UK Scientists Designing Cement To Safely Store Nuclear Waste For 100,000 Years (ibtimes.co.uk)

An anonymous reader writes: A team of British scientists are working on designing a form of cement which could safely withstand the harmful effects of nuclear waste for thousands of years. The team at the UK's synchrotron science facility, Diamond Light Source, said the project will be vital as Britain looks to expand on its nuclear industry.

The team believe the new material is 50% better at reducing the impact of radiation than current storage solutions. The government is set to choose a location of where to store the estimated 300,000 cubic metres of radioactive waste which is estimated to have been accumulated by the UK by 2030.

Comments

Keep it close

[slashping]

As long as they keep it close, because the stuff that we call "spent fuel" still has 99% of the original energy locked inside. At some point, we'll want to dig it back up and actually use it.

Re:Keep it close

[Anonymous Coward]

And keep it monitored. Cement cracks, eventually. Mother Nature is a heavyweight champion.

Re:Keep it close

[Anonymous Coward]

If the waste has a half life of 10,000 years, then there will only be 1/10th of the energy after 100,000 years, right?

Re: Keep it close

[WarJolt]

The Pyramids of Giza are like 4.5k years old. With some tech we should be able to make tens of thousands of years.

Re:Keep it close

[AJWM]

Er, assuming that was a serious question...

100,000 years is ten half-lives (for a 10,000 half life). The amount of the original material left would be (1/2)^10, or a mere 1/1024th the amount of material.

As far as the amount of (useful) energy left, that depends on what the original material decays into, vs what it was originally.

Re: Keep it close

[Anonymous Coward]

Stop echoing christian pov based bullshit, the Giza pyramids and the Sphix is well over 10k years old.

Because of these water weathering and erosion features, Dr. Schoch concluded that the Sphinx had to be a far older structure than standard Egyptology was willing to grant, for significant rainfall could only be dated to its most recent period in that region of the world, the so-called sub-pluvial period, and thus the Sphinx had to be approximately 8000-10,000 years old. In other words, it was older than ancient Egypt itself(at least, by standard Egyptological chronologies). Needless to say, Dr. Shoch's conclusions were met with a storm of denunciation from the "science" of Egyptology.

Re:Keep it close

[slashping]

The waste is composed of a mix of radioactive materials with widely varying half lives. Some half lives, such as Strontium-94 are only 75 seconds, which means that it'll be completely gone in a few months, and radiation/heat produced by the waste will drop. Another common waste product Sr-90 has a half life of 30 years, but there are also waste products with half lives of millions of years. Most of the danger comes from the parts with intermediate half lives, as they produce lots of radiation, and will do so for years.

Re:Keep it close

[Zumbs]

And keep it monitored. Cement cracks, eventually. Mother Nature is a heavyweight champion.

And being encased in cement makes it real easy to have a look-see or move it if there is a problem. No, wait ... it doesn't.

Re: Keep it close

[Anonymous Coward]

Christian POV? I am pretty sure all the people who have extensively studied ancient Egypt were comprised of Christians, Muslims, Jews, and out right atheist. The paper you referenced presents nothing more than 1 more theoretical hypothesis built on questionable interpretations of the data collected while at the same time ignoring any facts that do not support their hypothesis. Taking this hypothesis to it's logical end points to the Sphinx being built 800,000 years ago when there was no recorded human civilization on the planet capable of building anything other than a fire. The supporters of Dr. Schoch are wedded to the "ancient astronaut" theories bandied about by those who grab at anything to support their thesis.

Re:Keep it close

[Anonymous Coward]

Or we could, you know, use it all and not bury all that useful stuff in concrete in the first place.

Re: Keep it close

[dywolf]

there's a bit of a difference between 8k year old rocks stacked on each other, and a manufactured substance.

Re: Keep it close

[naughtynaughty]

All you need to know about Robert Schoch is that he believes in telekinesis and the paranormal.

Re: Keep it close

[PopeRatzo]

The Pyramids of Giza are like 4.5k years old.

Or, they're 5 times older.

Re: Keep it close

[PopeRatzo]

8k year old rocks

Do you really think the limestone "rocks" that comprise the Great Pyramid are only 8 thousand years old?

Re:Keep it close

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually nuclear energy without reprocessing spent fuel; is bad proposition, because it is not sustainable.
Assuming that we use standard uranium/plutonium pallets; we will run out of fuel in 30-50 years, if we do reprocess it will last us few million years (it is a very energy dense).
That is why countries like France, Russia and etc; which are serious about nuclear energy do have reprocessing plants.
The technology is there it is well understood, but there is no political will to commit to it; that is why we are burring nuclear waste.

The only real concern is that most of the older reactor designs allow to generate enriched uranium/plutonium that is suitable for WMDs.
This is actually remedied in the new designs like thorium reactors.

Re:Keep it close

[dsmatthews9379]

I can't see nuclear waste sitting around for more than a century before fusion driven recycling systems consume it all.

Re: Keep it close

[Anonymous Coward]

Irrelevant, the mainstream view is held by christians.

The pyramid of Giza is on a class of its own, its construction accuracy is on a class of its own. In fact the others were built to copy the Giza one, thousands of years later.

Calling the rooms "King's/Queen's chamber" when there were no mummy found in it, is the bullshit christian mainstream pov. The flood lines prove the Giza one is much older than the other ones.

Stop talking bullshit.

Re: Keep it close

[flopsquad]

EVIL CHRISTAN POV thinking with 5000 year pyramids is going to HELL!! All Pyramids were built on 4 simultaneous 24hour days, making them 20000 year old!!!1

Also, the weathering patterns on the Great Pyramid of Giza and Sphinx can be most accurately explained by the action of intergalactic electric filaments, not wind, rain, and sand.

#hitlerhadacoldfusiontachionbomb

Re:Keep it close

[blindseer]

In other words we only need to watch the stuff for 100 years or so before it is no more radioactive than common dirt?

The waste is comprised of a mix of elements, that is true. What most people won't tell you is that more than half of that mass is not really radioactive, it's just really hard to separate from the radioactive stuff. A large part of the mix are elements with a half life much like Sr-90, 30 years or so. If we give it a century to "cool" then it's about 1/10th as radioactive as when we put it in.

Let's say, out of an abundance of caution, we store it for 300 years. That's ten half lives. At that point it's 1/1000th as radioactive as it was when we put it away. We can build a vault that can last 300 years without putting much thought into it. Put that vault in place that we think will be around in 300 years and already has good security, like a bank, military base, museum, library, airport, whatever. Then after the time is up we can open it back up, take the stuff out, and put the next batch of stuff back in and seal it back up for another 300 years. What comes out will be, without any processing really, be valuable reactor fuel. With some processing it can be made into a lot of valuable things, including the reactor fuel.

Re:Keep it close

[Firethorn]

What comes out will be, without any processing really, be valuable reactor fuel. With some processing it can be made into a lot of valuable things, including the reactor fuel.

You're still going to have to process it to get reactor fuel. The important thing is that it's the radioactivity that makes reprocessing used fuel rods expensive, because said radioactivity tends to contaminate things.

If you store the used rods in a reactor pool for ~30 years, then in an above ground cask for another 30-60, as you say, the radioactivity is a tiny fraction of what it used to be. That means that it doesn't contaminate things nearly as much, thus will be something like an order of magnitude easier/cheaper to reprocess. You stuff the non-useful radioactives, and other materials you can't be bothered to separate, into another cask.

Re: Keep it close

[Anonymous Coward]

The Pyramids of Giza are like 4.5k years old.

Or, they're 5 times older.

Leave your mama outta this. Yo mama so old, Jurassic Park was a movie of her HS reunion. (She was the brachiosaurus)*

And you can also stop spouting BULLSHIT.

* - BTW, yo mama so fat, after sex she smokes a turkey.

Re:Keep it close

[Trax3001BBS]

As long as they keep it close, because the stuff that we call "spent fuel" still has 99% of the original energy locked inside. At some point, we'll want to dig it back up and actually use it.

No.

I used to operate a reactor for Plutonium production, that fuel was dumped with of a lot of it's energy still available but it was processed the unusable waste being glassified.

A reactor will normally burn it's fuel till all it's rods are out or close -all used up.

Even then there's a lot of Plutonium around, it's being used to enrich Uranium for say the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plants.

