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Feds Want Nuclear Waste Train, But Don't Know Where It Would Go
mdsolar writes with news of a plan to move radioactive waste from nuclear plants. The U.S. government is looking for trains to haul radioactive waste from nuclear power plants to disposal sites. Too bad those trains have nowhere to go. Putting the cart before the horse, the U.S. Department of Energy recently asked companies for ideas on how the government should get the rail cars needed to haul 150-ton casks filled with used, radioactive nuclear fuel. They won't be moving anytime soon. The latest government plans call for having an interim test storage site in 2021 and a long-term geologic depository in 2048. No one knows where those sites will be, but the Obama administration is already thinking about contracts to develop, test and certify the necessary rail equipment.
The Obama Train. Full of waste and going nowhere fast.
Exactly right said Gnork the Neanderthaler. Let's not try to invent something like a wheel or anything. Who needs those? Where would you go and what would you use them for??
do something to help the country instead of trying to throw it under the back of the bus with the black Democratic president that was, despite your impotent attempts, elected twice.
...there's plenty of money left over to solve these trivial issues. Right?
Then what was running nuclear power plants with no way to get the waste to disposal sites and no disposal sites (and no concept of how to keep a disposal site safe for more generations than have used the English language)?
These same people would be complaining that it was a waste since there was no way to transport anything to the repository. unlike the complaining idiots here, most people are capable of doing multiple things at once. And since there are a lot of people in the government, they can actually work on even more things.
Reminds me of the dystopian themed film "Snowpiercer" in reverse.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt17...
Cue all the recent train explosion videos...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
--CF
Nuclear waste is regularly and safely carried by train in other countries.
Here's a video from 1984 of a crash test done in the UK on a train waste container:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
We know anything the government does is a... train wreck. It will only get worse in the future.
If only there was some sort of location, out in the middle of a desert far away from civilization, preferably under a geologically-sound Mountain, that we could store nuclear waste. I think Nevada would be a great place.
How unfortunate that we don't already have a certain facility already built for exactly this purpose. And I'm sure that if we did, Obama would have been so pleased with it that he wouldn't yank out the funding from underneath it.
Get the trains set to go to the cape. Cape Canaveral. A couple of heavy lift rockets are in development (SpaceX has one, NASA has one, etc.). By 2048 we should be able to loft those containers out of Earth's gravity well. Put them on a trajectory that impacts the sun in 10,000 years or some such. Yeah, sure, too dangerous and all. What if one blows up on takeoff, etc. Well, it is Florida...
It would be cheaper and likely completely safe to warehouse it in the US. The facility they set up to handle this prior to the political problems should have worked just fine.
But no one is going to be reasonable on the issue... so who can you pay to take it off our hands?
Find a nuclear power with capacity and will to deal with the problem. The US used to have this sort of capability... but we're a nation divided. And because of that... we are incapable of dealing with even simple problems.
It all could be resolved with a little mutual respect and consideration. But again... that's not going to happen. We don't respect each other. A large number of Americans hold large numbers of Americans in contempt. And until we let each other live and let live... we will remain at war with ourselves.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
What about reprocessing it on-site? Not all of US Nuclear plants' nuclear "waste" is actually waste.
Long-term: nuclear energy is our species' only real option, especially if we want to get off the planet. The sooner we start making sensible and informed decisions about energy, the better.
As a psychic, I predict that BNSF will get said contract.
There is no reason the design of a waste hauling train should wait until a site is identified, thus delaying the removal of the waste from many scattered temporary storage sites. The hauling design and the site identification can proced in parallel.
Indeed: The characteristics of the hauling solution may limit the selection of sites to which the waste could be hauled with acceptable levels of safety. That would argue for the design to PRECEED site selection.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
The us/mexican border. ( the unguarded part )
---- Booth was a patriot ----
For he is on a train to nowhere. Half way down the line already.
government hate.
Seriously. They know they will need something, so they are looking for ideas. They aren't purchasing them, they are looking ahead.
Something the government does rather well, but you knuckle heads can't possible understand that.
Well, the government used to do it very well, now there are fanatics in office that just stop any forward looking planning that doesn't jive with there religious views.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Oh wait, it's MDsolar again.
If we can drill big holes really deep in the desert and explode weapons tests there, I feel it is likely we can also bury waste in deep holes there, just as well.
Seriously folks, what is the big deal?
