Before we significantly increase the number of nuclear power plants shouldn't we solve the following?

Question

We currently have no useful solution to nuclear waste disposal but we want to build hundreds more. We currently import about half nuclear fuel but hundreds more proposed plants worldwide means more competition and significant price increases. No solution to waste, guaranteed price increases, far greater potential for nuclear enrichment; no answers but significant problems. And uranium and oil are each finite. We can't all have it and sharing seems to be about winning wars. Please, give solutions, not the company line.

Answer 1

I suggest that we load all the spent fuel rods into a rocket bay and send it into outer space where it can't harm anything or any one!

The nuclear power plants are a lot better than coal. Remember all the "acid rain" that ruined anything it touched! That was from coal fired power plants.

Answer 2

We have solved the waste problem.  It's just a political problem to pick a site.

http://www.wipp.energy.gov/

Many (most?) environmentalists to day have concluded that global warming is a significantly greater threat than nuclear power.

Including some very surprising people:

http://www.amazon.com/Revenge-Gaia-Earth...

Answer 3

The nuclear waste problem was solved when Bush selected the strangely forgotten Yucca Mountain site for long term storage.

Answer 4

The only TRUE solution is to send the waste into the gas giant Jupiter.

Answer 5

This problem has already been solved, it's called reprocessing.

Answer 6

The great BOON to society from nuclear energy, if I remember correctly, was the lack of waste.  The waste product is reprocessed then re-used.

The problem is that we only went halfway and produce the energy, but we don't re-process the waste, why?  Because of greed.  

Buy the way; I thought competition for our business by competing providers meant lower not higher prices.

Answer 7

Britain is considering a plan to build a fuel processing plant to convert nuclear waste into fuel.

"We can bury our reactor waste or we can treat it and then use it as free fuel for life. It's a no-brainer." - Sir David King, Chief Science Adviser

"To produce fuel, Sellafield's Thorp reprocessing plant will extract plutonium and uranium from the nuclear waste and convert it into an intermediate form, known as "mox," or mixed oxide fuel. The mox would then be processed in a separate plant to yield the necessary fuel rods and pellets; these would then be burned in what are known as fast breeder reactors to produce usable energy."