Re:Keep it close

[Charcharodon]

Never understood why they keep going to route of only using some of it. Why bury it. With enough in one spot someone will come up with a better use for it.

Re: Keep it close

[PopeRatzo]

Yo mama so old, Jurassic Park was a movie of her HS reunion.

But she looks good for her age.

Re: Keep it close

[DigiShaman]

And no doubt Robert Schoch and cranks like him continue to troll Dr. Zahi Hawass.

Re:Keep it close

[arglebargle_xiv]

Or they could store it at the corner of Irving Avenue and Moffat Street, Queens. I'm sure no-one would notice a little extra radioactivity.

Re: Keep it close

[Anonymous Coward]

slather her in bacon grease and she's doable

Re:Keep it close

[Anonymous Coward]

perhaps you fail to understand why it will be encased in concrete or did not read the article you linked. if you need help, just ask. someone will be happy to explain it to you.

Re:Keep it close

[angel'o'sphere]

If reprocessing extends usage of fuel depends on reactor technology.

The current in use reactors don't burn natural uranium. So reprocessing only gets like 2%-3% of uranium back from the spent fuel. The remaining ~ 92% + ~ 4% Actinides are still: waste

To "burn" that waste you need a different reactor technology, which no one has _installed_ yet.

France and other countries only do reprocessing to keep the nuclear weapons programs running.

Neither cost wise nor energy wise reprocessing makes any sense. 1/6th of the french nuclear plants only run to power the reprocessing plants.

Re: Keep it close

[Anonymous Coward]

How about Nevada, now that Sen. Reid is retiring? ( I get the feeling his main purpose as senator was to keep nuclear waste out of the state of Nevada.

Re: Keep it close

[Anonymous Coward]

BTW... Who would have "recorded" a human civilization dating back so many years? The census bureau? I say let's keep an open mind as to civilizations before us for there must have been quite a few.

Re:Keep it close

[RockDoctor]

the stuff that we call "spent fuel" still has 99% of the original energy locked inside.

Where the fuck did you get that figure from? Did you make it up, or did you copy it from someone who made it up?

For a start - the 300,000 m^3 volume given means that they're talking about intermediate- and high- grade wastes, not high-grade alone.

But even if it were high grade waste, the available energy is about 1/10th of the binding energy per nucleon. (See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... for an example ; you need to go from low energy/nucleon to high energy per nucleon to release energy per nucleon.) The only way you could get to 99% still available would be to achieve total conversion of mass to energy. Do you have a technique for that, because if you do, there are fleets of black helicopters from competing groups heading your way, and they are going to ask you questions you will answer. Repeatedly.

Re:Keep it close

[RockDoctor]

If you store the used rods in a reactor pool for ~30 years, then in an above ground cask for another 30-60, as you say, the radioactivity is a tiny fraction of what it used to be.

Between a half and a quarter, depending on the mix of isotopes in your "waste". Which is not a tiny fraction. The caesium has a half life of 30 years (so decays to a quarter ; 137 isotope) ; the strontium (1/4, 28 years), barium (1/64, 10 years), iodine (negligible, 60 days), xenon (negligible, 30 days).

While I agree that reprocessing waste is potentially a valuable source of dangerous materials, it is not as simple as sloganeering. And it will create additional wastes of its own (which you can't just distil back to dryness - many of the short-lived and dangerous isotopes are gases or low boiling point.

Re:Keep it close

[Firethorn]

Between a half and a quarter, depending on the mix of isotopes in your "waste". Which is not a tiny fraction. The caesium has a half life of 30 years (so decays to a quarter ; 137 isotope) ; the strontium (1/4, 28 years), barium (1/64, 10 years), iodine (negligible, 60 days), xenon (negligible, 30 days).

How's it still at 1/4 if the halflives you list are all at 1/4 or less after 60, much less 90 years?

Should be closer to 80% of radioactivity gone by then.

Also, 'Nearly as much'. Yes, it's still radioactive and dangerous, just not as bad as it was before.

Re:Keep it close

[RockDoctor]

That's by no means an exhaustive list of the isotopes produced. In a typical waste batch there would be several dozens of isotopes when the "rods" (or other forms) go into the reactor (even oxygen will provide 3) by the time it comes out, there will be several hundred isotopes which have been directly produced. Every one of them will have been subject to fairly intense bombardment by neutrons and alpha particles, generating probably several hundred others.

Ah, here's what I was looking for. From a US review of spent fuel, http://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/..., a section entitled

5.1 IMPORTANT ISOTOPES IN SPENT NUCLEAR FUEL SAFETY ANALYSES (p) 31 5.2 (next section) (p)35"

Actually, my guesstimate of "hundreds" above is reduced on that table to a mere 41. Of course, a different authority would probably choose a different group that are "important" but "dozens" certainly seems a good starting estimate.

I found a second source, https://www.oecd-nea.org/scien... which has a similar list of 31 nucleides.

Re: Keep it close

[dywolf]

if you want to get all philosophical here, then can take turns one upping each other with the different stages in the life of the material:
the blocks were quarried 8k years ago from a rock formation exposed 30k years ago, the upthrust from tectonic activity and plate collisions 700k years ago, driving to the surface material that formed 20 million years ago in the bowls of the earth....toss in another cycle of tectonic submergence/melting/upthrust here even if want, which allowed the substances that are now ignacious rock (I don't know...I just remember the name) but were originally sedimentary....or keep going further, with the accretion of galactic material into a disk and eventually a planet....the date it was fused and ejected by a supernovae...etc.

or we can just say the blocks are ~8k years old since that when they were quarried, and not engage in a pedantic argument completely beside the original point. :P

Utter Stupidity

[Anonymous Coward]

Why don't these idiots use that "waste" as fuel for breeder reactors? They are throwing away 98% of their fissile material and worse, trying to make 100,000 year plans for it.

Re:Utter Stupidity

[JoeMerchant]

Because: politics.

Re:Utter Stupidity

[fustakrakich]

Is there another way to ration abundant resources?

Re:Utter Stupidity

[Anonymous Coward]

Specifically: USoA geopolitics. Not that they are any less stupid, but the UK more or less just follow in this one. Fast breeder reactors are also just the thing for making the fissibles for The Bomb, and so we can't allow anyone to have those things, now can we? So storing the waste it is, eh. Thus asserting once more that politics is 99% stupidity by mass and worse by volume.

I for one wish we (where 'we' is everyone, really) would stop using these old need-power-to-shut-'er-down designs and move to something that a) stops instantly when we pull the plug and b) does not generate >1000 year glowy (or otherwise spectacularly unwieldy) waste.

Re:Utter Stupidity

[turbidostato]

"I for one wish we (where 'we' is everyone, really) would stop using these old need-power-to-shut-'er-down designs and move to something that a) stops instantly when we pull the plug"

You are not very good at safe design, are you?

No: you want a design that stop instantly the moment you stop pressing the plug, not the other way around (in other words: a dead-man's switch).

Re:Utter Stupidity

[careysub]

Cue the knee-jerk fuel-reprocessing-and-fast-reactor-is-the-complete-solution-to-all-nuclear-waste-problems-everywhere nutter comment.

Pointing out the problems with this comment is a bit of a problem in itself knowing what I should start with.

First, the 200,000 cubic meters of high-level waste already exists and is the product of the British nuclear weapons program, and possibly some of the high-level waste already created by fuel reprocessing. This stuff is a radiological and chemical witches brew that cannot be easily treated in any way. Some means of reducing this stuff to a stable state for long term storage is essential.

Second, there are only three operating (or soon to be operating) commercial scale breeder reactors in the world, two in Russia (operating) and one in India (not yet operating). A non-existent world fleet of breeder reactors cannot solve any real existing problems. Building a world-wide industrial deployment of breeder reactors is an exercise orders of magnitude more costly than waste disposal problems.

Third, breeder reactors do not make fission products go away. These must still be disposed of once the actinides are burned.

Fourth, fuel reprocessing systems currently operating produce larger volumes of high-level waste in physical terms than they take in. This must be converted to some form that be stored long term (see point one, above).

Fifth, spent fuel from power reactors does not contain "98% of their fissile material". Real nuclear fuel today is enriched to about 4% U-235 for loading (96% U-238), plutonium is bred and burned in place so that 5% of the actinide content is consumed, and the discharged fuel is about 0.8% U-235, 1.2% plutonium and 0.2% other actinides, for a "fissile content" of 2.2%. Reprocessing can only recover about 44% more usable energy content that the fuel already has provided. If you are thinking of the U-238, it is not fissile, but must be bred further to make it fissile. We can obtain U-238 far more cheaply and easily, if we need it, by simply converting the millions of tons of depleted uranium currently in storage into breeding fuel element.