Oh, right. Politics. Especially right wing nutjobs.
Obstructionism incarnate
Maurice W. Hilarius Voice: (778) 347-9907
What makes them think there will be safe rail lines or functioning trains in 2048? Let alone going to whatever god-forsaken place they decide to store the stuff.
We need a recycling plant with buffer storage. the whole "disposal" paradigm, including guarding the waste for hundreds of thousands of years, is predicated on the idea that the 95% of unburned fuel that keeps the stuff hot for so long is something that should be thrown away while it slowly decays. It should be recovered and re-used, so that the actual waste remaining after that is trivial. If we used Yucca Mountain as the buffer storage, an accompanying recycling plant would mean lots of good jobs for Nevadans.
Tea-beggars are intellectually challenged by complexity. They can't comprehend the requirement of reasonable limitation on personal freedom as the underlying theme of constitutional government because they never learned to value cooperation or thinking beyond their own personal prerogative. They see the world in terms of a polemical struggles of good and evil, black and white, us versus them. The emblematic phrase of these so-called libertarians is, "If you're not with us, you're against us." That's why they can't abide political comprise and seek to destroy anything they equate with their misguided definition of socialism as the arch enemy of democracy.
Would be the ocean - just like Fukishima - it's entirely safe.
That's why Obama has to be either black or white; he can't be both. And since he doesn't appear to be challenged by an inability to jump, he must be...
And who said Nuclear power didn't cause pollution... We still can't get rid of the waste properly, minus launching them into the sun.
One suspects that wherever the 'waste' train goes it should be easy to find. After all, we may want to throw away sources of energy that will be active for centuries. But future generations, after we have blow through all the oil, may feel differently. And don't give me that wind mill junk -- adding frictional losses to the circulation of the air and water is not going to help...
It may sound far-fetched, but an electromagnetic rail gun would be feasible. Especially if the waste could be made into smaller units. Just aim it into the sun! No more problem. As a side benefit, the technology learned from this could be used to perhaps shoot material into orbit to build spacecraft out THERE, where the high cost of escaping the gravity well of earth would not be present.
Don't explain computers to laymen. Simpler to explain sex to a virgin. -- Robert A. Heinlein
put as much as possible in Harry Reid's house, fill his bathtub, swimming pool refrigerator, freezer, and leave a note saying "Thanks for Yucca Mountain"
Politics is Treachery, Religion is Brainwashing
It all could be resolved with a little mutual respect and consideration. But again... that's not going to happen. We don't respect each other. A large number of Americans hold large numbers of Americans in contempt. And until we let each other live and let live... we will remain at war with ourselves.
It's called "divide and conquer" politics. While the voting public is too busy calling each other "teabaggers" and "hippy communists," the politicians are fueling the fire with sound-bites on the one hand, while taking special interest money with the other, and then using this huge distraction and cash flow to systematically destroy our democracy, our institutions, and our government.
It put North Haverbrook on the map.
You want to keep spent fuel. It's not really "waste" - the anti-nuclear lobby just likes to call it that to hype up opposition. Current light water reactor designs use only about 5% of the U-235 in the fuel rods, and only about 1% of the total energy extractable from the uranium. That's why spent fuel remains "hot" for so long - the vast majority of the energy it contains is still there, and is emitted over time as radioactive energy as it decays.
So in essence, the "waste" is really fuel containing 100x as much energy as you've already extracted from it. If you send it to a breeder reactor, it can use the "waste" as fuel thus extracting more energy. The "waste" from that process converts it into a form which light water reactors can use again as fuel. You extract a much larger fraction of the energy from the original uranium, and the end product of all this would only remain "hot" for a few centuries instead of dozens of millenia.
"OMG - this solves the nuclear waste problem! Why aren't we doing this?" Unfortunately, breeder reactors create weapons-grade plutonium as a byproduct. That's the only reason we don't do it - it's a purely political reason, not technical. President Carter banned the commercial use of breeder reactors in the U.S. in the interest of non-proliferation (the military still can and does use them).
I won't judge whether Carter made the correct call - that's a political decision. But you can see why you do not want to be selling spent fuel to a country you frequently butt heads with on the geopolitical arena. First, you're selling them cheap energy (that we ourselves choose not to tap for political reasons). Second, you're selling them the means to make more nukes.
gotta get those contracts out to your friends before your time in office is up
In this situation, the horse is the train, as it moves the cart. So it comes first.
