The President’s Blue Ribbon Commission on America’s Nuclear Future met in Washington this week to address an old issue: the reprocessing of nuclear reactor waste. It is an idea that many thought was settled in the 1970s. After India extracted plutonium from its civilian reactor fuel and tested a nuclear weapon in 1974, President Gerald Ford paused the program. President Jimmy Carter, who was trained in the nuclear navy, eventually stopped the reprocessing plant just outside the Savannah River Site (SRS) gate in Barnwell, South Carolina. A DCBureau.org camera crew visited the old, abandoned plant last month.

Continue reading Closing the Nuclear Circle or Opening a Cornucopia of Plutonium?