The Nuclear Regulatory Commission was asked today to avoid the term “recycling” when it writes new licensing rules for reprocessing spent nuclear fuel.

“Calling reprocessing recycling is green-washing at its worst,” said South Carolina Sierra Club chair Susan Corbett. “It’s just a marketing tool.”

[link to chronicle.augusta.com]


As spent fuel from the nation’s 104 commercial nuclear reactors piles up at a rate of 2,000 tons per year—adding to about 70,000 tons now in storage—more and more private firms have expressed interest in reprocessing spent fuel to recover uranium that would be made into new fuel rods.