The UK has a stockpile of plutonium and uranium big enough to power every household in the country for six years, or up to a century if it continues to be re-processed, according to the Adam Smith Institute (ASI).
The think tank is urging the Government to draw on these reserves as a source of clean energy, while liberalising the “sclerotic” planning system to accelerate Britain’s nuclear development.
Some countries, including France and Japan, already recycle their nuclear waste to make fuel. Britain also used to be a world leader in re-processing, but only used the technique recommended by the ASI on a relatively small scale.
Of course, entirely true.
The think tank said fuel can be made from nuclear waste by mixing plutonium and uranium compounds, turning the blend into small pellets and heating these in a sintering furnace at 1,700C for 36 hours. The pellets are then inserted into a fuel tube, welded shut and put into a reactor. With 140 tonnes of plutonium at the Sellafield nuclear site in Cumbria, of which 100 can be used for this purpose, and thousands of tonnes of uranium in the UK, the ASI estimates that Britain has the resources to create enough fuel to power every household for six years.
The think tank said fuel can be made from nuclear waste by mixing plutonium and uranium compounds, turning the blend into small pellets and heating these in a sintering furnace at 1,700C for 36 hours.
The pellets are then inserted into a fuel tube, welded shut and put into a reactor.
With 140 tonnes of plutonium at the Sellafield nuclear site in Cumbria, of which 100 can be used for this purpose, and thousands of tonnes of uranium in the UK, the ASI estimates that Britain has the resources to create enough fuel to power every household for six years.
MOX, great stuff, the only reason not to use it is interminable reguilation. Something that government can solve – if it wishes to.
Apparently there’s not much opportunity for grift in the nuclear power industry, so the government isn’t interested.
They are, however, very interested in getting paid. That Robin Hood energy scheme that bankrupted the council started coming undone when they were only a day late passing on a £9m green levy to Ofgem.
Can’t expect John Gummer or Zac Goldsmith to put up atomic piles in one of their fields, can we? And if there’s nothing in it for Gummer, Goldsmith, and all the other simpering, sniggering rich people who get invited to SamCam’s kitchen suppers…
No one died at Three Mile Island. (The neighbours got a dose roughly equivalent to a chest X ray.)
About 31 died at Chernobyl.
Two died at Fukushima (not from radiation).
So worldwide nuclear power kills fewer than one person per year.
About five people per year die in industrial accidents on wind farms in Scotland alone.
More than 700 people in the UK die falling down stairs each year.
Just for some perspective.
@philip
In the cause of public protection we should be removing all stairs, and banning all buildings over one storey high
Can’t do that, it would stop our imported diversity celebrating their cultural heritage of offering free base jumping to teh gays.
I know, I know !
We could put the illegals to work shovelling the urranium into the furnaces.
All these reactors are in the back of beyond, so a few Portakabins to house them and problem solved ! They are productive and out of the way.
Can’t have endless committees and inquiries into the problem if you solve the problem can you?
How true Jonathan.
“The think tank said fuel can be made from nuclear waste…” etc
“The think tank said fuel can be made from nuclear waste…” etc
There’s one Hell of an echo in here. 😉
@Philip…
ISTR a meme doing the rounds at the time… “More people died at Chappaquiddick than at Three-Mile Island”.
And of course, if we used the right sort of reactor, we could use up a lot more of what is currently called “waste” – and at the same time massively reduce the amount to be disposed of.
Unfortunately the anti-nuclear lobby (or at least, some parts of it) have managed to persuade TPTB that it’s an election losing strategy to do the logical thing. Hence instead of dealing with “waste” the sensible way (make more energy, dispose of small amounts) – we classify burnable fuel as waste and massively magnify the scale of the disposal “problem”. Original plan for dealing with old magnox plants – turn them off, defuel them, leave them for (say) a century, then dispose of small amount of not very active materials. Satisfy the anti-nuclear lobby – shut them down, then dismantle them while there is still significant amounts of activity, spend massive amounts of money doing it, and have a massive pile of intermediate level waste to store. And for bonus points, the anti-nuclear lobby can point out how expensive this is and hence why we should abandon nuclear.
If Oz is going to decarbonise, I’d naturally rather have all our coal burners replaced by nukes. At least that way the trains’d still run on time——ooops the lights wouldn’t go out.
We after all have huge reserves of uranium and Johnny Howard pointed out about a quarter of a century ago that we could dump the radioactive waste on Heard Island. And as you point out, we could burn the long half-life isotopes so we’d only need to bother about it for a few hundred years.
Of course we could buy breeder reactors from the Russians and burn up all our depleted uranium as well as our spent fuel, and sell the rest of our uranium overseas to pay for it all.
“About 31 died at Chernobyl.”
I don’t think that’s really fair. Chernobyl was really horrible and made a very very large area uninhabitable for decades and it’s a continuing bugger’s muddle now that the neo-soviets are back in charge.
There are very many very good reasons to go for nuclear power – I wouldn’t jeopardise them all by lobbing in easily undermined arguments…