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Yucca Mountain Approved for US Nuclear Waste Storage
Cephalien writes "As reported by Reuters (The link is from AT&T Worldnet -- No registration required, etc, etc), looks like congress has pushed this through against Nevada's objections (NIMBY, anyone?). Now all that's left is the licensing from the NRC. I dunno about you folks, but I'm glad I don't live in Nevada." After 20 years in the making and 4 billion in studies construction on the $58b facility can begin. It was this or Cmdrtacos basement.
It's got to go someplace and the Yucca Mountains are as desolate as you can get. A good storage facility will be a huge boon to the energy industry and our computers will continue running unabated.
Good news for all involved.
I have been pwned because my
It's sad that tens of billions of dollars are going to this when there are millions of people who are dying of hunger.
Opponents, including a number of environmental groups, argue Yucca Mountain and shipments of nuclear waste to it would provide an inviting target for terrorists.
Seriously... Let's get realistic. "Let's not build anything big, because it might be a target for terrorists. Let's all live in flat houses that all look alike, and we can each keep a little bit of nuclear waste in our backyards so that it's take FOREVER for the terrorists to build a bomb. That way we can all get cancer together."
Get a life, protest groups. Nuclear waste is nasty stuff, and it'll be around for thousands of years. We can either trust thousands of people in thousands of places to keep it under lock and key, or we can pile all of it under one mountain and know FOR SURE that it'll be safe forever.
Duh.
In Soviet Russia, sig types you!
I'll admit that this site is probably about as good as any, but the idea that you have to keep 77000 tons of deadly radioactive material isolated for the next 10000 years just scares me. Civilizations rise and fall in such timescales. Who is going to know it is there, even 1000 years from now? What happens if some geologist of the future unknowingly takes a core sample in just the wrong place, to name just one of many not entirely unlikely scenarios.
For goodness sake, my local council doesn't even know where all its buried services are located under the roads and pavements. Do we really think we can preserve data and ensure political stability for 10000 years?
This has to be the biggest argument against nuclear power. Forget the operational safety aspects. We just can't guarantee the long-term safety of the waste.
I know this is an old debate, and you might consider it a troll, but if we had invested 58 BILLION DOLLARS (falling over backwards here ...) propermy 20 years ago, we might have had an alternative for nuclear power by now. I recently heard a radio interview with a nuke expert who said that, with a bit of luck, they might have an experimental FUSION reactor by 2030. Right now they do have the capabilities of warming deuterium plasma to 150million degrees celcius, which is sufficient to start fusion. Now they have to invest 17billion dollars to build a reactor. Dollars they don't have...
silly, isn't it ?
When will I end this grieving ? When will my future begin ?
I'm glad I don't live in Nevada.
I would gladly locate the national nuclear waste repository within 1/2 mile of my home if the alternative is to leave it where it is. My home town of Portland, OR is about 30 miles from the Trojan nuclear power plant, a now-defunct power reactor whose pool is being used as its spent-fuel storage facility. The pool is a few hundred yards from the Columbia river. Given that situation, IMHO almost any sensible thing one could do would be an improvement.
Reasons
- It costs too much (we are talking about thousands of tons here, not a couple of grams)
- It's too dangerious (if the launch fails, oh boy, that's gonna be some firework)
Sticking it in the mountain is probably the cheapest way to go
kawai
They decided they couldn't use CmdrTaco's basement, cuz they'd have to move the used-geek storage facility to a less secure site, and it was decided that misuse of used geeks posed a larger threat than the construction of nuclear bombs from nuclear waste.
---
"The chances of a demonic possession spreading are remote -- relax."
It'd have to be a helluva big car, with some really bad-ass explosives. Six inches of Very Hard Steel, with a lead liner and a thick energy-absorbing outer casing. A simple bomb would just push the thing over. You'd need a shaped charge just to poke a hole in it, and all that would do would be to let some nasty stuff out (which would contaminate a few hundred meters of ground). Collisions? They tested the cask design by running a locomotive into it at 60+ MPH, and all it did was bounce the thing along the track.
Meanwhile, several thousand tons of extremely nasty chemicals of all sorts (from caustics to poisons to explosives) are running down roads and railroad tracks at speeds of up to 100 MPH.
