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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.
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.
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
You can't just dump spent LWR fuel into a fast reactor - the concentration of fissile material is far too low for it to go critical.
Reprocessing's been done, but it's quite messy and there's no demand for the recovered fuel. Making MOX is much more difficult and expensive than making standard uranium fuel. It's cheaper, easier and probably safer to just store the spent fuel in dry casks until a suitable disposal site is found. Fortunately, those casks last a long time.
There is many places which are really good to use as radioactive waste dumps. The most stable rock plate in Canada, known as the canadian shield is 4,5 bn years old to 540 millions years old and is stable since then. Of course, you have to make an agreement with government of Canada to use it and pay some kind of fee to monitor and secure it, however it is a perfectly acceptable solution.
Achille Talon
Hop!
US law requires the US government to collect and deal with spent nuclear fuel as it is regarded as a stategic material. The same law requires the power generating companies to pay a levy to the government per MWh of nuclear electricity generated for this to be done. As I recall they've paid (or rather the consumers have paid) over $30 billion since the levy was introduced.
The power companies are now paying for on-site dry-cask storage of spent fuel since the US government isn't actually doing what they've been paid to do, that is take away the spent fuel and deal with it. They have stopped paying the levy after a court agreed with them and they are using some of those savings to fund the local dry-cask storage they need.
The taxpayers have benefited from over $30 billion of free money gifted to the government by the electricity generating companies, it's not the other way around.
It would probably take 20 years for the conceptual designs, material selection, laboratory testing of the materials, CAD design, prototype building (a dozen or so), THEN come the lawsuits, Congressional hearings, de-funding, re-funding, de-funding again, re-funding again, route selection, more lawsuits, different route selections ( Repeat ) and finally protestors chaining themselves to everything in the way before the first load of wastes is ready to go anywhere.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.