Last August, the Pentagon awarded contracts to begin designing new components for proposed weapons systems. A new ICBM and a new cruise missile will play the same role in our nuclear arsenal as the missiles they are replacing. They are expected to be operational in the late 2020s.
I often return to the problem of radioactive waste disposal in this blog. In the U.S. alone, the cooling pools at nuclear reactor sites are rapidly filling up with spent nuclear fuel rods. The soonest that the U.S. will have a permanent geological repository for spent nuclear fuel is estimated to be 2050.
Nuclear fusion could provide the electricity that is needed to power our civilization but there are many technical problems that still need to be solved. Nuclear fusion generates about four times the power of nuclear fission but does not produce the nuclear waste that is piling up at the fission power reactors around the U.S. and around the world.
Australia has about one third of the known uranium reserves in the world but is only the third largest supplier of uranium oxide concentrate to the world energy market. Currently, there are only three uranium mines in Australia with almost all of the uranium mined being exported to Australia. Australia does not use nuclear power and only has a few research reactors.