And at this very moment, over two BILLION gallons of a horrible chemical (poisonous, explosive, and carcinogenic) are currently being transported around the US in vehicles, and normal folks are allowed to handle the stuff with little or no formal training (at places they call "gas stations").
to run my electric air conditioner to keep me cool from the global warming caused by all the fossle fuel emissions from conventional power plants because of the enviro idiots who won't permit more safe, clean nuclear power plants to be built. There's still way too much irrational fearmongering about nuclear materials, most of it second hand propaganda spread by entertainers w/o a clue looking for some 'cause celeb' to vent about and completely misleading the public. People who are steadfastly opposed to anything associated with nuclear to such a degree that they tremble with fear over getting a completely safe "nuclear magnetic resonance imaging" scan really should do the intelligent world a favor and study the enemy and get over their misconceptions - get a damn geiger counter and /measure/ what the heck your afraid of, get some low level uranium glass or pitchblende samples and play with it, notice the everpresent background radiation that occurs in nature, measure how fast radiation falls off when you get just a few inches away. Read about the history of radioactivity, Mme Curie, prospecting, etc. Otherwise you're just a clueless puppet of an even more ignorant leadership that show your lack of knowledge with every empty-minded protest. Democracy only works with an educated public - that's why people who know what they're doing are so frustrated by an ill informed public who start wearing black skeleton suits and mushroom clouds at the mere movement of a railroad car.
Here you have over 40 thousand people perish in the US 'automobile holocaust' every friggin year and nobody ever protests that - but take an industry with an incredibly safe track record and the mere mention of some activity brings out the placard waving idiots in droves.
try { do() || do_not(); } catch (JediException err) { yoda(err); }
I dunno about you folks, but I'm glad I don't live in Nevada.
Amen to that. And it got me thinking again.
It's funny in a way. All across the world the same thinking is prevalent (I do not accuse the previous poster of thinking like this). "Nuclear power is good and safe and perfect, but don't even think of storing all the waste near where I live!"
It kind of takes the edge of people's strong position for nuclear power. Accepting risks is always easy when it's not yourself taking the risk.
I personally do not oppose nuclear power. It's better than the current alternatives (no pun intended ;-). But there is a way to lessen nuclear waste: save power.
From what I've seen from here across the pond, there doesn't really seem to be a strong discussion in the US whether nuclear power (or any other power for that matter) is good or bad. People just simply consume enormous amounts of electrical power because it's there in the socket and just waiting to be consumed.
At least in Sweden, low-power lamps, TV:s with negligible stand-by power consumption and other similar products sell. Saving energy is something positive, something people want. Consumers can even accept a slight price increase if it means that we save energy. And part of that is that people know there's no way of disposing of nuclear waste.
The US seems to be dominated by a) big power companies that tells people to consume and b) overzealous protest groups that nobody takes seriously. And that's really sad, because the US is such a large country...
Not least was this visible, of course, when the neighbouring global problem with carbondioxide emissions was discussed recently. About every nation except the US (which by itself makes something like 25% of the worlds CO2-emissions if memory serves) accepted taking steps to reduce the emissions. The US had powerful oil companies which saw a potential risk of losing profit, and refused. Of course the public argument was something like "we won't reduce emissions because X won't", where X is your country of choice. Weak argument in the eyes of global climate.
Perhaps we can hope that the same oil companies will be put out of business because of creative bookkeeping. That would be a win for the world. ;-)
The problem is the waste, radioactive material that will be active for hundreds or thousands of years, where do you leave the waste? Nobody wants it in their backyard and how do we safely transport it and savely store it until it is no longer harmful?
In my opinion this is why we need to look for alternative sources of power, so eventually we will no longer have to use nuclear power. The best thing to do is stop using it now, so the amount of waste will not grow anymore, simple math: when we stop using nuclear power in 50 years from now, we will have at least twice the amount of waste we have now(nucelar power is around for about 50 years). But stopping to use nuclear power now is impossible and imho it will still be around for the next 50 years.
The solution? Keep the powerplants we have until their designed lifetime is up, and keep looking for alternatives, nuclear fusion might be one, but I don't think that will happen this century or ever (because we won't need it anymore->read on). For alternative powersources I'm putting my money on the fuel cell, the cleanest form works on hydrogen but that still has some storage problems. Running the fuel cell on natural gas(GM already has one of 7kW that can be installed at your home) is easier (natural gas is already available in many homes) and a bit saver. However, eventually we need to run the fuel cells on hydrogen only, it is widely available(water) and the "waste" is pure and clean water. In the meantime we need to create a way to safely store and distribute hydrogen, this certainly can be done in the next 50 years or so...
Oh, and by the way: the efficiency of the average fuel cell is already at 40% and can still increasing.
Beware of Programmers who carry screwdrivers. -- Leonard Brandwein
First of all, yes, it's nuclear waste, it's dangerous stuff. But, we know a lot more about it than the old days. Keeping the waste at regularly, and calculated, separated intervals there is no real danger. The danger lies in leaving it too close so that individual containers can charge each other up and potentially cause an explosion. That won't be happening in Nevada.
The reality is, we have to put the waste somewhere, and under the desert floor is as good as any (and better than most). Except for the waste, fission is an incredibly safe form of power. Properly disposed of, the waste can be pretty benign. Yucca mountain is a good place for the waste, and were I to live near there, personally, I wouldn't worry about it. But that's me, knowing what I know.