Sixth, reprocessing is very expensive. Make that "VERY expensive". The cost of the fissile material produced is much higher than enriching natural uranium, and every aspect of fuel fabrication and handling is much more expensive due to it being "hot" from the beginning. The value of mixed oxide fuel on the market is less than zero. Utilities must be paid a subsidy to take it for free.

Seventh, a breeder reactor power economy cost much more than a conventional power reactor economy. As things now stand the high capital cost of conventional power reactors make them economically unattractive without some sort of construction mandate, or special economic support. A system that is much more expensive is a non-starter if the conventional power reactor problem is not solved in practice (see point two, above).

Eighth+ (yes, I have more points), but I am tired of typing.

Re:Utter Stupidity

[nojayuk]

Gas and coal are cheap and the waste from burning them can be dumped into the atmosphere and nobody cares enough to stop burning them since that would increase the price of electricity and cost jobs (see "War on Coal"). Nuclear reactors, including breeders are expensive to build and everyone is petrified of spent fuel from reactors because they've been fed bullshit and crappy movies about the effects of radiation ever since 1945.

Using up spent fuel in new-design reactors by reprocessing and other means will cost money and new uranium fuel is really cheap at the moment (current spot price for U3O8 yellowcake is $34.15 per lb) and it will remain cheap for another 50 years and more as more mining sources are developed and brought into production.

The Russian BN-800 reactor is designed to burn spent fuel and also plutonium from decommissioned nuclear weapons but it's quite experimental and it will be a while before more reactors like it are built. The fuel for it still needs to be processed and specially fabricated, it can't just take used fuel pellets and this adds to the expected cost of operations.

Some countries such as Russia do reprocess spent fuel but that only concentrates the unusable isotopes that are actually waste and they still need to be dealt with, probably by deep geological burial. There doesn't seem to be any real problem with this idea but it gets a lot of attention from the panic merchants with the 100,000 year figure being thrown about a lot although that's quite arbitrary considering the environmental radiation sources already present around us naturally which do not emanate from the nuclear power industry.

Re:Utter Stupidity

[Anonymous Coward]

>I don't like something so I will call everyone who advocates it a "nutter"
Oh, you're one of those nutters.

Re:Utter Stupidity

[Anonymous Coward]

Specifically: USoA geopolitics. Not that they are any less stupid, but the UK more or less just follow in this one. Fast breeder reactors are also just the thing for making the fissibles for The Bomb, and so we can't allow anyone to have those things, now can we? So storing the waste it is, eh. Thus asserting once more that politics is 99% stupidity by mass and worse by volume.

I for one wish we (where 'we' is everyone, really) would stop using these old need-power-to-shut-'er-down designs and move to something that a) stops instantly when we pull the plug and b) does not generate >1000 year glowy (or otherwise spectacularly unwieldy) waste.

It's called a "thorium reactor." People in the nuke heavy industry of generating electricity like to bitch about how "it's more expensive." Nevermind that we can "burn" supposedly "spent fuel." Nevermind that. Why? The almighty dollar sign.

All of this "zomg, must store spent fuel safely" is a red herring. The thorium reactor is the answer. It's a whole lot of bitching and yelling over a very well solved problem.

Re:Utter Stupidity

[Anonymous Coward]

Reprocessing is extremely expensive, there is no way to make it cost effective.

TL;DR: Get a fucking clue, cuntcheese.

Re:Utter Stupidity

[Anonymous Coward]

Second, there are only three operating (or soon to be operating) commercial scale breeder reactors in the world, two in Russia (operating) and one in India (not yet operating). A non-existent world fleet of breeder reactors cannot solve any real existing problems. Building a world-wide industrial deployment of breeder reactors is an exercise orders of magnitude more costly than waste disposal problems.

Ahhh I see you subscribe to the American government financial methodology of kicking the can down the road because problems can be a bit hard. But why solve a problem when you can just bury it and hope that it only causes an issue after the next election.

Re:Utter Stupidity

[Anonymous Coward]

theres also the proliferation problem. greatly increases the world's supply of weapon grade fissile material.
and thats somethng we can do without.

Re:Utter Stupidity

[turkeyfish]

Yeah, so that when the "plug" design breaks and you stop pressing it, it will just keep on going. Exactly, what one would need for a nuclear reactor?

Re:Utter Stupidity

[Anonymous Coward]

You're not very good at picking up the main points, are you?

The point here was that a reactor that *requires power* and ultra clean water for cooling for days or even weeks to safely shut down, power that the thing no longer delivers even though it's still stupidly hot and water that may not be available any longer either, is not a very safe thing at all. Thus, something, *anything* that does not have that particular pathology but that will just shut down, fizzle out, snuff like a candle, or whatever, once it's being told to do so will be a vast improvement. Where "pulling the plug" might be stopping a neutron beam keeping the reaction going or something. That idea is the key.

How the notional plug is pulled is relatively unimportant in context, but hey, if you want to make it so an operator must hold up a switch at all times (not down, since if he dies he might slump down on top of the switch, doofus), well, would you want that job? Hold it up by hand at all times. So no taking a leak during shifts. And no jimmying the button, silly, that's unsafe. So I say you have some learning to do about a) what's important to the point being made and b) how not to have human nature and the sheer force of boredom defeat your totes SMRT safety plans.

Re:Utter Stupidity

[Dantoo]

Err no. A Dead Man's switch keeps it going by pressing the switch. If you stop pressing it, or the switch breaks, then the system stops. Commonly used on locomotives.

Re:Utter Stupidity

[blindseer]

Let's take this point by point.

First, the 200,000 cubic meters of high-level waste already exists and is the product of the British nuclear weapons program, and possibly some of the high-level waste already created by fuel reprocessing. This stuff is a radiological and chemical witches brew that cannot be easily treated in any way. Some means of reducing this stuff to a stable state for long term storage is essential.

That may be true but we have ways to reduce the mass of what needs to be stored if we use some preprocessing to separate out some of the valuable materials.

Second,...Building a world-wide industrial deployment of breeder reactors is an exercise orders of magnitude more costly than waste disposal problems.

Breeder reactors may be an expensive and difficult task but we can make energy from the "waste" that it burns. It is quite possible that by investing billions of dollars/euros/rupees in this we could get a net gain on our investment. Basically we can make money from burning this waste.

Third, breeder reactors do not make fission products go away. These must still be disposed of once the actinides are burned.

Many of those fission products are very valuable. Either because they are very useful radioactive isotopes or rare minerals. Much of the rest is not in fact radioactive, a fission produces two nuclei, with only one of them radioactive. If we just separate the non-radioactive elements from the radioactive elements then we'd cut the mass needed for storage in half. Then by separating the useful isotopes from the less than useful isotopes we could cut the mass needed to store by more than half again. With smart processing we could turn 10 tons of waste we'd have to bury into 4 tons. I think that alone is worth something.

Fourth, fuel reprocessing systems currently operating produce larger volumes of high-level waste in physical terms than they take in. This must be converted to some form that be stored long term (see point one, above).

If that is the case then you are doing it wrong.

Fifth, spent fuel from power reactors does not contain "98% of their fissile material". ...
We can obtain U-238 far more cheaply and easily, if we need it, by simply converting the millions of tons of depleted uranium currently in storage into breeding fuel element.

U-238 is only one of the many elements that can be obtained by properly processing spent fuel and other radioactive wastes. There are many other valuable elements in this radioactive wastes and if we process it out we reduce the mass of waste we need to store considerably and we can make money doing it.

Sixth, reprocessing is very expensive. ...
The value of mixed oxide fuel on the market is less than zero. Utilities must be paid a subsidy to take it for free.

Again, that is because you are doing it wrong. People are experimenting with a pyro-processing system that can melt down this waste and with some very creative chemistry they can separate out all the valuable stuff from the not so valuable stuff. Basically it's heated until melting, what becomes gasses at those temperatures is collected and separated by masses and chemical properties. Gasses like iodine can be made into medicines, noble gasses collected for welding, and so forth. Noble metals tend to just sink to the bottom and can be sold for jewelery or coinage. Zirconium, hafnium, beryllium, and many other non-radioactive elements can be separated out and reused in nuclear facilities because of their unique properties when exposed to radiation.

