Congressmen Pushing To Reopen Yucca Mountain

Bob the Super Hamste writes "CNN is reporting that a group of congressmen backed by the nuclear industry are pushing to reopen the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste site. The site has sat closed and uncompleted since the Obama administration scrapped the project. The article goes into the pros and cons of the Yucca Mountain site for storage and also brings up some interesting political issues involved in continuing development. It's also worth noting that there's been a fee on electric bills since 1983 for the building of the site."

Comments

About time

[wbean]

About time. We are fussing about whether this will be safe after 10,000 years and meanwhile we store the waste in overcrowded pools spread around the country and continue to burn coal, which is an environmental disaster all by itself, never mind what it does to the climate.

Re:About time

[Anonymous Coward]

And, as a bonus, if they start reprocessing the waste (and overturn Carter's executive order which outlawed the process), there will be enough storage in Yucca Mountain to store all the waste that will ever be made, until it's cooled, since most of the waste, by volume and mass, is just more fuel, and what IS really waste is hot enough to burn itself out on the scale of human life spans...

Re:About time

[Anonymous Coward]

lol you are making the mistake of thinking the argument is about common sense. Its about politics.

Re:About time

[Kamiza Ikioi]

Shhhh! You'll wake the tree huggers who only want to use biodegradable elf farts powering windmills in Denmark! Just imagine if a nuclear plant melts down! The entire world's salt supply will kill us all!.

As I've always said, solar and wind are great, where its sunny and windy. We need to stop the fantasy science and at LEAST use today's available science to solve today's problems. You wanna develop space solar panels and beam down power? Fine, we'll close the nuclear plants AFTER you get it working.

Re:About time

[trout007]

You seem to think that nuclear reactor byproducts were ever going to be stored there. This was always a jobs product. Tax electricity to pay to dig a big hole in the desert. It was never any more than that. You realize if the storage was allowed to open then more reactors would be built and electricity would get cheaper. That would make our lives better and help the economy. That is not what the politicians want. They want us miserable so they can gather power.

Re:About time

[bosef1]

It looks like the Ford and Carter bans on nuclear waste reprocessing were overturned by Reagan. The Wikipedia page on nuclear reprocessing has an overview of the current situation, and a link to a more in-depth summary of US reprocessing policy here (pdf).

Based on a quick read, it looks like one of the big hold-ups is that while the US isn't banning fuel reprocessing, it isn't subsidising it either; but that's just from a quick read and I encourage you to do your own analysis.

Further, reading over the Wikipedia page, it looks like there have been some substantial improvements in the reprocessing chemistry that go a long way to mitigating the proliferation risks that were a concern in the 1970's.

Re:About time

[gnick]

You seem to think that nuclear reactor byproducts were ever going to be stored there. This was always a jobs product.

Let us fantasize. For many years, people were saying the exact same thing about WIPP. Trucks loaded with TRU-PAKs head down to Carlsbad all the time.

Re:About time

[Anonymous Coward]

We could do space solar today too. We already have everything we need to do it. Just one more thing we lack the political will to actually make happen I guess...

Re:About time

[atriusofbricia]

lol you are making the mistake of thinking the argument is about common sense. Its about politics.

It's far worse than that. It's about irrational fear on one hand and unknowledgeable hardcore anti-nuclear power fanatics on the other. How many times have we heard the anti-nuclear power crowd go on and on about there's no where to store the waste, and then when you bring up Yucca they switch to "well no you have to transport it!". What they really want to say is "Ban all nuclear power! Power everything with rainbow farts from Unicorns!"

Re:About time

[bhcompy]

You think people will be less scared of microwaves after so many people played Sim City 2000?

Re:About time

[trout007]

Different situation that proves my point. WIPP stores DOD waste. This comes from weapons that enrich their power so it's good.

Re:About time

[socz]

You hit the nail on its head: "it isn't subsidising it either"

From my conversations with others and general internet reading, other countries have been reprocessing their 'spent fuel/waste' and using it over again. In some discussions the reasons for lack of space (for storage) has come up as a primary reason of why they do it. And why they don't do it here in the U.S.A. is because of cost - it's much cheaper to just set it and "forget it" than process it which costs money. It's such a shame that it has been like this in the U.S.A.

Re:About time

[cdrguru]

I believe regardless of the science and actual process for reprocessing it is simply an equivalence in many politician's minds of reprocessing == proliferation. I believe the truth is that you get plutonium out as a "waste product" from straight fuel rod reprocessing but with some new formulations of fuel rods you may end up putting the plutonium back in.

My understanding of fuel reprocessing today is that it is somewhere around 97% of a fuel rod is available for using in a new fuel rod. In other words, only 3% of the mass of a fuel rod is truely "waste" and ends up needing to be buried somewhere for a long time.

Of course it is idiotic to be storing fuel rods which require cooling and isolation when they could be reprocessed with 97% of them being reused. But the nuclear politics are filled with idiocy.

Re:About time

[Anonymous Coward]

"Further, reading over the Wikipedia page, it looks like there have been some substantial improvements in the reprocessing chemistry that go a long way to mitigating the proliferation risks that were a concern in the 1970's."

The proliferation risks are also mitigated by something that I did not realize until recently: that like uranium, you have to have the right mix of plutonium isotopes for an effective nuclear weapon. I always thought uranium required difficult isotopic enrichment whereas plutonium you could derive from any waste reactor fuel chemically, making it a lot more dangerous from a proliferation standpoint (chemical processing is easy compared to isotopic separation). But it turns out the fuel has to have a brief duty cycle in the reactor to yield the right mix. It has to be low in 240Pu and high in 239Pu, otherwise the bomb will "fizzle" (predetonation). That means you can only put the fuel in the reactor for a relatively short time before having to take it out and process it for bomb use, otherwise the 240Pu builds up over time. For regular, commercially-used reactor fuel and reactor designs, it wouldn't work without seriously impeding the uptime for the reactor and even if you used a reactor design that allows fuel replacement while the reactor operates (e.g., CANDU reactors) it would be very wasteful and expensive for fuel. It's like you're barely using it before swapping it out. At typical fuel burnup rates before removal, there would usually be more than enough 240Pu to make its use in weapons unlikely if not impossible without isotopic separation. You probably need a dedicated reactor like the ones the military used, and it would be fairly obvious if you were trying to cheat by running more fuel quickly through a regular reactor than normal. So the proliferation issues of reprocessing seem overblown to me unless there's some subtlety I'm missing. Regardless, if you monitor the isotopic composition of the plutonium coming in or going out of the reprocessing system it's going to be easy to tell if someone is trying to use it for weapons, and you could always intentionally poison the mix (swap in some plutonium with more 240Pu) to keep the batch below levels of concern. While you could isotopically separate the plutonium, good luck with that -- it would be more difficult and dangerous than separating natural uranium (even less mass difference than U-235 versus U-238), and anyone capable of doing that would take the easier uranium route.

Incidentally, too much 240Pu is thought to be one of the reasons North Korea's initial nuclear test fizzled. Some more background on the effect of 240Pu on weapons here and here.

Re:About time

[dkf]

We could do space solar today too. We already have everything we need to do it. Just one more thing we lack the political will to actually make happen I guess...

We also lack large-scale heavy lift capacity. It's currently fantastically expensive to put things in space, and almost all of that cost is due to moving mass from the bottom of a gravity well to (much closer to) the top. It's simply much cheaper to just put solar cells on the ground (assuming you're somewhere with plenty of insolation and relatively cheap land) even despite the reduction in efficiency due to the atmosphere. Plus it's easier to upgrade and easier to maintain.

Re:About time

[rmstar]

It's far worse than that. It's about irrational fear on one hand and unknowledgeable hardcore anti-nuclear power fanatics on the other.

Fair and balanced, heh?

It is between irresponsible nuclear energy fanbois on one hand and political and financial/technical reality on the other hand. Nuclear is not going anywhere, and it's time for the nuclear energy advocates to stop pretending. Things don't get anymore true because you repeat them over and over. When you weight the probability of something going wrong with the consequences it comes out that nuclear is not for most places on this planet.

It is simply not true that coal (for example) is worse than nuclear. It might be so on a an average day, but if shit hits the fan, nuclear can recover all the distance in a single day, and then make some the next day. And given the corruption and incompetence of the nuclear industry, we'll see another blow to its image within a decade. I'd bet it will be a Thorium reactor by the chinese, who are going to fuck up as surely as the sun gets up tomorrow.

Go ahead, claim it's impossible, so you are on the record when it does.

"Ban all nuclear power! Power everything with rainbow farts from Unicorns!"

How's that called. Nuclear strawman? Hahaha.

Re:About time

[ThorGod]

If it's not subsidized, then it's only a matter of time before cost of storing (un-reprocessed) waste meets the raw cost of fuel.

My understanding is that reprocessing generates plutonium, and that probably had/has something to do with a lack of reprocessing.

Get the cost of fossil fuels to be more efficient (i.e. incorporate negative externalities into the price of oil), and all this immediately becomes more interesting for everyone.

Re:About time

[mosb1000]

And WIPP makes sense, as it is a geologically stable formation. Yucca Mountain, not so much.

Re:About time

[atriusofbricia]

It's far worse than that. It's about irrational fear on one hand and unknowledgeable hardcore anti-nuclear power fanatics on the other.

Fair and balanced, heh?

It is between irresponsible nuclear energy fanbois on one hand and political and financial/technical reality on the other hand. Nuclear is not going anywhere, and it's time for the nuclear energy advocates to stop pretending. Things don't get anymore true because you repeat them over and over. When you weight the probability of something going wrong with the consequences it comes out that nuclear is not for most places on this planet.

It is simply not true that coal (for example) is worse than nuclear. It might be so on a an average day, but if shit hits the fan, nuclear can recover all the distance in a single day, and then make some the next day. And given the corruption and incompetence of the nuclear industry, we'll see another blow to its image within a decade. I'd bet it will be a Thorium reactor by the chinese, who are going to fuck up as surely as the sun gets up tomorrow.

Go ahead, claim it's impossible, so you are on the record when it does.

"Ban all nuclear power! Power everything with rainbow farts from Unicorns!"

How's that called. Nuclear strawman? Hahaha.

You want me to claim that there will never be another nuclear accident? You're right, that would be silly. It will likely happen again. But here's the thing. In the 60 odd years since the first commercial nuclear power plant came online we've had what, three accidents of note in commercial plants? One of which has never been proven to have harmed a single person and the last of which the consequences are admittedly unknown. What did it take to get that final incident? Just a 9.0 earthquake and a 43 foot tsunami. But yeah, totally unsafe and blow up all the time. Even the POS of Chernobyl was running fine until they started to muck about with it.

During those same 60 odd years, how many people were killed and injured in coal mining operations? A back of the napkin figure would be at least 15,000 dead. How many were directly killed by any nuclear disaster?

How many were injured by coal pollution? How much soot and related by products were released? You can't say that coal isn't worse than nuclear without taking into consideration the entire picture. Production to consumption. I tried to find evidence of uranium mine disasters or widescale environmental damage from uranium mines and was unable to find them. That isn't to say it is perfect and without fault, but it sure as hell didn't kill as many people.

All power production technologies currently known by mankind create pollution either at the point of production or construction. All power production technologies have risks. No exceptions.

You seem to be anti-nuclear. Fine. What's the alternative? I don't have a workable one and that is the only reason I would put it forth. Research should continue on alternatives, but for now everything else is either worse on some level or a pipe dream. If you say that you're totally against nuclear power then you're saying that you're okay with all the coal miners killed and the pollution released by that. You can't have it both ways.

You're right about one thing, politics is one of the primary limiting factors on safe nuclear power. People always have Chernobyl in mind when you talk nukes. Never mind that the risk of a Chernobyl style disaster is practically zero in a modernish non-Soviet junk reactor. Even Fukishima didn't just pop its top one day, did it? While keeping in mind that the risk of a serious disaster is extremely low, should we not at the very least replace the current reactors with even safer ones? Or would you rather we just shut them all off and blast out even more coal and gas pollution and let even more miners die. Would that be cool?

Re:About time

[wmbetts]

It's actually about Nevada residences say store your own fucking waste we don't want it.

Re:About time

[khallow]

And WIPP makes sense, as it is a geologically stable formation. Yucca Mountain, not so much.

Need I note that Yucca Mountain is also geologically stable (on time scales that involve nuclear waste)?

Re:About time

[Anonymous Coward]

Of course it is idiotic to be storing fuel rods which require cooling and isolation when they could be reprocessed with 97% of them being reused. But the nuclear politics are filled with idiocy.

That last part above really explains it. There are so many negative attitudes and so much misinformation (or just wrong information) out there concerning nuclear power and its implications, that politicians have a hard time standing up for what is right, even in the rare case that they understand the subject and actually have a real opinion of their own. Electricity can be generated vie nuclear fission at a relatively high level of safety (especially when you consider the full impact of coal and petroleum use), and the spent fuel CAN be dealt with safely, if we are willing to invest in modern facilities and use appropriate techniques. Too bad nuclear power is such a political hot potato - no one wants to touch it. Nuclear power needs a major advertising campaign, beginning at a grass-roots level, or else it will continue to be shunned.

Re:About time

[Anonymous Coward]

Shhhh! You'll wake the tree huggers who only want to use biodegradable elf farts powering windmills in Denmark! Just imagine if a nuclear plant melts down! >

Haha, I can think of at least three partial or full meltdowns (more if you want to count Fukushima as multiple meltdowns, which it was), and the sun still rises in the East. And we are a bit short on wind, rushing rivers, sunshine, and elf farts around here. Nuclear power, done right, is clean and safe. The problem is that people and politicians aren't so convinced of that, and many fission facilities need to be updated or completely replaced with more modern plants. The technology is maturing rapidly, and we know how to do it pretty well now.

Re:About time

[AmiMoJo]

As I've always said, solar and wind are great, where its sunny and windy

Not this shit again. Look, we have solar thermal collectors that work 24 hours a day 365 days a year. They are perfectly adequate for producing baseline power. Plus, there are parts of the earth where sunlight is guaranteed anyway, which is why the EU wants to build plants in north Africa.

