NMR Shows That Nuclear Storage Degrades

eldavojohn writes to point out recent research using nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) imagery that shows that certain nuclear waste storage containers may not be as safe as previously thought. From the article: "[R]adiation emitted from [plutonium] waste could transform one candidate storage material into less durable glass after just 1,400 years — much more quickly than thought... The problem is that the radioactive waste damages the matrix that contains it. Many of the waste substances, including plutonium-239, emit alpha radiation, which travels for only very short distances (barely a few hundredths of a millimeter) in the ceramic, but creates havoc along the way."

Comments

It's an economic problem in the US.

[ciscoguy01]

The trouble with spent nuclear reactor waste is the quantity of the stuff.
In France they reprocess the used fuel, which results in about an 80% conversion to new useable nuclear fuel. So rather than having 100 tons of nuclear waste, they have 20 tons that have to be stored indefinitely.
Here in the US we don't reprocess our spent fuel, because it costs more to reprocess that to just make new.
This is an economic problem that results in us having to stockpile the whole amount of spent fuel, forever.
If it cost less to reprocess, or if reprocessing were required to reduce the amount of spent fuel for storage, we would have and 80% smaller problem.
But we don't.
Personally, I think that would be worthwhile just to reduce the storage requirement.

Re:It's an economic problem in the US.

[b0s0z0ku]

Here in the US we don't reprocess our spent fuel, because it costs more to reprocess that to just make new.

Only because the government is subsidizing the eventual building of a storage facility. Also, have we considered the risks of the current state of things - which is that the highly-radioactive spent fuel elements are lying around (under guard, but still...) in dry casks or reactor water pools.

Besides, environmental costs also have to be considered. It's not just the storage of a large mass of fuel. The environmental toll also includes damage due to uranium mining and extraction, enrichment of the uranium - both of which involve some pretty evil chemicals (UF6, yummmmmmm).

-b.

Re:It's an economic problem in the US.

[cperciva]

In France they reprocess the used fuel, which results in about an 80% conversion to new useable nuclear fuel. So rather than having 100 tons of nuclear waste, they have 20 tons that have to be stored indefinitely.

In fact, it's even better than that: Those 20 tons which remain as waste are considerably "hotter" than the useful fuel, and thus degrade faster. Instead of keeping 100 tons of waste for 240,000 years, they need to keep 20 tons of waste for 100 years.

Re:It's an economic problem in the US.

[Chris Burke]

I also would love to see your reaction when the nuke plant 2 miles from your house melts down and the authorities are rousting you out of your house to clear the area.

It wasn't necessary for TMI, so why do you think it would in a newer, safer design? Things like pebble bed reactors whose very physical design dictates that the chain reaction will slow down if the reactor ever becomes too hot, making meltdown physically impossible.

You're vastly more likely to have to flee your home due to a truck carrying industrial chemicals getting in a wreck -- as in, this has actually happened -- but I don't hear you calling for the end of industrialization.

I live in Illinois, the most nuclearized state in the US, so it's not just an armchair discussion to me.

And how many meltdowns have there been? Right, zero. Gary, Indiana is a bigger source of health risk to Illinois residents than your nuclear plants are. Your coal plants are a bigger health risk. Just like people living around the TMI plant were exposed to more radiation from underground radon gas than by the TMI incident.

Illinois, "the most nuclearized state in the US", gets about 50% of its energy from nuclear. France gets almost 80% of their power from nuclear. How many meltdowns have there been? Right, zero. I guess it isn't hypothetical to them, either, but they come out on the other side of the debate.

By the way, it wasn't theoretical to me, either, as while I was attending the University of Michigan they had an active nuclear reactor on campus. Strangely it too failed to meltdown and explode.

So the "special interests" you are talking about are people like me.

No, you're one of the people who have an irrational fear of the nuclear boogeyman that I'm talking about.