Reprocessing is expensive partly because we haven't figured out all the chemistry yet. It's also expensive partly because government regulations throughout the world make it expensive. The first country that creates sane regulations on the processing of nuclear

Re:Utter Stupidity

[gweihir]

Nuclear power is about some people getting rich. Nothing else. As soon as you accept that, it becomes obvious why stuff that is going to stay dangerous for millions of years gets thrown away.

Re:Utter Stupidity

[khallow]

I have to roll my eyes at this post. We can have all this trouble or we can do the "nutter" approach and recycle the valuable stuff.

Re:Utter Stupidity

[Firethorn]

No: you want a design that stop instantly the moment you stop pressing the plug, not the other way around (in other words: a dead-man's switch).

I like the liquid thorium design - in the prototype plant they shut the reactor off for the night by turning the cooling system off.

How that worked is that the reactor vessel had a drain in it. The drain had a fan/cooler such that when they pumped the reaction mass into it(using a different heating system to melt it), the drain was cold enough to solidify the mass, plugging the drain. Turn the cooling system off, the drain plug heats up and liquifies(the vessel itself might heat up a little, but well within design tolerances). With the drain clear, the reaction mass drains out of the reactor into a sort of ice cube tray array that separated the mass into sub-critical amounts, where not enough heat is generated to keep the mass liquid, so the whole kit solidifies.

When the researchers came back in the morning, they'd fire up the heating system to re-melt the cubes and pump the mass back into the reactor. A cooling fan pointed at the drain would solidify the mass wanting to drain back to the trays. Once plugged, a critical mass could be built in the reactor vessel, and the operation of the reactor would resume.

Re:Utter Stupidity

[cavreader]

If there was a cheaper way to generate nuclear energy that was as safe or safer than existing technologies someone would make the investment no matter the upfront costs. Even the current companies already heavily invested in nuclear technology would do a basic cost and market analysis and see their existing technologies would become obsolete and any profits they were counting on would be gone. The almighty Dollar, Euro, Renminbi, or Ruble rules the world and any new idea or technology capable of earning more will eventually win out. Do you think Exxon would just fold up shop if a more profitable alternative to oil magically showed up or would they make sure they were in at the beginning to make sure they continue to rule the worlds energy markets. Powerful corporations did not become powerful by being stupid. Attempts at undermining new technologies or processes are hard to conceal in today's world. What one mind can envision so can 20 others and in today's world nobody seems to be capable of keeping any secret large or small.

Re: Utter Stupidity

[Anonymous Coward]

No, it was a Jimmy Carter "I'm afraid of nuclear" moment.

Re:Utter Stupidity

[MrL0G1C]

You don't get it, reprocessing nuclear waste is horribly expensive, that's why here in Britain, even though we were charging high rates to reprocess waste we still decided to shut it down anyway.

Nuclear using reprocessed fuel costs 30c+ per kWh as compared to 2c to 10c per kWh for coal, gas, solar, wind, hydro, geothermal etc.

Even off-shore wind costs half of what electricity made with reprocessed fuel costs.

Re:Utter Stupidity

[Anonymous Coward]

Throwing lots of numbers out, all generalized, with no basis. That's OK though, it for the cause.

Re:Utter Stupidity

[blindseer]

No, I do get it. The only reason nuclear reprocessing, or nuclear ANYTHING really, is expensive is because of nonsensical rules governing the handling of anything deemed "nuclear".

If the rules were such that we treated these materials based on the real and actual hazards they pose then we'd see more nuclear power plants. That's because we'd be shutting down all the coal plants based on how much radioactive material they spread to the environment alone.

The expense lies solely with government regulation. I'm not saying we need to do away with the regulation, I say the regulations need to make sense.

Re:Utter Stupidity

[turbidostato]

"You're not very good at picking up the main points, are you?"

Your bet.

"The point here was that a reactor that requires [blah, blah] is not a very safe thing at all"

It seems I got the point and it's probably *you* the one that didn't, since you just substituted one petty detail with another. Just like the parent poster (maybe the same).

The point and *my* point is that unless you are quite good at safe design you'll end up taking out an unsafe design for another unsafe design. Just like you: *any* design that needs to be told, one way or another, to unplug, is unsafe by design. Everything else, are details.

Some examples:
1) The most straightforward (thus, the one in my example): The machine requires to be told to run to stay running. Stop comes as soon as the machine is not told to stay running, aka dead man's switch.
2) Anything that stands gravity load needs to turn off when moving towards gradient (i.e.: never let control rods to work upwards)
3) Anything that uses fluid pressure needs to stop if pressure drops.
4) Always check for out-of-boundary conditions, not in-boundary conditions. Whenever an out-of-boundary condition is reached a release-condition switch must enter into action, passively, if at all possible (i.e.: a fuse, or a mechanical release valve).
5) Any relase-anything (i.e. pressure-relieve valve or fuse) action should break the "stay running" cycle.
6) Never ever let possitive-feedback loops to increase power output.
etc.

Re:Utter Stupidity

[Anonymous Coward]

If we're doing it wrong, then prove it. Start up a company to do it right, and show us all how it works. There should be a fortune in it for you.

Unless, of course, you're full of shit.

Re:Utter Stupidity

[lazy genes]

Check out this number! 280 billion dollars for cleaning up the Fukushima site. That's only if they come up with a few free miracles, and allowed to dump the waist just outside the harbor. wtf

Re:Utter Stupidity

[blindseer]

Doing it right requires regulations that allow for it. As it is now so many nations are scared witless over anything "nukular" that anything outside of how things are done now just do not have a means to get licensed. I'd have to convince the powers that be that heating up radioactive elements beyond their boiling point is actually a good thing. This process would be done in a sealed vessel held under a slight vacuum so none of the radioactive elements get released to the atmosphere. Once the waste is a molten syrup, and the lighter stuff are gasses, then some really interesting chemistry can be done to separate all the stuff out and make it useful again.

The way we do things in the USA is completely insane. Anything that contains thorium, an inert and barely radioactive element, is treated like weapons grade plutonium in the regulations. This is because at some point in the past someone theorized it is possible to build a nuclear weapon from it. Even though this has since been proven false the processing of thorium is nearly forbidden. On the other hand, in China, thorium is readily mined and tossed unto open air piles. They can do that safely because, unlike plutonium, it will not fission if piled up. It is so dense it will not blow away, it is insoluble in water, it will not burn, essentially it is an inert rock.

How the USA and most other nations regulate other radioactive materials is similar. I hear that Canada and India have some moderately sane regulations and therefore we see companies working through the regulations there to make some of this processing happen. Even though it might happen there in a decade or so the first processing plants will be small and will be only allowed to do a fraction of the separation processes that they'd like. They would still not be able to process nuclear waste down to nearly nothing if allowed to separate out more elements. What they could do though is make a serious dent in the piles of waste they have now.

Some things that you might want to look into to see what I'm talking about: pyro-processing, molten salt reactors, especially the denatured molten salt reactor from Terrestrial Energy, and waste annihilating molten salt reactors from Transatomic Power, liquid fluoride thorium reactors, and I'm probably missing a few good search terms.

Re:Utter Stupidity

[angel'o'sphere]

That may be true but we have ways to reduce the mass of what needs to be stored if we use some preprocessing to separate out some of the valuable materials.
That would reduce the mass by less than 10%

And: you seem not be aware that most of that mass already is reprocessed ... so actually there is not much to gain, considering that you can "buy" new reactor fuel cheaper on the market than you can get it from reprocessing your waste/spent fuel.

Re:Utter Stupidity

[angel'o'sphere]

I don't really know why you are arguing about this bullshit eery time "nuclear" pops up on /.

Everyone told you meanwhile that reprocessing is pointless.

1000 tons of "spent fuel" only contains about 30 tons reusable fuel. For current reactor technologies, that is.

Your ideas about hazards and safety are so scary that I hope that you never are responsible for anything that puts people life in danger. E.g. driving a truck or piloting a boat or air craft.

But thank you that you are enlightening us with wisdom that obviously surpasses more than half a century of world wide legislations and literally millions of involved scientists and engineers world wide.