Wind does vary, but we can store the energy and release it when needed. In fact we already do that with current nuclear and fossil generation. With storage in place you only need to look at average wind speeds and those are fairly stable.

You also forgot about tidal and geothermal which are 100% reliable.

Fine, we'll close the nuclear plants AFTER you get it working

Cool, we have it working so let's start closing those reactors down. Seriously, we have the technology to do it today. Why waste time developing new reactors that consume fuel and produce hazardous waste when we could spend it deploying clean renewables? It has nothing to do with climate change or anything like that, we just have a cheaper and overall better option now.

Re:About time

[AmiMoJo]

It's about irrational fear

The hardcore pro-nuclear power fanatics love trotting this one out.

Yes, theoretically nuclear can be completely safe. Unfortunately the reactors are run by companies whose primary motive is profit and by human beings who are naturally fallible.

Accidents do happen: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_civilian_nuclear_accidents

Now, I am aware that the amount of radiation leaked from Fukushima isn't dangerous to most people in Japan, certainly not in Tokyo where I was when it happened. The damage it has done to Japan's economy is very real though, particularly for farmers.

So, given that we have a choice between say solar thermal collectors which do not require fuel or produce any waste and nuclear I don't think it is unreasonable to argue that we should be pursuing the former rather than directing funds towards the latter. Obviously we can't just turn all reactors off today but doing so in the next 10 to 20 years is not an unreasonable goal for most developed countries.

Re:About time

[rmstar]

What did it take to get that final incident? Just a 9.0 earthquake and a 43 foot tsunami. But yeah, totally unsafe and blow up all the time. Even the POS of Chernobyl was running fine until they started to muck about with it.

The problem in Fukushima was loss of mains power together with generalized chaos from the monster tsunami. A sputtering cesna together with political unrest or mild underregulation of the nuclear companies can have the same effect. The monster tsunami is a nice cover, but is still a distraction.

I am with those who insist that the main technical problem with nuclear energy is a sound regulatory framework. I don't see it. And without it, it is unsafe technology.

A similar incident (you don't need a tsunami) in any German reactor would almost certainly trigger a collapse of its economy. In fact, had the reactor been closer to Tokyo, that would have been it, too. When you weight the small risk against the ridiculously huge consequences, I obtain a clear no. I can, however, imagine circumstances where it would be a clear yes: for example: build it underground in a remote area. And, as with the military, don't let a private company run it. Interestingly, none of this options are ever considered by the fanbois.

Re:About time

[Atzanteol]

A mistake may happen! Stop all production NOW!

It's unreasonable to believe anything will ever be completely safe. And it's counter-productive to crawl inside a hole because of it. The least we could do would be to build plants which are safer than the ones already operating and reduce the amount of pollution caused by current methods of producing electricity (or at least stop the expansion of said pollution in the future).

Re:About time

[AmiMoJo]

It is about levels of risk. If a solar thermal collector goes wrong at worst you have a fire and some molten salt leaking out. If a nuclear plant goes wrong you can have radioactive material spread over a very wide area.

Re:About time

[MachineShedFred]

The process they've been using for it (PUREX) has three outputs: Plutonium, Uranium, and all the other shit you don't want, in a nasty cocktail of actinides.

Once you've extracted the Pu and U, you can then recombine them into mixed-oxide (MOX) fuel, which will burn in the fleet of PWRs we have today. Rinse and repeat.

Re:About time

[Anonymous Coward]

Before you make comments about coal...you should do some research...coal is now burning cleaner and is used in areas that don't have the pollution that some big cities do...just do your research first. People should text more and talk less to save the ozone!

Re:About time

[Cyberax]

"Not this shit again. Look, we have solar thermal collectors that work 24 hours a day 365 days a year. "

Not that shit again. We DON'T have large-scale solar thermal collectors that work 24 hours a day. Let me repeat: WE DO NOT HAVE THEM. There is none of them.

The problem is: you need humongous amount of heat storage to last more than 1 hour. The largest molten-salt thermal collector plant has only 4 hours of autonomous capability, and it already poses some challenges.

Just calculate on a back of a napkin how much molten salt you need to store to power 1GWt_electric power plant for 12 hours.

The largest power plant with heat storage is http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andasol_Solar_Power_Station which stores only 1TWt*hr of heat. That requires a cylindric reservoir of 36 m in and diameter 14 m height. A 1GWt*hr_electric power plant would need around 2GWt*hr of stored heat for one hour of operation, so for 20 hours of Sun-less operation you'd need 40GWt*hr of stored heat. That'd be a cylinder of 72 meters in diameter and 140 meters in height.

Re:About time

[AmiMoJo]

We DON'T have large-scale solar thermal collectors that work 24 hours a day. Let me repeat: WE DO NOT HAVE THEM. There is none of them.

Except the ones in Spain, Italy and the US you mean? I think China has one too, can't be arsed to Google it for you.

Re:About time

[Rich0]

it's much cheaper to just set it and "forget it" than process it which costs money. It's such a shame that it has been like this in the U.S.A.

Well, like many things in the US it is only because of external costs. The taxpayers pay the cost of storage, so storage is "free." In the same way, taxpayers pay to blow up people in the middle east, treat lung cancer, and ultimately relocate cities, which makes burning oil "cheaper."

If taxpayers are going to foot the bill for storage then they should just reprocess the waste. We're just saving ourselves money. By all means charge some kind of tariff to de-externalize some of the cost, but while you're at it pay for troops in the Middle East using tariffs on imported oil. With the external costs factored in, let the market sort it out. Of course, many "market advocates" don't have anything like this in mind - they just want to avoid any regulation at all.

Re:About time

[Anonymous Coward]

You obviously do not live in Nevada. If your state makes the waste, than your state should keep it and NOT SEND IT TO MINE!

Re:About time

[Cyberax]

They are NOT large scale. The one in Spain is just enough for 20MWt_electric turbine to work for 15 hours. That must be scaled at least 50 times to be considered large-scale (i.e. comparable with an average fossil-fuel power plant).

I know, because I research them for my work-related project and I've actually been on Andasol power plant myself.

Re:About time

[aslagle]

Wow. The problem with Fukushima was a quake larger than anyone ever anticipated, along with a tsunami far higher than anyone in Japan saw coming.

If the quake had happened by itself? No issue. If the tsunami had happened by itself? A likelihood that power would have been interrupted temporarily, but not an issue.

I am with those who insist that the main technical problem with nuclear energy is a sound regulatory framework. I don't see it. And without it, it is unsafe technology.

Your thoughts on risk assessment are part of what makes our society so litigation intensive - if one child gets harmed by something, no matter what the rate of incident is, by God, sue those people into the ground, there should be NO harmful incidents using product X! I don't care if there's a 0.00001 incident rate, we need to spend hundreds of millions of dollars fixing the problem!

Re:About time

[atriusofbricia]

It's actually about Nevada residences say store your own fucking waste we don't want it.

I suppose. Though I don't think anyone is really living out near Yucca, are they?

Re:About time

[atriusofbricia]

It's about irrational fear

The hardcore pro-nuclear power fanatics love trotting this one out.

Yes, theoretically nuclear can be completely safe. Unfortunately the reactors are run by companies whose primary motive is profit and by human beings who are naturally fallible.

Accidents do happen: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_civilian_nuclear_accidents

Now, I am aware that the amount of radiation leaked from Fukushima isn't dangerous to most people in Japan, certainly not in Tokyo where I was when it happened. The damage it has done to Japan's economy is very real though, particularly for farmers.

So, given that we have a choice between say solar thermal collectors which do not require fuel or produce any waste and nuclear I don't think it is unreasonable to argue that we should be pursuing the former rather than directing funds towards the latter. Obviously we can't just turn all reactors off today but doing so in the next 10 to 20 years is not an unreasonable goal for most developed countries.

The fear is statistically irrational. There have been two "serious" accidents in 60 odd years. Only one of which directly killed anyone and the other of which will likely turn out to have directly killed no one. Stack that against the hundreds to thousands directly killed every year, depending on whether you count world wide or not, in coal mines and such and the comparison is worse. Solar thermal collectors are a nice idea and there is nothing wrong with pursuing them. However, they are currently unproven and pretty damned expensive. The logical thing would be to, at the least, replace the current aging reactors with newer and safer designs while also researching alternatives.

As far as the reactors being run by companies who primary motive is profit isn't it logically cheaper to build a safe reactor than to skimp and build an unsafe one and deal with the problems of a failure? Isn't that pretty much always true for most industries?

As to turning off the reactors in 10 or 20 years, I very much doubt that. As such, we need something to replace the current aging ones and that has to be either more nuclear plants or fossil fuel plants until realistic alternatives can be found. Which shall it be?

Re:About time

[atriusofbricia]

What did it take to get that final incident? Just a 9.0 earthquake and a 43 foot tsunami. But yeah, totally unsafe and blow up all the time. Even the POS of Chernobyl was running fine until they started to muck about with it.

The problem in Fukushima was loss of mains power together with generalized chaos from the monster tsunami. A sputtering cesna together with political unrest or mild underregulation of the nuclear companies can have the same effect. The monster tsunami is a nice cover, but is still a distraction.

I am with those who insist that the main technical problem with nuclear energy is a sound regulatory framework. I don't see it. And without it, it is unsafe technology.

A similar incident (you don't need a tsunami) in any German reactor would almost certainly trigger a collapse of its economy. In fact, had the reactor been closer to Tokyo, that would have been it, too. When you weight the small risk against the ridiculously huge consequences, I obtain a clear no. I can, however, imagine circumstances where it would be a clear yes: for example: build it underground in a remote area. And, as with the military, don't let a private company run it. Interestingly, none of this options are ever considered by the fanbois.

You may not need a monster tsunami but you do need something pretty damn severe. These plants don't just randomly blow up one day for no real reason. Even Fukushima was fine, post quake, until the aforementioned monster tsunami wiped out its backup generators. Nuclear energy is regulated up one way and down the other, some would say over regulated. Why do you think there have been no new plants built in the US in around 30 years? Think that comes from a lack of regulation?

That tsunami killed 20,000 odd people and the plant failure killed exactly no one. That doesn't make it not bad, but it does make one issue much smaller than the other. At the end of the day what is doing more damage to the Japanese economy, direct impact of the reactor failure or constant FUD and media coverage over what isn't the real main event of the disaster in the first place.

You speak of the ridiculously huge consequences but what are they really? Some pollution, albeit pretty bad. Were thousands killed? Hundreds? Tens? One?

As to not letting a private company run it, who ran Chernobyl again? Just because it is run by the government doesn't by any means make it automatically better or safer. If a company screws you over you can sue it. If the government screws you over, you can do what exactly?

Re:About time

[AmiMoJo]

You seem to have forgotten about Chernobyl. Two workers died in the Tokaimura incident too. Those are just the first two that come to mind, but if you read through the list I linked to you will see plenty more.

I accept your point that lots of people die in coal mines, but I am not advocating coal. It is a straw man.

You should also read up on solar thermal collectors. We have them, there are plants operational right now, they work. We just need more of them. They are also extremely safe because they don't require any hazardous materials. They are extremely cheap too, not least because they don't need fuel, are easy to decommission and don't contaminate land.

isn't it logically cheaper to build a safe reactor than to skimp and build an unsafe one and deal with the problems of a failure?

No, it isn't. That is the reason why we need strict safety rules and regulations. It happens in all industries. Look at cars - Ford famously decided not to fix design defects because it would be cheaper to just pay victims off. TEPCO was warned that Fukushima could flood causing catastrophic failure but did nothing about it. Air France was warned that pitot tubes on their aircraft could freeze and stop working but only slowly started replacing them as part of normal maintenance rather than urgently, at least until one of their aircraft crashed and killed everyone on board.

Actually airlines are a good comparison to make. Generally flying is the safest way to travel, but when it goes wrong it can go very badly wrong for a lot of people. As such we have strict safety requirements, but even so accidents do happen. In the past we decided that nuclear was worth the risk to get the benefits, but now there are genuine alternatives people are re-assessing the situation.

Re:About time

[wmbetts]

It's not really about people living at Yucca. It's about the citizens saying we don't want it. Even if the fears are unfounded the citizens of the state should be able to say take it else where.

Re:About time

[RespekMyAthorati]

One thing I have never understood: why not just dilute the stuff until it is no longer hazardous? For example,

1. 1. Dilute radioactive material 1000:1 with sand.
2. 2. Heat mixture until it becomes molten glass. Stir well.
3. 3. When cool, grind up into powder.
4. 4. Test result: if still too radioactive, go to 1
5. 5. Else, distribute what's left over a large area (Sahara desert?) so that nobody can put it back together as a bomb.

After just 4 cycles, the original stuff will be diluted a trillion to one. Can anybody enlighten me as to why this wouldn't work?

Re:About time

[MormonBoy]

Wrong. You are very ignorant of the safety systems in nuclear power plant. The facts are nuclear power is clean and safe. How many people die in coal mines per year? What about natural gas explosions in homes and industrial locations? Thousands around the world. How died at Fukushima due to radioactive material exposure? None. I happen to work in a DOE nuclear lab; we are very capable as citizens of the world to use nuclear power for power generation, let alone other high temperature process heat applications. We just need to be the feel good and damn commie enviro bastards out of the way.

There are other nuclear power generation alternatives as well. Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactors and High Temperature Gas Reactors are very good technologies and work. We as citizens of the world need to allow these new reactor into our communities. There is the promises and hope of Small Modular Reactors was well.

Get the damn liberals out of the way and we can make energy work for us. The damn Germans are being so PC stupid they don't see the failures of the renewable technologies of solar and wind power. Without subsidies, renewable energy technologies are too expensive.

Cheers and enjoy the radiation around you. Nothing like a little alpha particles enlightening your world.

Re:About time

[Anonymous Coward]

Executive order, legislate, and regulate - energy conservation and noncarbon- and nonnuclear- energy-generation capacity. Nuclear will never be clean, nor safe. Nor will fossil fuel extraction or usage.