Or maybe the horse is the locomotive, and the cars are the cart?
Then the casks are the load? Well, those are already in existence, I think.
So really, it's just a matter of the the tracks to the right place, but it's not like those aren't standardized, so non-issue.
Of course, being an anonymous coward, I can see that even you are too embarrassed to be associated with your own words.
Yucca became impossible when USGS scientists fabricated data. Now, we can never really know about any of the other science done there. The whole thing has to start over and it can't be Yucca because the temptation would be too strong to try to use some study or other that has already been done. Back to the drawing board. Mississippi says it does not want it. http://www.sunherald.com/2014/...
I live in Conway, Arkansas, and it most definitely NOT a shithole. I'd rather be here than just about anywhere else.
Folks: What would happen if instead of trying to figure out where to send the waste to via rail; we would have a portable vitrification system that can be sent to different power plants via rail. Vitrification (go to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/V... for the wikipedia article) could possible be implemented via a portable facility that can be transported by rail. The portable vitrification facility would go from power plant to power plant and vitrify the waste to a glass like substance, which should be safer to handle and store. If all you are railroading around the country is a vitrification plant; there should be no problem with local communities. All you are moving around is an electric (or gas) furnace and associated support equipment. If that derails or is involved in an accident, then it would be no worse than just a piece of machinery such as a lathe or miling machine falling off of a train.
Most Respectfully Yours Mark Allyn Bellingham, Washington
because the broken window fallacy still holds
Sound familiar ! :-)
So we can just let the nuclear waste, instead of people, circle the rail line until a destination is found. Or where ever the train happens to break down/derail. Then that becomes the new repository for all nuclear waste by default.
...unless of course they build a house somewhere and then expect the world to then construct a road to it.
maybe, just maybe, the location of the sites are less of a concern than the infrastructure required to get the stuff there.
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue and that domed building about a mile away, both in Washington, D. C.
It's because the Dept of Energy wants to spend that $30 billion they collected from utilities ratepayers. They don't want congress to cut their budget and don't have a repository, so why not play twith rains.
It is in no-one's interests to have a spent fuel containment accident such as the one threatening Fukushima right now (fortunately TEPCO are working on it) so reducing this threat is a really good step no matter if you are pro or anti nuclear.
Planning infrastructure for long term containment is going to come down to the science of the facility and the DOE has found that Yucca mountain is not acceptable in terms of their 'Defense in Depth' policy to containment. Science conducted by the Australia's CSIRO found that granite has the capacity to capture radioisotopes leaking from a facility via ground water.
Additionally, any long term, development of any future reactor technology will depend on a place to store an manage fuel. This is the type of long term planning required to manage these types of materials and is a real positive step to resolving a critical infrastructure issue. Train lines can be built later when a suitable location for a spent fuel containment facility can be assessed based on good science and engineering practices. Both pro and anti nuclear folk should be supporting these forms of initiatives.
Any development of new reactor technology is going to depend on this form of infrastructure because implementing a new reactor technology goes beyond a flippant "just use xyz' technology". Our generation may just have to face that we have been handed down a few turds in terms of energy technology because they weren't forced into thinking long-term the way our generation has been forced to. The responsible thing to do is for our generation to try to solve those problems so we have additional technology options available in the mix.
There is nothing wrong with using nuclear in the future if it is done properly, but it needs proper infrastructure to work and any honest assessment of today's nuclear industry will reveal that it could be done a whole lot better. In the meantime use of solar, wind and geothermal today are a requirement to develop good nuclear infrastructure in the future.
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
...ask yourself this: would you really want 1600 tons of radioactive potential death rolling through your city just waiting for an errant snowflake to land on the line to derail the whole kaboodle?
Say it doesn't happen. Go on. I dare you. Those were just a few I dug out from a cursory google search.
Political debates have me rolling my eyes so much I think I got optical whiplash. I should sue. - Foamy The Squirrel
Did it ever return?
No, it never returned,
And its fate is still unlearned.
It may circle forever
On the Union Pacific.
It's the train that never returned.
Nuclear is extremely expensive. The lie that nuclear energy is cheap needs to end.
There were 38 rectors cancelled during construction in the US. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L... That is money spent that does not show up costs for power. Now-a-days, utilities are charging ahead of power production then cancelling. Nice scam if you can get the state regulators to go along with it. Federal loan guarantees are ripe for abuse as well.