The expense lies solely with government regulation. I'm not saying we need to do away with the regulation, I say the regulations need to make sense.
To show us your wisdom, why don't you hand pick the 10 most "insane" government regulations and explain to us: what is wrong with them, how to fix it, and what is the benefit. Feel free to pick ten randomly.

Thank you.

Re:Utter Stupidity

[Anonymous Coward]

I do this stuff for a living.

The kind of nuclear waste that gets grouted is not spent fuel. Currently UK spent fuel is reprocessed. That results in new fuel, which is reused in plants, and Highly Active Waste (HAW) which is composed of fission products. This is not useful as potential fuel but is extremely radioactive (like, 1000s of Sieverts per hour, which will give you a lethal dose in a few seconds). It is vitrified and put in steel flasks, and stored in actively cooled stores. Eventually once it no longer requires active cooling it may be moved to a geological disposal facility (if we ever build one).

Waste that gets grouted is Intermediate Level Waste (ILW). This is activated steelwork (i.e. steel that has been part of a nuclear reactor), contaminated lab equipment from active labs, fuel production machinery contaminated with alpha waste powder, contaminated cement scabbled from the lining of disused fuel ponds etc. Plutonium Contaminated Material (PCM) is also grouted. This stuff is also of no use as fuel, but is not so radioactive that it needs to be vitrified. A new type of grout that provides better long-term containment is of interest as it will keep the material safer for longer.

Re:Utter Stupidity

[drinkypoo]

No, I do get it. The only reason nuclear reprocessing, or nuclear ANYTHING really, is expensive is because of nonsensical rules governing the handling of anything deemed "nuclear".

That's an incredibly stupid thing to say, and Slashdot is a dumber place because of it. Nuclear material is dangerous to handle, spent or not. If it weren't, we wouldn't even be having this discussion.

Re:Utter Stupidity

[AmiMoJo]

Basically we can make money from burning this waste.

You can't, the cost compared to conventional nuclear and other forms of energy is too great. You won't find anyone willing to invest in your high cost energy source when there are much more competitive ideas that need funding to develop, and when disposal + making new nuclear fuel is much cheaper.

If that is the case then you are doing it wrong.

No, that's just how those reactors work. The containment vessel becomes high level waste itself, and the total amount of material involved vastly outweighs the amount of fuel it will process during its lifetime. The vessels don't last that long either, because the material degrades faster than other reactors.

People are experimenting

And that's the problem, it's fantasy technology that doesn't exist and may or may not work as advertised. Remember, you are competing with things like energy storage and renewables that are proven to work and in high demand.

The first country that creates sane regulations on the processing of nuclear waste is going to find themselves very wealthy very quickly.

If that were true, why hasn't China or some other country that already processes a large amount of toxic and environmentally damaging waste done it? China has a vast nuclear programme of its own, including both power and weapons. It's not like they lack the know-how or domestic need, let alone the prospect of getting rich quick that you suggest exits.

If we get some sane rules on the building of nuclear reactors then we can see a renaissance of nuclear power.

Like internet advertisers, the industry brought those rules on itself. It has shown that it can't be trusted to stick to them, or to operate plants safely. Rather than work with governments to come up with rules more to your liking, the industry keeps asking for more hand-outs to maintain safe operation and then flouting the rules anyway.

Before proposing changes to the rules, you first need to propose how to get the industry to stick to the existing rules.

Re:Utter Stupidity

[blindseer]

Of course nuclear material is dangerous to handle, any heavy metal would. So, I suggest wearing gloves, hard hat, goggles, and steel toed boots when handling it in any significant quantity. Oh, a filter mask might be a good idea too.

A spent fuel rod fresh from the reactor core is very radioactive, just seconds of exposure can kill you dead. After it's cooled down for a couple years in a pool it can be safely moved to a vault to cool down for a few decades or centuries. Alternatively that two or four year old spent fuel rod can be processed for it's valuable medium lived isotopes. Whether the medium lived stuff is removed by processing or a few decades in a vault the stuff that remains is not much more radioactive than the dirt it came from. So handle it with the gloves, goggles, and mask as it's processed further to separate out what could be used as nuclear fuel, medical isotopes, industrial isotopes, and inert elements. What started as one ton of waste can probably be processed down to something that can fit in a beer can.

That beer can of radioactive waste could probably be best disposed of by neutron bombardment. That means you put it back in a nuclear reactor.

If we do this smartly we can do away with many of the hazards, harvest some very valuable elements, and not have to bury anything for more than a few years, 300 years at most.

Clarification

[PuddleBoy]

I believe what they mean is "concrete" rather than "cement".

Cement is a powder that is one component of concrete;

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cement

Together with sand, water, and aggregate (rock) they undergo a chemical reaction (when mixed) to form concrete. Changing the quality, component ratio and admixtures of concrete can dramatically change various characteristics like strength, set time, resistance to water pressure, etc. I can remember seeing concrete that was very dark (almost black-ish) in color. I was told it contained a lot of lead for use in radioactivity shielding.

Just sayin'

Re:Clarification

[careysub]

No, they mean cement. You add aggregate to provide structural properties and reduce the cost of the mix when used for construction. This is for waste disposal.

Re:Clarification

[wbr1]

Thanks for the concrete example. It really cemented things in my mind.

Re:Clarification

[Anonymous Coward]

No, they mean cement. You add aggregate to provide structural properties and reduce the cost of the mix when used for construction. This is for waste disposal.

Then, would the nuke waste not be the "aggregate," then?

I still don't see how we're going to harvest the spent fuel when people get off their asses and start implementing nuke reactors that use the "spent fuel," such as

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liquid_fluoride_thorium_reactor

Re:Clarification

[PuddleBoy]

... No, they mean cement. You add aggregate to provide structural properties and reduce the cost of the mix when used for construction. This is for waste disposal.

FTA: "...the plan for a Geological Disposal Facility (GDF) where highly radioactive waste, immobilised in cement, would be interred deep underground"

I'm pretty sure they mean concrete. Cement is a dry powder (think of those bags at the home improvement store - "Portland Cement") - it would be tough to immobilise anything in a loose powder for 100,000 years.

It is quite common for people to use the words cement and concrete interchangeably, though they are two different things.

Cement (in this context) is a dry, loose powder. It is one component of concrete.
Concrete is a hard 'finished product' that they make (some) roads and buildings out of. Concrete is a mixture of ingredients that, after going thru a chemical transformation, "sets" or hardens into something with tremendous compressive strength.

Re:Clarification

[Anonymous Coward]

Cement once it's set is called ... cement. You're an idiot.

Re: Clarification

[Anonymous Coward]

Talk to a structural engineer and lose your pig ignorance

Re:Clarification

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm guessing they're not really worried about the sand and aggregate being resistant to radioactivity, so yes, they are talking about cement.

Re:Clarification

[thisisauniqueid]

In the UK, concrete is frequently referred to as simply "cement", e.g. "the cement building", "it's made of cement".

Re:Clarification

[Anonymous Coward]

Sand is a form of aggregate and is not necessary for the chemical reaction to take place. Just cement and water. That's it.

Re:Clarification

[Anonymous Coward]

Yep, another case of having concrete evidence to help cement the idea.

Re:Clarification

[Anonymous Coward]

I've lived in England for 45 years and I don't know anyone that refers to Concrete as "cement".

Re:Clarification

[stoborrobots]

Cement is also a hard product produced by mixing powdered cement with water, and allowing it to dry. This is frequently used for applying to things which need to be permanently affixed, but do not require the compressive strength of concrete. Wet cement is essentially a glue.

Re:Clarification

[Bob_Who]

I've lived in England for 45 years and I don't know anyone that refers to Concrete as "cement".

.... or "concrete" galoshes.

Re:Clarification

[Anonymous Coward]

Shouldn't they be concrete wellies?

KGIII (Low on posts so posting AC)

Why 100,000 years

[sjames]

The 100,000 years thing is a scam meant to make the nuclear waste problem look intractable. LONG before that, the "waste" will be no more radioactive than natural rocks laying out in the desert in the U.S.

Re:Why 100,000 years

[ThorGod]

True, but it still won everyone over in Nevada.

Re:Why 100,000 years

[careysub]

The 100,000 years thing is a scam meant to make the nuclear waste problem look intractable. LONG before that, the "waste" will be no more radioactive than natural rocks laying out in the desert in the U.S.

