State collapse is inevitable when a society’s leaders are insulated from the negative consequences of their bad decisions.
Mike Shelby
It is hard watching the empire fall due to greed, arrogance, blackmail and narcissism. Is there a path forward? Without morality, courage, honor and faith, we will continue this descent into evil and elimination.
The only hope we have are the companies and successes of Elon Musk and Palmer Luckey. I am sure that the government will destroy those two lights also. Hope without the intangible nouns listed above is not a strategy.
Given the quality of some of their infrastructure projects, the ENTIRE WORLD should be very worried about the construction of these. I have no objection to nuclear power on principle. I have serious objections to the fact that they continue to create horrifically-deadly nuclear waste (1 molecule of plutonium can kill someone and its half-life is 40,000 years or so) while NOBODY seems to have come up with ANY RELIABLE means of disposal or storage. And NO, I do NOT TRUST that Yucca Mountain has been handled any LESS CORRUPTLY as any other government project.
I can guarantee that the Chinese give ZERO SHIT about how well-managed their waste is or whether any of it spreads around the world killing billions or rendering portions of the globe uninhabitable. As bad as a new coal plant every week might be to the environment (yes, and coal waste is quite toxic too), I feel far safer with those than all the nuclear plants.
Of course the implications for them having energy while we are forced back into the stone age are impossible to ignore too.
You might want to do some research on modern nuclear reactors.
Initially the Nuclear reactors build during the “cold war” era were designed to create plutonium for weapon use.
Modern units create far less and reprocessing of “spent” fuel turns that plutonium into new fuel burning it up in “Fast Reactors” to create heat for the steam turbines driving the electrical generators.
Most of the “Waste” you speak of was created by our Cold War efforts (Yeah, I had family working in the Hanford Nuclear site).
Reprocessing was forcibly SHUT DOWN by the Green Peace and Sierra Club. So deep long term storage was forced on the business.
Overseas however:
SNIP
France, Russia, Japan, and China are the primary countries that actively reprocess spent nuclear fuel.
Key Countries and Facilities
France is a global leader in nuclear fuel reprocessing, operating large-scale facilities at La Hague. These plants reclaim about 96% of usable material from spent fuel, including uranium and plutonium, which are then recycled into new nuclear fuel, supporting a circular economy and reducing high-level waste volumes
Russia also operates commercial-scale reprocessing facilities, extracting plutonium and uranium for reuse in mixed oxide (MOX) fuel and fast reactors
. Russia’s approach emphasizes both energy sustainability and strategic fuel cycle management.
Japan maintains a reprocessing facility at Rokkasho, operated by Japan Nuclear Fuel Limited. Despite delays and technical challenges, the facility is central to Japan’s plan for a closed nuclear fuel cycle, aiming to reduce reliance on imported energy and manage nuclear waste effectively
China has a small-scale operational reprocessing facility and another under construction, reflecting its gradual expansion into nuclear fuel recycling to support domestic energy needs.
Seems it is cheaper to reprocess in the long term than buy new fuel.
Pity the NIMBY folks will never Grok that fact.
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