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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.
Bring forth your ignorant, your undereducated and uneducated, your readers of dubious websites, and maybe, just maybe, one or two people who actually know what they're talking about.
Time for another nuclear waste disposal imbroglio!
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Cool - imagine an entire line of quasi-radioactive collectibles to decorate your Xmas tree and decorate that shelf above the fireplace that needs that something special.
After R'ing TFA, it looks like this is nothing new, just a slightly better method of vitrification. I don't know, the tone of the FA was a little, um, enthusiastic for an incremental improvement to an established method...
A house divided against itself cannot stand.
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...
Was I the only one that read "ACME" instead of Amec?
lasts two hundred thousand years - far longer than any radioactivity will last
There will be some residual radioactivity in any nuclear waste forever - I presume that they meant far longer than the half-life...
Ground Zero, have developed a new process for storing nuclear waste that lasts two hundred thousand years
:P
I won't believe them until they have done it just once. Until then it theoretically lasts two hundred thousand years
Couple this story with the recent pronouncement by James Lovelock and others that nuclear power may in fact be the only way to save the world after all, how does this square?
Nuclear energy seems to boil down to two things: cost and danger. If we sort out the first one, will we learn to live with the second? After all, in terms of simple loss of life, cars kill about the same number of people every year as a jumbo jet going down with all hands, and we accept that as necessary.
"And the meaning of words; when they cease to function; when will it start worrying you?"
Glowing glass spikes would be even cooler than lava lamps. (Yes, you'd have to mix stuff in to get the glow.) And they'd last for generations of stunted mutant troglodytes with no use of fossil fuels--talk about your green power!
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
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?
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.
Why don't they just form it into a nice little arrow/bullet shape and use that instead of depleted uranium in the military.... That way it will be in one of 3 places, a firing range, a foreign country, or an enemy of the US. :) Ready.... aim.... glow.........
Cliff Claven
K.E.G. Party Chairman
Founding Leader of: Koncerned for Egalitarin Governance
No offense intended to the people of the article, but some of that waste (if we are talking used fuel elements) still contains Uranium and Plutonium which has a half life of 10^8 years. While I am pretty sure I won't live to see that, It still is a pretty messy thing to deal with.
One thing that this sort of storage technology is good for is for the short lived stuff with half lives in the hundreds of years.
My humble opinion is that this technology is used after the really long lived nasty stuff is separated and destroyed (neutron bombardment looks promising). There was an Argone National Labs Experimental Sodium reactor that in "proof of concept" separated all the uranium from spent fuel (electro refining)but the program was cancelled due to budget cuts.
Believe it or not, there is technology being researched to destroy radioactive waste products with accelerators that actually looks like it may work.
The real question is, how can we apply this technology to finally seal up the leakage from around Chernobyl permanently? The last time I read anything about it, the sarcophagus that was built around the plant was leaking terribly and radiation is permiating the area. This sounds like a great application of the new process, but I wonder what sort of hurdles will have to be overcome to actually implement the design in that part of the world.
60 percent of the time, my comments are right everytime.
This sort of thing is done already, and often glass is packed inside a metal layer/container. Take transport: if you got fluid components, dust, or pressurised gasses, and there's an accident, the stuff spills all over the place, and into air, ground water. If it's glass, it may go in pieces, but the pieces stay were they are, with the radioactive material trapped inside.
The problem is factoring in the cost of running a nuclear waste compound for 200,000 years, into the price of the electricity generated today by nuclear power.
The Vitreous State Lab at The Catholic University of America has been doing this for 30 years. Read a recent article here.
You do realize that the longer the half life, the slower it's breaking down, so the less radioactive the object is, right?
Right?
Ah.
--Dan
Since they mix the material with soil to form the glass, maybe they should use soil from a place where it's been contaminated by lead? (Safe storage and toxic cleanup, bonus!)
