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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
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. ;-)
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
(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.
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?
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.