Feds withheld negative Yucca data; Data shows proposed nuclear waste facility would fail

[bananas]

You can't trust the nuclear industry.

Feds withheld negative Yucca data, say Nevada officials
Data shows proposed nuclear waste facility would fail, says state agency
By Mary Manning
Tuesday, Aug. 11, 2009 | 4:21 p.m.

Nevada officials say they have found evidence that the Energy Department withheld data in a licensing request that would prove a proposed nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain would fail.

The Nevada Agency for Nuclear Projects discovered two documents in a computerized database not included in a licensing application sent to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission that show how unsafe buried nuclear waste would be at Yucca Mountain, said Bruce Breslow, executive director of the state agency.

<snip>

In the 1990s, Energy Department and state studies showed that water ran through Yucca's layers of volcanic ash much faster than scientists had calculated. Special metal was needed for the containers, as well as sheets of titanium that would be installed after the repository closed, to prevent water from corroding the containers and releasing radiation to the environment.

<snip>

The state found documents dating back to 2004 asking the Energy Department for a review of the drip-shield scenario, Breslow said. The results contained in the department's own documents would have disqualified the site before the license application was submitted.

<snip>

[madokie]

1. Guess what

You never could trust them

[NNadir]

2. Like Oklo "failed?" Of course, if you don't know a shred of science

"failure" means something entirely different than it might to someone who knows what happened at Oklo, a permeable sandstone formation that spent a few billion years in some of the wettest areas on earth.

Speaking of "failure," big boy, are you concerned that the dangerous fossil fuel waste dump you've been ignoring for years here - that would be Earth's atmosphere - might be, um, failing?

No?

Only nuclear power must be perfect for all eternity, even if all the shit you don't care about kills one person every ten seconds right now?

Let me know when you've discovered EVEN ONE person who died from Hanford, by the way.

As for Oklo, you would have to be someone who didn't have contempt for science to understand that in two billion years, very few nuclides migrated more than 100 meters from the porous natural reactors that operated cyclicly for hundreds of thousands of years. But as we know, a fundie is a person whose views do not in any way exist as a function of information. An anti-nuke could no more stop obsessing on the non-issue of Yucca than the Pope could stop obsessing on birth control.

Both positions are equivalently ignorant, and equivalently inflexible.

The number of people who have died from used nuclear fuel year after year after year after year after year here of anti-nuke gibberish is the same as it was before this site existed: ZERO.

The number of people who will die in the next ten minutes from dangerous coal waste dumping is not zero.

Nuclear energy need not be perfect to be better than everything else. It merely needs to be better than everything else, which it is.

[enough]

3. The information in the article does not depend on any particular definition of "fail."

It has to do with specific elements of the plan and specific studies that showed that that part of the plan would not work. And with the fact that those studies were withheld.

You can argue all night about the meaning of failure and not begin to address the issue brought up in this article.

[NNadir]

4. Of course it doesn't. In the anti-nuke faith risk has no bearing on fantasy.

The fact is that 1,000 Yucca mountains "failing" under the terms proposed by the anti-nuke fundie faith would not be as bad as 10,000 average cars operating normally for two years, in terms of any sensible and scientific measure of risk, shit that escapes the fundies, terms like "DALY" "YLL" or "YLD."

As for the innuendo about "hidden" stuff, it's just that, innuendo.

According to anti-nukes, "failure" is a function of any stupid thing they can imagine. The point still stands that after years and years and years and years and years and years and years and years of illiterate whining here and elsewhere about so called "nuclear waste," the number of people actually killed by so called "nuclear waste" is the same as the number of dumb antinukes who can identify ONE such person: Zero.

It is, of course, no fucking secret how many people die from air pollution or how many people will die from climate change, although dumb anti-nukes have been know to hide or obscure that fact under huge piles of fundie bullshit.

There is NOT ONE dumb fundie anti-nuke who is open and honest about say, the heavy metal contamination associated with the class of semi-conductor devices, but the fact that they obscure it has no effect on the risks associated with the weeny failed solar PV industry. The industry's toxicity is overlooked simply because it's trivial and has had no meaningful effect on the dangerous fossil fuel waste dumping problem, aka "climate change."