Re:About time

[AmiMoJo]

I think you are caught up in your own little fantasy about a "liberal" conspiracy. Seriously, what the fuck does political correctness have to do with the situation in Germany?

People thought the US was nuts when they said they were going to put a man on the moon in 9 years. German's goal isn't nearly as lofty.

Re:About time

[Fordiman]

"financial/technical reality on the other hand."

The financial and technical reality is that nuclear is cheap when compared to anything but coal, and safe when compared to virtually anything else.

"Things don't get anymore true because you repeat them over and over."

Take your own advice, then do some research before opening your mouth again.

"It is simply not true that coal (for example) is worse than nuclear."

A 1GW Coal plant belches about half of what TMI and Fukushima excreted in terms of long-lasting radionucleides, in the form of thorium and uranium /every year/. Oh, and that climate-changing stuff as well as SOx, NOx, and particulates. But hey, those don't count.

"How's that called. Nuclear strawman? Hahaha."

Ok. Tell me when you have a solar plant or wind farm that produces a gigawatt and doesn't consume insane amounts of land, and doesn't /require/ a carbon-belching natural gas plant to provide power back-up. Then we can talk about why asking to abandon nuclear is the realm of magical fantasy land.

Re:About time

[Fordiman]

"I am with those who insist that the main technical problem with nuclear energy is a sound regulatory framework. I don't see it."

Then you're fucking blind, mate. Nuclear energy is the most well-regulated technology the developed world engages in.

Re:About time

[Fordiman]

"You seem to have forgotten about Chernobyl. Two workers died in the Tokaimura incident too."

Chernobyl was the result of people mucking about with an inherently unsafe reactor design; Tokaimura was an experimental reactor. Neither of these have anything to do with modern APWRs.

"You should also read up on solar thermal collectors."

Best one is 125 MW, it takes up a ridiculous amount of land to get that, and it cost us nearly $25/W to build. Nah, they're shit.

Re:About time

[Fordiman]

"We could do space solar today too."

Yes, because that's cost-effective and efficient. Even the design phase proved to be a failure. The only benefit of going to space is modest gains via escaping atmospheric absorption - which are then lost by inefficiently converting that light to electricity, then inefficiently converting that electricity into a maser (while losing energy to positional maintenance). This is not to mention the cost of flinging the damned thing into space.

Space solar is a spherical cow. Any engineer can tell you.

Re:About time

[Fordiman]

Oh, so the combustion of coal no longer produced CO2? The mining of coal no longer fouls rivers or flattens mountaintops? Coal's lifecycle no longer /fucking kills people?/

Fuck your marketing. Coal is still filthy and blood-stained.

Re:About time

[Fordiman]

"Nuclear will never be clean, nor safe."

As a former nuclear engineer, I have to disagree. Current nuclear power plant designs are clean and safe. They emit fewer pollutants than you, personally, as a living human being do, and will likely kill fewer people.

Mind, I have misgivings the earlier plants; most of them have been retrofitted with lessons-learned-based safety features, rather than having them designed in.

Still, your statement is one of ignorance. You might want to learn about how nuclear energy works before declaring it unclean and unsafe.

Re:About time

[rmstar]

A 1GW Coal plant belches about half of what TMI and Fukushima excreted in terms of long-lasting radionucleides, in the form of thorium and uranium /every year/.

Oh, really? Same stuff? You are a liar and a NE shill.

It needs to be reopened, and spent fuel moved in.

[Animats]

It's not perfect, but dry cask storage in Yucca Mountain is way better than rods in spent fuel pools in power plants.

There's been worry about shipping spent fuel rods around, but the casks are very tough (they will survive being hit by a locomotive), and the worst cases are far, far less dangerous than a failed spent fuel pool at a power plant, as we now know.

The American public has been fooled..

[Anonymous Coward]

Yucca mountain was nothing more than a covert government black project all along. The whole 'nuclear storage' thing was a smokescreen for the real intended purposes for the site, which is mainly a link to huge underground bases in Nevada. There is a reason for everything the military does.

Good luck to these Senators, but they are so in the dark about the reality of the situation that they will never get this passed.

Re:The American public has been fooled..

[G-forze]

Citation needed

Re:The American public has been fooled..

[Anonymous Coward]

That's OK, G-forze. I think in the case of our esteemed AC, MENTAL HEALTH TREATMENT is needed. The post flunks the most basic sarcasm test.

Re:The American public has been fooled..

[couchslug]

We are coming for you and those like you. Those we don't keep around to be ridiculed will disappear.

You don't know when, you don't know where.

Sleep well.

Re:The American public has been fooled..

[Skidborg]

So it is Black Mesa or Aperture Science under there?

Radiation is bad

[Anonymous Coward]

Everything radioactive is bad once handled by man. Unless it's made of marble and made into kitchen countertops, or statues around the capital building. Then it's too little to worry about.

Wait, this means Obama actually cut spending?

[Anonymous Coward]

Wait, this means that at some point in time, Obama actually cut spending on something?!

(Reads article)

Oh, nope. He just threw out billions of dollars that we paid for (via the tax mentioned in the summary) while increasing spending by forcing us to look for a new solution and continue wasting money on inadequate, more expensive, and above all more dangerous storage.

That's the hope and change I'm used to. I was worried there for a moment.

Re:Wait, this means Obama actually cut spending?

[Anonymous Coward]

Hey, turn off Fox News and open the window up to let the crack fumes out.

Re:Wait, this means Obama actually cut spending?

[Anonymous Coward]

Fact: Obama has increased deficit spending more in his ongoing term than all other presidents combined.

Re:Wait, this means Obama actually cut spending?

[Anonymous Coward]

Fact: Obama has increased deficit spending more in his ongoing term than all other presidents combined.

Fact: 2+2 = 5.

Fact: War is peace.

Fact: Rush Limbaugh was never addicted to any drugs.

Fact: We have always been at war with Oceania.

GOD BLESS FOX NEWS AND ALL IT STANDS FOR!

Re:Wait, this means Obama actually cut spending?

[Anonymous Coward]

You know, I'm really getting sick and tired of this constant meme that the only people upset with Obama's presidency are Republicans, and therefor Fox News watchers, and therefor either racist or stupid or flat-out insane.

Simple fact: Obama is the worst president the US has seen for at least three decades. He's increased the deficit, he destroyed the economy, the job market is in the toilet, and he's already managed to start at least three wars (that we know about).

The simple fact is that if you're not upset with Obama, and by extension the Democrats, you're either stupid, or racist, or insane.

Shutting down Yucca Mountain is just another on the long list of things that make Obama one of the worst presidents the US has ever had. And with a year and a half left, he's working hard on adding that to his list of "accomplishments."

Re:Wait, this means Obama actually cut spending?

[Anonymous Coward]

Your ideas intrigue me, and I wish to subscribe to your newsletter.

Re:Wait, this means Obama actually cut spending?

[Omestes]

Simple fact: Obama is the worst president the US has seen for at least three decades. He's increased the deficit, he destroyed the economy, the job market is in the toilet, and he's already managed to start at least three wars (that we know about).

Wait? Three wars? We're pretty much out of Iraq. Afghanistan was started by quite a different president, and Libya isn't a war nor a strictly US concern. The Job market was in the toilet long before Obama hit the office, as was the financial crisis. Further, pretty much every president in recent memory takes it as a holy mission to increase the deficit, his predecessor didn't really do a very good at NOT increasing the deficit either. And I hate to say it, neither will whatever GOP backed moron who replaces him, being that they might actually be more bat-shit-crazy than the Democrats (quite an achievement there).

I'm VERY disappointed in Obama, but I still think Bush Jr. holds the title of worst. Obama is merely a mediocre president stuck in a time that requires a great president. We haven't had a great president in my lifetime, and we probably won't in the time that remains (sadly, America's days of relevance have probably past).

The simple fact is that if you're not upset with Obama, and by extension the Democrats, you're either stupid, or racist, or insane.

How is liking Obama racist? How are ad hominems constructive, for that matter? And yes, obviously all people who dislike Obama are Republicans, since all people who like the Democratic Party are stupid, insane, or inexplicably racist. Obviously, by your reasoning, all Democrats like, and support Obama. Which, as a Democrat, from a Democratic family who all dislikes Obama, is obviously true. With that logic, is it okay to hate every Republican because of the actions of their weakest members (Palin, and Bush Jr.), since obviously because of these people all republicans are stupid, crazy, or vegan (which is as inexplicable as racist in this context)?

Also, what is the alternative? Obama isn't great, but we could have Sarah Palin (or that Bachmann woman, who is almost as scary), which makes me happy that we at least have an ineffectual president over a malevolent one. I'll take mediocre over bad any day.

Further, you realize it takes both parties to work towards a balanced budget, right? The Republicans are as ineffectual as the Democrats in that regard, since both parties REFUSE to compromise. Raising taxes (and cutting subsidies lived by the GOP's Heartland base), and cutting spending (including the social programs loved by the Democrat's base) is the only way. Just because someone isn't doing it "your way" doesn't mean the other side is wrong, since you are probably as big a moron as anyone who thinks they know the God's honest revealed truth of politics, and obviously the other 50% of the population is completely wrong.

That thinking is whats dragging us down... And we, sadly, deserve it so I'm not crying too much.

Re:Wait, this means Obama actually cut spending?

[Anonymous Coward]

Wait? Three wars?

Libya, Somalia, and Yemen. Also arguably Pakistan based on the number of sorties run in it, but they're an ally, so that "doesn't count," I guess.

You're welcome.

Re:Wait, this means Obama actually cut spending?

[Eskarel]

Bush destroyed the economy, Obama has done stuff all to fix it, but he didn't destroy it. The job market follows the same thread.

The only President in the last 30 years to not increase the deficit was Clinton, Obaman inherited the largest deficit and debts have this tendency to grow more rapidly the more of them you have. Again, hasn't really done much about it but given the only realistic solution to the deficit is a tax increase and no one seems to want one of those there's a bit of an excuse there.

Obaman started the war in Libya, he continued the war in Iraq and Afghanistan. Yes he's failed to get out of two of them, and he has started one, but he did not start 3.

Obama hasn't done a particularly good job, but 90% of what you've levelled against Obama was actually done by Dubya. Attributing what George W Bush did to Obama is a pretty classic case of Fox News Bullshit, and makes you a retarded idiot. Hate Obama all you want, he's done a pretty craptacular job, but stop blaming him for what Bush did.

Re:Wait, this means Obama actually cut spending?

[MachineShedFred]

You are extremely overstating the case here. Obama isn't the worst president we've ever had, but he's definitely not in the top 20 either.

Did he get impeached by Congress like Andrew Johnson, who was only acquitted by a single vote? How about Warren G. Harding, who filled his appointments based on corruption and cronyism? What about James Buchanan, and his own economic collapse; to say nothing about being happy with the Dred Scott Decision. Or, there's always Franklin Pierce, who reopened the question of slavery in the west by signing the Kansas-Nebraska Act. Or, everyone's favorite, Richard M. Nixon.

Bush doesn't even make the bottom 10. How the hell do you think that Obama would rate?

Re:Wait, this means Obama actually cut spending?

[Omestes]

Libya, Somalia, and Yemen. Also arguably Pakistan based on the number of sorties run in it, but they're an ally, so that "doesn't count," I guess.

Those aren't wars. We've been in a low grade conflict in Somalia for years. Libya has a UN mandate, and officially isn't our "war", its NATO's. None of these three could really be considered "wars" in the first place... Compared to Obama's predecessors pet wars, at least. The US is always involved in a smattering of conflicts around the world, constantly. Hell, if we were famous for one thing wolrdwide, it would be our desire to stick troops and guns in small countries around the world. I doubt anyone else would be much better... Especially when compared to most of the contenders on the Republican side, who are pretty much hawks down the line.

Thorium Reactors

[RudyHartmann]

You can burn the transuranics in a Thorium reactor and extract residual energy from them. Then the hazardous waste will be negligible by comparison. Google LFTR.

Re:Thorium Reactors

[Anonymous Coward]

You can burn the transuranics in a Thorium reactor and extract residual energy from them. Then the hazardous waste will be negligible by comparison. Google LFTR.

you could if not for genius president carter's non nuclear proliferation act, if we can get that overturned an amended, then as you said, even the waste products can be used

Re:Thorium Reactors

[Anonymous Coward]

Could somebody please tell me how the *!&# burning the waste products up is a problem for nuclear proliferation? If you're consuming the fuel, shouldn't that make it less useful?

Of course, I think we should recycle nuclear fuel regardless, but this point has always annoyed me.

Re:Thorium Reactors

[Nadaka]

Because the same reactor can (and does) produce plutonium as an intermediary fuel. Some of those reactors can be designed to allow the plutonium to be harvested.

Re:Thorium Reactors

[rhook]

You have to enrich the waste before you can use it.

Re:Thorium Reactors

[Andy Dodd]

Burning waste products up requires reprocessing. Carter banned reprocessing unilaterally due to proliferation concerns and a false assumption that reprocessing = PUREX = proliferation - but there are fuel cycles that use reprocessing other than PUREX.

Re:Thorium Reactors

[alexander_686]

If you use uranium as you fuel [and most plants due] a by-product is plutonium. When reprocessing the fuel one can extract the plutonium easily.

Building a bomb out of uranium is hard. Nuclear fuel is “low enriched”. It needs to be purified to “highly enriched”. This is hard to do. Building a bomb out of plutonium, on the other hand, is hard.

Any country to reprocess fuel, could say with a straight face, that they had no intention of building a bomb – but verifying that would be next to impossible. So to close that door to nuclear proliferation the advance countries had to give up reprocessing. So what is good for the goose is good for the gander.

Re:Thorium Reactors

[Andy Dodd]

Note: Thorium fuel cycle has nothing to do with burning our existing waste. Yes, it does happen to support a low-waste low-proliferation-risk cycle, but there are actually low-proliferation-risk cycles such as that used by the IFR that work with our existing waste regardless of thorium use as fuel.