Where it will do the least amount of harm to anyone.
Under CIA, NSA, TSA headquarters. Also, the waiting rooms around congress for corporate lobbyists should be another safe location.
How about the Bridge to Nowhere?
Table-ized A.I.
why don't we pool all the waste in an already contaminated area. since chernobyl is a dead city, can't we just mail it to them and leave it at the empty post office ? btw, that's supposed to be a bit of humor in a bit of realism.
happy trials
Because by then we will have fusion of helium, berilium, oxygen, sulfur, germanium, gadolinium and 5 more elements yet to be discovered.
very effective topics.
There's already illegal, and secret, nuclear dumps on northern Mexico. I bet the train will head there.
Let me tell you the story Of a man named Charlie On a tragic and fateful day He put ten cents in his pocket, Kissed his wife and family Went to ride on the MTA
Charlie handed in his dime At the Kendall Square Station And he changed for Jamaica Plain When he got there the conductor told him, "One more nickel." Charlie could not get off that train.
Did he ever return, No he never returned And his fate is still unlearn'd He may ride forever 'neath the streets of Boston He's the man who never returned. http://www.mit.edu/~jdreed/t/c...
I love the Slashdot headline "Feds Want Nuclear Waste Train, But Don't Know Where It Would Go". A most provocative issue of nuclear energy, stir in a bit of Fed-Fumbling with the idea of a ghost train and you have the perfect movie plot and Internet meme.
Drawing on most recent experience with politics in America, the way illegal immigration is being "handled" -- I conclude this announcement means that the Nuclear Ghost Train has Already Left The Station.
It is currently circumnavigating the continent. Soon it will pass through Your Town.
Folks like me who live near the tracks know of ones like it, those trains that pass through in the dead of night and (creepily) did not blow their horns, for you awaken to the low rumble of wheels that seems to go on forever. Yeah, those.
Every night the Ghost Train pulls onto a siding somewhere and dark figures with flashlights roll up and couple another boxcar. By 2015 the Train will be pulling more than half of all spent nuclear fuel in North America, and nuclear plant operators will sleep that much easier at night, since relieving them of this awful responsibility is the ONE thing the Federal Government promised to deliver all along.
It's going through Tennessee tonight. Listen for it. Pleasant dreams. Is this so farfetched? Could some one come up with any other examples of government action just as ludicrous? I see a lot of hands raised here.
I see a few others have brought up radioactive train movies, some of them with plots blatantly obvious and goofy. After all we're talking about a system of containment so secure that even a head-on with another train would roll the casks off the train and dint them slightly, as they wait to be picked up again. Cue up video of protesters dressed like skeletons with nuclear death symbols who caught a whiff of nuclear transport and scream "Not in our town!" as thin-skinned railroad tanker cars of chlorine gas, sodium hydroxide and cresol pass by.
If you're protesting, do not step out in front of the Nuclear Ghost Train. It has been instructed not to stop under any circumstances. Cleanup crews are on standby in all major cities and your bodies will never be found.
The Nuclear Ghost train does exist in a movie, but it's not a goofy disaster movie. It is a Argentinian film entitled Moebius [1996] made by Gustavo Mosquera. "Recent stories, fears and oblivion seen through a metaphor. A 30-passenger convoy vanishes in the closed circuit of the Buenos Aires underground system. Research will be initiated towards finding the cause of this dematerialization. A young topologist (surfaces mathematician) leads the investigation based on some lost maps and technical data sheets. He cannot find the whereabouts of the old scientist who designed the intricate weft of the subway web, until the unexpected aid from a young girl will ease the obtention of the first clues. Everything seems to be futile, but a random event that will risk his life gets him into an impossible train, were he will face up the amazing final revelation." This is an amazing movie though you may need to resort to [extreme] [methods] to see it.
Never mind those too-obvious disaster films. Moebius [1996] is the perfect one to take in while you ponder the meaning of the Perpetually Moving Nuclear Ghost Train.
Which has already left the station.
<blink>down the rabbit hole</blink>
http://transatomicpower.com has a reactor design that is inherently safe, works on spent fuel rods, and extracts almost all usable energy from those spent fuel rods.
If we had enough of these reactors we could generate *all* our electricity for over 60 years using existing stocks of spent fuel rods.