[Old and In the Way]

5. Regarding risk-

Any cost/environmental impact analysis done on a failure of a nuclear power plant vs. a solar PV cell?

:rofl:

[wtmusic]

7. There's absolutely no way to come back from that one.

End of argument, take the ball and go home.

:rofl:

[Dogmudgeon]

15. That's funny.

You do know that PV solar devices contain significant amounts of arsenic, cadmium, and other highly toxic metals ... right?

You can look up toxicity figures for each of these metals, calculate the mass-per-joule of each, and actually figure out how they compare.

Have you?

Ending an argument based on not understanding what you're arguing is its own cause for a Mr. Rofl icon.

--d!

[wtmusic]

16. Sorry, I forgot something

:sarcasm:

[Dogmudgeon]

20. My apologies as well

Too much arsenic and mercury in my baby formula, no doubt (my first five years were spent a mile downwind of the Fels-Naphtha factory in Philadelphia).

:hi:

--d!

[madokie]

8. Actually a fundie is someone who believes that Jesus will appear at some point in time

and take the believers back to heaven with him. You see that way they have no reason to worry about the very dangerous radioactive waste. I prefer to take my chances with us using our brains and develop a more benign source for our electrical energy needs. Take the money and time that is being wasted on nuclear power and ramp up our known alternate energy sources. All the while continue to work on the discovery and development of other at present unknown sources. Thats what I propose we do. Not put all our marbles in jesus coming to take us away before we have to worry about that nuclear waste. I have confidence we can win this battle and I'm also confident that that win will not be by use of more nuclear power plants.

:hi:

I meant to reply to #4 but it doesn't really matter

[NNadir]

9. My definition of fundie concerns the anti-science element of fundamentalism.

To wit: I don't give a rat's ass about the return of Jesus, although the waiting for the return of Jesus is sort of like the twits who wait endlessly - consuming all the time - for toxic solar PV junk to save their rich consumer asses from sin.

But what concerns me is the grotesque scientific illiteracy of the anti-nuke cults. For instance, there are zero fundie anti-nukes who have ever opened a single text on the geochemistry of radionuclides, because in general these little twits don't even fuck know what the periodic table is.

Thus they are incapable of understanding the 2 billion year history of the Oklo fission formation and applying this fear and ignorance to the modern analogue, thus condemn the rest of humanity to breath drink and eat their consumer waste while vaguely hoping - also out of illiteracy to express it with full contempt screaming from its faith based nonsensical and morally hollow rhetoric:

All the while continue to work on the discovery and development of other at present unknown sources

.

Here's some bad news Kiddie: The development of technology requires opening the scientific literature, something that ZERO anti-nuke fundies on this website have clearly never done. As such it is prayer, nor a program.

As for the "we" as in "what 'we' propose to do," don't make me vomit or giggle or both. There are zero anti-nuke fundies on this site who have ever done a shred of work on energy, which is clear from their 4th grade level comprehension of things like the laws of thermodynamics, heat transfer, materials science, and even very, very, very, very low mathematics.

All fundamentalists of course cause damage to the hopes of a planet which will soon hold seven billion people, not even 0.001% of whom will have own a solar powered electric or hydrogen car in this century.

But our little wastrel twits, who wouldn't know a Madelung constant from the kiddie Madeline book series, couldn't give a fuck about that bulk of humanity, because they are not only intellectual twits, but are worse moral twits as well.

[madokie]

10. What a stoopid man you are

The booze is what makes you vomit asshole and ignorance has the giggles covered. Other than that you bring nothing to the table of discussion other than hate and discontent. Fuck OFF

[Javaman]

11. no need to get angry at nnadir

he's the resident kook in this forum.

no one takes him seriously.

