[mitchntx]

Katrina is gonna cause a $.20 spike in fuel costs .....

[mitchntx]

Mitch,

Fuel rods are reprocessed for nuke production.

See below.

The fuel rods in question are leftovers from North Korea's reactors, which were ostensibly built for nonmilitary purposes. Such rods are initially filled with enriched uranium—that is, uranium that has a relatively high content of the fissile uranium-235 isotope. Naturally occurring uranium is approximately 99.3 percent uranium-238, which doesn't do the trick when inserted into a reactor. Enriched uranium has been "purified" in order to up the uranium-235 percentage to about 5 percent.

Korean spent fuel rods, not those built by Siemens or Westinghouse (approved for use in the US), which have less than 1/2 that enrichment factor and a different chemical make-up altogether.