Re:Thorium Reactors

[bluemonq]

Fun fact: the ban on reprocessing was lifted by Reagan. The government just isn't subsiziding it.

Re:Thorium Reactors

[bluemonq]

Reagan lifted the ban.

Re:Thorium Reactors

[Cramer]

Hince the term "breader reactor". And any country that even draws one on the back of a napkin gets invaded by UN inspectors -- and often the US military.

Re:Thorium Reactors

[camperdave]

So? All it would take is for UN inspectors to come in randomly during the design, build, and operational phases to make sure that doesn't happen.

Re:Thorium Reactors

[RudyHartmann]

Uranium based reactors do create Plutonium. But in a Thorium based reactor for all practical purposes you do not. The reason why Uranium was preferred over Thorium for energy production is only BECAUSE of nuclear weapons. You cannot make practical weapons using a Thorium reactor. The chemical separation of actinides from spent fuel could also be used in a Thorium to create more energy from it. Elaborate and expensive ionic separation on not required. The basic idea a fusion is seductive, but so far it has only been a government make work project. Thorium reactors have actually been built and are functioning. Of course the most advanced to of a Thorium reactor would be e liquid fluoride thorium reactor (LFTR). The only reason these have not been built in mass quantities is engineering details. Fusion reactors are still pie-in-the-sky.

Re:Thorium Reactors

[drinkypoo]

Fun fact: the ban on reprocessing was lifted by Reagan. The government just isn't subsiziding it.

"The technology was banned by President Carter due to proliferation concerns. President Reagan lifted the ban, and President Clinton later reinstituted it."

Re:Thorium Reactors

[dbIII]

That was cheap politics because nobody in the USA was reprocessing anyway. It's like passing a law to ban tigers in Alaska.

Re:Thorium Reactors

[Savantissimo]

Look, I love the LFTR as much as anybody, and have for many years, but this kind of BS doesn't help the case. The neutron budget is just over break-even in thorium reactors and it does not lend itself well to transmuting waste. Other types of reactors specially designed for the job are much better for transuranic transmutation.

Also, the anti-proliferation features of LFTR are overstated. The LFTR produces and continuously reprocesses U-233. U-233 has been verified to work in nuclear bombs. Mostly the supposed proliferation-resistance is a factor of just not having enough neutrons to be able to afford to take much U-233 out, and U-233 being less convenient for storeable bombs, but if one day somebody decides they'd like to have some bombs for immediate use rather than a reactor, they can potentially turn the fissile portion of the reactor core into bomb pits in just a few days. There is also some excess U-233 produced, and it could provide a pit or two per reactor per year. If the pits are stored away from the rest of the bomb until use, and periodically remanufactured, then LFTRs could be the basis for a substantial nuclear weapons arsenal. The U-233 excess storage is needed anyway to provide the startup material for new thorium reactors, so it would make it easy to have a hidden weapons program.

Re:Thorium Reactors

[JSBiff]

Well, with *traditional* (Plutonium-based)recycle, here's the proliferation concern, as far as I understand it:

"Spent Fuel" from thermal-spectrum uranium fueled reactors (like light water and heavy water reactors which comprise essentially 100% of currently operating reactors) has some plutonium, and some U-235 (the type of uranium which can fission) in it. That Uranium-235 and plutonium (mostly the plutonium - there's not a whole lot of U-235 left after running through a reactor once).

The plutonium (and U-235) must be extracted out of the waste, and enriched to a certain level, before it can be useful as a fuel.

I think people are worried that nations like Iran, Libya, Syria and N. Korea will build such reprocessing facilities, using the excuse that they are simply pursuing civilian nuclear power programs, but that they will use these facilities (which are, at the end of the day, plutonium extraction and enrichment facilities) to enrich plutonium to a much, much higher level than you would for normal fuel use, and make bombs from 99% purified plutonium.

Even LFTRs, I believe, need you to extract the plutonium from the waste before they can burn that off for you.

I think the simple answer is just to not allow nations like Iran and N. Korea to build reprocessing centers. I don't know how a reprocessing center in the U.S., Canada, France, or U.K. poses a proliferation concern.

Re:Thorium Reactors

[MachineShedFred]

Producing Plutonium, in itself, is not bad. Running a short fuel cycle (90 days) in a reactor configured specifically for producing Pu-239 is bad.

Lumps of Plutonium that consist of more than about 7% Pu-240 are not suitable for nuclear weapon use, because the bomb will "pre detonate" causing you to have a really expensive bomb that generates slightly more energy than the conventional explosives it contains, and just spreads nuclear material all over the place.

Re:Thorium Reactors

[drinkypoo]

Whatever it was, it is.

Re:Thorium Reactors

[RudyHartmann]

While I agree with much of what you say. The uranium 233 that would be produced from an LFTR also contains a significant amount of U232. This stuff emits strong gamma rays as it decays. It is very deadly to handle. It would quickly ruin any electronics and many other materials in close proximity to it. There's enough of it in the U233 to be a significant obstacle to weaponize it. Though the ionic separation of it would leave you with only U233, but how tough would that be? It would be easier to separate the U235 out of naturally occurring uranium. In a practical sense, making weapons from this type of reactor would be overly costly, time consuming, and just plain dumb.

Re:Thorium Reactors

[Fordiman]

That's not actually accurate, but OP's comment was inaccurate anyway.

LFTR is one idea: You fission U-233 such that one neutron continues the chain reaction and another is absorbed by a thorium blanket; the resultant U-233 is extracted and placed in the fissile stream. You do this in a thermal spectrum, using a fluoride salt as carrier solvent for everything as well as being part of the moderator system.

Unfortunately, this won't work for spent LWR fuel; they've already given up all the goodies they can handle in the thermal spectrum. This is why you hear all the talk about fast reactors; much of the fissile load in spent LWR fuel is flavor of Pu, which only perform well in a fast neutron spectrum. Further, other trans-actinides only fissile at all with fast neutrons. Fluoride is too moderating, so that can't be used as a carrier salt.

What's used instead is a LCTR (Liquid Chloride Reactor). Works pretty much the same way, except (a) you have a much bigger core (fast neutrons go further), (b) the fissile stream is fueled ONLY by spent LWR fuel, (c) you shunt off the U-233 for seed material for LFTRs. This also puts you in the fortunate position that your fuel salt is already easily processed as a liquid, in a form that is commonly used for what's called "Pyroprocessing" anyway.

While you could, in theory, harvest the plutonium that occurs in this cycle, there are serious engineering challenges to that task. The expense alone to do it frequently enough to avoid significant amounts of Pu-240 and Pu-241 would be astronomical.

Re:Thorium Reactors

[Fordiman]

If you use natural uranium as your fuel, the significant amount of U-238 that is present can breed to Pu-239, Pu-240, and Pu-241.

If you use Thorium as your fuel, your bred fissile is U-233.

In a LCTR (throium breeder that has a fast reactor core of spent fuel), you breed plutonium, but you also fission it in real time. (The designed reactor geometry is such that one fission (producing 2.7 neutrons on average) gives 1 to the chain reaction, 1 to plutonium breeding, and .7 to U-233 breeding and material absorption.)

Re:It needs to be reopened, and spent fuel moved i

[White Flame]

Note that a good portion of the worry about shipping the spent fuel around is that the rails themselves actually need to be upgraded to support the weight of how the nuclear cargo needs to be shipped. The standard lines can't handle it.

coming and going

[John Da' Baddest]

Coal & gas plants can survive rapid political winds of yes-we-can / no-it's-bad, but this nuclear stuff takes a longer term commitment. You can't change your mind on a dime. Yucca mountain was scoped, zoned, and marketed as million-year storage, no wonder there's opposition. By me too. But as a "temporary" staging area until reprocessing and burning up, it may well be our best option. Too bad there's such a garbage-man mentality around. Recycle your own wastes? Communism! Islam! Illegal immigrants! Drug-dealing! Or whatever the tea-party crowd wants to launder it as. The Greens are likewise a bit irresponsible in this regard.

Re:coming and going

[atriusofbricia]

Coal & gas plants can survive rapid political winds of yes-we-can / no-it's-bad, but this nuclear stuff takes a longer term commitment. You can't change your mind on a dime.

Yucca mountain was scoped, zoned, and marketed as million-year storage, no wonder there's opposition. By me too. But as a "temporary" staging area until reprocessing and burning up, it may well be our best option.

Too bad there's such a garbage-man mentality around. Recycle your own wastes? Communism! Islam! Illegal immigrants! Drug-dealing! Or whatever the tea-party crowd wants to launder it as. The Greens are likewise a bit irresponsible in this regard.

Wait, what? What does "the tea-party crowd" have to do with this? Unless I'm terribly mistaken about the only people opposed to reprocessing fuel are either the greenies, because they hate nukes no matter what, or anti-nuclear weapons people because they don't know that it can be done without the output equaling bombs. Where are tea party people in that mix of people? Hell, for that matter who could seriously argue against cost effective reuse of materials?

question about fusion energy

[Anonymous Coward]

Suppose somehow that humans eventually arrive at functional fusion with all the free and essentially unlimited energy it promises.

Is there a technology that leverage this energy to convert dirty fission waste into harmless blocks of ${something_mostly_harmless}?

More generally (and more to the point), does there exist some magic fairy dust, however impractical now, that can mitigate the mess caused by nuclear energy?

Re:question about fusion energy

[Anonymous Coward]

A whole mess of wiki links for you to read, if you so choose: Reprocessing - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_reprocessing CANDU - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Candu Advanced CANDU - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_CANDU_Reactor Pebble Bed Reactor - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pebble_bed_reactor IFR - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Integral_Fast_Reactor TWR - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traveling_wave_reactor Glassification - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radioactive_waste#Vitrification

Re:question about fusion energy

[alexander_686]

Fusion Engery: No

Fairy Dust: Yes.
      There are ways to reduce the amount of high level waste, but as people mentioned they fall afoul of the nuclear proliferation treaties.
      There have been "table top" demonstrations of converting low level waste into safe stuff. Basically, you isolate the radioactive atoms and bombard them with neutrons until they fall apart into something safer. You don’t need nanotechnology to make this work – but close.

Re:question about fusion energy

[Nadaka]

The answer is yes. There is a way to process all that unspent fuel and reduce the waste to materials that can be safely stored until inert. It is called fission in a breeder reactor. We just have to repeal non-proliferation and build the reactors and we can get rid of all that waste while producing electricity at the same time.

Re:question about fusion energy

[Anonymous Coward]

Can't we use the same reactions that chickens use to convert magnesium to calcium to form egg shells to convert deadly radioactive waste into tasty aerosol cheeze ?!!!

Re:question about fusion energy

[fritsd]

That's a very good question and unfortunately I don't know. I am not a nuclear engineer but I've learnt a little bit of physics and chemistry. I want to point out a few misleading things I've read here on Slashdot:
The "pro-nuke" activists talk about reprocessing spent fuel (e.g. LFTR Thorium reactor, Fast Breeder reactors, etc.), and when they do they use the verb "burn", as in "burn the waste so that it becomes harmless".

I am quite sure that this is false and misleading.

We're not talking about "burning"; "burning" is a well understood chemical reaction of stuff with oxygen, where we have ashes left, and we also know how to scrub the fly-ash etc. so that we have industrial plants called "waste incinerators" which is very high-tech, very clean and leaves only little dioxins and PCBs in the waste they produce. Waste incineration is an understood procedure and if the temperature is high enough we can burn practically anything, clean the gases, and be done.

But here instead, we're talking about irradiating spent nuclear fuel with lots of high-intensity neutrons from a hugely radioactive reactor (that's why Fast Breeder such as the Superphénix and Monju needs to be cooled with liquid Sodium; it's nasty but anything else gets too radioactive from the neutrons to approach). After irradiating this spent fuel it becomes much more radioactive, and part of the higher actinides that made the fuel "spent" in the first place, will have "transmuted" (*NOT* "burnt"!) to other actinides.
Then it is the hope, that the now even more radioactive stuff can be chemically separated into highly-active short-lived stuff (put in a mountain for 300 years and you're already done with it), the unspent part of the reactor fuel which can now be re-used, and lots of other waste products that vary in intensity, duration of radioactivity, etc.
The idea of this is, that the resulting products are less dangerous in the long term (300 years +).
Now what I'm concerned about is, how can we be sure that it's all transmuted "cleanly"? Any higher actinide such as Americium and Protactinium can itself fission into loads of stuff; I don't think there's a neutron flux that can be generated on earth that transmutes everything in a spent fission fuel cocktail to components that are either mostly harmless or have a well understood decay. What I mean is that I don't believe that we already know how to transmute things "cleanly".

And that's why I want people to call it "transmuting" instead of "burning" so that this difference is not forgotten in the discussion.

<anti-nuke-rant>
I know transmuting spent fuel will be bloody expensive, and the politicians will want to see results. That leads to a "moral hazard" for directors of processing plants to sweep things (literally, maybe?) under the carpet. There are no more experimental breeder reactors working in France AFAIK (Superphénix is closed) or in Germany where they had scandals with Thorium pebble bed reactors in the 70's (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AVR_Reactor). THAT's why they want to get rid of nuclear now, btw. It's not just scaremongering; it's their politicians saying "oh that reactor from the 70's? we thought you forgot.. yeah we'll approach the subject of clean-up costs again in 2060 when it's cooled down a bit".
Let's build out solar and wind, study and build out electricity grid storage, continue work on the ITER in Cadarache, and re-evaluate nuclear fission in 100 years when the costs of decommissioning have become more clear.
</anti-nuke-rant>

Free housing!

[Anonymous Coward]

Let's put Congress in Yucca Mtn., too! I hear the view from the top is spectacular.

Re:It needs to be reopened, and spent fuel moved i

[h4rr4r]

US rail needs upgraded anyway. Sound like an opportunity to improve our infrastructure and provide jobs, a great thing to do during a recession.

Oblig Neil Young

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh to live on
Yucca Mountain
With the fuel rods
And the nuclear waste

Re:It needs to be reopened, and spent fuel moved i

[Andy Dodd]

Nothing wrong with our freight rail system - it's one of the best in the world.

