Recycle depleted Uranium?

[Finishline42]

One of the areas of nuclear energy that isn't discussed often made the news today in KY. The Courier Journal has an article about a new process to recycle depleted uranium at the plants in KY and Ohio. Think there's unfunded liabilities in SS? What about 39,000 14 ton containers of the waste in Paducah another approx 20,000 in Ohio? The containers are filled with the leftovers of 60 years of uranium enrichment, first for our nuclear bombs and then for our reactors.

Tax payers have already paid $2 billion for clean up. This 'new' project is a way to keep the plant funded - it was shut down in June. The plant, when in operation used enough electricity to power Nashville.

[link:http://www.courier-journal.com/article/20131127/NEWS01/311270094/Paducah-nuclear-fuel-plant-may-get-second-act-new-contractor|

And the stockpile is huge — some 39,000, 14-ton cylinders of depleted uranium hexafluoride that blanket 700 acres on the site 10 miles west of Paducah.

Another 20,000 cylinders are at a Department of Energy facility near Piketon, Ohio, and are potentially part of the arrangement, according to DOE.

Sens. Mitch McConnell and Rand Paul, and U.S. Rep. Ed Whitfield, whose 1st District includes the Paducah site, issued a joint statement praising the company.

“It is our understanding that GE proposes to invest over $1 billion to create a state-of-the-art laser enrichment facility at the DOE site that will create thousands of construction jobs, and hundreds of permanent jobs at a future GE facility,” they said.

They also said the proposal would would “help revive the U.S. domestic nuclear supply chain, while likely generating billions of dollars in new tax revenues for the local, state and federal government.”

[NaturalHigh]

1. I hope that something good can come from this...

but I have always been under the impression that recycling DU was not really feasible. Granted, I'm not very knowledgeable about the subject.

[ConcernedCanuk]

2. Links are appreciated, so - here it is

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Paducah nuclear fuel plant may get second act with new contractor

http://www.courier-journal.com/article/20131127/NEWS01/311270094/Paducah-nuclear-fuel-plant-may-get-second-act-new-contractor

The U.S. Department of Energy has identified a new future use for its shut-down Paducah nuclear fuel plant, choosing a proposal to employ laser technology to extract uranium from vast enrichment waste stockpiled there.

The announcement raised hopes for thousands of jobs at the sprawling Western Kentucky facility, which stopped enriching uranium last summer, triggering layoffs and fears of economic doom.

Energy Department officials said they would open negotiations with Global Laser Enrichment, a General Electric and Hitachi joint venture, for the sale of its depleted uranium hexafluoride inventory.

It will negotiate with a second company, AREVA, to handle the site’s less-valuable, off-specification uranium hexafluoride inventory, at a nuclear fuel fabrication facility in Richland, Wash., the department said.
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by the way; (not from the link/article)

MIC et al have been doing their part by recycling Depleted Uranium ya know - -

They've been spreading it all over the Middle East for decades!

MIC et al would really like to help out more ya know,

but Syria and Iran got taken off the table,

for now . . .

CC

[hunter]

3. It's a useful fuel in some nuclear energy schemes.

This depleted uranium, nuclear weapons, nuclear "waste" from existing power plants, and thorium and uranium that's already been dug up out of the ground and dumped as mine tailings, could all be recycled and used as nuclear fuel.

Potentially we could generate plenty of electricity in the U.S.A. for a long, long time using nothing but these toxic "wastes."

But for now, since the infrastructure already exists to mine and enrich more natural uranium, since there is such strong opposition to the construction of new nuclear power and nuclear fuel reprocessing plants, and as a consequence of the incredible propaganda successes of the natural gas industry, all this dangerous waste that might have been used as fuel is going to be left around poisoning the planet long after this civilization falls.

If I was "Emperor of the Planet Earth" I'd ban the use of fossil fuels (sorry folks, no more automobiles or airliners) and I'd put people to work transforming existing toxic wastes, things like uranium hexafluoride, into less troublesome forms.

Alas, humans will not behave in a rational manner (we never have...) and it will be left for mother nature to clean up after us when we are gone. Fortunately she has plenty of time. One way or another, our idiocy will be erased.

[kristopher]

4. That project AKA "Mitch McConnell's Boondoggle"

SFB McConnell is facing a hard re-election campaign and he needed to bring home some bacon.