Once we can safely and cheaply launch it into space, we can simply fire it off at the sun where it will do nothing. Until that day, we need a place here to store it.
They send us their oil and we send them nuclear waste material. Or, if they prefer in 'pre spent' form on the tips of missiles. Seems fair to me.
When I was in college I worked a couple of summers as an intern at a nuclear power station.
At the time, I naively bought into the propoganda of "clean energy, more radiation comes from the sun than a nuclear power plant," etc.
Even then, though, I'll never forget the response of one of the managers when someone asked "what about the waste?"
The reply was (paraphrased) "We can store about 20 years of waste here, on-site, but it's the government's job to find a perminent solution."
Unbelievable. An entire industry, creating some of the most toxic materials ever created by man, whose attitude was basically "don't worry, the government will clean up our mess." These are probably the same people who bitch and moan about "big government" and want less regulation, and frankly the entire nuclear storage facility is a huge government subsidy of a dangerous and economically unviable industry, demanded by said industry at the point of a radioactive gun.
As you might have guess, over the years as I've grown older, and wiser, my opinion on nuclear power has changed 180 degrees.
You are right, we have only our "decision makers" to blame for this, but lets not forget that most of those decision makers are not government politicians so much as CEOs of large utility companies that have neglected their own, most basic responsibilities throughout this entire process.
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
Wow, what a nice step one towards fixing that whole "hated on a global stage" thing.
Right, okey. So, we'll keep all the monentary outlays to ridiculous notions such as the World Court and the United Nations.
It's funny how the US is so 'hated on a global stage' until you need US funding for some earthquake, natural disaster, peacekeeping mission, etc etc... but if you don't want our help, that's fine. Stop asking for drugs. Stop asking for aid. Stop asking for money. I'm tired of subsidizind your asses anyway.
-'fester
But the half life of the fuel is something like 8 DAYS, not 10,000 YEARS.
science is a religion
They have options. They could import tons of coal and oil. Other countries do it. Nuclear is a BETTER solution, it's not a perfect one. There is no perfect solution. Hopefully we can keep comming up with better solutions. While we're working on those solutions time we need to realize that energy production has serious side effects, and that we need to use that energy in as efficient ways as possible.
It's the infrastructure of the reactor chamber and everything around it. It gradually becomes radioactive. Still, in a sense you are partly correct. The half life of the materials may be able to be chosen to decay in years, rather than hundreds or thousands of years. But there's going to be constraints, and some long-lived radioactivity is extremely likely IMO.
-WolfWithoutAClause
"Gravity is only a theory, not a fact!"In his flatlander books, Niven suggests that humanity began shooting nuclear waste at the moon to get rid of it - only to start mining the waste 100 years later to get all those incredibly valuable transuranic elements.
In any case the idea that someone will trip into this site in 5000 years is kind of lame - IIRC, Yucca is a salt mine, salt is soft and mallable and the tunnels slowly collapse over even a single human lifetime. Thus, one of the advantages of YM is that any intrepid idiots would have to do a lot more work than picking a lock to get at the waste.
Clear, Dark Skies
I see, so if one state doesn't want something but the other 49 gang up on them, then they're gonna get it. What a wonderful system we have.
Interesting too that Nevada doesn't have any commercial reactors, yet they get stuck with the waste. In fact the bulk of the nuclear material and programs within the state are federal.
Yup, the waste has to go somewhere. So in this case someone shits in New Jersey and it ends up in Nevada's back yard.
. Quit playing Monopoly with Bill. Switch to one of many non-Microsoft products today.
Nuclear Waste is a myth. There is really no need for a nuclear waste repository. The solution to waste is a "fast breeder" reactor, which converts spent fuel into new fuel. Uranium is converted into plutonium, which is then burned to produce uranium and other lighter elements. The Uranium can be burned in conventional nuclear power plants. The process does produce waste, but waste with a half life of 10's to 100's of years rather than 10000. Why dont we have any breeder reactors? Politics. Because one of the intermediate steps is plutonium, everyone is worried about proliferation. Polititans worry that if we do it, then hey, north korea will look at it and say "You guys are making plutonium, so can we". Heres a clue, North Korea will do it wether the US does or not, same with all the other rogue nations out there. The only thing youre preventing is a solution to the waste problem.
Wouldn't a modern breeder reactor (of which we have none thanks to the goddamn hippies) produce about 10% the waste of the older plants? I think I saw that on an episode of the Simpsons once...
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
What about dumping it into a subduction zone?
I will accept that Yucca Mountain is better than what we have now - waste stored in smaller bits in thousands of insecure and not stable places. That said, why not get rid of the problem permanently? Shooting into space is way too expensive, but why not dump the waste into the planet's core, whence it originally came? Seal the stuff in ceramic (that is, make a ceramic with the waste embedded, then put that into a damage-resistent cask, etc), then ship it to a subduction zone and drop it in. In a small (geologically) amount of time, the casks get drawn under the earth, and melted into component parts in the mantle. Then they are no more dangerous really than natural radioactive substances in the ground.
