Between March 1 and June 15, 1980, the declared size of the commercial light waste reactor (LWR) nuclear power industry in the US has decreased another 9 GWe. For the presently declared size: the 165 declared reactors will peak at a capacity of 153 GWe in 2001 and will consume about 870,000 MTU as enrichment feed; the theoretical rate of enrichment requirements will peak at about 19,000,000 SWUs/y in the year 2014; as few as two repositories each with capacity equivalent to 100,000 MTU would hold the waste; and predisposal storage reactor basins and AFRs (away-from-reactor basins) would peak at <85,000 MTU in the year 2020 if the two respositories were commissioned in the years 1997 and 2020. It should be noted that the number of declared LWRs has dropped from 226 on December 31, 1974 to 165 as of this writing. The oil equivalent of the energy loss, assuming a 50% efficiency in use as in cars, is 17,000 million barrels. This is about 10 years of the current rate of US consumption of OPEC oil.
