Amec Working on Long-Term Nuclear Waste Solution

Ckwop writes "The Daily Telegraph is reporting that Amec, the company that cleaned up Ground Zero, have developed a new process for storing nuclear waste that lasts two hundred thousand years - far longer than any radioactivity will last. The process works by mixing eighty percent soil with twenty percent waste and then heating the mixture to three thousand degrees centigrade. When the mixture cools it forms into a glass harder than concrete. While this is not the first waste process of this type it is the first to be cost effective and produces a glass much harder than previous methods. " We'll see if we still need a ten mile field of spikes I guess. A pilot facility is being built in Washington State.

Comments

Storage, not technology, is the problem

[Anonymous Coward]

While it's good to see another neat/good idea, the problem is having a place to put it. Until such a site exists AND IS ALLOWED TO OPERATE, we're left twiddling our thumbs. Since nothing is 100% safe and secure, I'm not optimistic such a site will be operational.

To head off some flames, I'm sure people are fully secure living near dams, powerplants, coal mines and transmission wires. Oh, and I assume they're suitably slathered with SPF 30+ outside in the sun...

Re:Storage, not technology, is the problem

[yog]

I'd really like to see this type of technology implemented to store nuclear waste and perhaps other kinds of toxic compounds that are otherwise too expensive to treat.

200,000 years sounds long enough that we'll either not care by then or have evolved into beings that can withstand the radiation.

Perhaps this combined with pebble bed nuclear reactors will at last make nukes a realistic and safe alternative to oil.

A hundred nuclear fission plants using the safer pebble technology and a really solid waste storage approach would go a long way to weaning the U.S. and its allies off the Wahhabi oil machine. They could generate hydrogen during low demand times for use in fuel cell vehicles and straight power for peak time use, and solar power could fill in the gaps.

Re:Storage, not technology, is the problem

[RCulpepper]

The NIMBY thing is particularly tragic because the Yucca Mountain debate is painted as though, because the site isn't 100% safe, we shouldn't store our waste there, as though our waste were currently stored in some kind of interdimensional X-zone, instead of spread around the country in vast stretches of poorly defended and leaky containment vessels. Yucca may not be 100% stable -- but it's orders of magnitude more stable than the system we have in place now.

Not exactly incremental

[Anonymous Coward]

The article stated that the current processes uses concrete and lasts 200 years. I would say that the "incremental change" to 200,000 years IS significant. Now, I would have doubts that it actually lasted that long. And I would be interested in seeing how they determined that deterioration rate. Is 200K years a conservative estimate or a best case scenario one?

Far longer than what exactly?

[fstanchina]

Well, "far longer than any radioactivity will last" is obviously wrong, because it depends on which kind of radioactive isotopes we're talking about. It's far longer than *most* radioactivity will last, because the most abundant isotopes in this kind of waste have half times of a few hundred years, but some radioactivity will last for millions of years.

Re:Nothing new?

[Smidge204]

341 years of safe storage to 200,000 years of safe storage, done at 75% of the cost... that's a pretty big increment! Not to mention that this appears to be the first truly viable long-LONG-term solution to preventing the waste from leaking out of where it's stored. Still have to agree on a spot to put it, but once it's there you don't have to worry about it. That's half the battle won, and that's what makes it news.

=Smidge=

RTFA!

[pedestrian crossing]

They've increased the performance of this technology by a factor of 80 - 100. That's impressive.

You are comparing apples and oranges, and I believe that the fact that you've been "tricked" into making this comparison makes my point that the article isn't exactly without bias.

The 200-500 year figure is for CONCRETE ENTOMBMENT, which is NOT vitrification.

Vitrification is not new. And I would doubt anyone who claimed even 20,000 years of containment. There are a lot of factors that can come into play on those kind of timescales, and these numbers have nothing to back them up. Of course I haven't backed up my doubts of these numbers, but hey, I'm not the one saying "problem solved"...

Re:RTFA!

[GigsVT]

God, isn't it obvious?

Do you see any way to experimentally back up their claims of 200,000 years longevity? "Accelerated weathering" isn't a valid answer.

The burdon of proof is on the person making the extreme claim, not on the person who doubts it.

Re:The acceptable cost of disposal?

[gadget junkie]

.... really, it boils down to a matter of "perceived" vs. "average" risk.

The technologies available to dispose nuclear waste, imperfect as they are, render the risk comparable, in terms of damages, to alternatives ways to obtain the same amount of usable energy in comparable quantities.

the point is that the human being is incapable to assess low probability events .

As you said, you see the same psychology at work in air transport: people that habitually use a car (and drive recklessly, BTW) regard air travel as "dangerous", while statistically just the opposite is true.

Re:Wrong Numbers!

[julesh]

Rubidium 87 has a half-life of 47 billion (10^9) years

Do you know how much of that stuff you'd need before you would even notice the difference from background levels? Remember that the longer the half life, the more atoms you need to produce the same amount of radioactivity. Doubling the half life halves the amount of danger posed by the radiation emitted. Its as simple as that.

NO; Politics, not technology is the problem

[museumpeace]

the answer, without going into a lot of phyics is that between proven sources and the regenerative capacity of so-called breeder reactors, we could could go [at present power consumption levels] for centuries. This was the original "power too cheap to meter" argument made for nukes back in the [naive, optimistic] '50s. It would outlast oil by several generations. Politics always trumps science and acute accidents like Chernobl always change peoples minds more effectively than diffuse accidents like our overheated bioshpere slipping by with little alarm despite wiping out entire species. If one percent of what our nation spends to secure an oil supply [you may even leave out the cost of the Iraq misadventure] were spent on building nuke plants that were idiot proof and safe disposal methods, we would not be worried about another three mile island, and we would be able to afford to turn on our air conditioners.

...USA has not built nuclear plants since 1970s

[reporter]

Please read fascinating information about how nuclear energy is clean and safe and could drastically reduce our dependency on the oil from the Arabs. Unfortunately, we Americans have not built any nuclear plants since the 1970s.

So, this new way of processing nuclear waste will benefit all other Western nations besides the USA.

The USA is a great nation, and it is built by kind-hearted people with good values even though they have only an average intellect in areas of science. This average intellect is being manipulated by science frauds who claim that nuclear enery is a disaster waiting to happen. Most of Japan's electricity is generate by nuclear power plants.