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Safety Review Finds Yucca Mountain Nuclear Waste Site Was Technically Sound
siddesu writes: The U.S. Department of Energy's 2008 proposal to build a nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain, Nevada, was technically sound, a report by the NRC says. However, the closed-down project is unlikely to revive, as its staff has moved on, and there are few funds available to restart it. "With the release of the final two volumes of a five-part technical analysis, the commission closed another chapter on the controversial repository nearly five years after President Barack Obama abandoned the project, and more than a quarter century after the site was selected. While the staff recommended against approving construction, the solid technical review could embolden Republicans who now control both houses of Congress and would like to see Yucca Mountain revived."
The problem is that the storage of nuclear waste isn't passive, it requires active processes to keep the genie in the bottle.
Reactor 4 at Fukushima Daiichi in Japan wasn't even fuelled when the tidal-wave destroyed the coolant circulation pumps, but the storage pool in the reactor building became a problem because the continual supply of liquid water is necessary in order to keep the fuel safe. The 'cool down' period is very, very long and if the temps get too high then reactions with the other materials in the system (Zirconium at Fukushima Daiichi) can lead to chemical reactions and possible explosions, or can even lead to pressure buildup and steam explosions (Chernobyl, and to a lesser extent, Three Mile Island). Given how the Japanese have been struggling with even determining the conditions inside those four reactor buildings, let alone remedying them, I can see why no one wants this vast spent-fuel facility to be near them, if something serious does go wrong then it the results would be absolutely horrible on a regional scale.
And of course, if the facility isn't near a nice place to live, it's a lot harder to attract and retain skilled workers that could easily find work at any number of other power plant facilities across the country.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
The pools aren't necessary forever - 5 to 10 years and then they can be moved to dry casks. Already, over 20% of spent fuel is stored this way. Hardly permanent, as the casks need to be reconditioned/rebuilt every 30-100 years - but not the active process that you describe.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
That shit is poison, a proliferation risk, and it isn't like there is an unlimited supply of fissile material anyway. At best nuclear energy is a stopgap technology. At current rates it is thought that there is a 200 year supply at best... more like 100 years (or less) should consumption double (or triple).
"Proliferation risk"? Please cite your source!
"200 year supply at best"? Again, please cite your source.
The folks in Japan working the #4 unit of the Fukushima Daiichi plant would like to have a word with you about this. It was shut-down and defuelled before the tsunami struck, and despite this its spent fuel pool's contents blew the building apart.
You are misinformed. While the stability of the fuel pools was unknown and a concern at the time of the disaster, it was later determined that they were in fact not leaking, damaged, or in danger. No fuel in storage was compromised. The damage to Unit 4 was caused by the hydrogen explosion of Unit 2.
Well, if you assume we never reprocess old reactor fuel rods, never exploit breeder reactors, never explore thorium reactors, and never do any more prospecting, he's more or less right. Sadly for him, none of this is true, so we have thousands of years on naturally occurring uranium just from the ocean (contains about 3mg per cubic meter of uranium), a huge number of on-land prospecting claims that have never been investigated, an unknown number of classified resources still undisclosed after the Cold War, and research ongoing into breeders, thorium, and other higher-efficiency nuclear reactors ongoing. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P... has a good analysis of current beliefs about uranium reserves and extraction.
Nuclear reprocessing is one of the biggests myths proponed by nuclear advocates.
Only the plutonium, which is less than 1% of the spent fuel rod, can be really used again as MOX. However the process to seperate the plutonium is a extremely expensive and dirty one, involving pumping low level nuclear waste into the sea.
The rest of the uranium in the used fuel rod is uneconomical to reprocess because of contaminated with U232 and U-236:
"No use of reprocessed uranium in French reactors in the near future
The uranium recovered from reprocessing of spent fuel in France is not expected to be used for the manufacture of nuclear fuel in the near future. French utility EdF rather has made provisions for long-term storage of the reprocessed uranium for 250 years. This was revealed in a report of the French Court of Auditors on the decommissioning of nuclear facilities and the management of radioactive wastes.
Usage of the reprocessed uranium (REPU) is problematic for several reasons: since the REPU is contaminated with the artificial uranium isotopes U-232 and U-236, special precautions are necessary during processing: the U-232 and its decay products cause elevated radiation doses for the plant personnel, and the U-236 as a neutron absorber requires higher enrichment levels to achieve the same reactivity. In consequence, use of the REPU is not very attractive at present market conditions: conversion is three times more expensive than conversion of natural uranium, and enrichment cannot be done in France's sole enrichment plant (Eurodif gazeous diffusion plant), since the REPU would contaminate the plant's circuits. "