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Yucca Mountain, Open For Business
John Galt writes: "It seems the Feds have finally decided that Nevada will host the government's nuclear waste repository." The Yucca Mountain project has been in the works for a while. Here is a cutaway diagram.
What could be safer than disposing of unwanted bodies in the Nevada desert? Stick them in an enormous nuclear silo with 77 000 tons of stuff that'll kill you if you get near it! ;-)
Tales from behind the Lagom Curtain
one nuclear power plant makes 30,000lbs of waste per year. sending one pound of something into space costs $10,000.
now multiply those two numbers together to determine the cost of waste disposal using your plan. for one plant. for one year. then ask yourself who is going to pay for that
1) add one part Nevada
//ct
2) sprinkle with underground radioactive waste
3) bake for two hours in the presence of Kevin Bacon
Let me save you the wait - the resulting giant cannibal worms will be suckers for TNT & the last one will have to be tricked into burrowing off of a canyon ledge.
(Yeah I know - calling Tremors art is stretching it a little... ok alot)
Nuclear winters are caused by the dust kicked up by multiple warheads impacting and exploding on the earth's crust. A single rocket with waste blowing up in the atmosphere, critical mass or not, will not cause a nuclear winter.
What you will get is a nasty case of Chernobyl-style fallout, combined with a Mir-like dispersal of radioactive junk across a given hemisphere. Time to stock up on fallout shelters and iodine tablets...
From the link:
Energy Department scientists contend those issues either have been resolved or can be dealt with as a final design for the facility goes through the licensing process.
I don't understand: if there still are issues which are not resolved, how can the decision to put the dump there be taken? What if the issues CANNOT be dealt with during the final phase? Does anyone believe that they will they be able to admit and back out?
I'm not surprised that the local politicians (and I suppose also the population) are NOT happy about it....
Also, in the post-9/11 world it'll be much harder to keep en eye on what's happening as "for security reasons" lots of stuff has been pulled from the Internet. For example, in France we have a recycling site at La Hague which used to give access to many webcams inside the installation (the new director's policy was "absolute transparency" to reassure citizens), but now they are offline....
This doesn't seem like it's the best solution here. I can think of two alternatives that aren't being used or investigated: 1) subduction zones. Put the waste deep into a subduction zone instead of a stable region like Yucca Mtn. Instead of hanging around basically forever, the waste will be pulled underneath the Earth's crust eventually. 2) Breeder reactors. Using breeder reactors would allow ALL of the Uranium isotopes to be burned in the production of energy, not just the U-235. That means that the ultimate waste product of the reactors would have a half-life of under 30 years instead of thousands of years. France deals with their nuclear waste like this already, and we should too.
If tits were wings it'd be flying around.
There was a Scientific American article about this alternative solution a few years back.
s ea bed.htm
Vol. 276, Jan. 98, pp. 60-65, Burial of Radioactive Waste Under the Seabed.
Holes could be drilled hundreds of meters below the seafloor in geologically inactive areas. Canisters spaced around 10 meters appart could be lined up around the bottom. Removal (in case something goes wrong) would not be a problem with a rentry cone at the top for a future drill.
It turns out the mud under the seabed has a consistancy of peanut butter, ideal for slowing the spread of any radioactive waste.
"Around 1,000 years later the metal seathing would corrode, leaving the nuclear waste expodes to the muds. In 24,000 years (the radiocative half-life of plutonium 239), plutonium and other transuranic elements would migrate outward les than a meter."
Unfortunatly this soulution is sometimes grouped with "ocean dumping" an therefore prohibited by international law.
(quick google search)
http://www.theatlantic.com/issues/96oct/seabed/
my associative arrays can kick your hash - TCL
SECURITY NOTICE
The Office of Civilian Radioactive Waste Management promotes the open review of documents by the public during the Yucca Mountain site recommendation consideration process. However, following the attacks of September 11, 2001, we have removed certain content from our Internet site to minimize the risk of providing potentially sensitive information that could result in adverse impacts to National security. The Office of Civilian Radioactive Waste Management apologizes for any inconvenience that this action may cause. We appreciate your patience and understanding during these difficult times.
Translation:
We support open disclosure. Except to you. Or anyone else that might care about the safety of radioactive waste. I mean, not providing this info on the internet is to prevent terrorism! So that's good!
(sigh)
Will Sept 11th be the excuse for the de facto revoking of sunshine laws and intrusions on liberties? I think maybe.
Lawrence Lessig is my personal hero.
What kills me is millions of taxpayer dollars have been wasted in non stop fights over this site. Yes, nobody wats it in their backyard and if I lived near the site (like within a few hundred miles) I'd probably think about moving. But in this world if its not a nuclear dump, its a real dump, a highway going through your house, high tension utility wires, etc. I'm currently in teh study area for a divided highway, with oone of the routes going straight through our house. Sucks huge not knowin if you'll still be allowed to own your house X years from now - nice to know that none of us realyl OWN our land :)
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Much better idea:
Put the plutonium in a fast reactor and generate electricity while reducing the quantity of plutonium and creating shorter-lived daugter products. So, that's (1) reducing the amount of plutonium (2) getting electricity out of it (3) reducing the waste storage cost.