Our passenger rail system is a whole other story, but good passenger rail infrastructure and good freight rail infrastructure are completely independent.

Yes, in our country our passenger infrastructure is heavily dependent on our freight infrastructure, which is WHY our passenger infrastructure is so bad.

THE US LACKS LONG TERM PLANNING

[arcite]

This is the problem with the US IMO. They lack any long term planning. The political party in power at any given time is only obsessed and focused with getting themselves reelected in four years. Thus, planning is limited to FOUR YEARS. How can one run the last remaining superpower on a four year shedule? It takes 10 years to build a nuclear power plant. How long does it take to build other MEGA infrastructure projects? There are so many unemployed out there, the US should be doing like China and upgrading its ancient infrastructure and laying the groundwork for a high-tech, energy efficient 21st century. I would suggest to raise taxes, but so far that has only made banksters on wallstreet wealthier with zero economic impact. Where is the leadership?

Re:THE US LACKS LONG TERM PLANNING

[Anonymous Coward]

I agree. the presidency has become nothing but a job to these people. All they care about is getting hired. Once there its more of a "well shit what could I do while working here... meh.. whatever.. I got a job!"

Meanwhile bridges fall apart.. water mains rot and burst... roads crumble and fall apart...

"it was a foolish man who built his house upon the sand"

Re:THE US LACKS LONG TERM PLANNING

[magarity]

Thus, planning is limited to FOUR YEARS. How can one run the last remaining superpower on a four year shedule?

The Chinese are rapidly overtaking with their five year plans. I therefore recommend that the main US election cycle become every 6 years with legislative elections every 3.

Re:THE US LACKS LONG TERM PLANNING

[Culture20]

The political party in power at any given time is only obsessed and focused with getting themselves reelected in four years. Thus, planning is limited to FOUR YEARS. How can one run the last remaining superpower on a four year shedule? It takes 10 years to build a nuclear power plant. How long does it take to build other MEGA infrastructure projects?

By extension, when one party does plan ahead and start building Nuclear/Solar/Foo plants, after four years, the new party in power comes along to halt construction because it's not their baby.

Re:THE US LACKS LONG TERM PLANNING

[Anonymous Coward]

Thus, planning is limited to FOUR YEARS. How can one run the last remaining superpower on a four year shedule?

The Chinese are rapidly overtaking with their five year plans. I therefore recommend that the main US election cycle become every 6 years with legislative elections every 3.

Screw it, we're doing SIX years.

With a little aloe strip.

Re:THE US LACKS LONG TERM PLANNING

[Rich0]

Yup, we make lots of long-term plans, we just never stick to them. Of course, almost all the plans promise the world in 15 years, with massive tax increases just after the end of the current president's second term.

After all, we're returning to the Moon in 2020, with our first robotic missions starting three years ago, and going to Mars sometime after that. Oh, and the medicare doughnut hole will be closed in 2020. I'm sure somebody has a plan to balance the federal budget by 2018 as well.

Re:THE US LACKS LONG TERM PLANNING

[Anonymous Coward]

This is the problem with the US IMO. They lack any long term planning. The political party in power at any given time is only obsessed and focused with getting themselves reelected in four years. Thus, planning is limited to FOUR YEARS. How can one run the last remaining superpower on a four year shedule? It takes 10 years to build a nuclear power plant. How long does it take to build other MEGA infrastructure projects? There are so many unemployed out there, the US should be doing like China and upgrading its ancient infrastructure and laying the groundwork for a high-tech, energy efficient 21st century. I would suggest to raise taxes, but so far that has only made banksters on wallstreet wealthier with zero economic impact. Where is the leadership?

So what you are saying is we need some sort of a central authority that is unelected and can delegate how to do this kind of "mega infrastructure projects"?

Re:THE US LACKS LONG TERM PLANNING

[Anonymous Coward]

>Where is the leadership?

Unfortunately, the baby boomers wish to retire early, leaving a shrunken workforce to support them, even though medical science has made it so that they are capable of working.

Ethics seem to have been thrown out long ago in favor of short term gains.

"Greed is Good!"

It really is a pretty safe facility

[HangingChad]

I remember working on some of the Yucca Mountain studies years ago and there really isn't a better place you could store nuclear waste. It's very stable geologically, and the storage medium leeching was practically non-existent, even if you stored the blocks under water.

Most of the objections are NIMBY related and don't represent any realistic threat.

I can promise you where nuclear waste is being stored now, where ever that is, is a lot less safe than it would be at Yucca Mountain.

Re:It really is a pretty safe facility

[0123456]

I can promise you where nuclear waste is being stored now, where ever that is, is a lot less safe than it would be at Yucca Mountain.

But that's exactly why the anti-nuclear nutters oppose it; they love nuclear accidents because it helps them campaign to end nuclear power... the last things they want are safe reactors and safe waste disposal.

Re:It really is a pretty safe facility

[ThorGod]

But that's exactly why the anti-nuclear nutters oppose it; they love nuclear accidents because it helps them campaign to end nuclear power... the last things they want are safe reactors and safe waste disposal.

Good point! Protestors lack the proper incentives or, at least, impetus to inform their own opinions.

Re:It really is a pretty safe facility

[TopSpin]

Parent is correct. When you get past the junk science and put credible people under the spotlight Yucca Mountain is understood to be a safe long term solution. I watched the congressional testimony. The DOE had to have it beat out of them, because affirming the safety of Yucca kicks a leg out from under the Administration's policy. NRC scientists affirmed the same thing. There are no technical reasons why we should not open Yucca Mountain. The only actual reason for the shutdown that anyone could cite was the purely political view than Yucca is somehow "unworkable" for reasons known only to Chu.

Even worse was the NRC testimony. I don't believe this level of acrimony has existed at the NRC since TMI-2 melted down. NRC staff members publicly condemned the NRC Chairman Jaczko for politicizing the matter, withholding information from the board, manipulating scientific results and manipulating the process. 'Science based' government my ass. Jaczko is still withholding the completed results of the NRC's scientific assessment of Yucca mountain safety.

From the the NYT story

The [NRC] inspector general’s report said that Mr. Jaczko’s decision to halt the Yucca review was based on politics, however, not on a consideration of the acceptability of the site for long-term storage.

Criticism of the Administration, the DOE and Jaczko by the House committee was nearly bipartisan. Basically we have anti-energy anti-nuke activists playing political games inside the NRC and the DOE, and everyone knows it.

This nonsense needs to stop. We really need to get this waste secured at Yucca before some earthquake/tsunami/tornado/flood/hurricane/meteor/terrorist/busted-water-pump causes widespread nuclear contamination.

Re:It really is a pretty safe facility

[jbeaupre]

I refer to these sort of tactics as bunghole politics. The idea is to stop up the system so that it has to be shut down. Named after the following joke:

The brain said "I do all the thinking so I'm the most important and I should be in charge."

The eyes said "I see everything and let the rest of you know where we are, so I'm the most important and I should be in charge."

The hands said: "Without me we wouldn't be able to pick anything up or move anything. So I'm the most important and I should be in charge."

The stomach said: "I turn the food we eat into energy for the rest of you. Without me, we'd starve. So I'm the most important and I should be in charge."

The legs said: "Without me we wouldn't be able to move anywhere. I'm the most important and I should be in charge."

Then the rectum said: "I think I should be in charge."
All the rest of the parts said: YOU?!!
You don't do anything! You're not as important as we are, surely!
You can't be in charge!"

So the rectum stopped working...
After a few days, the legs were all wobbly,
the stomach was all queasy,
the hands were all shaky,
the eyes were all watery,
and the brain was all cloudy.

MORAL OF THE STORY

It only takes one asshole to shut down a job and an asshole is always in charge of everything.

Re:It really is a pretty safe facility

[sl3xd]

Hate to tell you this, but the problem isn't really NIMBY - it's about several states being forced into something that's very much against their interests, and in a way that can potentially depopulate whole cities. The waste storage itself isn't the largest problem; the site can be secured relatively easily, and is safer than in the spent fuel pools at our nation's nuclear plants.

The problem lies outside Yucca Mountain: It's partly in safety, and mostly in politics.

The issue is that large, populous states, nearly all of which are east of the Mississippi river, are forcing Nevada to take the waste. With only three in the house and two senators to oppose, Nevada is largely powerless to stop it. The choice of Yucca mountain is in large part because the populous states with nuclear plants outvote Nevada by a factor approaching 100. Nevada doesn't even have a nuclear plant.

The issue is about state soverignty and why they should be involuntarily turned into a garbage dump for the East Coast. - Nevada (and the transit states of New Mexico, Colorado, Wyoming, Idaho, and Utah) have no nuclear plants. Why should they pay nearly all of the penalties, and enjoy none of the benefits?

There has been more than enough suffering from broken nuclear energy promises in these states. For the residents affected, nuclear fallout isn't a distant fear, or a paranoid fantasy - it is a hard reality. It's not that it might happen, but that it already has, and it was forced upon them involuntarily.
- These states have already suffered the terrible cost (in lives) from radioactive fallout from the nuclear tests of the cold war, with tens of thousands dead, and many times more fighting thyroid cancer. (American film icons John Wayne and Susan Hayward died from cancer induced from the fallout of these tests).
- The amount of radiation exposure in these states was over 5.5 exabecquerels - levels that dwarf that of Chernobyl and Fukushima combined.
- Why should these states (again) pay the penalty for nuclear energy - espescially when they receive no benefit from it?
- Why should these states believe yet another "promise" of safety from an industry (and government) that's proven highly effective at covering up problems and killing their family members?

We're talking about the same government who decided it was a good idea to store and dispose of the nation's (extensive) supply of nerve gas only a few miles away from a population center of two million, and the same industry that has been found covering up massive problems in order to extend the lives of reactors well beyond their design and safety limits.

The waste will travel through New Mexico, Colorado, Wyoming, Idaho, Utah, and Nevada - exposing all of those states to the bulk of what is by far the most dangerous part of the whole project - transit of the waste. Estimates put 70% of the waste traveling through the Salt Lake Valley - population of ~2 million or so. It's not possible to secure the transit routes - there are just too many miles, too many people. The dry casks are tough, but they're not perfect. It's impossible to secure an entire city, or even the tracks along the route. I don't want to bring up "terrorism" here, but it doesn't even take a release of material - just an incident terrorists can claim they caused - to cause a lot of recrimination and panic.

Governers can and have called out the national guard (ie. state-controlled military) to prevent waste from entering the state. Tanks, helicopters, and a company of heavily armed, and highly motivated national guardsman is a pretty big deterrent to a mere shipping company. It inevitably ends up as a standoff where the Federal Government backs down, because frankly, how good does it look to the rest of the World if the US uses its military on one of its own states for not allowing themselves to be the waste dump of the most dangerous stuff on Earth - espescially when the waste comes from thousands of miles

Re:It really is a pretty safe facility

[sl3xd]

The problem with "Yucca Mountain" has nothing to do with the facility - there are shortcomings, but I'm not aware of any place that would be better.

The problem is in the transport of the material to the facility - it affects more people, passes through densely populated areas, involves more congressional districts, and is easily the most dangerous part of the plan. The nation's nuclear failings and broken promises with the residents of the affected transit areas doesn't help either.

It's one thing to get past fears when speaking to a random group of people; it's another thing entirely to say it to a populace that's already suffered tens of thousands of deaths from Nuclear fallout, and are still expected to have tens of thousands more - and that's before anything involving waste from power plants is involved.

To many of the downwinders, it's not a "write your congressman" type of issue - it's an armed rebellion sort of problem.

Re:It really is a pretty safe facility

[Anonymous Coward]

Um, wouldn't the Brain call a doctor? Or at least go to the store and buy some laxatives?

That story makes no sense.

Re:It really is a pretty safe facility

[rastoboy29]

To be fair, you're still assuming that a "safe" nuclear power plant is possible.

I'm inclined to agree, but the evidence suggests otherwise.

Re:It really is a pretty safe facility

[imunfair]

It isn't NIMBY, yet the things you named are all NIMBY fears for Nevada. From the perspective of someone that doesn't live in any of the prospective states I think Nevada is a much better choice. We've already contaminated the underground area near there with no wide-scale radiation issues, so even with leaks it seems promising that most of the country would not be affected.

Kamps said better sites for a repository include deep granite formations in places like New Hampshire, Wisconsin or Minnesota

So instead of sticking it in a low population desert we should stick it in a hole near the source of one of our biggest rivers (one that just happens to flood a lot of land on a regular basis too...), or within spitting distance of the gulf stream?

Additionally you already pointed out the population argument - Nevada is the 16th least populated state - 5x less people than Wisconsin. A lot of the other least populated states are either northerly (head of rivers), or small east coast states. The argument that they can refuse nuclear waste since they don't have nuclear power is silly when it's cheaper and cleaner for Nevada to build huge solar farms in the barren Mojave desert. The reason they don't need nuclear power is the same reason everyone else wants to store nuclear waste there - it's low population and low risk compared to the rest of the country in the case of a catastrophe.

I'm not saying the nuclear site would be unsafe, but when you're planning for the worst and looking at leaks - why would you want any of those other sites over Nevada? A vast, largely unpopulated desert that is already partially irradiated is prime real estate for this type of thing, especially when billions of dollars have already been spent in Nevada to partially build the facility.

Regarding the reprocessing - if we ever did that on a large scale I expect the facility would be built near Yucca Mountain. The only thing they'd be shipping out would be new, usable fuel rods. It would be silly to build it far away and pay the expense to ship everything there just to reprocess it - you'd need hefty subsidies to make that possible - and I doubt nuclear reprocessing facilities are the type of project most states would heavily subsidize.

Re:It really is a pretty safe facility

[QuantumRiff]

>Nevada (and the transit states of New Mexico, Colorado, Wyoming, Idaho, and Utah) have no nuclear plants. Why should they pay nearly all of the penalties, and enjoy none of the benefits?

