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Decommissioning San Onofre Nuclear Plant May Take Decades
gkndivebum writes "Southern California Edison has elected to decommission the San Onofre nuclear plant after a failed effort to upgrade the steam generation system. 'Nuclear economics' is the reason stated for the proposed decommissioning. Other utilities operating nuclear power plants in the US likely face similar decisions when it comes to weighing the costs of upgrading older facilities. Allowing the reactors to remain in 'safe storage' for a period of up to 60 years will allow for radioactive decay and lower radiation exposure for the workers performing the demolition."
for 50 years, the federal government has taxed nuclear fuel to build a permanent waste depository. where is it?
weasels.
if this is supposed to be a new economy, how come they still want my old fashioned money?
I have knowledge of this matter and I know it's crap. This is about negotiating with a supplier and throwing a tantrum. They have decided to cut off their nose to spite their face.
(If this sounds like a lot of opinion, it is...but I do have some knowledge on this matter. Once things are final, I'll be happy to share exactly what I know.)
For the moment, until things change, nuclear power is the only source that provides enough to keep things going without buring stuff and putting it into the air and everywhere. Already nuclear power has saved countless lives as they have safely displaced the amount of coal and gas to burn. Without nuclear power, the net carbon footprint of hybrid cars would be less than barely a net improvement over pure gasoline. Wind, solar, geothermal and others are not able to make it happen.
Anti-nuke people haven't been paying attention. But just about any way you look at it, nuclear wins. Sure it requires a great deal of care to handle it safely, but we've been doing nuclear in the US for a very long time with a pretty excellent record.
It disappoints me that greedy business interests are behaving this way. Until we have something better than nuclear, we need to keep nuclear going. (Shut them all down once we've got something better. It's not like I'm in love with the tech, but it's just so much better than burning stuff.)
Other utilities operating nuclear power plants in the US likely face similar decisions when it comes to weighing the costs of upgrading older facilities.
Yeah, my country unfortunately has a 60,000% idiot tax. We get massive amounts of food poisoning because people fear irradiated food. We pollute so badly that we've managed to kill large lakes and entire biomes in Africa because we're burning fossil fuel as our primary energy source when we were the ones that first created nuclear power. 4% of my fellow countrymen believe that shape-shifting reptiles are trying to control the government through political manipulation... another 7% "aren't sure". And we're reporting record numbers of people joining the Flat Earth Society, and have one of the lowest rates of acceptance in the theory of evolution of any industrialized country on Earth.
In short, we're morons. That's why nuclear power is so expensive here, and why we're letting these plants rot... it's stupid, pathetic, moronic fear of technology, science, and progress. And it's killing the planet. Literally. We are literally dying of stupidity.
#fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
I thought the point of such extensive containment structures was that they would never be destroyed? Just remove the fuel and any equipment that isn't cemented into the structure and leave the rest. I imagine the general thought-lines behind a lot of nuclear plants was to simply to continue to build new reactors as the old ones had to be decommissioned and continue to use the same generators, transmission equipment & facilities with incremental upgrades over the years. But I think I see why they're going the decommissioning route with this one, even if it was economic to build some new reactors this plant is sandwiched between the Pacific and a major highway. The reactor structures themselves are not more than 400' from the ocean, at least on the face of it this place is another Fukushima under the wrong circumstances.
[Our Children's Children's Children Will Save Us]
From certain doom now. Just let them deal with it.
Both my aunt and neighbor told me the same crap when I asked why they don't recycle. They'll be dead before the world goes to hell.
I went through their trash and recycled for them. Each time I was scolded for going through their trash. I said I would stop...
However, to each I also told that research in neuroscience, cybernetics, and stem cells will give us the ability bring our dead back to life by scanning in their brain.
I promised that I would stop recycling for them, and also swore that if they do not start recycling that after they are dead,
I will have their bodies exhumed by whatever means necessary, and their brains scanned and I will bring them back to life
after the carelessness of people like them has caused the world they leach life from to truly "go to hell".
They both now have incentive to recycle, and have continued to do so; Even gotten some of their friends to recycle too.
These "God Fearing" people would throw the world away. It took someone putting the fear of life into them to change them.
Nuclear energy is most important. Once the last specs of coal and drops of oil are sucked from the Earth, we will look back at our fearful folly and think:
"All that useful material for making plastics and things, and the fools fucking burned it all."
It is time to realize the startling truth. You may literally have to live with the consequences of your actions forever.
There is no significant safety issue here
"i did not have sexual relations with monica lewinski"
Nuclear proponents are always running around yelling wind and solar pawer can't compete on a per KW basis. Well, not if you skim off the profits and leave the cleanup to taxpayers!