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
Although "harder than concrete" sounds "strong" it does not address the chief danger in long-term storage. Chemical erosion and leaching are a bigger issue than brute strength. Anyone who has ever thought about geology and objects like geodes will realize that quartz is both much harder than concrete, but also (over the long term) water soluble. The real trick is to encapsulate the waste in something that won't dissolve or allow the migration of waste isotopes in the heat, potential liquids, and long timescales of waste storage. (I'm sure hardness is somewhat of an issue when trapped alpha particles and decay products create expansion stresses in the glass)
I do think that vitrification is the way to go, but statements like these do the public no good when they mislead them on what characteristics actually make for a good containment system.
Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do.
The problem is not how hard glass is, but how brittle it is. Normal glass is harder than most metals (steel, for example) but it is very brittle, and chips/breaks easily. Concrete isn't exactly immune to this either, while we are on the subject. So hurray! It's hard enough to survive a journey though the ass of an RIAA lawyer, but will it shatter into a trillion radioactive pieces if some bozo drop's it?
I browse on +1 so AC's need not respond, I won't see it.
Of the top of my head... There was some discussion and research done a while back to establish what sort of symbolic warning to future generations we could use on the surface above extremely hazardous waste such as long half-life radiactive material. The idea of using a lot of large monolith type needles came up, these were supposed to be truly massive and the idea was to convey 'dont dig here', or something. It seems pretty sensible to at least try and warn future generations about an area such as a geologic waste depository but what if the warning signs get misconstrued? If we ever wipe our selves out, which is more than likely in my opinion, then would the next round of intelligent life understand what we ment? Might not such a legacy raise the same kind of curiosity that we have and lead to some archealogical dig only to get themselves zapped...
my other sig is written in brainfuck
The rocket would melt before getting there. They'd have to send it at night.
After all, my Uncle says that is what they do with the radio active mining equipment, and he has been down the largest uranium mine in Australia - Olympic Dam.
The Internet's nature is peer to peer - 20050301_cs_profs.pdf
And since the mantle's already highly radioactive --- radioactive heating is one of the things that drives Earth's geology --- the fact that the waste is radioactive is hardly going to be a problem.
Provided you make sure that the initial hole is deep enough to be well under the water table, this form of disposal should be both cheap and entirely safe.
One of the waste products produced by nuclear reactors is Iodine-129. The half-life of I129 is 15.7 million years.
You'll have a greater risk of radiation exposure from going outside on a sunny day than from all the iodine-129 in the world. The point about keeping an eye on iodine-129 is because it's found together with the more dangerous isotopes, iodine-131 and iodine-133, which have half-lifes of 8.02 days and 21 hours respectively, making them very active and dangerous substances:
From http://www.jaeri.go.jp/english/press/2001/011017/ (Japan Atomic Energy Research Institute):
Among the radionuclides emitted during a nuclear accident, the Iodine (131I, 133I) isotopes exhibit strong radioactivity that affects the human body but they are difficult to quantify because they have short half-lives and turn quickly into stable, non-radioactive substances. On the other hand, the iodine-129 that is hardly hazardous at all due to its long half-life period is emitted at a certain ratio with respect to iodine-131 and iodine-133. The measurement of iodine-129 makes it possible to estimate the emission of radioactive substances such as iodine-131
Iodine-129 by itself is hazardous for roughly 0 seconds, 0 minutes and 0 years. So which physics course did you take again?
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"...
A house divided against itself cannot stand.
You'd rather I didn't correct it?
I'd rather you not correct it with a half-truth like say, oh, picking an extremely long-lived compound whose contribution to the total radioactivity of the waste is minute at best.
Plutonium also has a very long half life.
24000 years, IIRC. As you admit yourself, after 10x the half-life (=240000 years, in the same ballpark as the 200 000 years claimed) most of the radiactivity from plutonium has disappeared.
I assume you wouldn't eat it for breakfast.
Of course not. I wouldn't want to eat any other heavy metal for breakfast either, they all tend to be quite toxic to biological life.