The problem is getting the screaming hedgemonkies in Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth to let you do it since it impinges on their superstitious beliefs.
I'm out of my tree just now but please feel free to leave a banana.
-S
--- What parts of "shall make no law", "shall not be infringed", and "shall not be violated" don't you understand?
Yucca Mountain is located at the NTS (Nevada Test Site), where the USA has performed most of its nuclear weapons testing. So it isn't exactly a pristine example of desert wilderness. The site also has the most of the needed infrastructure and security already there.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
Using deep-sea subduction zones to dispose of waste is an interesting idea that has been kicking around for awhile.
However, there are a few concerns, some political, some practical which have not been sufficiently dealt with (yet), for use of this method to be deemed acceptable.
It goes against the grain of current 'waste disposal' thought. In the past, the model used to be "dilute and disperse". Then, as we realized some pollutants remain toxic even in low low exposure rates, the model changed to "concentrate and contain". You can see this mindset in our acceptance of smokestacks: they used to be a sign of progress, now they're not welcome in your neighbourhood. So, simply dumping nuclear waste into a subduction zone gives the shivers to anyone raised in this mindset, even if logically you can show that the subduction zone does in fact carry material only downward -- you can't guarantee the waste isn't going to wind up someplace where it can do harm. Models can only show you what should happen; the real world often decides to disagree. So it's a tough approach to sell.
The key thing is, once the waste is down there, you no longer have control. Who knows what might happen to it. Once waste is placed at the subduction zone, human intervention will be extremely difficult, whether by submersible or robot remote.
If a waste container breaks open down there (and don't think you can economically design one that won't -- the forces down there are spectacular), there's not much you can do except cover it with dirt or other materials. "Oh, it's just one broken waste cannister at the bottom of the entire ocean" -- see how well that goes over with Greenpeace.
The other main practical consideration is actually getting the waste containers to go into the subduction zones. Most subduction zones have thick sedimentation layers over
their sea floor opening. We're talking about tectonic processes here, not vacuum cleaners. That is, any container you put there is just going to sit at the bottom for a long long time without actually going anywhere.
There was a design competition about this - my favorite is the Landscape of Thorns.
There's always a lot of talk of shooting nuclear waste into the sun and/or into space as an alternative to underground storage. Over the past 30 years, 77,000,000 lbs (35,000,000 kg) of nuclear waste (from reactors) has been created. Rockets commonly used today for space launches (Atlas, Delta, Titan, etc) can put about 4,000 - 5000 lbs into an earth escape trajectory.
Give these numbers, that would require about 15,400 launches to get the nuclear waste off the earth and out of earth orbit. The rockets that we would most likely use for this have a failure rate of about %5. This would make about 800 failures. 800 failures in which 5000 lbs of nuclear waste could potentially be spread into the atmosphere and the air.
I know these numbers are just numbers, and statistics are just statistics, but I think it shows that the risks for launching nuclear waste into space are unacceptable.
Yes, read that again. The pedestal for the statue of Roger Williams (Rotunda/Senate Chamber Hallway, U.S. Capitol) gives off about 30 microrem per hour... more than the proposed standards for radiation at the perimeter of Yucca Mountain. Just to put it in perspective.
-- null
I've been closely following the Yucca Mountain investigations since the mid-1990s; my garage has hundreds of thousands (really!) of pages generated by various parties involved in this effort. I doubt DOE will continue to be so free with its literature, in light of "security cenrcenrs" raised by September 11th.
But I digress.
In a nutshell: "Approval" of the storage facility has been a foregone conclusion since the studies first began. Yucca Mountain was the only site studied, and any "problems" discovered have been ignored or glossed over.
The real problem is a lack of planning -- it isn't just the "Internet generation" who can't think ahead. Back when we began building nuclear power plants, no one thought about what we would do with the waste -- and so it now sits in over a hundred locations around the U.S., in hardened canisters sitting next to power plants. Because no one looked ahead fifty years ago, we now have a crisis on our hands, and little chance to make a rational decision.
The problem at hand: Nuclear waste needs to be stored somewhere, and Yucca Mountain is the only site selected for study. There may not be a rational, safe solution to the problem of nuclear waste -- and so Nevada's residents may take it in the shorts because of short-sighted and selfish politicians and
I say "may" because Nevadans are unlikely to lie down and "accept the inevitable." They're a feisty bunch, especially the ones who don't live in Reno or Lost Wages -- er, Las Vegas. The Ages Brush Rebellion is gaining strength again in the American West; confrontations between federal officials and local residents continue to rise.
You don't think this issue affects you? If you really think freedom is important, you might want to consider that Nevadans will be hosting nuclear waste that they did not create, as dictated by the federal government on behalf of big, stupid corporations. (Note: I like lots of businesses, even big ones -- but I have great disdain for stupid companies and people who impose their mistakes on others.)
