Power Generation - Hydrogen and Fuel Cells: Advances in Transportation and Power - page 214

More than $6 billion has been spent on high-level waste disposal.
Spent fuel can be deadly for tens of thousands of years. In order to iso-
late it from the environment, nuclear waste is to be buried deep under-
ground. Nevada's Yucca Mountain has been under consideration for de-
cades and many in the nuclear industry believe that the Clinton adminis-
tration blocked action on this site to gain support in this area.
Yucca Mountain may be the most studied area in history. The federal
government claims that the environmental effects of the repository will be
small and have essentially no adverse impact on public health and safety.
These claims have been challenged and there has not been the political
will to go ahead with the site.
The 104 nuclear plants in the U.S. provide about 20% of our total
power. In the 1970s and 1980s U.S. nuclear plants operated at about 65%
of their potential, but today with improved practices this output exceeds
90%. China has 6,600-MW of nuclear power now and has plans for 40,000-
MW. India has 15 nuclear reactors with 8 more under construction includ-
ing a 5000-MW breeder reactor scheduled to operate in 2010. Four more
breeders are to follow by 2020. Breeders manufacture plutonium fuel from
uranium fuel, which increases the amount of energy produced. Because of
safety and proliferation concerns the U.S. is not building any breeders. Af-
ter Three Mile Island and Chernobyl worldwide reactor building leveled
off a little above 400. In the U.S. cancellations outnumbered the country's
103 operating reactors. One or two plants came online in the mid-1990s
and no others were scheduled.
After the energy crisis occurred California, the call for increases in
energy production included nuclear power. Nuclear power has been pro-
moted as a clean source of energy that, unlike fossil fuels, produces no
greenhouse gases or air pollution. Nuclear power is more environmen-
tally friendly because it does not contribute to global warming the way
fossil fuels do. Unlike coal, natural gas and oil-fired power plants, nuclear
plants are free not only of carbon emissions but also of other noxious gases
like sulfur dioxide, mercury and nitrogen oxide that have made fossil-fuel
burning plants the biggest source of air pollution in the United States.
Nuclear energy does not produce as much CO 2 or other greenhouse
gases as fossil power, but it's inaccurate to call nuclear technology CO 2
free. A large amount of electric power is used to enrich the uranium fuel,
and the plants that manufacture the fuel in the U.S. are powered with coal.
When fuel mining, preparation, transportation and plant construction
are included with power production, nuclear power can produce about