Newsgroups: alt.activism.d,sci.energy,talk.environment
From: John De Armond
Subject: Reprocessing Re: EDITORIAL: Japan: What's the Plutonium For?
Message-ID: <7lzqrwb@dixie.com>
Date: Mon, 30 Nov 92 18:00:59 GMT

ems@michael.apple.com (E. Michael Smith) writes:

>This is my major complaint with BOTH the 'environmental movement' AND
>the nuclear power industry.  The Greenpeace folks want all Pu burried
>rather than (nuclear) burned up.  The nuke industry wants to just stuff
>spent fuel rods in a hole in Nevada and call it waste disposal, when
>they should really be reprocessed to remove the fuel.  (I know, some
>of the nuclear industry is pro-reprocessing, but most of the power
>structure seems to be Gung-Ho on burial for reasons beyond me...).

I thought we'd been over this once before.  The industry "wants" to put
fuel in holes ONLY because that is the method the goverment has told them
MIGHT be acceptable and thus MIGHT have a stable regulatory environment.

Run your Wayback Machine back to the administration of the Georgia White Trash.
Remember that HE killed reprocessing under the guise of a proliferation
risk.  The subsequent 12 years of non-policy did nothing to fix things.

Here is what the utilities want. They want to make power:

*	As inexpensively as possible.
*	In as stable a regulatory environment as possible.
*	Using materials whose acquisition and disposal is well-defined and stable.
*	in any manner that does not cause a ruckus and makes a little money
	for the stockholders.

In the 60s utilities (and their stockholders) were willing to innovate and take
risks.  After the bloody 70s (both nuclear and fossil), that's all gone.
If the government wants them to waste government money on demonstration
projects with no hope of commercialization, so be it.  If the government
wants them to burn cow shit and spray the ashes across the sky and they
can make money doing it, so be it.  Given that nuclear is a part of the
production scene, if the government wants the utility to store the
spent fuel in a water-filled pit and will let them recover the cost, so be it.
If the government wants them to drill holes in the ground and dump the
fuel in, so be it.

That one method is "right or wrong" doesn't seem to enter into the discussion
anymore.  The only concern is whether the government likes it and whether
they can keep the stockholders happy.  A real 90s way of doing business.

John

From: John De Armond
Newsgroups: sci.environment,sci.physics,sci.energy
Subject: Re: Is car pooling for real? (was Re: Are bikes really less 
	polluting?)
Message-ID: <vxdm22h@dixie.com>
Date: 21 Jul 92 15:21:12 GMT

In article <1992Jul17.163846.15871@murdoch.acc.Virginia.EDU:,
gsh7w@fermi.clas.Virginia.EDU (Greg Hennessy) writes:

: When the regulations are properly followed, nuclear power is
: reasonable safe. When regulations are properly followed, medical waste
: is reasonable safe.
 ...
: When will happen WHEN someone shady operator dumps radioactive waste
: somewhere? It has happened before (Brazil) and will happen again.

Based on 50 years of experience, that simply will not happen in the US.
The licensing requirements are so stringent for every entity that touches
the stuff and the fines for even paper transgressions so severe that
shady operators don't exist.  Consider that the NRC considers liability
for FUPs to be joint and several, meaning that all parties involved are
fully liable for the FUP.  Further consider that $100,000 fines from the
NRC for even simple things like paperwork foulups are not uncommon,
and what we have is a rather draconian and grossly expensive system
of disposal that nontheless works.

Interesting to try to make a point by comparing what might happen in
the US to events in one of the more environmentally disasterous third world
countries.

John