-- Two men say they're Jesus. One of them must be wrong. - Dire Straits
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Fusion emits free neutrons that alter materials about the reactor. These tend to be lighter materials than fission byproducts. Lighter radiactive elements tend to have shorter half lives, but are also more readily absorbed into the biological cycle.
Fusion and other alternative energy claims are like the early days of fission- "free power". EVERY energy source has pollution potential, especially when they are scaled up to the amounts society uses. Society could cut energy use by 90% without much pain. Tooo many 3,000 square foot houses and SUVs.
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Okay, but could I just take a lot of spent fuel, extract just the "pure" U235 and reconstitute it into a big ball of "pure" 95%> U-235?
For what it's worth, that is an INCREDIBLY difficult thing to do. Not impossible, or even implausible, just difficult. It takes some really big equipment - say, the size of an average oil-refinery, and a fair amount of time (the Manhattan project took a couple of years to get enough U-235 to make one bomb). It would certainly be easier now than then. But note that only 10 nations have ever pulled it off. And only one ever did it without outside help.
Besides, if you can do it, what's to stop you from just extracting some pitchblende from the ground and doing the same thing?
If extracting the "good stuff" were a trivial exercise, we would do that rather than store the stuff. After all, the U-235 would be just as useful to us as to a hypothetical terrorist. More really, as we could use it to fuel another reactor.
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
Do you think whatever container the wastes are put in is going to be subject to the high-energy neutron flux that's constantly bombarding the internals of a working nuclear reactor? That stuff lasts for years under really nasty conditions. The alpha and beta particles emitted from radioactive materials isn't going to hurt much. The gamma's could if somebody sat their ass on a container with lots of "Stay away" signs on it, but I can't say I feel the least bit sorry about someone who does something that stupid.
"Changing the structure, if not the composition" Get real. Do the electrons (beta particles) change the composition and structure of the CRT screens you use as a computer monitor?
As for "accidental criticality", get a fucking clue and stop dramatizing the issue with bullshit. It's more likely two of your brain cells would get together and generate a useful thought.
As for earthquakes, the whole damn earth is subject to those. The most powerful quake on record happend in Missouri, of all places.
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 in perspective.
(Various disclaimers: Yes, the Steve Milloy's JunkScience.com site does usually have a politcal agenda. However, that does not, in itself, make their claims any less true. And yes, you should take into account alpha vs. gamma radiation. And for what it's worth, the radiation study was made possible by a grant from Citizens for the Integrity of Science. An opposing viewpoint can be found here.)
-- null
The current issue of National Geographic has a nice article on nuclear waste. I'd provide the link but for three times in a row, my Win2000 box here at work has bluescreened when I click on the link. Hmph.
Anyhow, I see people getting moderated up for saying that the 10000-year life span of the Yucca mountain facilities was determined by half-life.
Not true!
The 10000-year service life of the Yucca Mountain facilities was decided upon by the fact that there likely won't be a DOE to monitor the site or a government, as we know it, to control it. In a nutshell, "After 10000 years all bets are off" was the decision.
As a rule, a radioactive substance has to go through 10 half-lives to become harmless. The higher the radioactivity an element has the shorter its half-life. The converse is true as well. Plutonium has a half-life of 24000 years. 24000 x 10 = 240000 years before it becomes harmless. Uranium is less radioactive than plutonium (but still incredibly deadly) so it has a much greater half-life.
So really, for plutonium were looking at an additional 230000 years after the facilty might/will fail before its contents are harmless. Longer for the uranium.
Don't fool yourselves into thinking the facilty will be safe after its design life has expired. In fact, the Yucca Mountain facilty is only designed to last for 4.17% of the time period when the plutonium stored there will be deadly.
Nuclear power is the first time we went into an energy source with a good idea of exactly how dangerous. The same statement very probably can't be said of any other powersource.
How about that clean hydropower. Then look at what it does to fisheries, and the fact that the salmon no longer take their nutrient-laden bodies back up the river, where the bears catch many and fertilize the forests. Look at the silting problems in dams, and the lack of that necessary silt below the dam.
How about fossil fuels and global warming?
At this point, I don't even know about trusting either solar or wind power. Extensive use of solar power may well change the albedo of the Earth, or something odd like that, affecting the climate. Extensive use of wind power could conceivably affect climate, in addition to killing large numbers of birds.
I'd prefer we learn to live more efficiently and control our breeding.
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
On the Yucca Mountain issue, I wonder whether other Western sites would be worth considering, like the Great Divide Basin in Wyoming... nothing there, nobody lives there, and Interstate 80 is near enough to get the waste transported there. Maybe the geology's wrong, or Wyoming's politicians are too strong for it to happen ;)
I'd have a personalized plate on my car, but "toxic bachelor" won't fit into 7 letters.
