Distorting the truth
William Tucker writes:
"Uranium fuel rods sit in a reactor core for five years. During that time six ounces of their weight?six ounces!?will be completely transformed into energy. But the energy produced by that transformation will be enough to power a city the size of San Francisco for five years"
What a load of nonsense! Six ounces is lost out of out of how much fuel in the fuel rod? As nuclear fission occurs, fission products quickly build up which prevent a sustainable nuclear reaction and the fuel has to be removed. The spent fuel which is produced is highly radioactive and continues to generate a huge amount of heat which is wasted and has to be disipated, along with 66% of the heat generated by the fuel when in use, which heats the sea or goes up in steam up a cololing tower. Only a small percentage of fuel is ever used to produce useful energy.
After removing spent fuel from a PWR reactor it has to be actively cooled for at least twenty five years in spent fuel ponds before it can be moved safely into fuel casks. Now it is true that a small amount of nuclear fuel does produce a large amount of energy, but perfect it is not. In the meantime, radiation from spent fuel is a risk to health for more than 10,000 years.