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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.
It would take more energy to launch the rocket into the sun than you'd get from the nuclear fuel in the first place. People think that the sun is an easy target because it's "down" in the gravity well, but you have to remember that you're starting with earth's orbital velocity, which you need to cancel out to 'fall' to the sun. That's about 18.5 miles/second.
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.
SLASHDOT: news for people who can't concentrate on work or have no life at all and got tired of yelling back at the TV.
That's about the same amount of output as 17 modern LWRs. THe PBMR is well suited to areas without an existing electrical infrastructure. Using PBMRs to power the U.S. isn't practical and that's not what they're designed to do.
Now if you built 100 additional LWRs and double the nuclear power production in the U.S. (up to 40% from today's 20%) you'd have a massive impact on greenhouse gas emissions (We'd be able to join the Kyoto protocol) and reduce our reliance on foreign sources of natural gas. Very little oil is used for electricity generation in the U.S.
Heating the soil up that high to melt it into glass will also vaporize the lead and send it into the air.
It's been around here since 1969, and still used today in La Hague nuclear repocessing plant. You will find many details (in english) on the web site of the CEA (Commissariat à l'Énergie Atomique), a governmental agency. They say that glass packages are guaranteed for millions of years.
The faster a substance decays, the more energy it emits. Conversely, substances which only decay very slowly emit very little radiation. Thus U-238, with it half-life of 4.5 billion years is far less radioactive than, say, Carbon-14 with its half-life of approximately 5,730 years. There are, of course, different types of decay, and heavier atoms tend to decay producing alpha particles and gamma rays rather than the beta particles that are common in lighter elements. Even so, elements with half-lives measured in millions of years do not typically emit enough radiation to be a threat to humans or to nature. The intensively radioactive products tend to get rid of themselves, so it is the medium intensity materials, such as the infamous Sr-90, with half-lives measured in months to millenia, that are particularly dangerous. It is also worth noting that alpha, beta and gamma rays can not make materials radioactive - it is neutrons that do that - and that alpha particles, which are the least penetrative of the three primary radiative products of nuclear decay, are also the most strongly ionising, while gamma rays, the most penetrating, are the least ionising, given the fact that they consist of mere EM radiation rather than charged particles like alpha and beta rays.
Humans are exposed to ionising radiation every day, and have been during the entirety of history. For this reason we have a variety of genetic repair mechanisms. The mere presence of ionising radiation is not a matter of concern; under normal circumstances the most significant sources of such radiation are natural. It is only when the level of radioactivity overwhelms the body's natural defenses that radioactivity becomes a threat to human health.
Sometimes you don't get immobilization. We had a prototype of this years ago here in Oak Ridge, TN, developed by Martin Marietta Molten Metals (M4) where they tried in situ vitrification by sticking these huge carbon electrodes into a prepared testbed in an open field. What little water was trapped inside caused a massive steam explosion that blew hot dirt for a radius of hundreds of feet.
I'm now the technical support for the financial servers for the federal bankruptcy court for M4.
There's glass, and then there's glass. "Normal" doesn't tell us much. The Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago, IL, US has (had, anyway) a room full of glass springs, etc. and a glass block which has had a large iron ball dropped on it many times daily over *years* so people can see the effect on polarized light passing through it as it is stressed.
Well-made glass is not just hard, it is *tough*. Proper formulation and annealing yields a very durable material. Not much at all like that cheap stuff they use to make jars for spaghetti sauce.
An error in the story:
Plutonium has a half time of 44.000 years.
If you put 1 kg plutonium in a glass block, after 44.000 years 500 grams are still there. After 88.000 its down to 250 grams, after 200000 years still 30 grams are left. So if you put 10 kg into such a block, after 200000 years still 300 grams are left.
The press release of the research team is missleading as well. In germany the deposition of waste, radioactive or not, in different kinds of glass is a long researched topic.
At my town where I live is the research center, and I know people involved in such researches.
