You have hit on one of my greatest “social regrets”, for a world that could have been if not for the numerous costly, destructive, time wasting collectivist mumbo-jumbo setbacks.

On my truck, lets just say there's a lot you don't know about me. If it weren't for our worthless POTUS and a few groups like the EPA we would be drilling all the oil we need here and not importing a drop, except from our friends. And if they want money to be our friends, no they aren't.

As for Pinatubo, that was just one volcano that was of such size that the effects were immediate and markedly different from any trend. Different enough that the results could be pointed to and with no uncertainty say this caused this. And the effects were worldwide just as Mt St Helens was and any other good sized volcano. Although it's been a few years now since the 10th biggest eruption occurred in the Northwest - Mt St. Helens. While I don't know that st.helens and Glacier are related I know that our winters were suddenly much harsher for several years.

The volcano outside of Mexico City has been in a state of constant eruption since sometime in the late 70's and like the one in Hawaii is constantly erupting at a low level.

All that aside for a moment, please understand my contention is that the output from a coal fired plant in the US, pales compared to what one volcano can spew forth in one event, and we do have numbers of events worldwide at any time. All the CO2 from all the coal fired plants would not equal what Pinatubo gave us.

My first two degrees were earned after I got back from Vietnam, finishing in 77 then a third in 89. Mechanical, Electrical, Civil Engineering. Then I did a little grad work in the mid 90's and a BFA and MFA finishing in 2006. After 268 hours I'm on a break for a while.

***I lost a entire paragraph somehow - late addition.

The most important thing anybody learns in college is how to learn things. Followed by good scientific methodology. I can't help but believe that the astronaut learned this lesson very well and if there was anything he needed to know in order to process data or things that were relevant to his interests, he would know them. You also seemed explain to me about recycled military use of spent fuel elements. I can assure you, despite my advanced years, there's not much in that field I don't know about.

"If you read my post, you would see that the argument I'm making is that the lack of resources is going to create a lot more instability in the world."
I agree with most of your post, but I think people have always felt like this-- we're running out of resources. And we are running out of specific things that run our economy today, but human ingenuity will find other resources to use to create value. Oil is a huge issue. Climate change is a huge issue. Once the engineers of the world have fixed the problems, the denialism will move on to other problems.

I really questioned the 8-12 ounce comment, so I started digging for a bit of data. What follows down to the last few paragraphs was gleaned from Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_pow... and a few other sources. Read and learn and then we can discuss this knowledgably.

**************

A nuclear reactor is only part of the life-cycle for nuclear power. The process starts with mining (see Uranium mining). Uranium mines are underground, open-pit, or in-situ leach mines. In any case, the uranium ore is extracted, usually converted into a stable and compact form such as yellowcake, and then transported to a processing facility. Here, the yellowcake is converted to uranium hexafluoride, which is then enriched using various techniques. At this point, the enriched uranium, containing more than the natural 0.7% U-235, is used to make rods of the proper composition and geometry for the particular reactor that the fuel is destined for. The fuel rods will spend about 3 operational cycles (typically 6 years total now) inside the reactor, generally until about 3% of their uranium has been fissioned, then they will be moved to a spent fuel pool where the short lived isotopes generated by fission can decay away. After about 5 years in a spent fuel pool the spent fuel is radioactively and thermally cool enough to handle, and it can be moved to dry storage casks or reprocessed.

Comparing radioactive waste to industrial toxic waste

In countries with nuclear power, radioactive wastes comprise less than 1% of total industrial toxic wastes, much of which remains hazardous for long periods. Overall, nuclear power produces far less waste material by volume than fossil-fuel based power plants. Coal-burning plants are particularly noted for producing large amounts of toxic and mildly radioactive ash due to concentrating naturally occurring metals and mildly radioactive material from the coal. A 2008 report from Oak Ridge National Laboratory concluded that coal power actually results in more radioactivity being released into the environment than nuclear power operation, and that the population effective dose equivalent, or dose to the public from radiation from coal plants is 100 times as much as from the ideal operation of nuclear plants. Indeed, coal ash is much less radioactive than spent nuclear fuel on a weight per weight basis.

Waste disposal

Disposal of nuclear waste is often said to be the Achilles' heel of the industry. Presently, waste is mainly stored at individual reactor sites and there are over 430 locations around the world where radioactive material continues to accumulate. Some experts suggest that centralized underground repositories which are well-managed, guarded, and monitored, would be a vast improvement. There is an "international consensus on the advisability of storing nuclear waste in deep geological repositories", with the lack of movement of nuclear waste in the 2 billion year old natural nuclear fission reactors in Oklo, Gabon being cited as "a source of essential information today."

As of 2009 there were no commercial scale purpose built underground repositories in operation. The Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in New Mexico has been taking nuclear waste since 1999 from production reactors, but as the name suggests is a research and development facility.

Reprocessing

Reprocessing can potentially recover up to 95% of the remaining uranium and plutonium in spent nuclear fuel, putting it into new mixed oxide fuel. This produces a reduction in long term radioactivity within the remaining waste, since this is largely short-lived fission products, and reduces its volume by over 90%. Reprocessing of civilian fuel from power reactors is currently done in Britain, France and (formerly) Russia, soon will be done in China and perhaps India, and is being done on an expanding scale in Japan. The full potential of reprocessing has not been achieved because it requires breeder reactors, which are not commercially available. France is generally cited as the most successful reprocessor, but it presently only recycles 28% (by mass) of the yearly fuel use, 7% within France and another 21% in Russia.[143]

Reprocessing is not allowed in the U.S. The Obama administration has disallowed reprocessing of nuclear waste, citing nuclear proliferation concerns. In the U.S., spent nuclear fuel is currently all treated as waste.

