No harry, at the moment the "waste" contains in excess of 96% of the fissile material that it contained when it went into the reactor. At the moment its cheaper to store it, and use freshly mined uranium than bother with the reprocessing. So very little currently gets effectively reprocessed into new fuel.
Well exactly, They aren't so precious about waste issues.,]
Using nuclear fuel in any kind of breeder scenario gives you MASSIVELY more bang for your buck of fuel.
Its hundreds of times more energy than a once through U235 reactor.
Britain could run its entire grid off 110 tonnes of natural uranium or thorium, not even enriched using small amounts of plutonium and fast neutron reactor technology. The actual fuel cost would be around 4p per citizen per *year*.
Sadly the reactors are very expensive to make and its cheaper to use enriched uranium for now..
But - and here's the killer - even fast neutron reactors are cheaper than renewables..
The future is clear. Once sanity prevails it will be fracked gas and coal and then nuclear power.
Thorium used to be worse than worthless - i.e. you had to pay to dispose of it. So it could make many rare earth mining operations uneconomic if there was too much thorium. Apparently the price is now going positive, which suggests folks are waking up to the potential there as well.
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