For a somewhat different perspective on the issue, consider this article about the people who actually own Yucca Mountain:
Stealing Nevada
That article (which I am currently updating) has been published all over the world (search Google for it) in print and online. It won't make much difference, of course, because most people only care about right and wrong when it affects them directly. It's too bad, really; what the federal government is doing today with national IDs, intelletual property, and waste dumps is the direct result of letting them push other people around.
Good luck to those in Nevada, Shoshone, Paiute, and other-American alike. You need it...
All about me
When we started to do nuclear plants the idea was to build the plants we have today which basically "burn" Uranium. These plants usually take an enriched 3.5% U-235/ 96.5% U-238 mix (U-235 is what actually is Fissioned). After enough U-235 is spent to prevent efficient fuel usage, they remove the fuel and end up with a waste product which includes both U-235 and U-238 along with Plutonium-239 (Pu-239) isotopes and other radioactive isotopes.
What was supposed to happen is that this spent fuel would be reprocessed to extract the unused U-235, the Pu-239, and the other products. These would then be used in a fast neutron reactor which would actually burn not only the fuel itself but the waste products, producing as a result waste with a half-life of about 30 years (safe after 300 years and a lot less volume to store).
In the 1970's someone realized that the Plutonium-239 was also useful as bomb-making material. They decided that the risk of some of this being diverted to some third-world country which wanted a nuclear bomb was too high to take and so President Carter canceled the research project.
There is still a lot of debate over the real risks involved. From everything I've read I think the real story is twofold - first the Plutionium isn't really "weapons grade" when it is reprocessed in this manner, so the risks are over emphasized. And second, I think that the people running the power plants don't want to do this because it is cheaper to just run the uranium through their plants once.
Aww, who cares? The animals down there already glow in the dark...
There was a great article in Analog a year or two ago in which the author debated how exactly one would label a place that will be highly toxic for tens of thousands of years. You can't use the same symbols or words we take for granted to mean danger; who knows what people will use to denote that in the distant future?
Ideas bandied about included making the surface from dark stone tiles so it would be too hot to approach or making some huge symbol on the ground to warn people away.
The main problem, though, was whether anything you do to warn people off would actually end up attracting them. Imagine making a huge warning that future generations or visiting aliens think is just something cool like the lines at Nazca.
NPR is reporting this morning that the plan cannot go forward until Nevada has agreed to it. Their Congressional delegation is strongly opposing it, and Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle (D-SD) is also against it. Until Nevada agrees to it, nothing will happen until Congress votes on it. And they won't vote for it while Daschle is in the driver's seat.
Nevada and Congress are aware of the issues involved in keeping this stuff in temporary locations, but there is a big NIMBY issue as well.
IMO, it can't hurt to be very, very, very sure this will be safely stored. A couple more years of study are not all that much when you consider this crap will still be radioactive 10,000 years from now.
obviously no deficiencies vs. no obvious deficiencies
A. Subduction zones move material two directions. Soft material on top of the plate is scraped up and piled into mountains. Only the hard rock plate goes down. So anything we drop will go up, not down. You might as well put it in a mountain of your choice rather than a random mountain of the future.
B. It takes for ever for anything to happen anyway. Geologically, Yucca is just as good as subduction. By the time anything happens, it will only have moved a few feet anyway.
There is nothing so silly as other peoples traditions, and nothing so sacred as our own.
Folks,
When it comes to storing nuclear waste permanently, people are wrongly conjuring up images of thin-metal barrels of waste in liquid being dropped off.
WRONGO. Very likely, the radioactive waste will be mixed with molten glass and turned into glass balls, which are chemically extremely stable and have a tiny fraction of the radioactive output of spent fuel rods. These glass balls are then put into special large containers that are so strong even dropping them 30 meters wouldn't make anything close to a dent in the container. With the waste in barely radioactive form and these large containers, they could be dropped off anywhere undergground that has stable geology and never be an environmental problem to anyone.
I remember there was a bad joke going around early in the current Bush Administration about sending all the nuclear waste to Texas. That joke quickly ended when people read that DoE is actually looking at salt domes at now-dry oil fields in Texas as nuclear waste repositories, since salt absorbs radiation extremely well and these underground salt domes are geologically very stable.
Fast breeders produce more plutonium than they burn. You load in a lot of U-238 along with enough U-235 and Pu-239 to maintain criticality and during the ensuing core life that U-238 breeds into Pu-239/240/241 etc... Plus if you have loaded other fission wastes in there the neutron flux will "burn" them away. Yes, you are left with shorter half-life highly energetic stuff. But it's no worse than what comes out of a core now. And you are reducing the volume and the time it's dangerous by several orders of magnitude. The storage time is on the order of 50 - 100 years.
This technology was out worked completely over thirty years ago. The ONLY reason we aren't doing this is political.