Former EPA leader: ‘Irresponsible’ for US to halt nuclear power

[FBaggins]

20. I didn't realize that you were so poorly read.

You could, for instance, take your reply as an excellent example.

France is reducing nuclear to 50% of their electricity, from about 75%.

Which is relevant to the point... how exactly?

France has less waste because they have fewer reactors - the US has around 100, France has around 50 to 60.

I didn't say that they have less waste (for which your reply would be at least a little relevant)... I said they have a small fraction of the waste problem than we have. And that's true. The amount of high-level waste that requires long-term storage is dramatically smaller than ours. And yes, dramatically smaller after adjusting for TWh generated.

Reprocessing is more expensive, more difficult to handle, and more dangerous than once-through.

Not more dangerous perhaps... but certainly more expensive and more difficult. So? Lots of things that are recycled are more expensive and difficult than just throwing the waste away and digging up new materials... but we recycle because it's better for the environment and converts "waste" to useful materials - which reducing landfill volume. That makes it worth the expense (as it does with reprocessing)

Reprocessing actually increases the total waste volume - and it doesn't solve the problem of high-level waste storage at all.

Lol! And that's where you prove that you couldn't have made this post if you read it yourself. That's just plain nutty. The person who came up with that claim was being intentionally deceptive. Were you falling for it or trying to get others to?

Right now, the US has to treat the entire volume of spent reactor fuel as high-level waste. Only ~4% of the French spent fuel ends up as HLW - plus they reduce the incoming waste stream because the reprocessed fuel takes the place of freshly mined and enriched uranium.

France reprocesses some of it's waste for two reasons:
- to extract plutonium for nuclear weapons
- to extract plutonium for breeder reactors

Even though they have all the plutonium for weapons that they need and don't currently have a breeder reactor (while dozens of reactors run off of the reprocessed fuel)... you still expect people to buy that?

Their breeder reactor projects failed miserably, and the international consensus for banning nuclear weapons is growing.

That's nice. Again though... why is it relevant?