Some interesting Facts
"Nuclear Waste" and "Depleted Uranium"
How much "nuclear waste" (spent nuclear fuel rods) for
a family of four for twenty years? What is "Depleted Uranium?"
The
nuclear power for a family of four for twenty years generates no more than a
shoe box of spent fuel rods that critics call "nuclear
waste" The nuclear hysterics will not allow our country to
reprocess the rods to extract the highly radioactive isotopes and reclaim the
plutonium that can be used as new fuel. If we reprosess the spent fuel
rods, the remaining "waste" that must be buried for a family of four for
fifty years will fit in a pill bottle or a shot glass. Compare this
to the scare stories you get from the nuclear hysterics who would
have you believe that nuclear power plants generate mountains of nuclear waste
that can be scattered all over the world. The total nuclear
waste generated by all 103 nuclear plants in the U.S. over the last fifty years
will fit in the volume of a typical high school gym (77,000 tons by weight
so far). Does that sound like an enormous task? Or
difficult to safeguard once it is stored a thousand feet inside of a
mountain?
"Depleted Uranium" is nothing more than normal uranium
from the ground that has be processed to remove most of the fissionable
isotope U235. Hence, depleted uranium is almost pure
U238. It is less radioative than normal uranium found everywhere in
the crust of the earth. People eat about a microgram of natural uranium
each day because it is in almost all food. A pound
of uranium carried in your coat pocket is no more dangerous than a pound of
iron. Only the U235 component of natural uranium can make
bombs. U235 is about 0.7% of natural uranium. The rest is
U238.