Sorry.. You lost me right there... You do know that the first peaceful nuclear reactor in the us was in idaho, right? (idaho national labratory) and tons of other reactors? there is a GIANT reservation there for nuclear stuff. (and is the location of one of the very, very few nuclear incidents) If I remember right, the navy even trains there for their 'mop and glo's' for part of their training.

Do you realize how many nuclear weapons are sitting in Colorado and Wyoming? most of our ICBM's are located in those two states for craps sakes. (far from the coasts, so more time to see enemy attacks coming in and launch, plus harder ground to penetrate) Remember war-games?
  (cheyene mountain, in colorado) and Utah is where most nuclear testing took place, because of its very, very low population density. (and unfarmable land).

Re:It really is a pretty safe facility

[sl3xd]

Kamps said better sites for a repository include deep granite formations in places like New Hampshire, Wisconsin or Minnesota

I never mentioned any of the other proposed sites; so it must be a bit of cross-posting. Honestly, Yucca is the most logical choice for a central repository. And I do live in an affected area. I also believe that it makes far more sense for dry cask storage on-site than to transport it across the country to the central repository.

However, all governments need to take into account the human element, and political capital. To be honest, anything with nuclear waste disposal in the area is seen as a callous vote by 'east-coast' legislators who don't care about the local area - or the graves that are now filled because of them.

NIMBY generally refers to the fear that something might happen. The problem with Nevada (and the surrounding area) is that something bad already did happen, and the populace will be damned if they let something nuclear happen to them again - to the point of risking armed conflict. To say it's a failure of government is a massive understatement.

So while from an engineering standpoint, Yucca is a logical choice, from a political standpoint, you would have a hard time doing much worse - unlike the sites in New Hampshire, Minnesota, or Wisconsin, the people near Yucca have firsthand experience with widespread nuclear fallout, and will fight considerably more vigorously.

Food for thought (and a common complaint I hear): If the dry casks are supposed to be so safe, then what's the problem with leaving them at the nuclear plant? They've been designed to survive all of the cataclysms people are worrying about (explosives, train wrecks, tsunamis, hurricanes, earthquakes, tornadoes, fires, nuclear holocausts...) so exactly how are they going to be any more dangerous at the power plant?

There's no question that the waste should be taken from spent fuel pools and put in dry casks now. But there are reasonable and practical arguments that the casks should never leave the site.

Regarding the reprocessing - if we ever did that on a large scale I expect the facility would be built near Yucca Mountain

I've seen designs for nuclear reactors that are supposed to take the spent fuel rods directly from a cask and burn it - with no reprocessing whatsoever. There's apparently no need for a reprocessing facility anywhere, so why run the risk of transporting the casks at all?

Re:It really is a pretty safe facility

[sl3xd]

>Nevada (and the transit states of New Mexico, Colorado, Wyoming, Idaho, and Utah) have no nuclear plants. Why should they pay nearly all of the penalties, and enjoy none of the benefits?

Sorry.. You lost me right there... You do know that the first peaceful nuclear reactor in the us was in idaho, right? (idaho national labratory) and tons of other reactors? there is a GIANT reservation there for nuclear stuff. (and is the location of one of the very, very few nuclear incidents) If I remember right, the navy even trains there for their 'mop and glo's' for part of their training.

The only nuclear plants in Idaho are research reactors. There are no commercial power plants, and never have been. There was a plant intended for nuclear fuel reprocessing, but it was never put into use after congress outlawed processing of nuclear fuel (see a trend here? - no nuclear material gets transported.) There's a HUGE difference in scale between a commercial plant and a research reactor. Heck, the University of Utah has a small reactor - but just because it's a reactor doesn't make it dangerous - the radiation levels are so low that bare hands are used to work on the reactor core.

Do you realize how many nuclear weapons are sitting in Colorado and Wyoming? most of our ICBM's are located in those two states for craps sakes.

Patently false. Most of our ICBM's are submarine-based, and the few that are land-based are in North Dakota and Montana (A thousand miles shorter distance to get to the Soviet Union means you can carry more warheads.)

Remember war-games?

You mean the movie - a work of fiction?

NORAD is in cheyenne mountain, but there are no nukes there; it's a nuclear bunker for command and control - not for weapon storage.

Utah is where most nuclear testing took place, because of its very, very low population density.

Again, patently false. Utah has had zero nuclear tests.

More to the point: The detonations in Nevada threw up enough fallout to cause radioactive ash clouds to "snow" in Salt Lake City - whose population density isn't that different from most cities in the US. So densely populated areas were affected, and the number of people involved is quite high.

Being killed because you're a minority is no less of an outrage than being killed because you live in a rural area. Government sanction doesn't make it any less wrong.

Re:It really is a pretty safe facility

[Anonymous Coward]

Good point! Protestors lack the proper incentives or, at least, impetus to inform their own opinions.

That's bullshit man! Bullshit! They like totally formed their own opinions man. Like right after their professor told them what they should think.

Re:It really is a pretty safe facility

[Savantissimo]

Any place exposed to something that could get through those transport casks has more to worry about than just radiation. And smooth, vitrified slugs of glass buried in a single deep hole are a far cry from microscopic dust dispersed in the atmosphere over hundreds of miles. Most of the curies released into the environment have been from coal, not nuclear, and released in a way that is far more hazardous to health.

Re:It really is a pretty safe facility

[Anonymous Coward]

Sure they're safe. Go outside in the morning. See that big yellow ball in the sky? That's a fusion reactor.

Re:It really is a pretty safe facility

[fritsd]

There is money to do it now, so you Americans should do it now, is what I think.
Well, think of this made-up example of doom & gloom:
The Shit Hits The Fan in USA. E.g. federal government defaults on its debt, the roller-coaster off of Hubbert's plateau starts, large scale society collapses like the Roman empire, or something like that.
Not many people die, but most people switch their attention from watching politics on TV to growing potatoes and carrying jerrycans of water or gasoline on their head.
Now imagine that the nuclear waste of all USA power plants is *NOT* yet in Yucca Mountain, to be reviewed and reprocessed in 300 years. It would be like Fukushima Unit 4 (mind I DIDN't say unit 1-3! I mean the pool), but then squared.
Do you seriously believe that in 100 years from now, god-emperor Nehemiah Scudder of East Utah will apportion a percentage of his precious tithes to transport the spent fuel rods in the leaking swimming pool of the abandoned nuke plant that nobody dares to get near to anymore, through enemy territory (the heretic separatists of West Utah, the communists of Arizona or the godless hedonists of Las Vegas), to that faraway Yucca Mountain site, in exchange for ... nothing ...?
Mind you, it might make a good script for a film.

Re:It really is a pretty safe facility

[sl3xd]

Most of the curies released into the environment have been from coal, not nuclear, and released in a way that is far more hazardous to health.

No. The amount released by the high altitude nuclear tests alone was over 5 exabecquerels - several times more than Chernobyl and Fukushima combined.

The primary health concern with burning of coal is from mercury vapor, not weakly radioactive isotopes with half-lives in the million-year range. The radiation from coal isn't much more dangerous than from eating a banana.

Re:It really is a pretty safe facility

[sl3xd]

Now imagine that the nuclear waste of all USA power plants is *NOT* yet in Yucca Mountain, to be reviewed and reprocessed in 300 years. It would be like Fukushima Unit 4 [wikipedia.org] (mind I DIDN't say unit 1-3! I mean the pool), but then squared.

There's no reason the spent fuel shouldn't be put into dry storage casks now and stored at the reactor site. Suitable casks already exist, and have been designed to handle any imagined cataclysm for over a thousand years - hurricanes, tsunamis, fire, earthquake, explosives, tornadoes, etc; transporting the casks is an unnecessary step, and Yucca Mountain is an unnecessary expenditure (the facility is less than half completed, by the way).

The push to re-open yucca mountain is just NIMBY from the communities that wanted the benefits of nuclear power, but are unwilling to accept its costs.

Do you seriously believe that in 100 years from now, god-emperor Nehemiah Scudder [wikipedia.org] of East Utah

WTF... What does a work of fiction have to do with reality? Are we going to bring in the Lord of the Rings and present it as fact too? How about Tom Clancy's "The Sum of All Fears"?

Re:It really is a pretty safe facility

[fritsd]

Right :-) let me rephrase that fictional reference then..
You can't expect a nation half as big as a continent, which is totally addicted to petroleum influx, where it is anathema to talk about scaling things down and conserving power and switching to expensive renewables, to stay a coherent nation-state once that power source (the oil) becomes too expensive for the average Joe in the street to sustain their current income level. And after M. King Hubbert applied the Law of large numbers to add up a series of unrelated oil extraction graphs from various oil wells of various sizes, start years and production rates, for the USA, it becomes quite likely that the exact same maths is also valid when seen on a world scale instead of lower-49 states USA production fields, ergo there exists a Hubbert's peak, and with the terminal decline of oil going quite fast (maybe 40 years), you can expect USA to break up in 40 years as well. Then there is no federal government to force Nevada to accept the nuclear waste anymore. And it's not guaranteed that all of the states or whatever smaller-scale governments will exist will have the necessary level of cooperation to allow for transport of nuclear waste, especially if it's already a political problem now.

Re:It really is a pretty safe facility

[fritsd]

agree about the dry storage casks btw

Re:It really is a pretty safe facility

[jbeaupre]

Dude, the fact that body parts are talking to each other should have clued you into the fact that it's a joke. Do you really need me to explain it too?

Re:It really is a pretty safe facility

[Rich0]

Governers can and have called out the national guard (ie. state-controlled military) to prevent waste from entering the state. Tanks, helicopters, and a company of heavily armed, and highly motivated national guardsman is a pretty big deterrent to a mere shipping company. It inevitably ends up as a standoff where the Federal Government backs down, because frankly, how good does it look to the rest of the World if the US uses its military on one of its own states for not allowing themselves to be the waste dump of the most dangerous stuff on Earth - espescially when the waste comes from thousands of miles away?

Oh, brother. Nobody is going to start a civil war over waste management. This is just political grandstanding, like everything else having to do with waste disposal. Oh, and everything in your list basically amounts to NIMBY. The whole point of having a Federal Government is that it isn't the prerogative of every state to decide how everything works.

Re:It really is a pretty safe facility

[PeanutButterBreath]

Sure they're safe. Go outside in the morning. See that big yellow ball in the sky? That's a fusion reactor.

That big, "safe", yellow ball that causes so much skin cancer?

Re:It really is a pretty safe facility

[Anonymous Coward]

Yucca is not stable geologically.

Re:It needs to be reopened, and spent fuel moved i

[GooberToo]

This is yet another case of anti-nukers actually making the world a more dangerous and costly place. If the anti-nukers would just shut the fuck up and let intelligent people actually move forward, things would be way better all the way around. As is, everything is more dangerous and far, far, far more expensive than would otherwise be required if anti-nukers would simply shut the fuck up.

Re:It needs to be reopened, and spent fuel moved i

[Mashiki]

Well the US is one of the few countries in the world that doesn't reprocess it's nuclear waste. In fact you guys ship your plutonium to Canada so we can make nuclear fuel for reactors. Seriously? Time to kick environmentalists in the face when they fuck everything up for everyone else based on fear mongering.

You have Sarah Palin's mind for science

[leftie]

Religious extremists should not be allowed near discussions of science policy.

Re:You have Sarah Palin's mind for science

[Anonymous Coward]

Quote something he said that suggests he is a "religious extremist". You will not and cannot do this.

Why build one when you can build two at 3 times

[Marrow]

the price? I suspect the biggest problem with Yucca is that we are ignoring the lost revenue of building another one. And the guys in charge would really love to be able to steer another bazillion dollars to their favorite contractors. Very generous contractors.

Re:Why build one when you can build two at 3 times

[ThorGod]

huh? I see your line of reasoning, but it's more likely the very isolated nature of YMP hurt it. See, the hardest to kill government project is the one that 'resides' in as many representatives districts as possible.

Having said that, storing and managing nuclear waste is the very thing I want my government worrying/managing. Do you really think Walmart, GE, or BP has any incentive to properly manage nuclear waste? You've got to be kidding me!

Re:Why build one when you can build two at 3 times

[phantomfive]

No, the biggest problem with Yucca Mountain is Harry Reid. He doesn't want it opened, and he has a high enough position in congress to make sure it does not. Here is his statement, saying how proud he is that it was finally shut down.

Currently he is trying to find an alternative use for Yucca Mountain, in order to make it even harder to open again once he leaves office.

Re:Why build one when you can build two at 3 times

[sl3xd]

I’m a big proponent of nuclear energy- it's a necessary cornerstone to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. I think the best thing we can do is build modern reactors that can use the nuclear 'waste' as fuel, and burn it down to isotopes that decay in a few human generations. However, I'm not ignorant about the tragic failure of government that is the primary cause for the opposition to Yucca Mountain, and am keenly aware that there is no political capital left to spend - and why.

Trying to pin the "problem" with Yucca Mountain on Harry Reid is just aiming for the guy at the top.

The fact is that pretty much every representative in Nevada - local and federal - for the decades Yucca Mountain has been planned - have opposed the facility.

Neighboring states also have an interest in making sure Yucca Mountain never stores waste - the most dangerous part of the task (aside from putting the waste in the casks) is the waste transit, and some-odd 70% of it goes through Utah, following a route that hits nearly every major city in the state, and affecting over 2/3 of the state's population.

Both Utah & Nevada (among others) have (and will continue to have) appalling rates of cancer and mortality due to the nation's nuclear policies in the past. I know more than a few people who live sans-thyroid (and federal compensation) because the same government that's promoting the waste facility decided to airburst several nuclear bombs & study the effects of fallout on the populace -- all without consent or even informing them about anything. People are still getting cancer from those tests - from kids to adults. The tally is estimated to eventually reach over 100,000 people - the number still climbing.

My wife's parents remember playing in "snow" in July - white, radioactive fallout ash falling like snow for several hours. They didn't understand why their parents made them come inside after they'd been playing in it for the better part of the day.

Normally when a government kills that many of its own civilians, the world community invokes sanctions and somebody tries to do something for those who are dying. When the United States does it to the people in Utah and Nevada, it's met with a shrug and forgotten.

