Ticking time bombs: what should we do with nuclear waste?

[madokie]

http://www.smartplanet.com/business/blog/smart-takes/ticking-time-bombs-what-should-we-do-with-nuclear-waste/7950/?tag=content;col1

By Andrew Nusca | Jun 8, 2010 | 45 Comments



The United States has an atomic waste problem.

Nuclear power is without a doubt a viable source of cleaner energy, but the problem has always been what to do with the process’ byproducts.

A new Wall Street Journal report details the U.S. Department of Energy’s problems cleaning up temporary caches of steel-and-concrete casks filled with radioactive waste at now-defunct reactor sites.

The Energy Department is legally obligated to relieve nuclear plants of radioactive waste. But it hasn’t, because there’s nowhere permanent to put it.

[lob1]

1. I suggest we use the Chinese model and put it in our

toothpaste, then sell it overseas.

[madokie]

2. We might be surprised as to what products some of it winds up in

years ago when I first entered into the concrete world there was rumors that some of the radioactive steel waste was being reprocessed into our reinforcement re-bar. About that time I changed professions and went to work in a little more benign field.

[lob1]

5. My BIL was in the army in the early 50's, when they were

doing a lot of A bomb testing in Nevada. He was stationed there for a minute. They'd build towns and put jeeps, tanks and other equipment, even troops, at various distances from ground zero to see how the blast affected them. My BIL says he knows for a fact that the army sold the radioactive jeeps at public auction without telling anyone they were "hot".

[DrGregory]

9. they weren't "hot"

If the jeeps were far enough away from the blast
so as to not be totally destroyed; then they
were not irradiated enough to be "hot".

Dr. Greg

[Anakin Skywalker]

3. Dump Them in the Backyards of CONservatives?! See How They Like It?

Those morons don't believe that anything is harmful! Well, except s. e. x. (see, they can't even say the word), secular music, and a bunch of other things that I don't have time to list right now.

Feel free to add, though.

[bluestateguy]

4. Dump it all in the reddest of the red states

Toodles!

[OneTenthofOnePercent]

6. I suggest we pump it into our munitions to drop on and shoot at our enemies.

[madokie]

7. We do that already

Of course you already knew that. Sometime when you feel like you can stomach the photos you'll find google DU and Fallujah and see what the short term results of our use of much DU munitions and what its doing to the people there and the deformities suspectedly caused by it in newborns. Pretty sickening to say the least.

[DrGregory]

8. the real solutiom is clear

The real solution with what to do with nuclear
waste is clear - reprocess and recycle.

One can recycle all the long lived actinides
back to the reactor as FUEL. What should we
do with the long lived waste - burn it as fuel.

That way we only have short lived nuclides;
those with half-lives of a few hours, days, or
at most of few tens of years.

This is what Dr. Till states in his Frontline
interview:

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/reaction/interviews/till.html

"A: Eventually, what happens is that you wind up with only
fission products, that the waste is only fission products
that have, most have lives of hours, days, months, some
a few tens of years."

The longest lived fission product is Cesium-137 with a
30 year half-life. When it decays, it decays to
non-radioactive Barium-137.

So keep the Cs-137 stored until it turns into Barium-137;
which is non-radioactive - then do anything you want
with it. Use it as you would barium that was mined.

Dr. Greg

[PavePusher]

10. Stop making sense! It causes some peoples brains to hurt.... n/t

[Kolesar]

17. No country has been successful with that

France does it to some degree, but the process creates "more waste" of lower radioactivity.

Countries that have less fossil fuel resources than the US would have been doing this already -- if it was possible.

[DrGregory]

18. WRONG

>France does it to some degree, but the process creates "more waste" of lower radioactivity.

First, France, Great Britain, Japan ALL reprocess and none is out
looking for a mountain to store waste in.

It is a MYTH that reprocessing creates more waste. With reprocessing,
you take long lived isotopes, like Pu-239 with a 24,000 year half-life
and return it to the reactor. It is FUEL for the reactor. When
the Pu-239 fissions, you get short lived fission products.

