Urenco only does uranium enrichment, waste management is vastly more than this > France and most of Europe use Urenco. I'm French, and can see the result: was

Urenco only does uranium enrichment, waste management is vastly more than this > France and most of Europe use Urenco. I'm French, and can see the result: waste is piling up nearby the plants. Deep geological repositories are given as the ultimate solution since the 1970's at least, and there is _NO_ exploited site. Cigéo/Bure (in France) is only a project. Yucca Mountain never ran and is halted. On a similar vein see the Superphenix financial and industrial disaster. It was a french project, aiming at (there were other objectives) reusing waste and enriched uranium, and the French know about nuclear power. Net result: 60 billion French Francs lost. There is NO currently exploited solution for all the waste. No real breeder, no repository, nothing. This is Huge Establishment mismanagement at its best. > The integral molten salt reactor has these advantages and > should be comercialy available wothin 10 years. Molten-salt reactor R&D started in the 1960's, and stopped 30 years later. AFAIK with some complication and no industrial application(?) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molten-Salt_Reactor_Experiment#Decommissioning https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molten-Salt_Reactor_Experiment... I'm sorry to repeat myself, but there is no present and current solution. Promises are fun, and the nuke sector is prone to them, see the waste management farce resumed above. See also the nuclear fusion joke, periodically presented as the ultimate solution nearly every year... since 1940... and counting (mainly taxpayer's money for costly research). > I don't buy that waste is a serious problem Central administrations (in France, the US...) consider them to be a problem, even if most of them are pro-nuke. There must be something here. A tiny amount of hot waste reaching a phreatic zone, for example, is a very, very serious concern. > If your only point of comparison is 60 year old computers > you might argue that computers will never be economical to use. The quest for perfectly sure nuke plant, and for a sure way to manage waste (especially hot) started at the very least 50 years ago. > The waste disposal problem has been solved at the Onkalo Nuclear Waste Repository in Finland. It is "the first such repository in the world for high level waste, and currently under construction". It may start in 2023. This means that it is the most advanced project (it began in 1983, building began in 2004), but not yet in operation, and already under scientific criticism (copper capsules corrosion). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Onkalo_spent_nuclear_fuel_repository https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Onkalo_spent_nuclear_fuel_repo... Concise version: nuke plants are vomiting hot stuff for decades and a potential and very local solution (AFAIK it is not intended to store US, French or other waste) may start in 4 years. Who thinks that this is adequately managed? > Fukushima killed up to 1 person from radiation. This is some official thesis, there huge scandals tied to many official theories about this disaster, and also much more stern counter-theories. AFAIK nobody knows for sure because the amount of dead/sick persons or animals, and various cleanup costs, may only be known when the last contaminated particle which escaped will be inert. No expert judges that we can neglect those particles, therefore they probably aren't innocuous and huge efforts are made trying to clean up https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fukushima_disaster_cleanup https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fukushima_disaster_cleanup Many are now in the ocean. Some of it inducing solid cancers, which develops after 10+ years. > Meanwhile fossil is killing 4.3 million people per year via air pollution. Indeed, however tt doesn't imply nuke plants are a necessity, we have ways (solar, wind...), we may save energy, research to be able to obtain better ways to store it... Nuke distracts resources from those less dangerous and more realistic approaches which, moreover, are progressing impressively (efficiency up, total cost down, more and more effective deployments...) > Small reactors have less radioactive source in them and are proportionally less radiologically impactful than larger higher power reactors in the event of military/terrorist attack. Most of the existing ones use highly enriched uranium, and such material falling in the wrong hands will have effects quickly leading you to radically change your mind about this. > Wind and solar are doing amazing. ((...)) require massive energy investment in"non-productive" equipment like batteries Indeed, and this is a reason to invest into R&D on energy-saving, efficiency, energy storage... instead of pouring even more billions into already-explored dead-ends.