Solar and wind are increasingly outpacing nuclear power globally, with solar generation surpassing nuclear for the first time in 2025, according to WNISR 2026. The report highlights nuclear’s slow (…)
From the turbines? Basically nothing. Millions have been spent and best has been figured out is shredding them and using them as filler, which no one is going to use when dirt and sand are cheaper and no risk of break down. All other attempts to recycle turbine blades has resulted in just better ways to crush the down to bury them, which funnily enough is what most of the ‘clean up’ for Sweetwater was.
For nuclear? They can be recycled today if the incentive was there, France recycles almost all of it’s nuclear waste with something like an 80% recovery rate and predict they could go 95% if that ever became economically viable. Most of the nuclear waste in the above picture will be inert after 100 years, though there is no data publicly available of the make up the waste though it should be fewer than 1% plutonium which could be recovered for use else where, such as if thorium reactors ever become viable or for space probes as NASA loves to use it for.
The main reason the US doesn’t recycle is because US’s flawed policy of no radiation exposure means setting up a reprocessing and recycling facility would never become viable for the amount of waste produced annually. And as other posters have pointed out, even stuff that can’t be recycled or reprocessed for other uses could still be simply buried and used to boost a geothermal powerplant.
From the turbines? Basically nothing. Millions have been spent and best has been figured out is shredding them and using them as filler, which no one is going to use when dirt and sand are cheaper and no risk of break down. All other attempts to recycle turbine blades has resulted in just better ways to crush the down to bury them, which funnily enough is what most of the ‘clean up’ for Sweetwater was.
For nuclear? They can be recycled today if the incentive was there, France recycles almost all of it’s nuclear waste with something like an 80% recovery rate and predict they could go 95% if that ever became economically viable. Most of the nuclear waste in the above picture will be inert after 100 years, though there is no data publicly available of the make up the waste though it should be fewer than 1% plutonium which could be recovered for use else where, such as if thorium reactors ever become viable or for space probes as NASA loves to use it for.
The main reason the US doesn’t recycle is because US’s flawed policy of no radiation exposure means setting up a reprocessing and recycling facility would never become viable for the amount of waste produced annually. And as other posters have pointed out, even stuff that can’t be recycled or reprocessed for other uses could still be simply buried and used to boost a geothermal powerplant.