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DOE Launches Nuclear Waste Disposal Initiative (energy.gov)
mdsolar writes: The Department of Energy is formally launching its initiative aimed at establishing a disposal site for spent nuclear fuel. The department said Monday that it is accepting input on the disposal plan, which centers on finding at least one place to store spent fuel, with the consent of the local community. Officials are also planning forums throughout 2016 to inform a more concrete plan for establishing a disposal site. It's a key step toward rolling out what the Obama administration thinks is the best way forward for nuclear waste disposal. It stands in stark contrast to the proposed Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository in Nevada, which was designated by Congress to be the country's main waste site, but which the Obama administration canceled amid strong local and state opposition to it.
Since Colossus isn't in service anymore, how about using its location?
I know it's fun to blame everything on Obama but the cancellation of the Yucca Mtn project was caused by the Department of Defense and Full-Year Continuing Appropriations Act, passed on April 14, 2011.
Approved by Congress, Cancelled by Congress.
Yucca Mountain cost more than $96B dollars so far. I just read an article stating that the spent nuclear fuel is fine where it is, cooling in the ponds local to the reactors. So which is it? Do we need to spend another $96B, or more, and then not use that facility too? Is shipping nuclear waste to some repository far away safe and cost effective?
> So how much of the "waste" is just spent fuel that can be reprocessed vs irradiated materials and other construction trash and whatnot
It depends on the type of reactor. The MAGNOX and CANDUs have better neutron economy, so you can burn all sorts of mixes that won't burn in a typical US or French reactor. That said, France is the #1 reprocessed, and the UK and Canada are both involved too (along with Russia and Japan).
In the best-case scenarios, you can get the equivalent of 30% recovery - that is, you can get enough fuel from the waste to cover 30% of what you burned to get that waste. It's not insignificant, but it certainly doesn't eliminate the waste problem, in spite of what you might have heard. The real advantage is that it tends to isolate the nastier bits, which means that part can be stored more easily while you can put the larger-in-volume-but-less-nasty stuff somewhere less intensive.
As always the only real problem is cost. Reprocessed fuel costs much more than just digging up new stuff from the ground. As reactors can't really compete on the market right now even with the current fuel glut forcing prices down, they can't even think about used reprocessed fuel. Again, that depends on the cycle, at least some of the fuel being used here in Canada is reprocessed.
The good news is that the good parts don't burn off quickly, so if there is a need for reprocessed fuel, you can always go and get it from storage. Of course, it will be a very cold day in hell before the economics are in your favor, given the CAPEX on wind and solar for fiscal '16.
Fine with me, I used to work at a nuclear site so it would not be any different.
from the ./ summary:
from the Wall Street Journal:
Ceci n'est pas une signature.
Gah, I wish /. had "edit". I forgot to mention that the #1 output from the reprocessing is plutonium. You can mix that into your fuel mix in some reactors, and this is common in France and the UK for instance, but it is a proliferation issue. This is why the US and fSovs offered to reprocess fuel for other countries, even after the US decided not to reprocess its own.
More like Harry Reid. Of course the most powerful democrat in the senate would cancel a perfectly good repository site and put the nation at risk.
More specifically, "Not in Former Majority Leader Senator Harry Reid's Backyard" - Obama still owes him big time for pinching out Obamacare.
We should use the facility that has been built, instead of letting one lone-wolf senator prevent that from happening. Yes, a national repository would be much, much safer than the status quo.
The Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1982 was passed to create a national program to dispose of nuclear fuel safely. The bill arranged for utility companies to pay for the development of such a site, which technically was a fee payed for by customers, not taxpayers (though that's really not much of a difference). Congress in 1987 decided that Yucca Mountain was the site to use, and all that money was collected and spent to build the site.
I don't understand why Yucca Mountain even needs to be a permanent storage solution. At least storing our nuclear fuel in one location is magnitudes safer than storing it at hundreds of nuclear power facilities throughout the country. Because we all know how safe coastal power plants are, and there's no worry about rivers ever flooding them either. The only reason why we aren't in a panic about Yucca Mountain being shut down is because we haven't had an accident yet. But just getting lucky should be no basis of national policy.
4. you have lots of weapon's grade plutonium.
This is actually the problem with the fast breeder program is that it works by converting Uranium-238 into highly fissionable Plutonium-239. This means that you need lots of Plutonium reactors to burn the fuel but this poses a security risk because the Plutonium fuel is relatively easy to convert into a nuclear weapon unlike most uranium fuel which nowadays is not weapons grade and so cannot be used to build a nuclear device.
So while there may be some efficiencies with recycling the fuel the security concerns, especially in this day and age, perhaps out weigh any benefit.
And isn't it funny now that Reid has announced his retirement, that DoE is getting off their ass and working the problem again. Let me guess, they'll be announcing the decision to dispose of it in Nevada, roughly 72 hours after Reid has cleared out the minority leader office suite and Chuck Schumer has moved in?
Slashdot still doesnâ(TM)t support Unicode after it was added to the HTML standard in 1997.
Rather interesting that Senator Reid had no problem with the DoE spending $90+ billion to build the place in his state, but all of a sudden pitches a fit when it's complete and time to start moving waste there.
A couple construction jobs provided to tunnel that out and pour in the concrete?
Slashdot still doesnâ(TM)t support Unicode after it was added to the HTML standard in 1997.
Since when has DC been worried about civilian power?