Reply #1: Existing nuclear plants "burn" only a tiny faction of nuclear fuel.

[hunter]

What is now stored as waste could be utilized in new reactor designs that "burned" the most troublesome long half-life elements in this waste, reducing the length of time the waste is more dangerous than the original ores the fuel was made from.

There are also plenty of nuclear weapons we could get rid of, and thorium in existing mining wastes.

Or we could quit nuclear power.

What we will do, however, is worse than either alternative. We will continue to operate old, inefficient, and dangerous nuclear reactors with newly mined uranium, creating more long life nuclear waste.

And we will burn more coal.

I think the yellowcake near Grand Canyon should be left alone, but so should the coal. Coal mines and coal power plants in the Southwestern U.S. do incredible damage to the environment.

Some Arizona coal mines:



The scale of these strip mines is immense. Like the Grand Canyon, you can see them from space. We could quit coal and put solar panels on these strip mined sites, rather than untouched desert. We could put solar panels over parking lots, along highways and railroads... but we won't do that either.

Coal is just too easy and inexpensive because nobody is accounting for the damage it does.