The economics of oofle dust
May 29, 2006
By Chris Shaw
This is a very interesting article on "oofle dust", and can be read in its entirety here:
http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=4514
Excerpts:
Mass-balancing oofle dust
To stoke a nuclear fire, we require a concentration of 35 (U235) atoms in every thousand. This means that for every tonne of nuclear fuel produced, there MUST be 9 tonnes of depleted uranium hexafluoride (dUF6) to be disposed of. There is no way out of this simple mass-balance: dUF6 still retains 3 atoms of U235 per thousand.
The US alone has in excess of 720,000 tonnes of depleted uranium hexafluoride in storage in enormous "parking lots". It is contained in large, thick-walled special steel containers, which must be re-painted and tested for leaks continuously. The containers hold almost all of the dUF6 that was created since 1946.
Laughingly, the US DoE describes this intractable mess as "a future resource", but there is no way out. The energy and capital cost of changing this poison into something benign makes the nuclear option a loser. Ask yourself, if there was a buck to be made, would that "resource" still be there after six decades?
For every tonne of reactor-grade UF6 produced, Australia must keep 9 tonnes of dUF6 as a gift to future generations. Yet a steel cylinder does not a time-machine make.