Not quite. Unless the actinides have been removed by reprocessing the spent fuel does not return to the same level as ore for a few hundred thousand years. The period chosen: 100,000 years is about right - not quite long enough to reach that point, but pretty good. The legacy waste they are dealing with contains actinides and is a nightmare to try reprocess due to its non-standard composition.

Imagining that all waste problems are really that of disposing of nearly non-existent reprocessed fuel waste with all actinides removed is silly. They are dealing with real waste that really needs disposal, not hypothetical types of waste.

BTW: the (quasi*) natural rocks laying out in the desert (tailings) are a significant waste problem since they have been removed from their stable geological context.

*They have been physically and chemically altered.

Re:Why 100,000 years

[nmb3000]

The 100,000 years thing is a scam meant to make the nuclear waste problem look intractable. LONG before that, the "waste" will be no more radioactive than natural rocks laying out in the desert in the U.S.

The devil is in the details, depending on the type of fuel used and the components of the waste. Some high-level materials do exhaust themselves fairly quickly but some fission products have lower-level radioactivity (but still not something you want to keep a bag of in your pocket) with half-lives in the thousands or tens of thousands of years.

Also it's not just the radioactivity. Spent nuclear fuel is a concentrated waste product filled with heavy metals, unusual isotopes, any number of chemicals from the processing, reprocessing, and storage preparation process. You really don't ever want that getting back into the open environment -- hence the very long stable storage requirement, with 100,000 years being the big arbitrary number thrown about.

Re:Why 100,000 years

[sjames]

And the natural rocks in the desert contain radium and it's decay products as well as uranium. The fuel CAME from such rocks in the first place.

The best thing for the waste is let it sit for 500 years of so, then mine it for the valuable metals it contains.

Re:Why 100,000 years

[sjames]

Removing the actinides is the easiest part if you don't care about separating the U and Pu from them. IIRC, a CANDU reactor can use mixed actinide fuel.

Also BTW, the natural rocks I mentioned are NATURAL ROCKS, not tailings. If I meant tailings, I'd have called them that.

Re:Why 100,000 years

[gweihir]

Are you serious? Maybe look up what "half-life" means? Or what that number is for some things in there _and_ what they then change into that also has a number.

Re:Why 100,000 years

[sjames]

Perhaps you should look up what happens when you remove the valuable actinides first.

Re:Why 100,000 years

[gweihir]

Stop lying. They are no all valuable and hence do not all get removed. Also, quite a bit of nuclear waste gets stored _unprocessed_, because that is cheaper.

Re:Why 100,000 years

[sjames]

It gets stored unprocessed for a time in any scenario in order to let the really hot short lived radioisotopes decay. It is currently being stored longer than that above ground due to cheaping out and politics blocking the proper reprocessing and final disposal.

Take away the stupid politics and the processing would happen. And the actinides are all valuable. If nothing else, they are fuel for a CANDU reactor or similar. The big expenses happen when you insist on processing into MOX suitable for a larger range of reactors.

With appropriate policies, we could stop mining uranium and run off of the accumulated unprocessed waste for a few decades even while expanding power production.

Kick the can down the road

[JustNiz]

Great... lets just make it our kids and their kids problem for 5000 generations, just so we dont have to face the real responsibility/cost of dealing with our own waste right now.

Re:Kick the can down the road

[TheGavster]

If this concrete mixture actually does sequester the waste for 100k years, we're actually making so that no one needs to care for 5000 generations. And, as other posters have indicated, in a fraction of that time, there will be more to fear from natural rocks.

Re:Kick the can down the road

[Anonymous Coward]

Speaking of the devil. Do you realize that the very act of existing / thinking and typing you are contributing to the heat death of the universe. Future generations will have less energy because you are alive today. The only sensible solution is for you to kill yourself. That way future generations will have a more energetic future. Yes It is incredibly selfish for people to be alive today knowing full well that they are in fact eating up the resources that future generations could be using. Every act that people perform is changing our climate and environment. Yet people continue to perform these actions without a careful scientific study of the long term affects of their actions.

I think we can all agree that the only sensibly solution that all liberal enlightened minds can agree with is to kill off the planet. Make it a desert wasteland. Then we can finally stop global climate change once and for all. Animals and Gai will be free to exist without the harmful affects of White People and capitalism. I am thinking of the children of coarse when I type this.

-Hillary Clinton.

Re:Kick the can down the road

[PolygamousRanchKid]

Great... lets just make it our kids and their kids problem for 5000 generations

Problem . . . ? I'd call it a legacy. In about a generation or so, we will learn how to "frack" nuclear wastes dumps for energy. I think the powers that be should sell off nuclear waste to private folks. I'd take a ton or two for safekeeping in my backyard. When I'm long gone to meet my maker, my great-great-grandchildren will be making a fortune selling the nuclear waste, which will then be raw energy.

De Beers would like to try to convince me that I should buy diamonds for my children. Nonsense! Nuclear waste is the stuff to buy!

Re:Kick the can down the road

[Anonymous Coward]

Ha! One would hope that in that time frame, mining ancient nuclear waste would not be necessary (in your backyard no less!). However, based on everybody's observations about how humans make decisions, perhaps searching for the waste of a civilization that existed 10,000 years ago will be the best option!

Re:Kick the can down the road

[angel'o'sphere]

Perhaps you should read up how nuclear reactors actually work.

When that stuff is "ripe" to be dug out you face two problems:
a) new reactor designs might be able to use it, but need a couple of dozens of tons, not one or two
b) the energy market will be dominated by wind and solar, no one will be going to built a 30billion nuclear plant (in our times money) that can not compete with main stream energy production

Re:Kick the can down the road

[JustNiz]

I guess my question actually is do you really believe that anyone can accurately predict what concrete or anything else man-made would actually be like after 100,000 years, especially after all the unknown future external forces/effects on it.

Impossible

[Anonymous Coward]

What nerve to think we can safely store something 17 times as long as the earth has been created.

We humans really need to stop trying to play G-d.

Re: Impossible

[Anonymous Coward]

Where did you get 17 times from?

Re: Impossible

[Hognoxious]

A = 100,000 (from the article)
B = 6,000 (from the book of Genesis)

Divide A by B. Round to the nearest whole number.

Re: Impossible

[Anonymous Coward]

He's impersonating a Young Earth Creationist:

100 000 / 17 = 5882.35

GP is going for funny mod.

Re: Impossible

[Anonymous Coward]

I have a B.S. in math from Bob Jones University

Hopefully not permanently

[Solandri]

Radioactive materials either are highly radioactive but decay to (relatively) safe levels quickly, or have low radioactivity but remain radioactive for a long time. A material which is highly radioactive for a long time simply can't exist. A good way to think of it is that the energy released is the degree of radioactivity (rate of release of radiation) times the duration it remains radioactive. For a given amount of energy, one trait can be high while the other low, or both moderate. But both can't be high.

The reason our nuclear "waste" is dangerous on the order of tens of thousands of years is entirely political. We consider it waste even though it still contains the vast majority of the fissible energy (typical numbers I've seen are 98% of total energy, 90%-93% of recoverable energy). We do have the technology to use that waste as fuel - a breeder reactor can process the waste to generate power, and its "waste" products in turn can be sent back to conventional reactors to be re-used as fuel. This cycle would use most of the fissible energy in the original uranium, and the end product - true nuclear waste - would only be dangerous for a couple hundred years. Easy to engineer storage solutions for.

So why don't we do it? Because breeder reactors create weapons-grade plutonium. Stuff that goes kablewie in an atomic explosion if you compress it enough (that's right, despite what you've seen in movies the fuel used in a conventional nuclear plant cannot be used to make an atomic bomb). That's the only reason. We don't want to make it any easier for rogue nations or terrorists to get weapons grade plutonium.

But fast-forward a hundred years or so when most nations will have obtained nuclear weapons capability. Then suddenly this isn't as big a deal anymore (assuming we survive). And all that nuclear "waste" we've been burying in containment designed to last 100,000 years suddenly becomes a valuable energy source. And we will want to dig it back up and reclaim it for use as fuel. It will become especially important if we ever become a space-faring species. Wind is useless in space, and solar becomes less useful in the further reaches of the solar system. Fusion has lower power density - nearly two orders of magnitude worse than fission unless you go to extremely high pressures (fun in a containment failure, as if containment failure of plasma at tens of millions of degrees isn't fun enough). That makes fusion viable (albeit expensive) for permanent installations, but unsuitable as a transportable power source. So fission remains the only long-term high-density power source suitable for space travel. Those of you wishing fission power would go away are basically condemning us to live on this rock forever.

