From Steuart Campbell
Rob Edwards’s description of the nuclear fuel cycle omits an important feedback loop, namely that reprocessing not only separates plutonium from radioactive waste (fission products) but extracts unused uranium for the manufacture of new fuel, so avoiding the mining of uranium ore (22 March, p 8).
In fact, 98 per cent of the “used fuel” is recovered in this way. Only 1 per cent is recovered as plutonium, and then only as a by-product in Britain today. It is misleading to claim that “waste remains radioactive for hundreds of thousands of years”. This is true of only a very small proportion of the waste, which for that very reason is only slightly radioactive. The more active radionuclides have much shorter half-lives, with the result that the level of activity of the waste comes down to that of the original uranium in only 500 years.
Edinburgh, UK