Depleted uranium

Uranium enrichment produces many tons of depleted uranium (DU) which consists of U-238 with most of the easily fissile U-235 isotope removed. U-238 is a tough metal with several commercial uses—for example, aircraft production, radiation shielding, and armor—as it has a higher density than lead. Depleted uranium is also controversially used in munitions; DU penetrators (bullets or APFSDS tips) "self sharpen", due to uranium's tendency to fracture along shear bands.

** I am very cautious of where we get the DU that is used in our armor, certain ammunition and the tank Sabo rounds. I did not find a answer today. ***

Economics of Nuclear Power Plants.

Internationally the price of nuclear plants rose 15% annually in 1970-1990. Total costs rose tenfold. The nuclear plant construction time became douple. According to Al Gore if intended plan does not hold, the delay cost a billion dollars a year.

The economics of new nuclear power plants is a controversial subject, since there are diverging views on this topic, and multi-billion dollar investments ride on the choice of an energy source. Nuclear power plants typically have high capital costs for building the plant, but low fuel costs. Therefore, comparison with other power generation methods is strongly dependent on assumptions about construction timescales and capital financing for nuclear plants as well as the future costs of fossil fuels and renewables as well as for energy storage solutions for intermittent power sources. Cost estimates also need to take into account plant decommissioning and nuclear waste storage costs. On the other hand measures to mitigate global warming, such as a carbon tax or carbon emissions trading, may favor the economics of nuclear power.

In recent years there has been a slowdown of electricity demand growth and financing has become more difficult, which has an impact on large projects such as nuclear reactors, with very large upfront costs and long project cycles which carry a large variety of risks. In Eastern Europe, a number of long-established projects are struggling to find finance, notably Belene in Bulgaria and the additional reactors at Cernavoda in Romania, and some potential backers have pulled out. Where cheap gas is available and its future supply relatively secure, this also poses a major problem for nuclear projects.

Analysis of the economics of nuclear power must take into account who bears the risks of future uncertainties. To date all operating nuclear power plants were developed by state-owned or regulated utility monopolies where many of the risks associated with construction costs, operating performance, fuel price, accident liability and other factors were borne by consumers rather than suppliers. In addition, because the potential liability from a nuclear accident is so great, the full cost of liability insurance is generally limited/capped by the government, which the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission concluded constituted a significant subsidy. Many countries have now liberalized the electricity market where these risks, and the risk of cheaper competitors emerging before capital costs are recovered, are borne by plant suppliers and operators rather than consumers, which leads to a significantly different evaluation of the economics of new nuclear power plants.

Following the 2011 Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster, costs are expected to increase for currently operating and new nuclear power plants, due to increased requirements for on-site spent fuel management and elevated design basis threats.

Nuclear decommissioning

The price of energy inputs and the environmental costs of every nuclear power plant continue long after the facility has finished generating its last useful electricity. Both nuclear reactors and uranium enrichment facilities must be decommissioned, returning the facility and its parts to a safe enough level to be entrusted for other uses. After a cooling-off period that may last as long as a century, reactors must be dismantled and cut into small pieces to be packed in containers for final disposal. The process is very expensive, time-consuming, dangerous for workers, hazardous to the natural environment, and presents new opportunities for human error, accidents or sabotage.

The total energy required for decommissioning can be as much as 50% more than the energy needed for the original construction. In most cases, the decommissioning process costs between US $300 million to US$5.6 billion. Decommissioning at nuclear sites which have experienced a serious accident are the most expensive and time-consuming. In the U.S. there are 13 reactors that have permanently shut down and are in some phase of decommissioning, and none of them have completed the process.

Current UK plants are expected to exceed £73bn in decommissioning costs.

In most reactors the fuel is ceramic uranium oxide (UO2 with a melting point of 2800°C) and most is enriched. The fuel pellets (usually about 1 cm diameter and 1.5 cm long) are typically arranged in a long zirconium alloy (zircaloy) tube to form a fuel rod, the zirconium being hard, corrosion-resistant and permeable to neutrons.* Numerous rods form a fuel assembly, which is an open lattice and can be lifted into and out of the reactor core. In the most common reactors these are about 3.5 to 4 meters long.

*************************************************

Now if you've lasted this long, the suggestion has been made that there is 8-12 ounces of deleted uranium that must be disposed of each year - this is amazingly false. The fuel rods are replaced when they reach about 97% of their uranium stills remains as U-238 and has not been converted to the somewhat less radioactive isotopes. As was stated above, it is the acclimation of very long life half life isotopes are generated and build up in the fuel rods through their 6 year useful life.

Although we commonly refer to these used rods as "spent", that far from reality. The rods are still highly radioactive and the isotopes in them will remain so for about 10,000 years. They will not in their form be able to reach the critical mass required for an explosion, but the radioactivity will make them unhealthy to be around for a very long time.

And the problem is not just the fuel rods, we also need to deal with manufacturing wastes for both the rods and all the other radioactive things we have in our society today, medical, research, industry and more. All this needs to go someplace and since we cannot build a safe fast breeders reactor in this country, we cannot recycle it here.

If I had a train car load of coal ash and a pickup truck load "spent" fuel rods - my life insurance will be much less likely to payoff If I'd take a ride on the train and get as far from the truck as I can.