Slashdot Mirror
Nuclear Waste Accident Costs Los Alamos Contractor $57 Million
HughPickens.com writes The LA Times reports that Los Alamos National Security, the contractor managing the nuclear weapons laboratory at Los Alamos, NM has been slapped with a $57-million reduction in its fees for 2014, largely due to a costly nuclear waste accident in which a 55-gallon drum packaged with plutonium waste from bomb production erupted after being placed in a 2,150-foot underground dump in the eastern New Mexico desert. Casks filled with 3.2 million cubic feet of deadly radioactive wastes remain buried at the crippled plant and the huge facility was rendered useless. The exact causes of the chemical reaction are still under investigation, but Energy Department officials say a packaging error at Los Alamos caused a reaction inside the drum. The radioactive material went airborne, contaminating a ventilation shaft that went to the surface giving low-level doses of radiation to 21 workers. According to a DOE report, the disaster at WIPP is rooted in careless contractors and lack of DOE oversight (PDF). "The accident was a horrific comedy of errors," says James Conca, a scientific advisor and expert on the WIPP. "This was the flagship of the Energy Department, the most successful program it had. The ramifications of this are going to be huge. Heads will roll."
The accident is likely to cause at least an 18-month shutdown and possibly a closure that could last several years. Waste shipments have already backed up at nuclear cleanup projects across the country, which even before the accident were years behind schedule. According to the Times, the cost of the accident, including likely delays in cleanup projects across the nation, will approach $1 billion. But some nuclear weapons scientists say the fine is an overreaction. "It was a mistake by an individual — a terrible mistake — and Washington now wants to punish a lot of people," says Conca. "The amount of radiation that was released was trivial. As long as you don't lick the walls, you can't get any radiation down there. Why are we treating this like Fukushima?"
The accident is likely to cause at least an 18-month shutdown and possibly a closure that could last several years. Waste shipments have already backed up at nuclear cleanup projects across the country, which even before the accident were years behind schedule. According to the Times, the cost of the accident, including likely delays in cleanup projects across the nation, will approach $1 billion. But some nuclear weapons scientists say the fine is an overreaction. "It was a mistake by an individual — a terrible mistake — and Washington now wants to punish a lot of people," says Conca. "The amount of radiation that was released was trivial. As long as you don't lick the walls, you can't get any radiation down there. Why are we treating this like Fukushima?"
"ignore the production costs" - what exactly do you think you're paying for when you buy renewables equipment ?
"ignore the environmental cost of the equipment" - the energy paybacks on all renewables techs are now very low. Concrete usage in wind turbines is not comparably significant (perhaps you're thinking of dams?). Yes, some producers of solar cells, mainly in China, have had bad waste management practices (like a lot of Chinese industry in general). But compared to the amount of power produced over the lifespan of the products, it's quite small.
Anyway, once again we see that the issue with nuclear is rarely lives - it's cost. Nuclear accidents tend to be accidents in slow motion. Excluding any pressure explosions or the like, they generally give you plenty of time to get away without profound health consequences. But the down side is that, being in slow motion, they just keep on going and going, and keep on costing money. They may be in slow motion, but they don't let you just ignore them. You can't just stay in an area with, say, contaminated water and keep drinking it as if nothing's wrong. You can't just keep operating a facility that's suffered an accident as if it never happened. You have to remedy them and it always costs a fortune. And the potential upper bounds on the costs are almost unlimited (picture, say, the cost of a worst-case scenario at Indian Point with winds pointed at NYC - the cost of even a couple week evacuation of NYC is almost unthinkable).
The nuclear industry has long suffered from a very unfortunate problem: a negative learning curve. With most technology, the longer you use and produce it, the cheaper it gets per unit. The nuclear industry has been one of the few industry where the costs have risen with time as people learn more problems in their designs and more risks that haven't been taken into account. And often the only way to address them is with brand new generations of reactors. Which is great, except that now you're starting your learning curve over from scratch, and your system is most commonly even more complicated to boot. It's really been a curse to the industry, and until it goes away, a true "nuclear rennaissance" is never going to occur. And no amount of government limitations on liability, no amount of municipalities forcing costs on to consumers, no amount of anything will really get the "take over the market" takeoff that proponents really want to see.
That's of course not the only problem nuclear has had. Another is the very long lead times on projects. The consequence is that you have to guess long in advance what the electricity market is going to be like. France suffered from this - they significantly overestimated what electricity consumption was going to be when they built most of their nuclear plants, leading to a generation capacity glut. This led to a lot of really inefficient uses of electricity and much higher investment costs than were necessary to meet demand.