Fission products decay to non-radioactive isotopes fairly quickly.
The longest lived fission product is Cesium-137 with a half-life of
30 years. So the lifetime of your waste goes down by a factor of over
a thousand, and is less radioactive than the material dug out of the
ground in a manageable amount of time.

From nuclear physicist Dr. Charles Till; former Associate Director
of Argonne National Laboratory:

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/reaction/interviews/till.html

Q: And you repeat the process.

A: Eventually, what happens is that you wind up with only fission products, that the waste is only fission products that have, most have lives of hours, days, months, some a few tens of years. There are a few very long-lived ones that are not very radioactive.

Dr. Greg

[Kolesar]

19. Your interview about IFRs does not *address* the volume of waste from reprocessing

Britain and Japan do not have active reprocessing programs.

That article on IFRs says that old fuel can be put back into "the same reactor" and "used up". That is not true. There will still be big, long lived radioactive byproducts.

[madokie]

20. I gave up

so much bullshit coming from that source so I pay no attention anymore
Its all flowers and honey according to the good dr. Nothing to see here just move along.
You'll see what I'm saying in due time :hi:

[Kolesar]

21. What is sad is that state reps and Congress people cannot see through the bullshit in the propaganda

Propaganda, and big campaign donations by the energy industry, is what it takes to control public policy.

[DrGregory]

22. then you need to learn more.

>That article on IFRs says that old fuel can be put back into "the same reactor" and "used up". That is not true. There >will still be big, long lived radioactive byproducts.

Then you don't know your nuclear physics.

A reactor like the IFR with a fast spectrum can use ALL those long lived
radioisotopes - the actinides - as fuel.

That is what Dr. Till states when he says you recycle the material until
you ONLY have short lived radioisotopes. That's the whole beauty of the
IFR fuel cycle or any reprocessing / recycle scheme - you have ONLY
short live waste at the end of the cycle.

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/reaction/interviews/till.html

Q: And you repeat the process.

A: Eventually, what happens is that you wind up with only fission products, that the waste is only fission products that have, most have lives of hours, days, months, some a few tens of years.

The waste is ONLY fission products that have lives of hours, days, months
some a few tens of years. NO thousand year nuclides - NONE, NADA, ZIP.

Dr. Greg

[Kolesar]

24. No country has been successful with that

France does it to some degree, but (their) process creates "more waste" of lower radioactivity.
France does not use "IFRs".

There is some propaganda value to your agenda of writing half-truths.

See: http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=115&topic_id=102552#102895

[DrGregory]

23. WRONG!!

>Britain and Japan do not have active reprocessing programs.

They sure the heck do. British Nuclear Fuels Limited operates
Sellafield on the Cumberland coast of Britain. It was formerly
called Windscale - but it is where Britain reprocesses spent
nuclear fuel.

Japan certainly also does. They used to have the French do it
at La Hague; but they got tired of the Greenpeace protests so
the Japanese built their own facility. It was in the news a
couple years ago because they had a minor accident.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sellafield

The Japanese reprocess at the Rokkasho-mura plant.

Dr. Greg

[Kolesar]

25. Caps lock button broken? ... eom

[Terry in Austin]

11. Even without the toxic waste issue, nukes won't cut it

They cost too much, do too little.

They're far too dependent on the existing fossil-fuel energy base, and are unlikely to replace it as it dwindles.

Nuclear power is a nice, appealingly heroic lab curiosity that actually has little hope of scaling up anywhere close to being our "normal" source of energy.

That's even before considering any questions about whether it's wise even to want to.

[Nihil]

12. You seem to have blended two posts together there ...

Let me help ...

> Even without the toxic waste issue, ...

That bit seems to be related to nuclear power ...


> ... nukes won't cut it

... but this bit is from the standard gospel of MZJ.


> They cost too much, do too little.

That bit seems to be related to domestic solar panels
but it could be related to US nuclear "policy" (as much as
such a thing can be said to exist outside of the corporation
business plans).


