I grew up during the Cold War and, as a child, had nightmares of nuclear war. As the Cold War wound down and the nuclear powers agreed to reduce their nuclear arsenals, I thought that I could relax a bit. Now there are people on both sides of the Earth who would like to restart the Cold War.
In the 1960s, it was estimated that there would be a huge global fleet of nuclear power reactors by the year 2000 that would require reprocessing of spent nuclear fuel in order to create more fuel. As the years passed, interest in nuclear power declined and the world reserves of high grade uranium ore increase. When the year 2000 arrived, the global nuclear power reactor fleet turn out to be one tenth of the early estimate and there was sufficient uranium fuel available.
