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

Whiskey Tango Hotel

[AKAImBatman]

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.

First of all, why is that stuff sitting in a nuclear waste container? It's good, fissile material that could supply much-needed energy to our power grid. Stop being a bunch of pansies and BURN IT IN A REACTOR! That will not only massively reduce the amount of waste, but it will turn much of the remaining material into extremely hot isotopes that will go inert (or nearly so) in a much shorter period of time.

Secondly, Pu-239 emits a very small amount of radiation. With a half-life of 24,000 years, it barely even raises the background levels. At a whopping 10 fissions per kilo per second, I doubt that much of the radiation is even escaping the material. I presume that the real safety problem is Pu-240 contaimination. A problem that wouldn't exist if they burned the materials instead of storing them.

Lastly, can someone please inform the press that the 1980's called? They want their "one of the most deadly by-products" scare-mongering back. There are far more deadly materials in this world than a bit of plutonium. Caffeine being a prime example. We dillute caffeine so much that we don't realize that too a few grams is actually quite deadly. (Find out how much of your favorite caffinated product would be needed to kill you here.) So maybe we can start reporting these things for what they are (engineering and safety issues) rather than what they're not (mini-Chernobyl levels of contamination). Maybe? *sigh* I suppose not.

Someone should setup a lobby group who's job would be to convince the government to let us use our nuclear fuels instead of declaring everything as waste in a mostly useless gesture to stop the mythical nuclear terrorist of the month.

Re:Whiskey Tango Hotel

[AKAImBatman]

A few micrograms of inhaled plutonium dust could significantly increase your risk of lung cancer.

And you're going to get airborne particals of a material with an atomic weight of 94 from an underground bunker, how again?

Safety tip: Don't grind up your plutonium with diamond reinforced tools from Home Depot.

Moreover, the "most deadly material" label for plutonium is usually associated with the Pu238 used in RTGs.

1. RTFA. It calls Pu-239 "one of the most deadly by-products of nuclear power". Their words, not mine.

2. Pu-238 is HOT. As in temperature wise. Its actual radioactive properties are not nearly as deadly due to its primary mode of decay being Alpha particles. (Unless, of course, you just can't resist drilling or grinding some in your home workshop to make airborne particles. In that case, you'll be forever immortalized in the Darwin awards. And if you manage to survive somehow, expect the feds to be less than happy with your posession of such materials.)

Seriously, it's not like this stuff is going to start oozing into everything. It's pretty stable (and HEAVY!) stuff. It's not going anywhere. It should be treated as a potentially toxic material, but it's not anywhere near a leading cause of death, nor is it likely to become one. Most of the nuclear materials problems we have are due to contamination from nuclear detonations. Contamination we've lived with for over 50 years.

This is a totally different isotope from the waste you're discussing, and with a half-life measured in a few decades rather than thousands of years, it is extremely deadly.

You forgot, "if inhaled or ingested". Touching it will probably give you third degree burns and a mildly elevated dosage of gamma and X-rays.

Basically, handle with care as you would any volatile industrial material. It's deadly to the handler if handled improperly, just like every other dangerous industrial material. Treat with proper respect, and don't stick your fingers in any rotating blades.

We...

[TransEurope]

...should store the waste at the dark side of the moon.
I suggest to build a moon base near the dump yard to for
observing. Since there is a lot of radiactive waste, there should be
more than one yard, so the first one should be named Alpha-1.

Waste?

[Hatta]

A couple questions for anyone who knows more than me:

1) If this stuff is still hot, doesn't it mean there's still energy there we could use?

2) This stuff came from the ground, why can't we put it back there?

True, but what about the upside?

[ChePibe]

Yes, yes, we know the problems with this. But what about the benefits? While there may be some negative health benefits, the super hero population is only bound to grow with this recent discovery.

You can't make an omelet without cracking a few eggs, and you can't make super mutants with laser vision without cracking some radioactive material storage facilities. Let's take a balanced look at this.

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.