I know it would probably be expensive, but... Is there not some practical way to load the waste into mass-produced, unmanned, disposable rockets, and just shoot the whole affair straight into the sun? It would certainly solve both storage and environmental concerns.
Like I said: Expensive, yes. But how expensive is it going to be to safeguard stuff that's going to be emitting lethal levels of radiation for at least the next 10,000 years?
Bruce Lane, KC7GR,
Blue Feather Technologies
> Okay, but could I just take a lot of spent fuel, extract just the "pure" U235 and
> reconstitute it into a big ball of "pure" 95%> U-235?
Sure. All you need to do is build a uranium enrichment facility. That'll only cost billions of dollars and require expertise found in only a handful of nuclear scientists.
Chris Mattern
This is why I like the Slashdot friend system. To me, all of your comments are at 5 :-)
All the creatures will die, And all the things will be broken. That's the law of samurai. (Jubai, 1605)
Granted, the safe long-term disposal of nuclear wastes IS a serious problem, which I personally don't think is solved by this action (though I *do* think it's an improvement to have one long-term site rather than hundreds of short-term ones). However, it is also worth considering that conventional fuels produce toxics that NEVER go away. A careful analysis of what energy sources to use should take that into account and choose the least harmful option (conservation, anyone?). A nuclear physicist of my acquaintance has an interesting viewpoint:
1. I can EASILY detect radioactives at harmful levels with a radiation counter; there are chemical poisons I CANNOT detect that are lethal in microgram quantities. Those worry me LOTS more.
2. Radioisotopes decay, but arsenic is forever.
"My strength is as the strength of ten men, for I am wired to the eyeballs on espresso."
Folks, it's simple. The stuff has to go somewhere, it has to go soon, and the best place at the moment is Yucca. Something a lot of people are forgetting is the fact that just because it goes to Yucca does not mean it has to stay at Yucca.
C'mon. We're a race of intelligent, efficient, innovative people. You can't honestly look me in the eye and say that within 10,000 years...no, within 100...within 10 YEARS we won't have a better idea of how to handle this.
How old is nuke power? 50 years? (I'm guessing) Have we not gone from being complete and utter morons about it (can you say sticks of uranium in a pocket to ward off disease?) to doing some very intelligent things with it?
I, for one, have complete confidence in our ability to revisit this issue, research and design new solutions and approaches to the problems of nuclear waste, and to come up with better solutions and maybe even uses for the stuff.
Nevada, quit whining like a chastised toddler. Be honoured; the research that has gone into finding the best place to put this stuff has probably benefitted you in tremendous ways...would that all our states' geography get such a thorough examination. Suck it up, it won't likely be there forever anyway.
Blog,Twitter
In addition to the blindness shown by regulators in approving a dangerous Yucca Mountain site, another issue is at stake: the United States doesn't legally pown Nevada:
Stealing Nevada
No conspiracy theories, just good old-fashion adherence to what is supposed to be the law of the land.
And for those who don't care about the long-standing problems of Indians: Where do you think the U.S. government learned how to steal people's rights? If you want to defend your rights, defend those of others.
All about me
I think you mean
here
Interesting.
IMO?
Opinion has nothing to do with it. Hard science has the answers, and the answer is: BZZZT! Wrong! There is no "relatively" long-lived waste from Fusion.
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
I hear a lot of people saying that they're glad they don't live in Nevada. Why? What's the difference? If something goes wrong with the storage, wouldn't it affect a lot more than just Nevada? I mean, if there was a leak, wouldn't the entire western half of the US be in danger? And please don't tell me it's all foolproof, because nothing is. Any time someone says that it reminds me of a discussion my class had in 6th grade with some nuclear waste disposal expert:
Expert: So, since nuclear waste is so dangerous, we are planning to seal it up into containers and drop them to the bottom of the ocean.
Student 1: What about the fishes?
Expert: Don't be stupid, the containers are sealed, there is no way the nuclear waste could get out.
Student 2: What if the container breaks?
Expert: It can't break.
Student 2: But what if it does?
Expert: It can't.
Student 2: But, what I mean to say it, what if it does break?
Expert: But, you see child, it simply can't break. It's a foolproof system.
Uh huh...
Lack of eloquence does not denote lack of intelligence, though they often coincide.
The peak radiation danger takes into account the fraction that is projected to escape the repository. OF COURSE this is after the 10000 years -- none is projected to escape before then!
The absolute quantity of radioactivity inside the repository is continuously declining with time; it doesn't increase to a peak at 400,000 years.
The waste doesn't have to be contained until it is presents zero hazard (after all, the U238 in the spent fuel has a halflife of more than 4 BILLION years), it just has to be contained until it has decayed 'enough'. The 10,000 year figure was determined to yield an acceptably low integrated population exposure.
