the nuclear waste problem becoming the energy solution?

I recently posted an april fools day link i noticed on a personal nuclear reactor for sale--as presented it was the solution to all energy woes- portable,safe, no need to economize, all the energy you could need

obviously a hoax--or was it?

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/smarter-use-of-nuclear-waste/

i'm wondering what the permaculture attitude might be to an obvious problem--nuclear waste--could that be the solution as set forth in the above article

The idea that 100 tons of waste with half life of 10s of thousands of years could be reduced to 1 ton of waste with half life of a few hundred years, the remaining 99 tons going back to be reprocessed and eventually converted (with lots of electricity produced) into less dangerous by products)

virtually no chance of meltdowns

the fuel would be the accumulating waste products waiting for shipment to yucca mountain

don't get me wrong, i'm not advocating for this, but anyone have any thoughts?

I find this article to be disingenuous, and very low on facts!
The federal government wanted the type of Nuke reactors that produced Plutonium, and backed it's development!

If they had spent the same amount of money on the Thorium Reactor -we would have had a safe reactor that could never have a 'china Syndrome' moment
it would burn up the 10,000 year stuff, AND

We would not be worrying today what Iran truly wants to do with its Nuke Reactors !

Not all reactors are bad just all the ones running today !

Like Fuki-Shima, all reactor sites expect to have unlimited amounts of electrical power supplied TO THEm, to handle emergencies if they have to shut Down !

Like Fuki-Shima this is not always possible !

And- This does not take into consideration the danger of The entire grid being shut down by an Air burst Nke that creates an Electro-magnetic Pulse E.M.P.

No Electricity to Nuke plants struggling to shut down

The fuki-shima plant was made by americans and we have many identical ones in this country !

O.K. This turned more negative than I planed but basically its all true ! Big AL !

I have not done any substantial research on nuclear power lately, but did learn some stuff about it in a chemistry class. I found that when learning about nuclear power a lot of people tend to see that radio active waste is potentially good fuel going to waste and ask why we don't reprocess it to get more energy out. I have always thought when they can reprocess and make a profit, they will.

I could see nuclear power gaining a lot more popularity as carbon emissions get to be a bigger deal, all it would take are a few good publicity campaigns and people might be demanding nuclear power replace fossil fuel burning. Heck if people devoted half the resources currently devoted to phrack technology, they would probably have found a way to make nuclear WAY more efficient in terms of energy out versus waste out. But anyway, the energy industry seems to be a slippery slope into some bigger picture humanity issues, it is difficult to discuss the possibilities of such a mammoth power source without recognizing the political and social reality it is constrained by.

n the one hand i lok at nukes and wish we had never gone down the path, now we are down there trying to get somebody to take stuff that is deadly for 100,000 years plus, and big Al you are right on about the desire of the government to want reactors that produce more of the deadly long lasting stuff.

i have heard that many of the new designs are fail safe in that when electricity stops flowing they just shut down. and they operate at normal pressures so no superheated radioactive water trying to burst a pipe and spew stuff into the atmosphere, but i have also heard that at present processing the waste is expensive and has not been tried at a commercial level, and the idea that superheated sodium is just a messy cleanup that does no lasting damage if it catches fire has to be one of the most optimistic understatements i have ever heard, but hey, it happened once and nobody got hurt

Bob Day : Encapsulating sodium in High temperature environments is easy !

Many older truck gasoline engines and Diesel engines have Sodium filled Exhaust valves to help carry off heat !

Trying to pump or flow Liquid sodium is where the trouble begins, but these pumps can be X-rayed in place and managed with routine maintenance

The current problem is that the industry will not build new Nuke Facilities until the Feds limit the amount of damages the industry can be sued for !

For the Crafts ! Big AL

watching people gardening , creating paradises, it's really difficult to remember there are these other things to think about when dismantling old technologies, the real question i think is do we go into the technology more to be able to eliminate it more safely later, or just hope the waste stays isolated for 100,000 years and doesn't come and haunt us hundreds of years from now when humanity is well established in a permaculture paradise.

I often have thought about the supposed transmutation of elements that are supposed to happen in living systems and in that purple state i wonder if there's some trick we can play with our mind,some psycho kinetic manipulation that could reach inside the radioactive element and neutralize it