[LehiNephi]

I don't know whether it's economical or not to reprocess the fuel, but in the US, the point is moot because the US has a ban on reprocessing.

The benefits of reprocessing aren't just limited to the physical amount of waste. Reprocessing also removes the actinides that are responsible for the oft-referenced 10,000-year storage. Without the actinides, the waste is safe after only about 300 years.

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

[WED Fan]

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

Actually, we don't reprocess it because there are some very serious special interest groups that have been very vocal and have blocked almost every attempt to build updated, new reactors and processing plants. Leaving us in a much more dangerous position than if they hadn't sounded off.

There are certain political movements that end up causing more harm, in the end, than the particular topic they are protesting. The no-nuclear-power crowd is one of them.

Three Mile Island is an example of how the system actually works to protect.

Chern...churn...that Ukraine power plant is an example of how the system fails.

The U.S. has exactly 0 old-Soviet designed power plants in operation.

Question: How many modern nuclear power plants are in France and Japan?

Question: Who leads the world in modern nuclear power plants?

It ain't the U.S. The U.S. has exactly 0 modern power plants in production. The U.S. has some of the most polluting oil and coal burning plants because the vocal nut jobs won't let us build modern plants of any kind.

Question: What major, technological leading power in the world has the most at-risk power production scheme?

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

[chrish]

The American government honours treaties now?

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

[Firethorn]

It was banned by presidential order by Jimmy Carter in 1977 due to fears of reproccessing resulting in proliferation.

Still, reprocessing is going on today in France and Japan, at the least.

Like others said, the 'waste' sitting on site could be reprocessed to provide enough fuel and reduce the amount of waste to the point that Yucca mountain wouldn't be necessary.

Going with breeder reactors and other more efficient designs would be good too.

Personally, if I was the EO(Evil Overlord) of the USA, I'd institute a practice of reprocessing nuclear waste as well as a building program to replace all the coal plants with modern nuclear ones. Kyoto, eat my dust. After shutting down all the coal plants, I'd work on replacing the old nuclear ones.

Result: Clean, safe, plentiful electricity, reduced emissions, etc...

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

[Chris Burke]

Three Mile Island is an example of how the system actually works to protect.

Fun Three Mile Island fact: The TMI reactor suffered a form of worst-case failure -- a runaway reaction when all of the control rods were removed and could not be reinserted -- and as a result released less radiation into the atmosphere than a coal plant does in a single day of normal operation.

Reactor designs have only improved since then.

There are political forces at work against nuclear power, and they have galvanized a large portion of the populace with fear of the nuclear boogeyman. There is no rational reason to fear nuclear power any more. If we can work on that issue, then maybe we can start to work on the political issues. With people still screaming in terror at the thought of nuclear power, we can never build the momentum to take on the special interests.

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

[Vellmont]

It was banned by presidential order by Jimmy Carter in 1977 due to fears of reproccessing resulting in proliferation.

Which might have made some political sense at the time, given that we were in the middle of a cold war and everyone was insane about making more and more nuclear weapons.

But now it's just dumb, and should eventually be reversed. There's no political will to do it right now for a number of reasons. It's cheaper to just buy new fuel, so the power plant lobby doesn't really want it to happen. The far left is scared shitless by anything nuclear, so even though it's a wise environmental move they sure as hell don't want to support it, and the far right wants to bury it's head in the sand with any environmental concern. So who's left? A few geeks who value efficiency and aren't afraid of things they don't initially understand.

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

[Arcane_Rhino]

Personally, if I was the EO(Evil Overlord) of the USA, I'd institute...

Good news, the position for new EO is opening next year. So far, yours is the best platform, if you are interested.

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:1,400 years

[jimstapleton]

you were probably a fan of storing dates as 2 characters in the 90s a well...

Re:So why not sink it?

[AKAImBatman]

So why not sink it?

Or better yet, why not use it? There are hundreds (perhaps thousands!) of industrial uses for nearly every nuclear material imaginable. Everything from illumination products to smoke detection to electronic level detectors to medical imaging and therapy to decade-long batteries use nuclear materals. Not to mention that the Pu-239 mentioned in the article is an excellent source of nuclear fission for power production.

