News for hackers. Stuff that matters.

A comment on Deaths per unit of energy for various sources. Parent comment

Re:Deaths per unit of energy for various sources by patrickyeon on Wednesday March 16, 2011 @09:17PM (#2334689)
The parent comment to yours is serious. CANDU reactors can run off fuel that is considered 'waste' from light water reactors. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Candu#Fuel_cycles
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Deaths per unit of energy for various sources by kiujhgtfghjk on Thursday March 17, 2011 @12:36AM (#2335088)
Every other nuclear power reprocesses their waste into fuel.

The reason the US doesn't is partly nimby-ism and partly strategic, waste contains plutonium and if we need to make more nukes to fight the commies we will be glad we didn't reprocess it all.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Deaths per unit of energy for various sources by patrickyeon on Thursday March 17, 2011 @12:01PM (#2336583)
CANDU doesn't chemically re-process it (no purification). It just physically breaks it up into fuel rods that it can use. A CANDU reactor can run on unprocessed, raw (just-pulled-it-out-of-the-ground) uranium, which light water reactors cannot do without chemical reprocessing.
[ Parent | on HN ]