Don't know that I agree, at least by "nature's perspective." I don't disagree in the slightest that nuclear waste is bad, but it's also "point contamination" and affects limited localities. Even considering leaching the area is still comparatively limited. Even if it is radioactive, part of nature's perspective is more like tens of thousands to millions of years. That's enough time for decay, and in the meantime there will be mutations and evolution-fodder, conceivably a good thing. It's only on puny human time scales that it's really a problem, and presumably we should be able to handle it over our own time scales. Part of the objection was, "What happens in a thousand years?"
For comparative damage, look at the Pueblo Indians. According to an NPR report I heard several years ago, they lived in a lush forested area. They overcut the timber and without the trees shading/transpiring, etc, the water table dropped and the area turned into a desert. It's still a desert a good part of a thousand years later, and doesn't show signs of becoming lush again any time soon.
In the long term (Nature's time) I'd be far more worried about the biological impoverishment now being caused by global warming and other human activities. Genetic diversity is Nature's toolbox for recovering from catastrophies, and that's where we're doing the greatest damage.
Perhaps we should do nature a favor and put out radioactive caches to increase the mutation rates and improve diversity. (tongue slightly in cheek, here)
Did you know that canola oil (2nd best to olive oil) is "genetically engineered"? Prior to WWII, it contained a few harmful substances, and was used for lubricaton. After WWII they began bombarding seeds with radioactivity and sifting through what popped up. Eventually they came up with a breed that produced edible oil that's also relatively non-unhealthy. Enhanced diversity in action.
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
You don't have the worlds largest GNP
;).
Out of curiosity who does? I can't find any country that even comes close to the USA's $9.6 Trillion (year 2000 current US$). Japan comes closes with $4.5 Trillion (which is larger than Germany, France and the UK combined). Even the combined total of the European Monetary Union is only $6.6 Trillion.
you're not the leading edge in science or economics any more.
Well I think we have settled the economics side of things so I'll be generous and grant you the scientific leading edge since I'm not exactly sure how to measure that. I'm still not sure who IS on the leading edge though. Europe taken as a whole seems the only likely contender - still it seems that Europe and the US are peers in terms of scientific research and advances rather than one dominating the other.
Except for your oversized bloated miliary you're just an average western industrial nation.
I'll grant you we have a bloated military, in fact we account for about 37% of ALL military spending in the entire world. Then again we can afford it - we only spend about 3% of our GDP on the military which is less than the worldwide average of 3.8%. and significantly less than Russia's 5%. In terms of sheer numbers our military (1,369,000 men under arms) is dwarfed by china (2,310,000) and even Europe's combined total is larger (3,459,000) so despite our massive spending we don't have an inordinately large military just a spectacularly well equipped one
The problem (if it is a problem) is America's hegemony is a fact that flows naturally from the vast size of it's economy. Despite all the resentments and sour grapes this engenders elsewhere in the world we are probably all lucky that it is the USA that weilds such an unbalanced economic (and thus military and cultural) power. There are other nations and other cultures that would not have been so restrained in the use of such dominance. Considered through the lense of history America has been remarkably restrained, if she wanted she has the resources to be an actual empire in FACT not just in her opponents rhetoric. All the weight that is thrown around is only a fraction of what it could be - with military spending only 3% of GDP it could double or even triple without much effort (It was 6% in 1985, at the same time the soviet Union was spending better than 12% of their GDP on the military). Fortunately American culture ISN'T militarised or imperialistic.
This certainly stinks for the residents. Regardless of how remote an area might be, who knows what the landscape will look like 5,000 years from now. How will we tell people what they are digging up? Why don't we send it into the Sun?
This has to be the biggest argument against nuclear power. Forget the operational safety aspects. We just can't guarantee the long-term safety of the waste.
The alternative is fossil fuels, and we can guarantee that fossil fuels are not safe on even shorter time scales. Global warming is already happening. It's not a hypothetical thing like nuclear waste leakage 10,000 years from now. If we keep on releasing greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, it's very likely that Holland and Bangladesh will be underwater. It's very likely that agriculture will be disrupted enough to cause billions of people to die. It's very likely that tropical diseases will start occurring at the temperate latitudes, where the population has no resistance. All of these things are high-probability events that we should expect to start happening relatively soon because of fossil fuels.
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Transportation is a concern, but even if somebody blows up a container (which is hard to do), it would contaminate a small area. Remember, high-level waste is mostly heavy metals that are alpha emitters. You have to eat or breathe the stuff, and it settles to the ground.
Bear in mind that there have been above-ground nuclear tests in Nevada without much effect on the people of the state. Yucca Mountain is far less of a hazard.
