They drill a pair of wells, pump fluid down one side of the ore, pump it back out the other side, with the fluid leeching the uranium out. (Usually peroxide.) No rock displaced. And, it's not introducing anything that isn't already there.... it doesn't put the uranium, or thorium, etc., into the ground... IMHO, the biggest problem is, it's cheaper to get more uranium than it is to reprocess the spent fuel. They 'could' reprocess it, and recover, maybe upwards of 75%, for further use as nuclear fuel; it just costs more than getting more. So, they end up w/ quantities of spent fuel, that has to be put somewhere. That's the issue. Unless they can figure out how to convert that into stable arborium for Kevlar, or something else useful, instead of sitting around in glass or being shipped off to Yucca Mtn, well... FWIW -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "RBW Owners Bunch" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected]. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/rbw-owners-bunch?hl=en.
