Letter: Do as Europe does: Recycle spent nuke fuel

Monday, June 11, 2001 | 10:02 a.m.

So the nuclear industry is calling for 50 new reactors over the next 20 years.

European reactors are designed to use recycled nuclear fuel. Recycled nuclear fuel can be used for 12 to 15 years.

In the United States, nuclear fuel is used for 3 to 4 years.

Perhaps the solution to the spent-fuel problem is to build the 20 new plants according to the European design. Then the 70,000 tons of spent fuel from U.S. reactors that are intended to be buried in Yucca Mountain can be recycled. There were three nuclear facilities in the United States in the '70s that were scheduled to recycle spent fuel, so we already possess the capability to recycle.

RON BOURGOIN, Rocky Mount, N.C. Editor's note: The writer was the consultant to the town of Rolesville in Wake County, N.C., in 1984 when a site in that area was being considered by the Department of Energy as a potential high-level radioactive waste repository.

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