Radioactive waste can remain dangerous for a hundred thousandyears. GE Hitachi created a new power plant that can useradioactive waste and reduce the storage requirements to 300 years.In GEH’s view, what is generally considered to be “nuclear wasteâ€these days is not really waste at all. Light Water Reactor (LWR)used nuclear fuel is composed of 95 percent uranium, 1 percenttransuranics, and 4 percent fission products. Many of thesetransuranic isotopes have long half-lives, which can createlong-term engineering challenges for geologic disposal. By usingelectro-metallurgical separations, PRISM is designed to perform therecycling of the 96 percent of the fissionable material (uraniumand transuranics) remaining in used nuclear fuel.
Think about our current and possible future uses of nuclearpower. In your initial post, please discuss the followingquestions:
What do you see as potential problems?
What do you see as the dangers today and in the future?
If you were in the position to make decisions about the outputof nuclear power production, what would you do and why?