If we actually put the stuff to good use, we wouldn't have to bury, sink, or launch much of anything. Instead, we sit around and worry that terrorists are going to steal plutonium to make a very complicated implosion bomb rather than stealing the supposedly "safer" Uranium we currently use. Nevermind that the Uranium could be used to make a super-simple gun-type nuclear bomb that could be constructed without massive computational resources, dozens of nuclear scientists, and actual test sites that would show up on a seismograph. No, it's much better to worry about Plutonium.

Sorry for the rant. This is something of a hot button issue for me. It's just stupid that we're not putting all this *good* material to use rather than trying to find a place to bury it. It doesn't make a lick of sense to anyone except politicians.

Re:So why not sink it?

[Short Circuit]

Burying waste at sea is a violation of international law.

My own idea was to bury the waste in a subduction zone, so that the waste would be drawn back into the Earth's mantle. Turns out, however, that that's also considered burial at sea.

No, I don't remember where I read the above info. Some site dedicated to discussion of the disposal of nuclear waste, IIRC.

Re:1,400 years

[eno2001]

It's perfectly logical as you WILL be coming back genetically if you have offspring. Assuming you have a child or children, and they do the same, you will eventually have a LOT of people connected to you. It's completely logical to care for their well-being. It's completely ILLOGICAL to be oblivious to this fact. Now... if you plan on never having kids, then you are welcome to be short sighted. I think living without a care for the future while having your own children is essentially being a "deadbeat meta-parent".

Wow! A modern super hero!

[ChePibe]

Hyper-sensitive man! Able to look through an obvious joke with his penetrating sarcasm ignoring vision! No internet joke is safe!

I kid, I kid...

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

[maggard]

Because, contrary to your Grade 6 "Earth Sciences Unit" animated filmstrip, subduction zones aren't neat little escalator-like places where material goes into some sort of geological garbage disposal system like you might have attached to your sink.

Instead they're messy places where continental blocks are crashing into each other in tremendously slow motion, riding up over, breaking off, dissolving, melting, all that good stuff. Material dropped on one of these places is could just lay there for the longer then we've been a species. However there is a strong possibility this material won't always just lie there but instead break up, on it's own or under subduction-related volcanic or seismic activity, and spread into the larger ecosystem (garbage in is indeed garbage out!)

While this breakdown & distribution could be a slow process it would be a chaotic environment and 'bad things' could just as well happen 'fast', with disastrous consequences. Keep in mind that while out of sight and generally low energy places the deep ocean beds are not disconnected from the rest of the planet and are also subject to disturbances; subduction zones hugely so.

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.

Yeah. No. Not a good idea.

Better to minimize the amount of material. Convert it into the least reactive forms economically & technically practical. Then using reliable systems (and that pretty much rules out 'under several thousand meters of water' with our current skills) isolate it as much as practicable in long-term stable places, and hope that future generations don't fuck with it in a bad way.

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.)

Re:1,400 years

[inviolet]

It's perfectly logical as you WILL be coming back genetically if you have offspring. Assuming you have a child or children, and they do the same, you will eventually have a LOT of people connected to you. It's completely logical to care for their well-being.

Why?

I myself am not coming back; only my genes will be, and then in a diluted form. I am not my genes; on the contrary, I am just a vehicle for my genes. They grew me in order to help them spread.

Don't worry, I agree with you about long-term planning. Indeed I have two sons and my thoughts are bent on their long-term wellbeing. All this gives me the euphoric glow of feeling virtuous. But that doesn't mean it's logical such that all parents who disagree are automatically in error.

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:1,400 years

[RicktheBrick]

We do not need 1400 years to find a much better way to dispose of this material. What will happen when we invent the technology(rail gun) to accelerate the material faster than escape velocity and than just launch the material into the sun. Future generations will be so bored that they will welcome this problem just to have something to do.

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.