I've lost count of the number of times I've refuted this LIE by kristopher.
The nuclear industry never said that electricity would be too cheap to meter. In fact, it wasn't even said about the fission reactor power plants run by the nuclear industry.
That old yarn was said by a Government official, the former chairman of the AEC, Lewis Strauss:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lewis_Strauss
In 1954, Strauss predicted that atomic power would make electricity "too cheap to meter." He was referring to Project Sherwood, a secret program to develop power from hydrogen fusion, not uranium fission reactors as is commonly believed
Kris also uses these sources from "second rate" scientists like Makhijani. I quote REAL SCIENTIST that are really out doing scientific research; like at the national labs. Dr. Till is one such scientist.
As you can see, Mahijani is behind the times because he refers to the process making potential nuclear weapons fuel. Even if he were correct, who cares if we reprocess in the USA. The USA has all the weapons material it needs and discontinued making bomb material decades ago. So even if the material were available, the USA has all it needs, so this material won't be used in bombs. ( Reprocessing would be done by the Government, like Enrichment is. Enrichment, which also has the potential to create weapons fuel, is done by a Government-owned corporation, the United States Enrichment Corporation. Even if the reprocessing were done privately, it would be overseen by the Government so weapons material could not be exported in violation of LAW. The US Government doesn't want more weapons material, and you can't ship it to someone else, so diversion of weapons material isn't even profitable. )
Evidently kris didn't read Dr. Till's interview. The IFR reprocessing process creates material containing Plutonium that is
IMPOSSIBLE to use in bombs:
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/reaction/interviews/till.html
Q: So it would be very difficult to handle for weapons, would it?
A: It's impossible to handle for weapons, as it stands.
It's highly radioactive. It's highly heat producing. It has all of the characteristics that make it extremely, well, make it impossible for someone to make a weapon.
Makhijani is NOT an expert on nuclear weapons, and what can and can not be used as bomb fuel.
The ONLY experts in the USA that know this highly classified field of science are the scientists at the national labs that design the US weapons, Los Alamos and Lawrence Livermore. Lawrence Livermore certified in a report to Congress that the Argonne / IFR process produces material that can NOT be used to make bombs. Senators Simon and Kempthorne referred to this report when they refuted an editorial by the New York Times:
http://www.nytimes.com/1994/07/05/opinion/l-new-reactor-solves-plutonium-problem-586307.html
A recent Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory study indicates that fuel from this reactor is more proliferation-resistant than spent commercial fuel, which also contains plutonium.
The weapons labs were able to make a bomb out of spent fuel from a Generation I nuclear power reactor back in the early '60s. The burnup of the fuel was less than 20,000 Megawatt-Days / metric tonne. In the '70s, nuclear reactors were burning fuel to about 45,000 Megawatt-Days / metric tonne and with the threat gone, the DOE declassified the '60s weapon study. Today, nuclear reactors routinely burn fuel to 55,000 to 60,000 Megawatt-Days / metric tonne.
Only die-hard anti-nukes still propagate this
OUTRIGHT LIE based on OBSOLETE data from the early '60s.
PamW
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