Re:Hopefully not permanently

[Anonymous Coward]

cmon, we don't know everything, saying fission is the only way could be like saying horses are the only way in 1800... i hope something better than fission is discovered for space travel.

Re:Hopefully not permanently

[turkeyfish]

"The reason our nuclear "waste" is dangerous on the order of tens of thousands of years is entirely political. "

Actually, the danger is not in the half-life of the isotopic decay. The danger is in the biological effects. Even a single atom of radioactive material has the potential to generate a cancer. There is no lower threshold to cancer risk. Having more than one atom around only multiplies the risk as it multiplies the probability of cancer.

Re:Hopefully not permanently

[gweihir]

Radioactively material does not need to be highly radioactive in order to be extremely deadly. For example, a realistic estimate is that 1 gram of Pu is enough to kill 1 million people via lung-cancer if finely ground and administered directly. Yet on the other hand, it is difficult to measure, as even a piece of paper is enough to shield it. Incidentally, that stuff has a half-life 375.000 years. (Well, the most important isotope has.) Your argument just shows your ignorance.

Re:Hopefully not permanently

[Anonymous Coward]

Repeating the lies that comprise the usual anti-nuclear talking points makes you either ignorant or a liar. Which is it?

Re:Hopefully not permanently

[gweihir]

I am one that actually understands the Physics of the matter, quite unlike dumbfucks like you.

Whats the innovation?

[Anonymous Coward]

This article just says that they can run a experiment longer than before.
No where is the 'new' cement discussed.
This just looks like a big fluff business piece for what ever this 'diamond' group is.

100,000 years?

[Anonymous Coward]

Hello scientists, the unsinkable Titanic would like to have a word with you

Depends on the radio element

[aepervius]

Firstly not radioactivity is equal. Alpha unless ingested is not a problem. Beta or gamma is another matter. But even then highly radioactive one are not a "problem" (e.g. half life of 100 years, by 1000 years you get less than 1/1024 of the radioactivity and the very short half lived one are even mostly gone during temporary storage). Weakly radioactive material with extremely long life are not a problem either (they don't emit much per second because long half life). The problem at worst is the one with medium half life, radioactive enough to be dangerous, beta or gamma emitter, but also around the half life you cite , and in sizeable quantity. IMHO this is anyway not a big problem, because the quantity involved are minuscule. 300000 cubic meter is barely a cube of 66 meter side. For the whole country over 15 years nearly. Let us not hide the fac that this is a problem but let us be realist and not make a mountain out of it. Basically the 100K years is not a scam. It is just a little bit exaggerated as problem & consequence. Compare to CO2 emission and radioactive emission of coal for example.

Re:Depends on the radio element

[sjames]

It *IS* a scam. It is because the 100,000 year figure is for it to show no activity at all. The fuel came from ore dug out of nature where it already showed activity. In order to be environmentally neutral, it need only decay until it radiologically resembles what came out of the ground in the first place. Then we can just throw it back into the depleted mines after we refine out the valuable metals.

The big problem in nuclear waste for the medium term is the strontium 90, but 500 years is more than 17 half-lives for it.

Possible solutiion.

[Anonymous Coward]

Buy everything from them. After having all the stuff, invalidate the monetary currency used in the trade.

But WHY?!?

[Anonymous Coward]

Earth is bathed in immaculate free energy from the sun, but we're still digging SHIT out of the earth and setting it on fire, or concentrating radioactive SHIT to react with itself, and produce a tiny amount of heat, to convert a tiny amount of water to steam and produce a minuscule amount of energy, (tiny compared to the amount of energy the sun dumps upon the earth, FOR FUCKING FREE...) which then leaves basically USELESS but STILL RADIOACTIVE, DANGEROUS SHIT that we then have to LIVE ON THE SAME PLANET WITH, AND GUARD IN PERPETUITY, by the way, which is in a now much more hazardous form than when it was diffuse, dispersed in soil, hidden in rocks.

So, WHY OH WHY are they looking for ways to further facilitate this fucking insanity? Shouldn't we be spending that time and effort figuring out how to store the FREE, CLEAN, AND RENEWABLE energy that has existed since eons before the dawn of man, and will continue to exist long after our little species has been snuffed (or snuffs itself) out of the universe?

It begs the question, what heinous stupidity is responsible for our continued reliance on the most dangerous and expensive, and harmful even when nothing goes wrong, ways to produce energy?

Why just nuclear waste?

[Anonymous Coward]

Why use it only for nuclear waste storage? If they can make concrete that last 100,000 years we can actually have buildings lasting that long too.
The current concrete lasts about 50 years before it has to be repaired or replaced, it does not handle weathering very well.

Synrock

[labnet]

Australia developed a technology to manipulate radioactive waste into a ceramic where the the radioactive material is locked into the crystal lattice of the material. The advantage of this process is once you bury it, it won't leach radioactive material into your ground water supplies. TFA wasn't clear if their new fancy concrete had this property.

Re:Synrock

[Anonymous Coward]

And since then Synrock concept has got better and better. But no market demand!

However no company or govt wants to pay to solidify their waste - plastic coated steel drums being cough cheaper. Or state actual contents fully.
Companies would also have to fess up whats really in their waste.

So they still hope some dumb country with a privately run LLC company will tip it down a deep arid mineshaft, where after 50 years or so something will leach and go critical enough to emit radioactive fumes for the aboriginal or indigenous residents. With that country paying the cleanup and dilution tab when they find the waste more radioactive than declared - a statistical variation.

Many years ago, North Korea or Syria would have been good places for such a dump, but now the little *****'s would dig it up and do something awful. Egypt, Turkey, down a dormant Indonesian volcano, or Australia? The list of 3rd world economies is shrinking.

Now I know why

[turkeyfish]

Would this contract have been awarded had Scotland voted for independence?

Anyone want to wager this facility will be put anywhere else?

Spread them around.

[140Mandak262Jamuna]

The coal burnt in powerplants emit lots of radio active elements in the smoke and ash. Coal ash is NOT as radioactive as nuclear waste. But there is so much of coal ash and smoke, if all the radio active elements released to the environment is counted, coal plants spew as much radio active elements as the what the nuclear plants produce

So if we add small amounts of nuclear waste, uniformly into the furnaces of coal plants, we could uniformly spread all this radio active waste all around the world. With just doubling the raioactive waste from coal power plants, we could get rid of all the nuclear waste. Spread uniformly over the surface of earth, 300,000 cubic meter will contribute 2.33e-09 cubic meter/square meter.

I doubt this will ever work

[Sax Russell 5449D29A]

Looking at the pyramids, I doubt we can ever build something that lasts for a hundred thousand years. There will always be somebody who wants to take a peek inside for one reason or another.

where to store it?

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't know but I cant tell you the locations it wont be stored anywhere near where the politicians live.

Pyramids

[Smiddi]

The Egyptian Pyramids are about 5,000yrs old we still don't know a lot about them, even after we went in there and took almost all the items out. Imaging the mess in 10,000yrs time when mankind opens up these storage containers because they also want to know what's in them?

Kind of like a "lifetime guarantee"

[Tony Isaac]

Some products are "guaranteed for life." What/whose life?

I suppose if it lasts only 1,000 years, they'll come back in their time machine and sue the inventors.

Just like any commercial claim, it seems prudent to read the fine print.

Joke..

[Anonymous Coward]

Pretty much everything UK scientists done should be treated with a lot of salt. In my field, anything from UK scientists can be guaranteed to be trash. There has been no breakthrough from UK in the past 10 years, whether it is scientific, technical, or something in between. UK no longer has good researchers nowadays. Yes they used to be very good, but the tide has changed.

100,000 years!

[blindseer]

If it takes 100,000 years for something to decay then it is no more radioactive than the concrete in my driveway.

Us humans separate radioactive elements into "short", "medium", and "long" lived isotopes. We separate them like that because compared to our life span these isotopes are short, medium, or long. The short lived stuff is gone in less than a couple months. These isotopes are effectively gone even before the spent fuel leaves the nuclear power plant. Fuel rods taken from the reactor core is placed in a cooling pool for at least two years so that all of these isotopes decay away. When they come out the radiation is so strong that even seconds of exposure means death. After they come out of that pool it's just the long and medium lived products that remain. The most dangerous of them are elements like cesium and selenium which can collect in bones and irradiate people for the rest of their natural life, however shortened that might be.

