Some of your statements seem confused – a system that you say “legislates for maximal profit and minimum responsibility” is the exact opposite of the nuclear energy industry. In fact, nuclear is the most tightly regulated industry on Earth, and consequently an exceptional safety culture and safety record has evolved. By any objective measure it’s the safest way to produce large-scale energy (vs coal, natural gas, and even hydro), and the only way to produce adequate amounts of baseload carbon-free energy (most of the carbon free electricity in the US is from nuclear). All this with an exceptional safety record. If you’re talking not about nuclear energy as a whole but about mining in particular, then why is it Uranium mining that’s drawing your ire? We’d have to use many times (~100 times) more iron ore (for steel), concrete, and land area to build equivalent electrical capacity with wind turbines. Metals, minerals, and many materials come from mining, of which uranium is a tiny fraction.

There are a suite of reactor options being looked at. Look up Generation IV Forum (GIF). The fast reactor systems for actinide (or transuranic) transmutation are potentially fantastic. Fast reactors for research have been built and demonstrated already here in the US and all over the world – although they’re all now shut down because of budget cuts in the 90s. Your (or whoever gave to you’s) idea of piping neutrons from the main reactor is just plain silly and would accomplish nothing. Fast reactor deployement is at least a few decades away. In the mean time, our current light-water reactors are doing fantastic. The French use them for 80% of their electricity and have the lowest per capita carbon emissions of any industrialized nation because of it.

Regarding the article, uranium exists naturally all over the Earth. All soil, all seawater, even in your bodies. It is not a radiation risk, and thus does not have the power to create sterile, radioactive wastes. It, like all heavy metals (mercury, lead, etc.) is a chemical hazard that should be appropriately handled. In some cases in the past it hasn’t been. It’s not that is can’t be, but that people didn’t understand (or particularly care as much) about risk to the environment. But, as will all industries, safety is a focal point for future operations. Just think about how dangerous the first cars were. Or airplanes. Or practically any industry. This author seems horribly misinformed, or deliberately dishonest. An anti-nuclear position doesn’t justify dishonesty.

http://digg.com/general_sciences/Can_a_Sodium_Fast_Reactor_Cleanly_Burn_Nuclear_Waste?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+digg%2Fpopular+(Popular+Stories)

see also: http://thoriumenergy.blogspot.com/2008/03/liquid-sodium-reactors.html

Yes, I do also know that nuclear will never be that clean (even fusion won’t be particularly clean) but if it was run as a social project as opposed to a profit generating industry it would hands down beat any other energy source, especially for the short term fix desperately needed to replace fossil fuels. Check the front page of http://www.independent.co.uk today, its a bit late for me to check the sources (3.45 am here in the UK) but 6degC is now being suggested as the likely average global temperature increase.