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Organic Cat Litter May Have Caused Nuclear Waste Accident
mdsolar (1045926) writes in with a story about how important buying the right kind of kitty litter can be. "In February, a 55-gallon drum of radioactive waste burst open inside America's only nuclear dump, in New Mexico. Now investigators believe the cause may have been a pet store purchase gone bad. 'It was the wrong kitty litter,' says James Conca, a geochemist in Richland, Wash., who has spent decades in the nuclear waste business. It turns out there's more to cat litter than you think. It can soak up urine, but it's just as good at absorbing radioactive material. 'It actually works well both in the home litter box as well as the radiochemistry laboratory,' says Conca, who is not directly involved in the current investigation. Cat litter has been used for years to dispose of nuclear waste. Dump it into a drum of sludge and it will stabilize volatile radioactive chemicals. The litter prevents it from reacting with the environment. And this is what contractors at Los Alamos National Laboratory were doing as they packed Cold War-era waste for shipment to the dump. But at some point, they decided to make a switch, from clay to organic. 'Now that might sound nice, you're trying to be green and all that, but the organic kitty litters are organic,' says Conca. Organic litter is made of plant material, which is full of chemical compounds that can react with the nuclear waste. 'They actually are just fuel, and so they're the wrong thing to add,' he says. Investigators now believe the litter and waste caused the drum to slowly heat up 'sort of like a slow burn charcoal briquette instead of an actual bomb.' After it arrived at the dump, it burst."
It should be noted that this waste is from cold war era defense programs, and not used commercial nuclear fuel which is much easier to handle and store. It should also be noted that although the writers make every effort to call the WIPP a "dump" in order to conjure up images of a simple landfill, it is actually an underground geological (saltbed) monitored storage facility created for storage of radioactive waste.
Unlike chemical from many industries that are dumped in many places with much less control, this is an example of quick recognition and response to a problem. Cold war nuclear waste comes in all kinds of nasty liquid, solid, and semi-solid forms and will continue to bring challenges as the slow cleanup slog continues.
Of course, this slashdot submission is one of an ongoing number of agenda driven submissions that intends to obfuscate the challenges of cold ware era defense program neglect with commercial nuclear power. Fortunately, most slashdot readers pick up on the obvious.
You still have a bad cert, Slashdot. What's going on?
Heard it on the radio a couple of days ago.
putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
Don't go green.
Tic-Tac-Toe, Global Thermonuclear War, and relationships all have the same winning move.
"organic kitty litters are organic" is stating the obvious. Just saying.
It is absolutely an agenda submission. It even looks to me like it's trying to be critical of the organic movement. I'll reserve my opinion of that kind of thing, but in this case, "organic" means what it actually means, not the hippie non-term it has become. I'd rather they say it was because they switched from clay-based to plant-based kitty litter. The risks of this should have been obvious to someone working with radioactive disposal.
This must have been very poor quality kitty litter. Given what my evil black cat puts into her cat box, the highest of quality in kitty litter must be obtained to prevent a similar explosion.
It's really quite a simple choice: Life, Death, or Los Angeles.
Organic cat litters are really just jet fuel? What? The stupid is strong with this one.
I don't think my cat gives a shit whether their bathroom is organic, it's a frickin' toilet.
I'm green with being sick about this having anything to do with "being green." For a NUCLEAR WASTE contractor to not read the ingredients and know the difference is what the news is here.
"Stupid hippie crap."
Jet fuel would be a hydrocarbon. Organic kitty litter would be essentially cellulose, a carbohydrate.
Both are fuels, in that they will combust when heated, unlike clay.
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fear monger over reacts to single incident to kill an entire industry, good going I have lost a little respect for your cause moron
I don't know that his cause is to blame. All causes have some idiot followers who jump on the bandwagon without any intellectual thought. Just along for the ride and parroting what he hears instead of thinking and responding intelligently. There are pros and cons to nuclear power but I have to say that this concerns cold war refuse and not modern commercial waste.
It's worse than two kinds of concrete.
