Letter: First, let’s study nuclear plants already in use

Saturday, Feb. 11, 2006 | 12:31 p.m.

The Bush administration's salesmen are trying to convince us that reprocessing, or recycling, spent-fuel rods will cut down on nuclear waste.

To get Americans to agree to construction of new nuclear power plants, the administration knows it has to present a plan to reduce radioactive waste. The Bush plan calls for extraction of the usable 10 percent in each fuel rod.

England recycles and has been doing it for 40 years at its THORP facility at Sellafield. Here's a quote from Sellafield working paper 5:2001: "The volume of radioactive waste is 189 times greater when reprocessed at THORP than it would be if the spent fuel is stored as waste on shore."

France has been reprocessing since the 1960s at its Cap de la Hague facility in Normandy. An official publication just issued from its high-level nuclear waste site at Bure, 100 miles east of Paris, says 5,000 acres are needed to bury its waste. The country has about half the number of U.S. reactors but needs five times the space designed for burial at Yucca Mountain. The French have 58 reactors, while America has had 106.

The best way to determine if reprocessing indeed reduces the volume of nuclear waste is to investigate the records of the two facilities that have been doing it for nearly half a century, not listening to the administration's sales force.

Ron Bourgoin, Rocky Mount, N.C.