The residents aren't ignorant of the effects of nuclear isotopes - there are few places on Earth where the populace is as intimately familiar with its effects -- as well as the callous regard its own government holds for the lives that were destroyed by nuclear isotopes.

It's not about the possibility that people might be hurt if there's an accident - It's about the tens of thousands of graves that are currently filled by friends and family because of past nuclear bungling.

The governors of the affected states have called up the National Guard to block shipments of nuclear waste in the past, and they'll do it again. There's no trust that the federal government will do anything for their safety - that political capital was exhausted decades ago, and until people stop dying (in a century or so), nothing will be enough to convince the states otherwise.

That is the failure of Yucca Mountain: the callous disregard for these smaller states, and the insistence that they "take one for the team" to the point the states are willing to risk a hopeless civil war.

Re:Why build one when you can build two at 3 times

[phantomfive]

I'm not trying to blame Harry Reid or pin it on anyone. I am merely pointing out the fact that without Harry Reid, all the rest wouldn't have the power and capability to prevent the US from going forward with storing nuclear waste in Yucca Mountain. Like it or not, that's the reality of the situation.

Re:Why build one when you can build two at 3 times

[sl3xd]

I'm not trying to blame Harry Reid or pin it on anyone. I am merely pointing out the fact that without Harry Reid, all the rest wouldn't have the power and capability to prevent the US from going forward with storing nuclear waste in Yucca Mountain. Like it or not, that's the reality of the situation.

There are other powerful senators (such as Orrin Hatch of DCMA infamy) in neighboring states who are no less passionate about refusing nuclear waste.

Believe me: It's not just Nevada that fought Yucca Mountain. Utah also has a licensed nuclear waste disposal site - one that slipped past all congressional review because of a loophole in laws surrounding indian reservations; the company that instigated has had to run a massive PR campaign just to keep people from being violent to their employees. The surrounding states of Colorado, New Mexico, Wyoming, and Idaho were also vigorously opposed to Yucca Mountain.

Here's reality for you: When there was a shipment of high-level nuclear waste destined for the disposal site on the Goshute reservation, previous governors of Utah have ordered the national guard to blockade shipments of nuclear waste into the state, in clear violation of Federal mandate. We're not talking about a political disagreement; we're talking about armed conflict. It's not personal reputations or careers that are at stake, but lives, hopes and dreams.

There is an overall ignorance in much of the US that nuclear waste disposal in the region is in the most literal sense unacceptable - regular citizens who don't have strong feelings about anything would rather die fighting in a military conflict than be forced to accept the nuclear garbage of people thousands of miles away.

Trying to pin all of that on Harry Reid is an insult to everybody who fought for decades to protect themselves from the tyrrany of the majority. It wasn't just a victory for Nevada. Yucca Mountain was kept on hold before Harry Reid hit the scene; he just happened to be around when a former senatorial colleague from Illinois took the time to understand the level of opposition by those most affected, and conclude that it wasn't worth killing over.

Re:Why build one when you can build two at 3 times

[phantomfive]

Sure, we'll see what happens when he retires.

Re:Why build one when you can build two at 3 times

[Anonymous Coward]

Do private companies own any of the power plants? Am I, the taxpayer, again being asked to foot the bill for business?

Privatize profits, transfer the losses to the public, is that what this is?

The idea that nuclear power is safe at all is just silly. Human error will beat your failsafe systems every time.

Re:It needs to be reopened, and spent fuel moved i

[Stone2065]

All fine, well, and good for those that this ISN'T going into their backyard... as a Nevada resident, I'm not real fucking happy over it. I'm hoping we can block it AGAIN, and they can figure out something ELSE to do with the shit. It's not like this is the only place on (or off) the planet we can put it...

only 42++ comments?

[ThorGod]

I'm saddened by the lack of interest this generated. I hope this is more a reflection of /. readers being too busy working to read and comment...

Why? Because nuclear waste and nuclear power are entirely under appreciated by the lay public.
-Nuclear power is one of the few, mature alternatives to fossil fuels.
-It's also pretty clean. (It'd be even more clean if the YMP was in full-swing).
-Somehow any nuclear accident gets blown completely out of proportion by the media (and therefore the public) while any oil related incident gets sweeped aside. Just how many opinions have changed after the Gulf oil drill incident? Not enough, I fear.

Are you sure?

[Anonymous Coward]

The main lines of the class 1 railroads can carry 35 ton axle loads. 100 ton cargos are transported routinely. Extra axles can be added to a railcar to increase its weight capacity. How heavy are these things, that the main line raillines are considered not strong enough to carry them?

Re:Are you sure?

[ravenshrike]

You're looking at nickel-steel casks carrying uranium and heavier than water liquid waste products. Soooo, pretty fucking heavy.

TEPCO's press release said same about Fukushima

[leftie]

Why should I believe this assurance of safety when the Nuclear Industry's track record shows they ALWAYS lie about safety and potential risks. ALWAYS.

Re:TEPCO's press release said same about Fukushima

[HangingChad]

I don't think they really do. Any large scale power system carries risk, but if you try to be honest about the risks people go off the rails.

At least as far as the Yucca Mountain leeching data goes, I've seen that with my own eyes. And that was before the nuclear industry basically took over the regulatory authority. Yucca Mountain planning did take cataclysmic events into consideration, up to what would most likely be extinction events for the rest of globe anyway.

If something really bad happened, you'd be safer inside Yucca Mountain than outside. If it wasn't for the remote location, I'd live next to the facility without a second thought.

Re:TEPCO's press release said same about Fukushima

[Thing 1]

Any large scale power system carries risk, but if you try to be honest about the risks people go off the rails.

Yeah, lie to me about your statistics and I'll go off the rails. Too bad there aren't more of me.

Side Benefit

[SuperKendall]

Yes, in our country our passenger infrastructure is heavily dependent on our freight infrastructure, which is WHY our passenger infrastructure is so bad.

WIth the average weight of Americans increasing, it could be very handy that passenger rail makes use of the freight lines.

There are NO safe reactors. NONE

[leftie]

As Fukushima showed, "safe" nuclear power is myth and a lie.

Re:There are NO safe reactors. NONE

[CrimsonAvenger]

I forget - remind me how many people Fukushima has killed so far?

Re:There are NO safe reactors. NONE

[Anonymous Coward]

Especially compared to coal.

Re:There are NO safe reactors. NONE

[Anonymous Coward]

I forget - remind me how many people Fukushima has killed so far?

In other news, cigarette smoking has been declared safe due to the negligible number of people who drop dead from lung cancer within 3 months of starting smoking.

What's the opposite of a NIMBY? Its the person who believes that problems he can't see from his back yard must not exist at all!

Re:There are NO safe reactors. NONE

[Beelzebud]

How many square miles have been evacuated to prevent illness and death? It's important to not leave that out. Japan doesn't have a lot of land to just abandon every time a reactor melts down.

Re:There are NO safe reactors. NONE

[khallow]

In other news, cigarette smoking has been declared safe due to the negligible number of people who drop dead from lung cancer within 3 months of starting smoking.

Shouldn't we apply some basic toxicology first? Don't people have to be exposed to a significant dose first? With cigarette smoking we have obvious, concentrated exposure to harmful chemicals. That's not the case with the Fukushima accident. Remember the evacuation zone and the public instructions to avoid various means of contamination? There appears to be a significant release of radioactive dust, but there doesn't seem to be a corresponding exposure to this contamination.

Re:There are NO safe reactors. NONE

[ravenshrike]

If they have enough natural disasters that all their other nuke plants have the same type of shit occur, most of the japanese population will probably starve to death before they die from rad sickness.

Re:There are NO safe reactors. NONE

[Beelzebud]

In other words, you have nothing.

Re:It needs to be reopened, and spent fuel moved i

[Amouth]

you know - the not in my back yard argument annoys the shit out of me.. everything is everyone's problem.. it has to end up some place.. if you don't like it in your back yard move.. but let it happen.. personally i don't mind.. if i don't like what is going on in the area around me i move..

Tea-party is about thrift

[SuperKendall]

Recycle your own wastes? Communism! Islam! Illegal immigrants! Drug-dealing! Or whatever the tea-party crowd wants to launder it as.

Tea party people have no beef at all with recycling - as conservatives, it's just another means to being thrifty and not wasting things.

It's along the same lines as saying the government should not waste money on projects they are not needed, we should not waste nuclear fuel that is perfectly good.

The Greens are MORE than a "bit" irresponsible, they are the ones fully responsible for the halt of Yucca Mountain and more nuclear power plants.

Re:Tea-party is about thrift

[Eskarel]

Some of the tea party may be about being thrifty, most of the Tea Party are about "government is bad".

Yucca Mountain

[Anonymous Coward]

In which Diz-Nee park is it, and why was it closed?

Re:Yucca Mountain

[MachineShedFred]

By this logic, I guess that means that Southern California can just go to hell with regards to the massive amount of power generated on the Columbia River and transmitted south by the Pacific DC Intertie.

Guess what - the grid allows for power to transcend state boundaries, so maybe the side effects of it's generation may need to transcend them as well.

what is wrong with America's infrastructure?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, much of America's infrastructure is old, but it still works. Our freight railroads are some of the best in the world. The US interstate highway is still quite extensive and functional.

If you are referring to the lack of high speed rail, or the lack of an electric grid to transport much wind power hundreds of miles, then yes, the United States lacks that. In the United States, only ~0.3 percent of all freight ton miles are transported by air. It is only in big, dense regions (like the Northeastern corridor, Japan, and parts of China), high speed rail is economical. If reduction in nonrenewable energy consumption is desired, then insulation of houses and buildings, thermal energy stores and more efficient heat and cooling systems should be pursued first.

Re:It needs to be reopened, and spent fuel moved i

[Cramer]

Bullshit. There's nowhere on Earth to put this stuff that isn't going to be in someone's backyard. Of all the land in the US -- and that's really all of the Earth we get to use, Yucca mountain is one of a very few safe places to store nuclear waste. If you wanted to bitch about it, you should've done so 40 years ago during the site selection process. (that, btw, is back when your politicians sold you out. they knew no one would care until the site was near opening.)

This has been bashed over and over... the answer is reprocessing and breader reactors. But the US power industry won't do either of them. Reprocessing is expensive. And building a completely new reactor just isn't going to happen -- cost, politics, NIMBY...

[Note: "safe" is debatable. 10,000 years is a very long time.]

Texas

[mdsolar]

Not at all. Texas was a more likely site but it had political pull to get out of consideration. Now Nevada has some pull. Perhaps we can let the science choose the site now. More geologically stable is better so lets look at Texas again.

NIMBY

[waddgodd]

It's going nowhere, Reid is still Majority Leader, it's in his state, and he's still against it. Lotta political smoke, not much fire.

Re:NIMBY

[Anonymous Coward]

Will it help our economy here? If so it'll be worthwhile and Reid may not have much of a choice. If not? He'll fight it under the same principles that he fought it before: If we're not creating the trash, why should we store it for the rest of the country?

Re:NIMBY

[Rich0]

Uh, because the reason Nevada is a great place to store trash is the reason that they don't generate it - nobody lives in half of the state's territory.

The places that generate the most trash are the worst places to store it - they're populated almost by definition and they're all next to rivers and oceans and stuff, which is why everybody lives there...

Real bad idea

[WindBourne]

Instead, we should be working on a new small power plants that can burn the 'waste', and then bury what remains. The fact is, that there is loads of energy left (hence the long half-life). So, if we burn it up via IFR or some other process, then we need just a little storage site. In addition, if the reactors are designed small, they can be manufactured and shipped to the site, loaded with the 'waste', and then simply burn it for the next 50-100 years.

Re:It needs to be reopened, and spent fuel moved i

[KenSeymour]

How does the fuel get to the plant today? What makes the waste heavier than the fuel?

IIRC the fuel gets there by truck. If so, they can take the dry casks out by truck if there is somewhere for the trucks to go.

Yucca Mountain

[Anonymous Coward]

I think that if YOUR state wants nuclear power, YOUR state stores the waste. Why should my home state be subject to the danger of radiation when YOUR state gets the power? Yucca Mountain is on a pretty major earthquake fault. It is not a good place for storage.

Re:It needs to be reopened, and spent fuel moved i

[Anonymous Coward]

Can you provide a citation for that? If they cut up, packaged, and transported the entire contents of the melted-down Three Mile Island reactor core across the country from Pennsylvania to Idaho, then it can't be that much of an obstacle, especially if the stuff is conveniently packaged in fuel bundles instead of fused into a solid mass that has to be cut up.

The point is, it's already been done.

I have been to France

[arcite]

Nuclear Power is a beautiful thing.

Nevada...

[batrick]

Everyone here is neglecting one of the #1 reasons this project was scrapped. Nevada is being dumped with the nuclear waste of all the other states. Nevada doesn't even have a nuclear power plant. United States against One.

Re:Nevada...

[Anonymous Coward]

Do you keep all the poop in the toilet or do you spread it around the bathroom floor?

Saying a state that has the most readily available and cheapest solar power in the country doesn't use nuclear power is just an obvious statement. Why would you pay more for a source of power that will also take longer to build and produce more waste? Of course the vast barren stretches of land that allow all that cheap solar are the exact same reason the rest of the country wants to store waste there.

Re:It needs to be reopened, and spent fuel moved i

[salesgeek]

I thought our passenger rail system was awful because of those airplane thingies that get you there in 1/20th the time.

I want them to use what they already built

[Marrow]

I don't want anything privatized. I want them to use the facility they already built. If it is totally unfit for that use, then I want the money raked back from every contractor that we spent it on. Which will never happen. If they start from scratch, they get to spend all that money -again-. And the skimming will go on and on and on. Note: This is a nuclear facility. Lots of security. Which means blacked-out costs and expenditures and a perfect place to hide graft and corruption. Its not like civilian auditors will ever get to see what we spent all that money on the super secure widgets.
There is no incentive for anyone to do the right thing! The only incentive is to keep the money flowing so everyone gets paid forever.

