All of France's Nuclear Waste Fits in One Room

Last month's Wired magazine cover made a case for accepting nuclear power if we are to ever really battle global climate change. I got up early this morning and read an op-ed in the WSJ by William Tucker that made more of the same very valid points. It's time for the US to join Britain, France, Sweden and most of the rest of the world and build nuclear plants to reduce our use of coal and oil to generate energy.

The big bugaboo that people bring up is nuclear waste....'where do we store it?' they ask suspiciously, as if this is a deal breaker. Tucker points out that France, where most of their power comes from nukes, they actively reprocess all of their nuclear waste. "The French now store all of the waste from 30 years of producing 75% of its electricity beneath the floor of one room at La Hague in Normandy." The fact is that nuclear plants can't explode since reactors use 3% enriched uranium and a bomb requires up to 90% to blow up.

Tucker also cites the fact that the Department of Energy once crashed an F-4 jet full blast into a concrete shell the same size as the ones used in nuclear plants. The shell was barely dented, which proves that terrorists would have a hard time creating an apocalypse by the 9/11 method.

But the article's main thrust is that Wall Street has to step up with billions in investments to make new nuclear plants a reality. But to get the money men in place, first we have to convince the public that the rest of the world isn't crazy to be building and promoting nuclear energy, and we should be doing it too.