IF YOU can’t innovate, then reinvent the wheel. That seems to be the thinking behind the US Department of Energy’s (DoE) plans for a nuclear fuel reprocessing programme – but this tactic may play into the hands of weapons-makers.
The idea of reprocessing spent nuclear fuel had been anathema to US policy-makers for decades because of the fear that plutonium could end up in weapons.
Then in 2006, the DoE announced plans to build a plant to test reprocessing technology that would both significantly reduce the amount of nuclear waste and keep the plutonium mixed in with other radioactive materials. Critics,…