It's like approving concrete originally, then switching to bamboo fiber mash. Yes, someone should have known better, as they're not even close to the same thing.
...dem radioactive urine-packin' kittehz.
Yeah Kittehz!
http://24.media.tumblr.com/ab9...
Left MS Windows for Linux Mint and never looked back!
Vote for Bernie in 2016!
Just because a material has a everyday name, it doesn't mean that the original specification didn't have a chemical/mechanical/biological/radiological/whatever reason for specifying it.
If all the material property requirements were met with a commonly available product that didn't require an expensive supply chain, then that's great.
HOWEVER...
I suspect that originally somewhere in the nuclear disposal system, a group identified the need, a solution was found and a materiel was specified. Along the line or through the years, the REASON for that specification was lost to the end of the purchasing chain and the poor sod who orders the stuff was given a directive to "buy sustainably" and substituted the new material without being aware of the original intent.
That person probably wasn't even been aware of the use of the material - they may have though it was used in the kennels for the guard dogs. It's a nuclear material disposal site. Need to know is important. (1) The suppler wouldn't have known, either.
There's lots of complaints of expensive procedures and materials(2), but this is a perfect example of the need for a formal supply chain system with provable provenance. You may BUY a commonly available kitty litter to fulfill the order, but what arrives in the sacks will have to match the specification sheet.
1. Yes, this is irony. The accident may have been prevented if the purchasing officer knew what it was for. Then again, maybe not.
2. Ferrous hammers are a bad idea around strong magnetic fields. If you're in a lab with a MRI or similar and lots of delicate equipment, a hammer to undo the dog on a vacuum chamber had better be a very special hammer. The kind that you can buy today for less than a hundred bucks, but in the 60's had to be engineered from scratch. Thank someone else's R&D for the fact you can buy a (nearly) chemically inert, non-ferrous, non-sparking hammer for a pittance.
Not to mention, it wasn't the kitty litter that caused this.
Newsflash: If you work with nuclear waste, don't go around changing the recipes without asking your boss!
This is unrelated to "nuclear energy" and was for bombs.
Learn to love Alaska
The nuclear accident is now known by the operation handle: Katpiss Evergreen
I would ask you to explain what you meant by that post, but I think not. Nobody was hurt by this incident, nothing was contaminated; the spill (if there was one) was contained and cleaned up.
You should learn the difference between cold war waste and the spent fuel produce from commercial nuclear power plants. They are very different. Spent nuclear fuel from power plants is actually quite easy to handle, particularly compared to the mess of wastes that the government produced for weapons up to and during the cold war era and completely neglected once they no longer had use for them.
What a joke, the system of disposable was the cause. Who is the they in the article that made the decision? Why did they make it? What oversight was missing or not followed? Oh never mind, organic causes nuclear waste accidents!
First off, this is from the weapons program, not power. Also, not all waste is created equal. Drums are only used for low level stuff - think lab coats, glassware, tools, etc. that at some point might have come into contact with radioactive stuff and so can have trace residue on it. This is *NOT* spent fuel. If you had cared to read the original articles, you'd know that the incident was the first in this facility's 15 year history, wasn't their fault, was extremely small, was immediately contained and rootcaused so that corrective measures could be taken. From where I'm standing, this is a good example of safety working as intended. Unlike your average coal ash spill.
Sentimental attachment aside, perhaps it's time to upgrade that old reliable eniac.
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
Ernest Hemingway
I would ask you to explain what you meant by that post, but I think not.
Where did it go wrong for you? Jesus fuck or Coca-Cola douche?
Nobody was hurt by this incident, nothing was contaminated; the spill (if there was one) was contained and cleaned up.
It seems clear on the order of crystal to anyone not poverty-stricken enough to pay attention that a Coca-Cola douche would release more malevolent material to the environment than this incident.
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
Ernest Hemingway
Don't take my word for it, look at who submitted this article, as well as a string of negative nuclear related headlines going back quite some time, for long stretches almost on a daily basis. You'll find its good ole mdsolar. So yes, I'll remind the community of it, because some folks don't really pay attention. I guess that includes yourself.