[wtmusic]

12. No, NNadir is not "stoopid".

He is extremely well-informed on the nuts and bolts of energy issues, and there was a time when he was willing to explain energy issues amicably to those less informed. When someone did challenge him with numbers instead of emotion their argument typically withered in short order. So although most consider it extreme, his position is among the best supported here on DU.

I think his patience has worn clean through and his posts have devolved into, as you say, "hate and discontent". I'm not sure why he still bothers posting. There is still a lot to be learned from them but you have to pick through the bile, and IMO he does himself a disservice.

[madokie]

13. It seems as if the man wants to stifle any discussion on energy

other than his pet peeve. Chances are we are not going to be building anymore nuke plants as they are designed today. I say we let the nuke industry stand on their own two feet and let them work on the few bad and I do mean bad when I type bad, Theres no doubt in my mind that the challenge can be met but not as long as we continue to subsidize the industry as we do, ain't gonna happen. In the mean time we as a country badly needing a new way with energy are wasting time and effort on this. I don't want one a nuke plant in my back yard and I worked like hell years ago to make sure it didn't happen. The potential of a serious ass catastrophe is so great I personally hope we don't add anymore to the chances that we have today.

I would like to see someone jerk a knot in his ass cause this E/E forum isn't only for him. We have rules that govern this kind of behavior, I think anyway. It matters not to me that you or anyone else is having a bad day it only matters to me that we discuss civilly the subject of energy and environment. Who made the big one's problem more important than any of the rest of us. I mean lets get real or lets have a fucking free for all. I've got a pretty acid typing style and will use it if need be but again why in the hell can't we be civil to one another. I come here to learn, I make no pretense of bringing anything except questions to this forum.

Get nuclear energy right and then lets talk, otherwise the industry needs to be told to go piss up a rope.

Now did I not voice my opinion without breaking any rules or telling you you are this or that. Isn't this how it's supposed to be done. You know civil dialoge

[kristopher]

14. I disagree

His arguments are propaganda, pure and simple. You endorse his "numbers", but make no mention of the way those numbers fit into a a larger set of equally relevant information that invalidates the significance he assigns his data. For example, using HIS fundamental criteria for selecting an energy source going forward we should continue to burn fossil fuels.

His ONLY numerical argument for nuclear is that nuclear has produced more electricity than other competing technologies.

He refuses to consider external costs for nuclear, so why should we consider them for fossil fuels?

He refuses to consider the political support that led to the favorable numbers of nuclear, so why should we consider that about coal and demonize the coal lobby?

If the ONLY valid yardstick is aggregate numbers of kWh produced to date, the we should shut down the nuclear plants and increase natural gas and coal generation forever.

Of course that is a ridiculous argument for continuing to use coal, isn't it? It is no less ridiculous when applied to nuclear and the POTENTIAL problems associated it.

The rhetorical sleight-of-hand practiced by Nnadir is to, on a limited basis, compare the crisis created by overuse of fossil fuels to the fact that nuclear isn't a heavy producer of GHG emissions while omitting production numbers - with no mention of production or costs. He then compares the cost and production numbers of nuclear with the cost and production numbers of renewables - with no mention of externalities. That's simply dishonest.

Since this discussion has started the cost figures for nuclear have skyrocketed, so that aspect of nuclear is no longer a reason to support it. When the known/potential externalities and other relevant considerations are factored in to the equation determining what technologies we should pursue to address climate change, the results of the equation are significantly different than Nnadir's "numbers" provide.

http://www.rsc.org/publishing/journals/EE/article.asp?doi=b809990c

Energy Environ. Sci., 2009, 2, 148 - 173, DOI: 10.1039/b809990c
Review of solutions to global warming, air pollution, and energy security

Mark Z. Jacobson

This paper reviews and ranks major proposed energy-related solutions to global warming, air pollution mortality, and energy security while considering other impacts of the proposed solutions, such as on water supply, land use, wildlife, resource availability, thermal pollution, water chemical pollution, nuclear proliferation, and undernutrition.

