Cincinnati

When I was a child, we recycled used cans and bottles to get some spending money. For a long time, recycling was not considered important. Now, it's great to see so many overflowing recycling bins in front of homes and apartments on trash day. This is just the right thing to do so we don't overload our landfills and waste our limited natural resources.

This same tactic in producing nuclear energy is succeeding in France, and should be used in the USA. Recycling is a way to re-use the valuable resources in used nuclear fuel to produce more nuclear-generated electricity.

Ohio has about 1,150 metric tons of used fuel stored at the Davis-Besse and Perry nuclear plants. Nationally, there is nearly 80,000 tons, which is often mistakenly referred to as nuclear waste but contains a treasure trove in nuclear materials that is potentially worth tens of billions of dollars.

Instead of storing their used fuel indefinitely in concrete casks, as we do, the French chemically combine uranium with plutonium from used fuel to produce a mixed-oxide fuel for use in nuclear power plants. That technology – which is also known as reprocessing – was originally developed and used in the United States, but President Jimmy Carter banned its use in 1977, on grounds that it would lead to weapons proliferation. France and a number of other countries with nuclear programs analyzed the problem differently and did not follow the U.S. example.

Today France – which obtains 75 percent of its electricity from nuclear power - has the lowest carbon emissions per capita in Europe and the cheapest electricity. It's time to revive nuclear fuel recycling in the United States.

Henry B. Spitz, Professor of Nuclear & Radiological Engineering, University of Cincinnati