Most glasses are somewhat vulnerable to acids. So the question, still to answer is: where to deposite the glass blocks? In germany it was for a long time an idea to place them in salt mines (we have a lot under surface piles of old stone salt).
Salt mines are considered "dry", very dry. However: a lot of salt compositions contain so called "crystal water". That means a crystal, a kind of big mollecule, contains captured water.
The ionisating rays of decaying material can break up such molecules and the water is set free. As such water can dissolve salt it can become to an aggressive acid which even harms very robust glass kinds.
Now you would think about a protecting surface over the glass blocks, that wont help much. Most places where you would store the glass blocks, will eventually be covered by the montain. The pressure if the mountain moves likely cracks a block once a while, and that block then is vulnerable to aggressive acids.
That said, glass blocks surely are a "quite save" way to handel our current problems. But they are no holly grail like the industrie likes to tell us.
Interesting is: in germany the research results are not public disclosed. In politics its still talked as if salt mines would be a perfect storage, but a granit mountain would be likely much better. I guess if you ask (or search for PDFs) you might get the information easyly, its an EU sponsored research project. However in media its not covered: htp://www.fzk.de (or probably the institute site: www.ine.fzk.de -- I did not check if they have their own site)
angel'o'sphere
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
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.
Dumping this glass on the sea floor still means we'd wind up with irradiated fish and coral.
Or we drop them into tectonic subduction zones. The glass would (eventually) get pulled into the earth.
"I don't know, therefore Aliens" Wafflebox1
Except glass is actually a liquid, and flows quite readily on a scale of centuries, let alone millenia, and you wouldn't want groundwater carrying any surface contamination off those glass blocks.
Christ, is that urban legend still around? No, glass is not a liquid.
ZFS: because love is never having to say fsck
Radioactive compounds and their isotopes are dangerous for two reasons.
1. They are radioactive and emit energy in dangerous quantities/frequencies. This energy destroys DNA and tissue causing burns and genetic mutations.
2. The elements are inherently toxic in the same way that lead and mercury vapor is toxic. Uranium is a toxic heavy metal separate from its potential radioactivity. This is why depleted uranium bullets and shells are such a bad idea.
Radioactive waste that is dangerous for reason #1 is low volume, high level and short-lived.
Radioactive waste that is dangerous for reason #2 is high volume, low level (radioactive intensity) and is long lived. In fact is is always toxic just like lead is always toxic.
#1 Radioactive waste turns into #2 radioactive waste pretty quickly. The half lives are between years and decades (maybe centuries).
Long-term storage requires a combination of "burning out" the high level stuff with breeders or keeping it safe for a few decades and then burning the resulting low level waste with all the other low level waste somewhere relatively safe. This low level waste is not going to kill anyone anytime soon. In fact diluting it is probably better than keeping it in the same place. These elements of low level waste are found in nature as a matter of course but at lower concentrations. A few thousand year round trip under the earth's crust would elminate the risk.
The bigger risks come from transporting the waste to the waste disposal site. Glass beads/bricks that can take the impact of a train wreck may be more important than beads that can take 5000 years of pressure sitting under a mountain.
Let's also not discount the fact that we will have amazing technologies in the next few centuries. If we blow ourselves up instead then the disaster of that outcome will probably sterilize the earth for eons. But if we do last a few more centuries than we will be burning this "waste" as fuel anyhow. It's not that big of a problem.
Sustainability and energy independence essay
The idea that plutonium is "one of the most poisonous substances on earth" is complete nonsense. In fact, plutonium barely qualifies as a toxin at all. Yes, it can cause cancer, which may eventually kill you. But lots of substances will kill you far more quickly at far smaller dosages. Some that are quite likely present in your neighborhood include digitoxin (foxgloves), convallaria (lily-of-the-valley), and aflatoxin (food molds). And substances such as Indian cobra venom, ricin, botulism, or anthrax are so much more toxic than plutonium that there is really no comparison.