Take the total lifetime cost ( including what is usually shifted onto us after the investors skeedaddle with the profits ) and divide that by KW's produced.
Hogwash! Nuclear power is too expensive to be sustainable.
* Carthago Delenda Est *
for 50 years, the federal government has taxed nuclear fuel to build a permanent waste depository. where is it?
As much as I love blasting on our danged ole federal gummint, on this one I have to blame the NIMBY asshats in Nevada. You see, the Feds identified a pretty damned good place in Yucca Mountain. The place is geologically pretty stable, made of solid rock, and has a crazy low water table. Oh, and it's about 100 miles away from civilization, which in this case means Las Vegas.
The feds spent decades fighting the locals to get this done, until Obama finally capitulated to the NIMBYs as fronted by Sen. Harry Reid, killing the project and leaving a total lack of long term storage. Quid pro quo for something, no doubt.
In doubt, better invade.
There is a growing technical debt with nuclear decommissioning. Debts can turn into bubbles, I wonder if it is the case here. Do we really know how much power is needed to decommission a nuclear power plant? How many years of the plant's production is it worth?
I read that much of the dumping grounds repaired and sold the used appliances. The "trash" wasn't worth repairing at US prices, but at 3rd world labor prices, it was worth it. So your trash is getting repaired, your same toaster in the recycle is getting melted down, and some 3rd world person will go hungry. So, throw it away for humanity! Or something like that.
Learn to love Alaska
I believe in making the world safe for our children, but not our children's children, because I don't think children should be having sex. -Jack Handey
Radioactive decay is the mechanism by which something decays which gives off radiation.
Radiation is all sorts of stuff, from the mundane visible light, to high energy beams of doom, to, unfortunately, electrons flying around (beta radiation) and helium atoms stripped of electrons (alpha radiation), although fortunately the term 'radiation' for alpha and beta particles has mostly fallen out of use.
Any given radiation photon (or alpha particle or beta particle) is indeed short lived in the area, but the radioactivity - the amount of radiation being given off in a unit of time can be constant for quite a long time. Normally we talk about the half life (how long it takes for the amount of radiation given off to drop to 1/2 of its previous level) but half of 'enough to kill you 1000 times over' is still a problem.
Different types of radiation have different effects.
With a nuclear power plant you have a fairly diverse collection of radioactive materials and types of radiation, some of which will be a problem for a few minutes, some for a few thousand years and everything in between (and potentially some things which are going to be a problem for millions). With regards to an american reactor (which I know nothing about) 60 years could very reasonably be long enough for a large portion of the short lived radioactive isotopes to decay into something safe, and the radiation to be either absorbed by the casing or simply be radiated away at a low enough dose that it doesn't matter. And then you have to deal with the stuff that's going to be radioactive for a lot longer. Or maybe not. Who knows, in 60 years someone might actually come up with and implement a plan for what to do with all this nuclear waste we're making that isn't just 'keep in under water on site'.
There is starting to be a market for nuclear cleanup. Just think how many companies out there are researching, or have a product that helps to mitigate oil spills? People dump millions of barrels of oil into the ocean then go out and try to clean it up.. we're still using it though, even though it's really nasty and really hard to clean.
The same can be said of nuclear waste. If they start handing out multi-billion dollar contracts to clean things up then shit will get cleaned up. Impractical methods of removing nuclear contaminants from soil and other material already exist, but nobody can afford to use them on a massive scale. Not to mention they would be a huge waste of energy.
I guess what I'm saying is that I understand their wanting to hold for now. Just letting things decay naturally saves tons of work and increases the safety. It also allows time for scientific or engineering work that may make the job easier.
what makes you think the reactor is de-fueled yet? there's your first fuck up right there
Yes but why the hell did we make so many fission reactors when we could have made LFTRS http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liquid_fluoride_thorium_reactor Cleaner, Cheaper, Safer and can be safely decommissioned in a couple of years rather than the best part of a century.
Build a Man a Fire, and He'll Be Warm for a Day. Set a Man on Fire, and He'll Be Warm for the Rest of His Life.
If you have to wait some 40-60 years for the iodine and some of the cesium and strontium to decay, it means that:
To be, or not to be: isn't that quite logical, Slashdot Beta?
Call me a cynical dirty hippy, but I have a problem imagining the directors of a commercial nuclear power station handing out a multi-billion dollar contract to clean things up 40 years after they're retired.
Or do you mean the government, payed by the taxpayer, hands out that multi-billion dollar clean-up contract? I agree, good for the economy 40 years onwards, but it's a bit of a broken-windows fallacy. If they hadn't dug up the uranium and built the reactor they wouldn't have to clean it up afterwards either.
To be, or not to be: isn't that quite logical, Slashdot Beta?