Re:I want them to use what they already built

[ThorGod]

Right, so place a marginal tax on gas that goes directly to an EPA funded environmental rehabilitation (cleaning) program. (Good luck passing that with who we've got in the Congress.)

PS Last time I heard what that marginal tax *should* be, just to properly cover the external costs of burning a gallon of gas, $12 would need to be added to every barrel of gas sold. Can YOU imagine paying $15 for a gallon of gas?

good luck getting this by harry reid

[hansoloaf]

ya know the senate majority leader who happens to be from nevada.

Re:It needs to be reopened, and spent fuel moved i

[Anonymous Coward]

It's not perfect, but dry cask storage in Yucca Mountain is way better than rods in spent fuel pools in power plants.

No it isn't. The Yucca Mountain project has made a lot of people rich but it hasn't created a safe disposal site for nuclear waste. Using it only guarantees a messy, expensive, and dangerous cleanup.

Anyone who proposes storing such dangerous material up in a mountain needs to (re)take a basic physics class.

Only one country + learn about it

[dbIII]

other countries have been reprocessing

Last time I looked there was only one France and they've had a lot of trouble with reprocessing and haven't done any for a couple of years.
Also for some reason a lot of people have it backwards. The one and only purpose of reprocessing is to extract usable material from spent fuel rods. It is NOT a way to reduce nuclear waste, in fact it actually generates a lot of low level waste due to contamination. The fuel rods are still very intense neutron sources after all so many things that come close to them also become radioactive. Very expensive PR has been applied to make people think like idiots on this issue so don't feel bad that you've been made to think it's magic and not a real thing with real costs inseperable from the benefits.
You still need somewhere to store radioactive waste with or without reprocessing. Yukka mountain is apparently a bit too wet, and if that really is the case it's just a matter of finding somewhere better.

Re:Only one country + learn about it

[MachineShedFred]

The one and only purpose of reprocessing is to extract usable material from spent fuel rods. It is NOT a way to reduce nuclear waste

Without reprocessing, the entire fuel load is considered waste.

With reprocessing, only what remains after extracting usable material is considered waste.

How is this not reducing nuclear waste again?

Re:Only one country + learn about it

[Rich0]

Yukka mountain is apparently a bit too wet, and if that really is the case it's just a matter of finding somewhere better.

I think the problem is the quest for the "perfect solution." We want some place where we can just dump stuff and then even if mankind goes extinct it will stay buried for 100k years or whatever. That just doesn't make sense.

The choice isn't between Yukka mountain or "someplace better" - it is between Yukka mountain and a bazillion containment pools and warehouse all over the place.

The solution is to manage the waste, not bury it. Stick it in Yukka mountain, and then monitor it. It will be safer there than anyplace it is currently stored in. If in 50k years things change, then move it. And by all means we should do whatever we can to reduce waste volume.

What about the effect on Nevada residents?

[Anonymous Coward]

Aside from the fact that Reid is the Majority Leader, there are specific issues specific to Nevada Residents. Nevada, as a desert, has a finite amount of water and that rights to the useage of this water is goverened by the State Water Controller, or some such nonsensical title. The building of this facility requires the allocation of water acreage to be designated for use at the storage facility thereby stripping away one of the most valuable resources from the residents of the state. It would seem only fair that is Nevada is forced to have its resources reallocated for the benefit of other states, Nevada has no use of Nuclear power, it would seem only fair that the government would then be obligated to pipe in water from other states for the use of Nevadans.

Perhaps you meant to answer a different post

[Marrow]

I have no idea what I might have said to bring up the idea of tax increases.

Re:Perhaps you meant to answer a different post

[ThorGod]

The energy sector suffers from drastically undervalued oil.

Who Lives in Nevada

[Anonymous Coward]

How many people who are for this project live in Las Vegas or near Yucca Mountain? Would your views be any different if this was being built near your city? For those who do live in Las Vegas (like myself) and are for this project, tell me why you are for it? I'm opposed to it but curious to see the other side as well.

Here Is A Volcano Quiz

[Anonymous Coward]

Q. What action do volcanoes eventually perform? A. They erupt.
Q. When was the last time Yucca erupted? A. 80,000 years ago.
Q. By comparison, when was the last volcanic explosion at Yellowstone? A. 150,000 years ago.
Q. If you place nuclear fissile material near or inside volcanoes and they erupt, where does the material go? A. Everywhere! The radioactive particulates can enter the jet stream and travel all around the world sprinkling nuclear fallout as far as Asia and Europe.
Q. Where is the best place to put radioactive waste? A. Refine it and recycle it back into existing reactors as a fuel source.

Pat yourself on the back if you got most of these questions right. Congrats! Isn't science grand?

Little known fact! Researchers funded by the Nevada Agency for Nuclear Projects and the Nuclear Waste Division of Clark County, Nevada suggested that the size of the Yucca Mountain volcanic field was not well known. Eight Quaternary basalt volcanoes erupted within 50 km of the proposed repository in the past million years, and higher than previously predicted recurrence rates for Yucca Mountain volcanism may be possible in the future.

ummmmmm No...

[Anonymous Coward]

Ive known folks who have worked on this project for years...
the pure science behind it is pretty simple...
the lack of common sense behind it is appauling,
and here on this page, the so-called science experts responding HAVE NOT done their homework...
the sites sit on a fault line...far too dangerous for storage..
can't get any simpler than that..
want more good reasons why it will never be happen?
here you go.
transportation alone would be more dangerous than leaving it where it sits now..
and lastly, guess how many nuclear plants there are in Nevada, thats right... 0...
why should nevadans be responsible for YOUR mess....
if you built a nuclear reactor in your state and didnt have a rock-solid way to take care of your own trash,
then YOU SHOULD NOT HAVE EVER BUILT ONE!
Nevada is not your trash can...
send nuclear waste here and the majority of nevadans will be standing on the train tracks or roads to block entery...
i dare you to test us....you will have a civil war on your hands..

Re:It needs to be reopened, and spent fuel moved i

[Anonymous Coward]

survive being hit by a locomotive?
wow...
the sheer ignorance is.. is.. unreal..

Universe

[Anonymous Coward]

Its a large place with black holes and stars. I am a normal guy, I like to blow things up. Can we send a rocket to a black hole loaded with stuff that can catch on fire and explode? That would be most excellent, and I would pay per view that!!!

It needs to be opened and used

[Anonymous Coward]

We need a President that actually will do something to alleviate the energy problem in this country - inherently safe Nuclear reactors are the ONLY technology that can meet our needs. Everything else is just wishful thinking.

Re:It needs to be reopened, and spent fuel moved i

[CyberDragon777]

www.youtube.com/watch?v=1mHtOW-OBO4

Yes. Your ignorance is really amazing.

Nice Timing!

[DarthVain]

Is it just me or is the Nuclear industry using exactly the wrong time to push this?

You might want to wait for Fukushima to cool down. Literately.

Re:It needs to be reopened, and spent fuel moved i

[MrKaos]

Yucca mountain is not a suitable site because it is made of pumice and geologically active evidenced by recent aftershocks of 5.6 within ten miles of a repository that is supposed to be geologically stable for at least 500000 years. The DOE's own 1982 Nuclear Waste policy Act reported that Yucca Mountain's geology is inappropriate to contain nuclear waste, and long term corrosion data on C22 (the material to contain the Pu-239 and mitigate the ingress of water - yet another Yucca problem) is just not available.

We need something made of granite. The only human made structure with the potential to last 10000 years is Mt Rushmore, so it has to be an engineering project of that scale, because the logistical problems of transferring the 70000 odd tons of Pu239 to the spent fuel containment facility are so involved that you want to get it right the first time and only do it once.

Even doing that will probably take 30 years to complete, but there is more to it than that.

I was a big fan of the Integral Fast Reactor as a potential solution and in a way I still am. But the reality is 3rd and 4th generation reactors are a pipe dream because our material science is not advanced enough yet to produce a reactor design that will last the thousands of years it will take to use that fuel. If you are going to build reactors then do it properly and build a Terra-watt scale nuclear reactor facility the belly of a massive granite mountain with an attached waste facility and chomp up all your remaining plutonium or end all commercial nuclear activity altogether.

Why? Because Nuclear power is energy intensive *after* the energy has been produced simply because said technology (material sciences) are not adequate to produce a Nuclear reactor that has a life span that matches the geological time frames of the fuel. This exposes the facility to all the energetic costs associated with de-commissioning reactor sites every 4 decades or so. A reactor design that lasts at least 1000 years and is a closed loop, i.e. the plutonium goes in and nothing comes out (except electricity and possibly hydrogen) and avoids all the energetic costs associated with mining, enrichment and de-commissioning/demolition of the reactor. That would be possible with a reactor situated inside the same granite facility where it could be disposed of in-situ to decay in the belly of a granite mountain.

As long we are producing plutonium and there is no where for it to go we will have a Nuclear Weapons threat and this is the price we pay for opening that pandora's box. I don't hide the fact that I don't like the constant failure of the Nuclear Industry. But I'm also being realistic. I realise that the only way out of this mess is a well thought out and designed project because we have no other choice due to the nature of the materials. It entails redesigning the entire industry, and it's a long term solution. A well designed and secured facility resistant to attacks even from orbit because that's the type of 21st century threats it would have to face.

But it has to be done properly, and I don't think private industry is capable of delivering such a project. If we really think about it it will be a massive undertaking that will present many challenges that must be overcome if we are sincere about producing a well engineered safe Nuclear industry and sincere about a platform for disarmament.

Some who have read my criticisms of the Nuclear Industry may be surprised to find that I actually support the development of a reactor that addresses the issue of 70,000 tons of Pu-239 (and much more U-238) currently stored in reactor sites around America, simply because it's irresponsible for our generation to foist these issue onto later generations.

One of the core reasons I support the development of such a reactor because it is capable of utilising weapons grade plutonium as fuel creating an impetus for di

How easy to read do I have to make it?

[dbIII]

As written above:
"in fact it actually generates a lot of low level waste due to contamination"
"The fuel rods are still very intense neutron sources after all so many things that come close to them also become radioactive."

It's best if you consider it as the industrial process it is of working on very hard materials with a very high melting point contaminated with very highly radioactive and chemically toxic materials such as plutonium (which makes it very hard to handle) instead of thinking of it as magic. Overall you are left with a larger amount of waste than the expired fuel that came in but it's less dangerous waste and you still have to store it somewhere.
Currently reprocessing is incredibly difficult, expensive, and contaminates a lot of other material that comes in contact with it. That means up to this time it has been done as a proof of concept (USA) or continuing development (France) basis and not as a serious way to produce commercial amounts of fuel. Most of the fuel rods sent to France for reprocessing over the last decade and a half are still in storage. Making new fuel rods is a lot easier than reprocessing old ones - plutonium and other materials from radioactive decay make the old fuel rods very difficult to handle.
Ideas such as accelerated thorium reactors have the potential to melt down and use the discarded uranium fuel rods without any expensive and difficult reprocessing.

Nuclear whiners.

[GargamelSpaceman]

Nuclear energy is unsafe in the hands of humans, and probably shouldn't be done - BUT it's going to be done anyway. The only intelligent way to proceed is to sincerely try to do everything possible to ensure that it's done in a way that is actually as safe as it can practically be.

NOTE: This is NOT the same thing as what 'environmental' and NIMBY groups do, which is to attempt to reduce the amount of fission that gets done by attempting to make it unprofitable with asinine overregulation, and whiny hinderances.
These people need to realise that the amount of fission that gets done will be the same no matter what they do, and that amount is ALL OF IT.

The only question is whether it's done safely and whether the waste is managed appropriately. The more profit that's in it, the more resources that will be available to try and ensure the whole thing is done as safely as possible.

Doing things well, even things that should not be done, but which will be done, is the best way to deal with nuclear fission power.

- End rant.

2012

[Anonymous Coward]

Strange hu? Spend Billions building the biggest strongest hole on earth and we don't use it for anything?
No accident.. It is waiting to house the chosen few to survive the destruction in 2012. :P

ITS NOT WHAT YOU THINK PEOPLE!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

Ive been living in Las vegas the past 4yrs and have driven up to Yucca mountain and so have a bunch of others I know. DONT BELIEVE what you read on the internet or in the news unless youve seen it in person. It is an underground city. The whole nuclear waste disposal is a cover up!!!!! about a year ago people including myself have seen large 18 wheelers/ semi trucks driving into the tunnels that were SUPPOSED to be closed! Now all of a sudden CNN says its "re-opening"?!? Right Right!!! Ask anyone whos been up there, the area is not sectioned off or anything. It doesnt take a genius to figure something else is up.

It's Gotta Go Somewhere

[Anonymous Coward]

Nuclear waste has to go somewhere. The longer the waste stays onsite at nuclear power plants the greater the potential for groundwater leakage or worse. Besides, the scientific community researched storage sites for years and I trust their choice. Within the last few years the Yucca mountain site was verified safe for 1 million years of storage, a new safety requirement by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. In addition electric utility companies have been paying a tax on nuclear power generation to the federal government for at least the last 20 years so the government could develop a solution to nuclear waste storage. It's time for the federal government to finally do something right---continue to develop and eventually utillize Yucca Mtn. for nulcear waste storage!

Stop The Insanity!

[Anonymous Coward]

Making and using deadly materials is so passe. With so many safe alternatives, it is a testament to our ever-lasting stupidity that nuclear power is being used at all. And what do all these reporters mean when they say that this group of congressmen are "backed" by the nuclear industry??? How come that statement is not the headline? What is the going rate these days for the health, safety and sanity of your co-inhabitants and constituents? Why aren't the smart people in power anymore??? I want my money back!

Re:It needs to be reopened, and spent fuel moved i

[Fordiman]

The thing that bothers me about the Yucca NIMBY argument is that Yucca Mountain is not in ANYONES back yard. No one for TENS OF MILES lives there.

Re:It needs to be reopened, and spent fuel moved i

[Anonymous Coward]

...and any water in the area that may get contaminated goes into more than backyards ...