It's times like this I wish I had a friend named 'The Professor'.
Why are people commenting on nuclear power production - TFA was about nuclear weapon production, right? Or am I just confused?
Not to disagree with your points in general, but nuclear power isn't suffering from a negative learning curve so much as we're still using the same plants we built so long ago before we learned all this! Design a modern plant for "keep inevitable accidents cheap and easy to deal with" and you can get just that. Pebble bed, for all that it's a back-of-the-napkin "hey, what if" design, fixes a lot of the common problems (because the common problems are more about fuel/waste management), and is one of many approaches where the operators can't make it melt down no matter how incompetent. Pebble bed still has issues and new failure modes, but it shows the difference in kind we could have if we actually cared.
IMO, the real problem is we've culturally lost the patience for large infrastructure projects. People like rooftop solar because it doesn't require trust in some large organization (government or corporate) to do a job right.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
Ah, the omnipresent "Nookyoolur = BOMZ!!!!" canard.
Steel can be used in construction. Or it can be used to coat bullets. Or make all sorts of implements of death and destruction. Or it can be made into a scalpel to cut out cancer.
The technology for nuclear power, by itself is neither good nor evil. It's all about intent in use.
Also, as noted, the rare earths being mined to make your "renewable" power? Basically being done by China in the cheapest, dirtiest manner possible. Because the US has been so constipated by the "nuclear issue" that nobody wants to invest in rare earths here because the regulations are not just completely overboard and crazed like Chuck Manson on a bad acid trip, but they're actively hostile towards any development of the technology whatsoever, no matter HOW cleanly it can be done.
Why? Nuke-ninnies like yourself.
And sure, China's rare earths are cheap right now. Until they aren't anymore. Then what?
And what about the vast environmental damage China's doing with their dirty mining procedures? Because you know their digs aren't regulated like they would be in the US.
And the equipment they use sure as fuck doesn't run on pixie dust, unicorn piss and fairy farts.
So don't pretend that your pie-in-the-sky renewable daydream is anything but.
Also, you're still dependent on fossil fuels for when the renewables can't handle the load.
On top of that, the only thing that will make truly widespread implementation of renewables anything CLOSE to viable is a MASSIVE improvement in storage technologies.
Even then, it's NEVER going to be able to be ramped up to a level where it can truly account for both base load AND peak load. You'd have to carpet the entire country in solar cells and windmills. Regardless of whether the location of implementation is truly viable or not. Let's not even talk about worldwide.
THEN you're locked into a continual "buy new ones now that these have worn out" cycle.
That basically makes us, permanently, an economic vassal-state to a hostile foreign power.
The biggest problem with nuclear power today is the fact that there's BEEN little to no new implementation for the last 20-ish years. The last completed reactor was Watts Barr 1 in Tennessee in 1996. This year, Watts Barr 2 is due to come online.
ONE new nuclear power plant in 19 years. And the median age of reactors in the US is 33 years.
Reactors are normally slated to run for 40 years, with the ability to apply for a 20 year extension.
So we have a bunch of reactors coming due for their extension. Old, crude reactors based on 50-60 year old technology.
We have the ability TODAY, to build reactors with new technology that are clean, safe and self-contained. You dig a hole in the ground, drop a concrete slab, drop the reactor in, and cover it in more concrete and bury. At the end of its lifespan, you dig it out and send it back to the factory for reprocessing and drop a new/refurbished one in.
Reactors where the facility isn't 10% reactor and 90% Rube-Goldberg safety systems. Reactors that are 100% reactor which are engineered FROM THE GET GO to be inherently safe. Where a failure doesn't result in a meltdown. Where a failure results in the reactor shutting itself off and keeping the unspent fuel contained and cool, away from the reaction mass.
On top of that, you could jump-start the US rare earths industry again. Because, rather than worrying about all that "radioactive crap" that comes up with the rare earths? That "radioactive crap" becomes "fuel" for reactors. And while costs MIGHT be a bit higher than the dirty Chinese market, they'll be making money at BOTH ends of the spectrum. Both from the rare earths and the rest of the stuff as fuel. Hell, the tailings from ONE modest-sized mine for a year could conceivably satisfy the entirety of the US power appetite for that same period PLUS.
But no. Nuclear = EEEEEEVIL and just waking up in the morning becomes a proliferation risk.
Also, how long as the US been relying on nuclear power? How many lives has that reliance saved?
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!