I'd rather live near Yucca Mountain than near a coal-fired power plant. I've lived near a coal-fired power plant. Before bag houses and scrubbers. Blech.
The waste that will go to Yucca Mountain is right now sitting in open ponds next to reactors all around the country.
You're glad you don't live in Nevada? You probably live a very short distance from one of those ponds.
Nevada is naturally radioactive. Yucca Mountain's radioactivity will be lower than background. Less than sunshine.
Transporting the waste will be a non-issue as well. The containers are massively overdesigned.
Mod the original article -1, Troll.
--Blair
How many of you actually have a college degree in Nuclear Engineering? I know I do. Just wondering - some of the things I've read here are just plain wrong.
Okay, first off, Yucca is the best alternative we have, period. The government is *gasp* meeting it's own law, if late, a law sponsored and supported by the Anti-nuclear movement in the first place. The government of AZ, including most of the people now trying to stop Yucca from opening, were all to pleased and helpful when the US Governement announced the construction project.
The AN movement has managed to engineer themselves into a corner, IMHO... they got the place built and now are using FUD and Scare tactics of the day (terrorism) to stop it. Has this been their agenda all along? Probably, only it will most likely backfire if people look past the word nuclear and at the meat of the story.
I worked for several years at Clinton Nuclear Powerstation. I am very familiar with the security of the DOE and the standards set for these plants. I am also familiar with the onsite storage of waste materials as well as the nucleological standards.
1) Folks, first off there is now chance of some hill folk terrorist walking off with materials in transport. The majority of the tonnage to be shipped is low level waste that would not be disasterous if released in an accident or packed around a bomb to be scattered in the explosion... We are talking many millions of tons of bags, cotton gloves, etc... all with little or no real radioactivity with the exception of a random single particle that set off a detector... often times the materials in question have less radiation than background in the Rockies or in a pack of smokes.
2) The containers are built to be unbreachable in disaster circumstances. Six to ten inch steel (case hardened at the ends), a ceramic then lead liner, as well as a crushable material for impact absorption. It would be easier to breach a WWII crusier's hull than these shipment containers folks. An RPG won't do it. A small plane will not do it. These things can take a combined total of 120+ MPH in impact energy without breach or failure. They weigh many tons so they can't walk off either. Simply put, they are secure, as secure as our manufacturing and technology can make them.
3) Terrorists - You disillusioned people who think the terrorists are real commando killing soldiers are sadly mistaken. Some have recieved training, including how to make low and high order explosive devices. Quite a few have basic infantry weapon training, a few tactics for urban combat. Alot of terrs have open field combat training, but of a gurilla and irregular nature. Intell service training (CIA for example) focused on reputation, image making, scare and commando tactics, and intel gathering/reporting.
IRL, most terrs couldn't shoot there way out of a fight, lack the technical knowledge or means to steal or break these containers, and are in general too easily identified (at least now with heightened security) to gather in significant numbers to no only overcome a DOE point team but also the DOE STAR response team should they attack.
It would take a coordinated, large group with explosive specialists, combat infantrymen, advanced communications, and heavy weapons to even consider tackling one of these trains (and trucks) carrying waste to Yucca.
Their best result would be a small breach of the container and a local spill that at most would only put a few hundred at risk for a very short time as DOE would be able to clean up and contain within an hour. They would die as a result, and yes, get some air time with the media, but the results would not be spectacular at all.
One more thing... every try to hit a moving, and secretly routed (at least in terms of timetable and location) train moving at 45 - 60MPH with a passenger jet (as one idiotic poster commented)... not possible, and given the design of the containers, not likely to result in a breach anyway.
4)DOE guards and STAR teams are highly trained, highly motivated, and almost exclusively made up of former 'commando' US soldiers from SEAL, Ranger, Force Recong, Green Berets, and Air Commando/Para Rescue. They are good shooters, mostly with college degrees, and know what they are doing. They would be a tough force for a large regular military unit to take on, let alone a bunch of rag head terrs. STAR teams can be onsite anywhere in the US with 20 shooters in 30 minutes... thats fast, leaving little time for a terr cell to actually manage to beat a DOE guard team and set up a breaching charge(s) of focused or shaped charge explosives that will do any good.
Yucca is our best chance to clean up the mess the liberals created after 3Mile Island. If you can think of a better system or place, fire away. Alaska is out due to the distances involved for getting it there, no other country should be involved, and much of the rockies is very unstable rock. Where to kids? I don't think I want it hanging around at the NucPlants or other radiological facilties until the concrete temporary storage units fail... no thanks.
(Full title: Expert Judgment on Markers to Deter Inadvertent Human Intrusion into the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant, Sandia Report SAND92-1382 - UC-721)
It serves to remind me that people may quote statistics in an attempt to support their positions, but in the end, they're just statistics.