> They're far too dependent on the existing fossil-fuel energy base,

That bit was either for wind or solar PV at the current time.


> and are unlikely to replace it as it dwindles.

That is true for solar PV and possibly nuclear but not true for wind.


> ... a nice, appealingly heroic lab curiosity that actually
> has little hope of scaling up anywhere close to being our "normal" source
> of energy.

Interesting one there: if it was lifted from an older document (pre-2002)
then it was definitely about solar but if it is current then it might be
about fusion, possibly "darklight" psuedo-"technologies" or maybe just the
good old SF dreams of satellites beaming PV energy down to base stations.


> That's even before considering any questions about whether it's wise
> even to want to.

Now *THAT* is the summary of most major nation's energy policy to date:
let's keep praying that "Business As Usual" will hold out until we leave office".

[Terry in Austin]

13. I take it you're pro-nuke, then

Commendable writing critique, but it's the policy that needs it.

B-)

[Nihil]

14. I'm "pro-whatever works" and "anti-nothing-without-reason".

i.e., I can see the problems with nuclear power (especially in the USA)
but don't subscribe to the mindless over-emotional panic that seems to
infest so many of the posters here.

Similarly, I love the potential of solar (PV, hot water, thermal electric),
wind (onshore, offshore), hydro (dammed, pumped), tidal, ground source heat loop,
true geothermal, gravel heat storage, flywheel storage, ... but I'm not blind
either to their shortcomings or to their impact on the energy demand of today.

If Obama were to order that every US nuclear power station be taken offline
tomorrow, the shortfall that it would create would not be taken up by anything
other than coal & gas. People who claim otherwise are either delusional or
simply lying. In that respect, I most definitely support nuclear power.

I would honestly like to see large-scale wind & solar thermal deployments
along with pumped hydro, hot rock and/or flywheel storage deployed for the
sake of the grid.

I would also honestly like to see domestic solar HW & PV (where appropriate),
ground source heat loop (or even air source heat loop) deployed as widely as
possible along with a *SERIOUS* conservation effort to reduce the primary demand.

I am not delusional enough to believe that we are at that point yet where we
can retire the nuclear power stations in order to "pass the baton" to the
renewable options.

So sue me ... :evilgrin:

(Note that I have *always* been against nuclear *weapons* despite anything that
certain anti-nuke posters around here will claim.)

[Terry in Austin]

15. Fair enough

I like the pragmatic approach. However, much hinges on that crucial verb "works."

If by "works" we mean "replacing current levels of fossil energy with non-fossil sources," then there's a problem.

World energy use is currently around 450 exajoules per year. A 1200 MW nuclear plant puts out something like 30 - 35 petajoules a year. That would require 12,000 - 15,000 plants, give or take. If renewables were taking on, say, half the load, that would still mean 6 or 7 thousand plants. Currently, there are only 436.

Figure that nuclear plants run close to $10 billion apiece to build, times 6,000. The scale of such a project is unprecedented. The dollar cost alone is staggering, and nukes put a huge cost on the energy infrastructure: transport, roads, steel smelting, cement firing, and so on.

The prospect of nuclear power "bootstrapping" its own energy infrastructure seems unlikely. Rather, the present fossil-based infrastructure -- one that's already fully committed, at that -- would have to be called upon to fuel its own replacement, while still meeting existing demand. That seems equally unlikely.

I do share your opinion that the various renewable sources should be developed, as well serious efforts to do with less. Truth is, we're going to be obliged to do with less -- a lot less -- regardless of how much we might like to demand.

We've got a big downshift ahead of us. Not a real popular idea, but there it is.

:shrug:

[Nihil]

16. Totally agree with the end of your post ...

> Truth is, we're going to be obliged to do with less -- a lot less -- regardless
> of how much we might like to demand.
>
> We've got a big downshift ahead of us. Not a real popular idea, but there it is.

True. Not particularly pleasant but true.