What Do You Do About the Waste? Recycle and Reuse.
As a long time proponent of the increased use of nuclear energy, I have been involved in thousands of conversations on the topic. (Trust me, I am a boring guest at a cocktail party and a real pain around the water cooler.) Nearly every one of them eventually included the comment that sounds like a question but is usually offered as a trump card aimed at stopping the conversation - “That sounds pretty good, Rod, but what do you do about the waste?”
That is the point where - if the person that I am speaking to has not totally run out of patience or simply cannot wait to get another drink - the conversation gets really interesting. You see, “the waste issue” is the best news that there is about nuclear power. I am not alone in that feeling; many of my long time colleagues like Ted Rockwell, author of The Rickover Effect, How One Man Made a Difference, believe that the byproducts that remain after producing energy with fission are valuable raw materials that should not be considered to be waste products. (See, for example, Why Throw Away a Priceless Resource?)
