Slashdot Mirror

Actually, I did mean yucca (I have been up a lot lately, so tired).
but this is what you want.

All in all, West Texas was a MUCH better choice for this. Though to be honest, the one thing that many consider bad (volcanic activity) I consider good. Mix this with magma and keep it underground.

Of course, even better would be to burn up all of this 'waste' in a GE Prism.

Hanford, in Washington. They were already storing the liquid wastes, so it seemed reasonable to vitrify the stuff and store it there permanently. Then came the reports on the stored liquid leaking enough to get offsite, and they were off the list.

I do not remember where they were planning to put it in Texas, though. If Texas, for that matter.

Here, I found it:

1986 The DOE issues final Environmental Assessments and nominates five candidate repository sites from the original nine, and then selects three western sites -- in Nevada, Texas, and Washington -- for detailed investigation, from which one is to be selected for repository licensing.

So how much more radioactivity will water gain if it flowed over the crush containers? (Assuming that the area will be wet in the future, and water will flow through the storage area.)

First it has been shown water does flow away from Yucca. I didn't find what I was looking for but I did find this about a study DOE will do, DOE to Study Yucca Mountain Water Flow and DOE did not apply its own geologic site criteria (pdf), this subsection is about half way down. Now onto how much radioactivity water will pick up, if the casks are crushed water won't just flow over the top of the casks, water can enter the casks as well. Water will then be irradiated itself as well as carry off radioactive particals that have dissolved.

So how much more radioactivity will water gain if it flowed over the crush containers? (Assuming that the area will be wet in the future, and water will flow through the storage area.)

First it has been shown water does flow away from Yucca. I didn't find what I was looking for but I did find this about a study DOE will do, DOE to Study Yucca Mountain Water Flow and DOE did not apply its own geologic site criteria (pdf), this subsection is about half way down. Now onto how much radioactivity water will pick up, if the casks are crushed water won't just flow over the top of the casks, water can enter the casks as well. Water will then be irradiated itself as well as carry off radioactive particals that have dissolved.

A Logger who needs work isn't an Environmental single issue voter.

You'd be amazed, I expect, at how few people re in favour of destroying the environment. The argument is all over the fringes - do we protect this one lizard at the price of 100,000 acres of (semi) useful land? That sort of thing.

And if the anti-nuke hysterics can ever calmm down enough to allow construction of a large number of identical (as the Navy found out a long time ago, much easier to deal with one or two designs than with 50 or 60) nuclear plants, we might be able to move a bit further along the road toward a cleaner environment.

• Those that don't like have big 'dangerous' nuclear facilities near their home or recreational spot.
• Those that are afraid of highly radioactive material being stored and transported

Ok so perhaps you aren't a single issue voter, but if Nuclear power was one of the reasons why you voted for Bush, you need to come to the realization that in 6 years he/they still haven't added a single nuclear plant. Again they made lots of promises that their voters never hold them up to. The real reason why is the very heavy 'NIBY' effect of nuclear power, I dare you to put a sign up in your yard which say "Please place nuclear power plant within sight of this house" (a cooling tower can been seen for dozens of miles), or better yet, get the good people in the red-state of Nevada to allow Yucca Mt to come online. However perhaps you could imagine if your county was the nations radioactive landfill, I'd bet your property value would plummet. Would you like it if nuclear waste trucks shared the same highway you take to work every day. Frankly I'd like to see more nuclear power, but what to do with the waste?

The real irony is that according to you the French have done it right, they force people to accept many nuclear power plants, and they reprocess spent fuel, which is a good idea generally, except if you don't like fissionable material being produced/held at dozens (perhaps hundreds) of sites around your country.

As far as energy goes I am most hopeful about Ethanol, as it fits right in our gas tanks which we have now. If we had only put 1% of the money which we have dumped into Iraq on Ethanol, gas would now be $2/ gallon.

Not all damage to DNA from radiation is harmful. Cells have repair systems and can quickly repair breaks in DNA, with no long-term cellular consequence. Alternatively, the repair may not return the DNA to its original form, but may retain its integrity. If cellular damage is not repaired, it may prevent the cell from surviving or reproducing, or it may result in a viable but modified cell. These two outcomes have different results, leading either to deterministic or stochastic effects [Court of Appeals, 1999, pp. 37, 38].

Source: http://www.yuccamountain.org/price003.htm

So you mod me a troll, and snigger at me because you think I'm wrong?

Have you considered things like earthquakes, or attacks by the military or terrorists?

Can you really predict the future with certainty? I can't, and I don't pretend that I can, either. Speaking of the future...

Have you considered the fact that nuclear waste disposal requires that the stuff be stored for 10,000 years or more? Can you guarantee that there won't be geological shifts or that somebody won't dig it up during that time? Can you even design a sign that is absolutely certain to communicate to your descendants 50 or 60 centuries hence, "Don't excavate here, what you dig up can kill you and everybody in your vicinity and make it uninhabitable for generations"?

You'll have to pardon me if I prefer to err on the side of caution in this regard.

I am still of the view that fission power is inherently dangerous and deadly, not just to us and our neighbours, but to our posterity and its environment as well. Why invest so much time and effort in trying to make it "safe" and rationalising that we can make it so when there are much less hazardous alternatives?

It's a good thing he's not pushing it too hard or I might find myself saying crazy things like "I agree with Bush"

At one tyme I was against nuclear power, mostly for two reasons. One is the possibility of accidents and the other is storage of the waste. However new reactor designs, such as the fast breeder reactor designs India uses or those that use pellets or pebbles are safer. There's still the problem with the waste however I heard some of the new designs produce little waste. If they can get rid of the waste then I'd be all for nuclear power. It certainly shouldn't be stored at Yucca Mountain. For one thing it's been shown Water can travel miles from there, and the other thing is that Yucca is an earthquake prone area. Some buildings were damaged there in an earthquake.

Also the government needs to stop subsidizing and shielding the industry. But if they did then nuclear power wouldn't be profitable.

Vinge, and others, have played with this concept in a sci-fi arena, but I wonder - what happens when, to take your example, garbage men hit the wall on efficiency at disposing garbage? (This implies the whole supply chain - or perhaps I should say the removal chain - of garbage mitigation specialists hitting a limit, including recyclers, dumpers, shippers, lobbyists, specialist accountants, etc.) Inputs to the garbage industry will likely be still capable of increasing demand (or, again oddly for this example, an aspect of supply), so economics start kicking in, raising costs of disposal. With garbage, we're seeing the start of this already, and in some extreme cases, lots of noise (a certain mountain in Navada, for instance).

This has, in turn, second order effects for lots of other industries and people, and almost nobody understands the problem, other than the people who are the maxed out specialists, for a given social, technological and economic milleu. Problems, solutions and examples of poor communication and scams start to multiply.

It is fun stuff to think about, especially because I think we're getting a little close in certain areas. I hope to have a paper out on this soonish.

Good points and I would add this: The United States has detonated about a hundred atomic weapons above ground in Nevada. Back in "the day" you could see the tests from Vegas -- I once saw an amazing photo of a glowing mushroom cloud above the Fremont Street skyline. I can't find it now, but here is a similar image. Mind-blowing.

I'm not saying all these atmospheric tests were GREAT but we're still here, with the equivalent of over 100 Hiroshimas in our back yard. (and I know about the fallout/health/cancer studies and all that, like I said it wasn't a great idea, but it also didn't destroy the country or even just Nevada.)