Why should not Brazil profit on the artificially high cost of oil derived fuels. It will perhaps even reduce the stupidity of the destruction of forests for biofuel plantations in that country and others.

I am totally against nuclear waste; that is the waste of the energy in nuclear fuels by disposing of them by burial before every atom of uranium or plutonium has been fissioned. There remains perhaps 95 percent of the energy available in what is called "waste" used fuel rods. The Chinese are now testing the use of these in heavy water reactors. Increasing the efficiency of nuclear power stations is an unwarented waste of money in the light of this waste of fuel.

The remaining fission products take up almost no space and the non-radioactive ones can be separated after a few years and the others safely diluted and stored in an old oil well perhaps or underneath motorways. All of the known produced fission products can be contained in a very short train load of standard containers. Perhaps only four or five of the largest containers would be needed. There is no chance of explosion; these are fission products. The radioactivity might be dangerous up close, but a propane tanker train could cause widespread death instantly.

Suported by experimental results, it is conjectured, that with reprossesing the fuel, a mostly unmodified CANDU reactor can be run on the simple addition of a few hundred pounds of thorium a year into the cycle after it has been started with "waste" fuel combined with pure thorium. Each pound of this thorium would produce the energy equivalent of three million pounds of coal. Such a reactor can be modified to use thorium efficiently enough to provide additional fuel for other reactors.

..HG..