Basically we can take our toxic nuclear waste and turn it into clean energy.
So we are going to pay for a nuclear freight train to nowhere?
Couldn't we instead use the money to improve the existing rail network to encourage humans to use it?
The rail service in this country is such a joke that most people choose to pay between 3 and 4 dollars a gallon for gas, increasing pollution and funding the arms buildup in the middle east.
It's not just a political problem when the stuff can explode. With breeder reactors, we will basically have the perfect combination for a security and maintenance nightmare. You will have a surplus of weapons grade plutonium, and that will get into the hands of people you don't want to have it. Whether that's bribery, a tactical assault, or accidental mis-management (think of the recent lost virus incidents) having something eventually means others getting it.
Then there are the storage problems. You have to keep pretty tight regulation on the density of material in warehousing. Or if buffering it, you have to inspect and maintain the integrity of the buffers. It's far from simple, and while it can be achieved, it is a balancing act that requires constant maintenance. If we ever become lax in maintenance, there's a big problem.
So a solution that requires excellent security and excellent maintenance over large periods of time is problematic in itself.
You'd just have radioactive glass. You didn't really solve the problem, you just partially solved it. At least the stuff won't leak into groundwater as fast; however, it will still decay, creating radioactive health issues..
They need it, and they need money and food. And they're too dumb to make use of it.
Perfect choice.
http://www.lasvegassun.com/new...
"(1998) Beginning in June, the Energy Department plans to haul nuclear waste from 41 foreign countries by rail through California, Nevada, Utah and Idaho for temporary storage at the Idaho National Engineering and Environmental Laboratory. Plans call for the shipments to begin in Concord, Calif."
At least it was protested against, any bets the trips went as scheduled maybe a little later?
A little more Google-fu and you can read about all the nuclear WAHEADS being TRUCKED around the U.S.
http://www.thegovernmentrag.co...
Self Defense - A Human Right www.a-human-right.com
Solve that which makes Nuclear Waste leathal? Then create a process that removes the "Radio Activity?" Just a thought.
10CFR173, DOT specifications for shipping radioactive material, already has container and routing specifications for shipment of high level radioactive material. It has not been used for shipments of commercial fuel but has been used for shipments of special weapons material in the past. (very much a classified activity for the DoD)
As to where to ship, the answer is recycling. It is criminal that the U.S. does not recycle spent commercial nuclear fuel. There is still a lot of useful material in a spent fuel bundle but a buildup of fission products makes it unusable. Better to remove the useful material and seriously reduce the volume of material that has to be given long term disposal.
And, guess what, the technology is proven.
http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/Nuclear-Fuel-Cycle/Fuel-Recycling/Processing-of-Used-Nuclear-Fuel/
Testing specs for a fissile material shipping container contain:
http://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/doc-collections/cfr/part071/part071-0073.html
A couple of youtube links showing the type of catastrophic accident testing that spent fuel casks must pass before being design accepted for shipment of high level nuclear material.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nA0-hjHDizA
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N_JhruRobRI
Just trying to add some perspective on what would be required in shipping spent commercial nuclear fuel for either reprocessing or long term storage.
Steven
NRRPT/RCT
Washingotn DC?
You're right. Nuclear power, or even renewable power as it's happening in Germany these days, may be too cheap to meter in the sense of having a flat fee system instead, once you got the infrastructure in place, just like with broadband Internet or a lot of cellphone services. The limit, in this sense would be the "bandwidth" of your electric wires coming into your house, which sets a maximum power rate, and then you can buy different plans based on the fatness or gauge + voltage (whether it's 110, 220, 330 or 440V) of your power connection, just like you can get different broadband Internet flat rates based on the connection speed. In essence your "meter" is your bandwidth, which puts a cap on the maximum possible amount extractable even when on at 100%, so the setup is not vulnerable to the tragedy of the commons overconsumption issues.
Or just stick in an simple power limiter which trips a breaker if you go over the limit :) Trouble is, our current energy system originated in the days of yore when we had to consume significant amounts of fuel (and thus cost) to produce a unit of energy. Our energy markets are geared towards it, our grid control is geared towards and people don't like changing systems with lots of investment behind them and which aren't necessarily broken.
If we were building a new zero-carbon grid green field-style, it might well be cheaper to just lose the stupid meters (and spending time reading them, processing them and collecting the varying amounts), put in a simple circuit breaker and be done with it.