SOMEBODY TELL BOWTIE MAN TO STAY AWAY FROM PHYSICS

In a petulant op-ed, George F. Will writes this howler:

About 20 percent of America's energy comes from nuclear energy produced using fuel rods, which, when spent, can be reprocessed into fresh fuel.

George, we have the wrong kind of reactors. We would need fast breeder reactors to "re-cycle" the fuel. This is from Scientific American:

In contrast to most normal nuclear reactors, however, a fast reactor uses a coolant that is not an efficient moderator, such as liquid sodium, so its neutrons remain high-energy. Although these fast neutrons are not as good at causing fission, they are readily captured by an isotope of uranium (U238), which then becomes plutonium (Pu239). This plutonium isotope can be reprocessed and used as more reactor fuel or in the production of nuclear weapons. Reactors can be designed to maximize plutonium production, and in some cases they actually produce more fuel than they consume. These reactors are called breeder reactors.