Nine electric power sources and two liquid fuel options are considered. The electricity sources include solar-photovoltaics (PV), concentrated solar power (CSP), wind, geothermal, hydroelectric, wave, tidal, nuclear, and coal with carbon capture and storage (CCS) technology. The liquid fuel options include corn-ethanol (E85) and cellulosic-E85. To place the electric and liquid fuel sources on an equal footing, we examine their comparative abilities to address the problems mentioned by powering new-technology vehicles, including battery-electric vehicles (BEVs), hydrogen fuel cell vehicles (HFCVs), and flex-fuel vehicles run on E85.

Twelve combinations of energy source-vehicle type are considered. Upon ranking and weighting each combination with respect to each of 11 impact categories, four clear divisions of ranking, or tiers, emerge.

Tier 1 (highest-ranked) includes wind-BEVs and wind-HFCVs.
Tier 2 includes CSP-BEVs, geothermal-BEVs, PV-BEVs, tidal-BEVs, and wave-BEVs.
Tier 3 includes hydro-BEVs, nuclear-BEVs, and CCS-BEVs.
Tier 4 includes corn- and cellulosic-E85.

Wind-BEVs ranked first in seven out of 11 categories, including the two most important, mortality and climate damage reduction. Although HFCVs are much less efficient than BEVs, wind-HFCVs are still very clean and were ranked second among all combinations.

Tier 2 options provide significant benefits and are recommended.

Tier 3 options are less desirable. However, hydroelectricity, which was ranked ahead of coal-CCS and nuclear with respect to climate and health, is an excellent load balancer, thus recommended.

The Tier 4 combinations (cellulosic- and corn-E85) were ranked lowest overall and with respect to climate, air pollution, land use, wildlife damage, and chemical waste. Cellulosic-E85 ranked lower than corn-E85 overall, primarily due to its potentially larger land footprint based on new data and its higher upstream air pollution emissions than corn-E85.

Whereas cellulosic-E85 may cause the greatest average human mortality, nuclear-BEVs cause the greatest upper-limit mortality risk due to the expansion of plutonium separation and uranium enrichment in nuclear energy facilities worldwide. Wind-BEVs and CSP-BEVs cause the least mortality.

The footprint area of wind-BEVs is 2–6 orders of magnitude less than that of any other option. Because of their low footprint and pollution, wind-BEVs cause the least wildlife loss.

The largest consumer of water is corn-E85. The smallest are wind-, tidal-, and wave-BEVs.

The US could theoretically replace all 2007 onroad vehicles with BEVs powered by 73000–144000 5 MW wind turbines, less than the 300000 airplanes the US produced during World War II, reducing US CO2 by 32.5–32.7% and nearly eliminating 15000/yr vehicle-related air pollution deaths in 2020.

In sum, use of wind, CSP, geothermal, tidal, PV, wave, and hydro to provide electricity for BEVs and HFCVs and, by extension, electricity for the residential, industrial, and commercial sectors, will result in the most benefit among the options considered. The combination of these technologies should be advanced as a solution to global warming, air pollution, and energy security. Coal-CCS and nuclear offer less benefit thus represent an opportunity cost loss, and the biofuel options provide no certain benefit and the greatest negative impacts.

[wtmusic]

17. Hard to tell from this abstract how he assigns mortality risk

and why he's using an upper limit, instead of a value determined statistically from historical data.

[kristopher]

19. I provided a link

The supplementary data is available at the same page. You may want to review discussion on the use of the "Bayesian" and "Frequentist" approaches for analyzing risk.

[wtmusic]

6. Yipes, they'd fail "much sooner than 10,000 years"!

The bright side is, no one would be around to get radiation poisoning - climate change will have turned the earth into an uninhabitable wasteland about 9,000 years earlier

[bananas]

18. For anti-science pro-nuke religious fundies, 10,000 years seems like a long time

The National Academy of Sciences said the waste must be contained for a million years.
The anti-science pro-nuke religious fundies in the Bush EPA had to be ordered by a federal judge to follow the science.

Generation 3 reactors are so expensive and take so long to build, the money spent on nuclear will make climate change worse than by spending it on alternatives.

Generation 4 reactors may never be economical.