Your autocorrect eyes aren't too far off. One common way to make small rockets is sugar as fuel. The sugar is mixed with your choice compound that provides the oxygen.
Let that organic material sit around for a while and airborne yeast will turn some of it into dragster fuel - ethanol.
If this is /. then why is it is so frickin' hard to update a CA? News for nerds..brought to you buy lazy BOFH?
> teenagers
Or in this case, Republicans. They hate science, and it shows when they attempt to do it. They love their overpriced organic crap. Just look at how their kind flocks to Whole Foods to give money to that CONservative that wants to steal healthcare from his employees. They love the word organic even though their kind is too stupid to comprehend what it means. Their anti-learning and even at times anti-reading position is destroying this country. As you pointed out, they're even shoving softdrinks into their daughter's vaginas. They are weird.
All causes have some idiot followers who jump on the bandwagon without any intellectual thought.
Really? I think I'll define "give dkf lots of money for doing nothing much, so he can spend it on beer and pizza and the other good things in life" as a cause and see how effective that is! Contact me for detailed instructions on how to remit payments.
(I know, it probably won't bring in much, but it also takes so little effort I might as well try.)
"Little does he know, but there is no 'I' in 'Idiot'!"
Must have been reasonably hot if it charred the organic matter it was mixed with, and burst the 55 gal drum...
Though I suppose the 'sludge' could have been something along the lines of sulfuric acid (with requisite trace amounts of radioactive bits in it).. that would cook anything organic in there. Of course you'd think they'd be smart enough to neutralize things like that before binning them... Maybe not.
Sent from my PDP-11
Have gnu, will travel.
When you're dealing with radioactive waste, going green is bad.
Just about every lab I've worked at, both university and industry, talking to chemical safety officers that were involved in cleaning up a building to be renovated brings up all sorts of stories of containers with browned and charred labels found in the back of some storage area. It seems amazing in some naive sense that there are not more fires at university chemistry departments because someone left some poorly labeled bottle some place for 10+ years to slowly react into one type or another of a mess.
I don't drive the content toward anything on this site. I do have my opinions, and I am very up front about them.
Anything I 'discredit' is done without relation to the submitter, his credibility, or lack thereof. I speak to the content of the article and the subject matter. I did not dismiss anything in this article. In the past I have shown how some of the articles submitted by the same person are misleading or dead wrong and many points, and directly from sources that are not credible. This article isn't one of those, but it was one of many written on this event, but one of the few to repetitively use the term "dump".
If you read the comments, these headlines breed confusion. Many people associate this type of waste with nuclear power fuel waste, and its a very different animal. Its a clarification that is perfectly reasonable for someone to make.
So, be specific. What truth don't I like that I am discrediting? Or did you just throw out that accusation with nothing to back it up? I certainly backed up mine.
Too often you end up making an idiot like the parent.
The "organics" did not react with the "nuclear" part of the "nuclear waste", they reacted with the 1% acid that was still in the solution.
A pure chemical reaction.
(Made complicated/ugly by the combustion products carrying away small amounts of nuclear waste, for sure.)
one is researched and proven since the 1940's the other is a bunch of dumb fuck teenagers spreading bullshit on the internet
so whats your better plan for a highly absorbent material that congeils toxic waste so it doesnt wash out to your water?
The litter prevents it from reacting with the environment. And
Seriously?
In other news, Slashdot editors are so shit, we put "And" after a FULLSTOP!
Go Slashdot, fuck everyone who went to English lessons and get paid for it in the process!
Epic.
Not sure any of you numpties get it! Making a *change* to a 'product' that mixes with radioactive material should never ever happen. This is basic process engineering 101. How the F can anyone make a change to a known working procedures that identifies, material type right down to the chemical content with a 'store purchase'.
This is a complete failure of basic engineering validation. People should be in jail for gross incompetence or negligence.
