Energy company abandons proposal to store nuclear waste at site in New Mexico

[hunter]

5. Existing nuclear power plants extract only a small fraction of the potential energy in this fuel

Reprocessed used nuclear fuel from these inefficient reactors, "depleted" uranium left over from nuclear weapon production and fuel enrichment, the plutonium cores of existing nuclear weapons, and various abandoned mine tailings could replace fossil fuels and power the U.S.A. for centuries.

Recycling fuels would also reduce the long term radioactivity of them.

The only reason we're not doing this is that newly mined uranium is cheap, along with the misguided (in my opinion) public opposition to nuclear power.

If gasoline was a penny a gallon would you care if your car got two miles per gallon instead of twenty miles per gallon? Especially if the twenty mile per gallon car cost two or three times more than the two mile per gallon cars? That's the current situation with uranium and nuclear power.

That's the problem with most of our world economy. It's easier and more profitable to trash the world extracting resources, making stuff we use only briefly, and throwing it all out as trash when we're done with it. This does not bode well for our long term survival.

If we observe the world around us, nature recycles just about everything. That's how life has persisted on this planet for billions of years.