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Waste Management: The Critical Element For Nuclear Energy Expansion
Lasrick (2629253) writes "As part of a roundtable on the risks of developing nuclear power in developing countries, Harvard's Yun Zhou explores the reprocessing of spent fuel. Zhou points out that no country in the world has come up with a permanent solution to nuclear waste in either of its two forms: the spent fuel that emerges directly from reactor cores and the high-level radioactive waste that results when spent fuel is reprocessed. Zhou points out that China and France have just announced a joint effort to establish a reprocessing plant, but that option isn't really practical for the developing world."
"no country in the world has come up with a political solution to nuclear waste" FTFY
The technology is relatively simple. But then so are the opponents.
Prove anything by multiplying Huge Number times Tiny Number
This get me curious... what has more unusable land... the "Magic Forest" around Chernobyl, or the land that can't be used due to tainted wells and such in Pennsylvania, not to mention the ever-so-toxic areas with mine tailings. Places like Centralia, PA come to mind as well.
I'd say that there was less environmental damage from the worst nuclear disaster in human history than the status quo in other energy methods.
Hmm, 600-odd nuclear reactors in the world. And they always fail? Odd that I've only heard of three failures, including one that was self-inflicted (if you put a reactor into an unsafe condition to test whether you can extract power from a reactor while it's melting down, don't be terribly surprised if it melts down).
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
Solar, Water, Wind are all completely renewable sources of energy that upon failure...don't destroy the ecosystem around it.
You forgot "completely unreliable" and "unsuitable for most energy needs".
Modern reactors can't fail.
This. Right here. This is the attitude that makes so many people distrustful of nuclear proponents.
I know you said we don't actually build "modern" reactors, but ANY design of reactor can fail, because people run them, boards that demand profit oversee management, and sometimes people fly airplanes into buildings.
I think he meant, new reactor designs do not fail catastrophically. The built in *PASSIVE* safety of these new designs would mean it take a deliberate act (sabotage) to cause a reactor to fail in a way that involves the release of radioactive materials.
You can't put fail and sabotage together and say the reactor is unsafe. *ANYTHING* is unsafe if it's sabotaged correctly.
Most of that 'Waste' is fuel that should be 'burned' in a reactor. The tailings came out of the ground in a mine and when the mine is depleted, they can go back in. The area will be less radioactive than it was before we started. The depleted uranium is just metal, nothing special about it except that it's density makes it a pretty good material for armor piercing rounds. We can use it for things like that, bury it, or breed it into fuel (or particalize it and blow it into the air like coal plants do, but I don't recommend that one). The liquid waste is mostly water, if we apply a bit of energy to it (perhaps from a nuclear reactor), we can diminish that considerably and have a more manageable waste. The tools and such are low level waste. We don't want kids playing with it, but it's not worse in general than the various carcinogenic waste from coal and oil.
It's amazing how bad you can make anything look if you're willing to stretch the truth. Just think of the many gallons of toxic waste created when you build a solar thermal plant (and by toxic waste, I mean in the porta-pottys).
When the waste spent fuel rods pool on the upper floors of the collapsing core melted 3rd reactor at Fukushima finally succumbs to the brittleness induced by heavy radiation, the resultant release of cesium 235 through contact with oxygen will depopulate Japan and likely much of the pacific coast, or any other areas the atmospheric and ocean currents take the plume.
So much for radioactive waste disposal as there will be no one left alive to dispose of it. Since the technology to begin dealing with Fukushima will not be available for another half a century it makes you wonder about the total cumulative levels of exposure (there is no save level) and how intelligent the design and use of radioactive materials by apes really is ; )