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ARTICLE ARCHIVE

Reprocessing

Reprocessing - the chemical separation of uranium and plutonium from irradiated reactor fuel - is arguably the most dangerous and dirty phase of the nuclear fuel chain. Reprocessing generates huge waste streams with no management solution and isolates plutonium, the fissile component of a nuclear weapon. Countries such as England and France, where reprocessing has been carried out for decades, face a legacy of contamination and an enormous plutonium surplus vulnerable to theft or attack.

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Entries from July 1, 2019 - July 31, 2019

Friday
Jul122019

House NDAA Blocks DOE From Reclassifying High-Level Waste in Wash. State

As reported by the ExchangeMonitor.

NDAA is short for National Defense Authorization Act.

The high-level radioactive waste that the U.S. Department of Energy would like to now call "low-level" is an inevitable byproduct from reprocessing irradiated nuclear fuel. DOE's hopes to save money by not cleaning up high-level radioactive waste, as at Hanford Nuclear Reservation, and disposing of it in a permanent geologic repository, as is legally required under the Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1982, as Amended.

To abandon high-level radioactive waste in situ, as along the banks of the Columbia River, risks catastrophic releases of hazardous radioactivity into the environment over long enough periods of time.

DateJuly 12, 2019 | Print ArticlePrint Article | |