It is not an Ad Hominem falacy to point out that the person in question posts many negative nuclear related articles.
From your own quote:
"An ad hominem (Latin for "to the man" or "to the person"[1]), short for argumentum ad hominem, is a general category of fallacies in which a claim or argument is rejected on the basis of some irrelevant fact about the author of or the person presenting the claim or argument."
It would be ad-hom to say "ignore this because mdsolar has bad morals". It is not ad-hom to say "beware, mdsolar is obsessed with nuclear energy".
Watch this Heartland Institute video
Beginning over 30 years ago, activities involving separating americium (Am) from old weapons materials generated a moderate amount of transuranic waste contaminated with americium (Am), plutonium, uranium and minor amounts of other radionuclides, and containing various metal-nitrate salts (strong oxidizers), such as (Mg,Ca)(NO3)2 with minor amounts of Fe, Na and K. When dewatered, these hot evaporator bottoms were poured onto a tray, vacuum dried, flashed crystallized, rinsed with cold water and put in bags, where they sat for 30 years.
[...snip...]
It was recommended sometime later that inorganic kitty litter made from silicate minerals be added as a sorbent (widely used in radiochemistry as well as the home litter box), but also to dissipate heat and generally mitigate auto-oxidation reactions of the kind we think occurred in these drums in WIPP. Anhydrous citric acid (a reducer) was used to bring the pH down if over-adjusted.
For reasons perhaps related to good intentions, or merely related to dust generation, the inorganic kitty litter was replaced by organic wheat-based litter early on in the process. There were a few other components of not much import in the drums, but additional organic components just added more fuel.
Some decisions regarding these additives are vague and not attributable to a real chemist.
So it seems it was a case of a well meaning idiot making stupid decisions.
Moreover, the article is worded as though the problem is the use of organic material, rather than merely the wrong material. To be clear, the wrong material could just as well be non-organic.
"Organic" isn't even an issue here, but merely an unreleated detail. Yet, the article puts "organic" in the spotlight as if it had something meaningful to do with the outcome.
It is high time for the molten thorium kitten reactors that can convert nearly all of the 'kitty litter' into fuel. Listen to them purr as they turn all this into pure energy.
It like the Government version of Mentos in Diet Coke.
Why in the world would these contractors be buying this stuff from a pet store? I would think that they would test several brands of litter and see which one worked best, then order them direct from the manufacturer with a contract stating that the formulation would be exact to that used in the tests. With all the money being sunk into nuclear cleanup (wasn't their a story just a few days ago about a site requiring $1 Billion a year just to stabilize the facility?) it sounds like some are cutting corners to pocket even more taxpayer money.
The whole point of organic cat litter is it DOESN'T go to a landfill. It can be composted and used to grow things.
"Organic cat litter" doesn't cause nuclear accidents. Brain dead Nuclear Industry / Dept. of Energy G-men who think recycled newspaper can block gamma particles do.
Claiming that kitty litter caused this is rather like say the Tacoma Bridge collapse was caused by Wind.
The failure in both cases was Human error!
So, if we get too many of these "containers" together, and they burst/explode, will we have a Nuclear Rocket Motor?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
(apologies to Space: 1999)
if (!sig) { printf("Signature Unavailable\n"); }
Compare and contrast this to the absolute clusterfuck in West Virigia earlier this year.
People had to have water shipped in for weeks. The company did it went 'bankrupt' (even though it's just another company with ties to the Koch brothers).
I heard about it for a few weeks and then nothing much on main media. That spill probable affected more people and animals than this 'spill' ever will.
You're looking at this the wrong way. Imagine you're a vendor of solar and/or photovoltaic panels in Maryland; nuclear bombs contain "energy" just like nuclear fuels contain "energy". Solar power doesn't contain such evil "energy" (aka "power"); it contains goodness and it contains profit margins. What humans require isn't energy, it's love from the sun god to bless their endeavours. Something that vendors in Maryland can supply in semi-abundance for a reasonable fee once you take latitudinal variations into account.