Recycled Russian bombs supplying US nuclear power

NY Times:

What’s powering your home appliances?

For about 10 percent of electricity in the United States, it’s fuel from dismantled nuclear bombs, including Russian ones.

“It’s a great, easy source” of fuel, said Marina V. Alekseyenkova, an analyst at Renaissance Bank and an expert in the Russian nuclear industry that has profited from the arrangement since the end of the cold war.

But if more diluted weapons-grade uranium isn’t secured soon, the pipeline could run dry, with ramifications for consumers, as well as some American utilities and their Russian suppliers.

Already nervous about a supply gap, utilities operating America’s 104 nuclear reactors are paying as much attention to President Obama’s efforts to conclude a new arms treaty as the Nobel Peace Prize committee did.

In the last two decades, nuclear disarmament has become an integral part of the electricity industry, little known to most Americans.

Salvaged bomb material now generates about 10 percent of electricity in the United States — by comparison, hydropower generates about 6 percent and solar, biomass, wind and geothermal together account for 3 percent.

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This may be one of the most beneficial recycling programs ever. Face it, most effort to recycle everything else are at best break even and here is one that actually provides something useful. It also demnstrates that nuclear energy is one part of our energy solution. While the US is rich in resources for all types of energy, Democrats have been strangling most of the productive sectors of the business such as oil and gas and nuclear energy in their vain search for "magic" energy that does not produce CO2 or is not scary.