Along with the funding increase the Department of Energy's Office of Science received, Energy Secretary Steven Chu is gradually putting his own mark on the agency. Among the cutbacks announced by the Obama administration in the 120-page "Terminations, Reductions, and Savings: Budget of the U.S. Government, Fiscal Year 2010", was funding for the politically controversial Yucca Mountain nuclear waste storage repository. According to the 2010 budget proposal the DOoE will shut down the facility and continue to store waste at the 103 nuclear power plants while a "'blue-ribbon'" commission studies alternatives, such as developing technologies to "burn" the high-level waste into something less long-lived.
Moreover, the program connected to providing electric utilities loans to pay for licensing new nuclear reactors will end next year, saving $158 million. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission is currently processing 26 reactors through the combined operating licensing procedures. The Obama administration argues that this level of interest indicates the subsidies are no longer needed.
The oil and gas industry also loses some tax breaks that from 2011 would be worth $1.47 billion. Costly subsidies "do little to incentivize production or reduce energy prices ... and would cost taxpayers $26 billion over the next decade," the administration says. "Yet these taxes are "only a tiny percentage of annual domestic oil and gas revenues -- about one percent over the coming decade ... [and] any claim that this proposal would have a significant impact on oil and gas production is unfounded."
Paul Guinnessy
DOE Secretary Chu has said “we’re looking at reactors that have a high-energy neutron spectrum that can actually allow you to burn down the long-lived actinide waste. [Note: Actinides include plutonium, which can be dangerous for 100,000 years.] These are fast neutron reactors. There's others: a resurgence of hybrid solutions of fusion fission where the fusion would impart not only energy, but again creates high-energy neutrons that can burn down the long-lived actinides.”
Reprocessing of Light Water Reactor waste is off the table because of the fear involved in production of pure plutonium and its proliferation danger.
But the government wants to get rid of all that waste because contains weapons grade plutonium. It’s just too dangerous to keep around for any length of time.
Therefore it’s simple. There are only two other things that you can do with this nuclear waste; you can bury it, or you can burn it. If you burn it, there is a huge amount of energy still contained within that waste because a Light Water Reactor only uses 3% of the energy content of its fuel.
Chu has got a big political problem here. The inconvenient truth is that if he uses fast neutron molten salt reactors(99.9% efficient) to burn Light Water Reactor wastes, he will produce way too much electric power for the US to consume.
This will destabilize the status quo in the energy markets. He can’t keep up with the Light Water Reactor waste stream because pound for pound of slightly used fuel even if it is nuclear waste, the molten salt reactors will produce 33 times more power than the current Light Water Reactor.
Why, because they are 33 times more efficient. What will the green power production people do? The greens will have no electric power market for their windmills! Of course fusion hybrid reactors are even worse! They produce even more electricity per pound of waste. He has no way to work around this, it is basic physics.
We could easily power America for 1000 years just on the nuclear wastes we have already produced. The LWR was designed to have its wastes buried. To burn this stuff will produce a sea change in the energy markets.