The report as a whole is interesting, I suggest you read it - but remember that the authors forgot the cardinal rule of 'scientific' study: never interject your opinions into research. Even if it doesn't color your results, it will give the appearance of bias.
I'm sick of people burying their nuclear wastes.
.sig
I say we force them to put it back where they got it from.
-- this is not a
I'll see if I can talk with the guy who originally told me about it.
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
Table of Plutonium Isotopes
First of all, Plutonium-240, 241, and 242 are produced in very minute quantities and are not much of a factor in waste storage.
Plutonium-239 has the half-life of 24000 years that you were referring to. However, Pu-239 is the most common fissionable isotope, used for reactor fuel and weapons. It would *never* be shipped to a waste storage site. It is simply too valuable.
Plutonium-238 is the common "waste" isotope, and it only has a half-life of 87 years. Even at 10x that duration, it is far less than the 230000 years that you are using as FUD.
- SEAL
As bad as it is for citizens of Nevada, I feel even worse for the Shoshone, who absolutely don't deserve having our radioactive shit stored in their sacred land. Hey, maybe we should start stashing some waste in Canada. I mean, it's not like the Canucks could do anything to us.
http://www.indiancountry.com/?1022253815
It's 10 PM. Do you know if you're un-American?
I think it's a good idea except that the container could take a long time to be subducted and in the process could be damaged before being safely in the mantle. It could contaminate the ocean, and that'd stink.
Black holes are where the Matrix raised SIGFPE
mapscience.org Type in your addy and find out how close the waste pass you by.
I get the worldwide average of 2.6%.
Here are some facts I have gathered.
h tm
3 .htm
The canisters that ship the waste are impact tested and yadda yadda yadda. They have to withstand heat, drops, etc. all sorts of stuff.
Used up nuclear fuel wont go critical. The k effective of all the waste to go in the mountain must be 0.95 or lower. The cores must be designed such that they wont go critical.
Here is more:
The effective multiplication factor (keff) is less than or equal to 0.95 under assumed accident conditions, considering allowance for the bias in the method of calculation and the uncertainty in the experiments used to validate the method of calculation
For all techies, read this:
The science and engineering report
http://www.ymp.gov/documents/ser_b/index.
Here is an FAQ of almost every possible question i could think of that anyone could ask.
http://www.ymp.gov/documents/feis_a/index_v
I hope these words have sparked your intrest to read on.
I would suggest reading these materials.
Sums up all type of accidents. Very short reading.
0 1. htm
http://www.ymp.gov/documents/ser_b/tables/tbl3_
Why are ppl blaming Bush? If Carter would have let us reproccess the stuff.. we wouldnt be in this mess
- Who knows what use we will find for it in the future?
Send it into space, it will be really hard to retreive.
Complie a list of the countries where the prevailing opinion is anti-USA.
Compile a list of the contries that activly request assistance. Don't include those places that are getting aid whether they want it or not.
I'd be willing to bet that you won't see much of an intersection.
Saying that we we will keep the monetary outlays is an empty argument. It will never happen. It would make for a really interesting experiment though. How interesting it would be to have the ability to look into theoretical alternate dimentions.
I got the 3.8% number from the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) document "Western Military Balance and Defense Efforts" Here it is as a PDF form. I was only looking at their latest numbers which were for the year 2000.
I'm sure like all such worldwide statistics it is easy to manipulate. I'm not exactly sure what biases CSIS has, they claim to be bipartisan and their congressional Advisory board is made up of congressmen from both parties and both conservative and liberal. (I thought there might be a slight liberal tilt since many of the republicans are "gypsy moth republicans" but there are a few western and southern conservatives too). I'd imagine that the Stolkohlm Peace Research Institute has it's own axe to grind too.
I'm perfectly willing to assume that the US is spending somewhat above the worldwide average, frankly I was suprised that the CSIS numbers showed the opposite. I had assumed that it would be higher since we have a significant military presence worldwide that most other nations don't. Not only that but some of the nations where we have a military presense we are effectively subsidizing the host nations defense budget. They don't need to spend as much of their own money to effectively defend themselves as they would have to if we were not present. For instance South Korea would probably have to spend much more on defense to effectively deter North Korea if it weren't for our troops on the border. I suppose this may be cancelled out by North Korea (and other nations in a similar postition) feeling the need to increase their defense spending, but N. Korea is spending more than it can afford as it is and It's likely that they would have to max out their spending whether we were there or not. To some degree we are in a Pax Americana and should the USA decrease it's spending it is likely that at least some of our allies that previously had lower spending would have to increase their spending to offset the loss of American troops & influence.
In any event if the USA is spending more on the military than the rest of the world (as a percentage of GDP) it is not spending very much from a historical perspective. It's overwhelming military superiority is not primarily a result of that higher percentage being spent but is a result of how much bigger a GDP that percentage is being drawn from.
What goes around, comes around. DO something about it, or get over it.
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