The problem with nuclear power is that the worst case is very bad. If the containment fails in a major accident, you'll get a whole lot of coal plants worth of radiation in a hurry. A coal plant, regardless of the failure mode, is unable to permanently radioactively contaminate an area. Something like Chernobyl in a US metro area would cost hundreds of billions of dollars.

Then don't build reactors like Chernobyl, duh. TMI wasn't built like that, so when it failed it didn't blow up like Chernobyl did. It is possible to design a reactor so badly that it has the potential to pull a Chernobyl. It is also possible to design a reactor so it doesn't. TMI didn't, and it is still considered an archaic design and no new reactor would be built in the same way. So where does this fear of "something like Chernobyl" come from? Hollywood?

Why? Human factors, primarily, because of the complexity of the technology and the risks posed by major failure. People blame "regulation" on the one hand for making the plants expensive, then with the other extoll the failsafe design demanded by these regulations for preventing the Chernobyl-type disaster. You can't have it both ways.

Well the key to preventing a Chernobyl-type disaster is to use a modern design that cannot fail in that manner. The key to avoiding the problem of human factors is to design your reactor such that no matter what the human does the worst case is that the reaction stops and the nuclear fuel is wasted. I'm still all for regulation that ensures safety, but proper reactor design means that safetly regulations needn't by themselves prove prohibitive.

If we had allowed nuclear technology development to continue apace with the rest of the world, our reactors would be better and cheaper and we would have cleaner air and more reliable energy. Instead, the major economic argument against nuclear is that we're so far behind that it would be prohibitively expensive to catch back up. Well that's only going to get worse over time, so I say turn it around now.

Re:'Sinking it' doesn't make it magically 'go away

[cartman]

So you're talking about essentially land-mining a significant chunk of the planet, some of the most unstable parts of the planet, with the possibility that still-lethal material could suddenly, randomly, re-enter our parts of the environment, with catastrophic results.

It seems extremely unlikely that waste from a subduction zone could re-enter "our parts of the environment." Uranium and transuranic actinides are extremely heavy elements and they would be stored as enormous 1-ton+ spent fuel assemblies in synrock or passivated glass at the bottom of the ocean. They are heavier than water. Even if earthquakes fractured the fuel assemblies, they still would not rise to the top of the ocean somehow, then somehow heat up to 5000+ degrees celcius, then vaporize and spread through the air. In fact, recovering one of the sunk fuel assemblies would be very difficult.

However I have read one plausible scenario that small amounts of radioactive waste stored at the bottom of the ocean could re-enter our environment. Over long periods of time, it may break up, then small amounts of it could be consumed by ocean animals, then it could travel its way up the food chain and eventually be consumed by a human eating seafood. However, the chances of that are very small and the quantities consumed are very small, and it would be far off in the future when most of the radioactivity had already been lost. In other words it would not constitute "catastrophic results".

There was also some concern about the health of ocean animals in the immediate vicinity of waste.

Still, stable terrestrial storage would be more effective for various reasons, according to what I've read.

Finally, regarding the majority of your posting: While there are indeed alarmist/ignorant/self-serving 'environmentalists', as there are boobs and headline-graspers in every part of human endeavor, there are also arrogant self-righteous techno-weenies with equally poor understanding of the topics on which they opine. As much as you look down on those you deem ignorant, those who are informed can look down on your ignorance, which to a self-aware person would suggest an attitude-check would be in order. (Frankly you come off not much different then the stereotyped asshats you rail against.)

Strange. I found the tone of his post to be far more temperate than yours.

As much as you look down on those you deem ignorant, those who are informed can look down on your ignorance, which to a self-aware person would suggest an attitude-check would be in order.

Indeed, perhaps an attitude check is in order by a "self-aware" person.

Re:Kill two birds with one stone

[san]

There are countries (the Netherlands, for example) that send their nuclear waste to France, too. The deal, however, is usually that the countries take back the reprocessed waste, and the waste processor gets to keep the fuel.