The long lived isotopes have half lives on the order of thousands of years or more. Elements with half lives this long is not any real radiation hazard since a person is more likely to die of old age before it decays. These elements should still be handled with care since they are still likely to pose hazards like heavy metal poisoning but that basically means don't eat it, breath in the dust, or handle it with bare skin.

We don't need to bury radioactive anything for more than perhaps 300 years, and we know how to do that. We've built plenty of structures that can last that long. After 300 years all the short and medium lived products are gone, only the long lived stuff remains. At that point the waste can be handled much like we'd handle anything containing lead, mercury, or arsenic. That means rubber suits, gloves, goggles, and masks. Then we can reprocess this material to separate out what are valuable metals, fissile reactor fuel, and other elements for medical and industrial uses.

I can remember reading as a kid about how scientists were trying to develop a "language" to communicate to future civilizations where we've stored our dangerous radioactive wastes. That way we don't contaminate future generations with all that nasty radioactive waste us evil people in the here and now are producing. Then I learned some real science from people that actually knew what they were talking about and learned that we don't need to store the waste for hundreds of thousands of years. If we store it for just a couple hundred years we can make it safe

We already do something like this now. Forestry people with watch over a forest for forty years so that we can harvest that for wood. People will build and maintain structures that they intend to make last for centuries. Libraries and museums will keep valuable items from history for as long as we can imagine. Keeping an eye on radioactive material, for the purpose of mining it again for it's valuable elements in a century or three, seems like a trivial problem really.

Re:100,000 years!

[drinkypoo]

We don't need to bury radioactive anything for more than perhaps 300 years, and we know how to do that. We've built plenty of structures that can last that long.

We're not that good at estimating which ones will do it. Most of the structures built well enough to last for hundreds of years were built hundreds of years ago — the stuff we're building now will be reclaimed by nature in practically moments when we leave.

Re:100,000 years!

[AmiMoJo]

The most dangerous of them are elements like cesium and selenium which can collect in bones and irradiate people for the rest of their natural life, however shortened that might be.

And that's why it needs to be stored for 100k years. If it gets into the environment and into the good chain it will get inside people, and harm them.

That's why no-one buys cheap land around Chernobyl. Sure, if you wonder around randomly with your dosimeter it might seem fairly safe, but actually spending an extended period of time there is a bad idea.

Re:100,000 years!

[blindseer]

Both Cesium and Strontium isotopes found in spent nuclear fuel have half lives of about 30 years or less. In 100 years you'd have 1/10th of what you started with. In another 100 years you'd have another 1/10th, and so on. In 1000 years it would be close to 1/10,000,000,000 of what you started with.

There is no need to store this stuff for hundreds of thousands of years. Storing it for a couple hundred should be sufficient to allow the worst of the radiation to have gone away.

I think that anyone that claims we need to store radioactive waste for hundreds of thousands of years is trying to sell something. In this case it's likely these people want to sell a cement that they can claim is durable enough to out last the pyramids at Giza. Of course no one alive today will have grandchildren around to verify that claim.

Down an offshore oil well

[esperto]

For a long time (decades) I see solutions like old salt mines such as Yucca mountain or other sites for long storage being suggested, but for some time I wonder if it wouldn't be possible to just turn the waste into small chunks (glass or cement) and shoot it down a failed/deactivated offshore well.
Those wells are very, very deep, altough they can get pretty thin at the bottom, they are quite wide for the most part and could store a great volume of material. It would shield us and most of living beings by a big having layer of rock and water and has the added bonus that, if someone wanted to steal it to make a dirty bomb or something, it would require a drilling rig, which you cannot find laying around and is expesive as shit to operate.
Would it be feasible?

These people don't understand radiation

[blindseer]

Radiation is like burning a candle. The candle that burns twice as bright burns half as long. The isotopes with half the half life is twice as radioactive. Something with a half life of 100,000 years is not something that will kill you, unless you forge it into a knife and stab yourself with it.

Just put the stuff in a vault for 100 years or so and then take it out. At that point the real danger will be from it being made of a mix of heavy metals. So wear gloves, goggles, and steel toed boots when you move it. The process it like you would any other material containing heavy metals like mercury, arsenic, and lead. Fashion the waste material into new fuel elements and common industrial stuff like re-bar and sewage pipe.

Idiots. This is a problem we should have solved already. This should not be that complicated.

Re:These people don't understand radiation

[angel'o'sphere]

How blind are you, blindseer?

Something with a half life of 100,000 years is not something that will kill you, unless you forge it into a knife and stab yourself with it.

Now explain the difference between:
1g of such a material on your fridge
1kg of such a material below your bed
1ton of such a material in your garage
10tons of such a material in a container in front of your house

Hint: 1000g equals 1kg, 1000kg equal one ton, so 10 tons of your favourite radioactive material is 10 million times more radioactive than your "harmless" 1g.

It does not matter if you get killed by 1g "high radioactive" element or by 10tons of a low radioactive element.

Getting something like it into your body is an other matter altogether.

The deadly dose of "low radioactive" uranium in your body is in the milli gram ranges. As uranium likes to react with nearly everything it is mandatory to not let even the slightest amount of it into the environment.

You can read up the same problem regarding Plutonium yourself.

Re:These people don't understand radiation

[blindseer]

Now explain the difference between:
1g of such a material on your fridge

I'd probably buy some of that phosphorescent paint, find an appropriately sized jar, and try to make a night light out of it.

1kg of such a material below your bed

That might be a problem for me.

1ton of such a material in your garage

That would suck, I'd have to park my truck on the driveway.

10tons of such a material in a container in front of your house

The steel container would block any alpha or beta radiation so that does not concern me. The gamma and neutron radiation would largely be blocked by the mass of the rest of the material between me and the emitting particle. Depending on the composition of the stuff in the container it is quite likely the radiation I'd be exposed to in my house would go DOWN.

The deadly dose of "low radioactive" uranium in your body is in the milli gram ranges. As uranium likes to react with nearly everything it is mandatory to not let even the slightest amount of it into the environment.

Did I even suggest that someone eat the stuff? I'm quite sure I didn't. I thought I was quite clear that this stuff should be handled like any other heavy metal, gloves, goggles, mask, hard hat, and steel toed boots.

Metallic uranium is known to be pyrophoric if heated, impacted, or perhaps when it's feelings are hurt. No one uses metallic uranium for anything except projectiles for military ammunition, and even then it's often coated and/or alloyed with something to reduce handling hazards. Solid uranium fuel is a ceramic, a durable oxide much like clay or industrial abrasives, and is about as likely to react with something as clay would. Liquid uranium fuel is only liquid when it's heated to insane temperatures. When cooled to room temperature it's a salt, often stored in steel containers to make it easy to move and protect handlers from the alpha radiation it emits. Uranium salts are even more inert. Someone might get a uranium oxide to burn with a halogen like fluorine but the salt won't because it is the product of being reacted with a halogen.

You can read up the same problem regarding Plutonium yourself.

Plutonium is probably a lower hazard since it is not taken up in the body like uranium, I'd still suggest you don't eat it. It is also an alpha emitter, a short distance of air will protect people from the radiation, so wear gloves if you have to handle it. It's not pyrophoric like uranium so it can be safely stored and handled as a metal. It is considerably more radioactive than uranium so it can be warm to the touch, but don't touch it, wear gloves. Even though plutonium in any isotope is considerably more radioactive than uranium that still is not saying much, uranium is basically inert so plutonium is still not much of a radiation hazard. Since most every isotope is either fissile or generates considerable heat it would not be advisable to stack it up in steel containers by the ton. So safety tip, don't pile it up, it can go "boom".

Again, handle it like any other heavy metal with the additional precaution of not piling it up too much.

Re:These people don't understand radiation

[angel'o'sphere]

The steel container would block any alpha or beta radiation so that does not concern me. The gamma and neutron radiation would largely be blocked by the mass of the rest of the material between me and the emitting particle. Depending on the composition of the stuff in the container it is quite likely the radiation I'd be exposed to in my house would go DOWN.

Ah, suddenly you approve of containers. Actually, they only block a part of it. And cause bremsstrahlung and in worst case also gamma radiation. The more you pile up the stuff the more stuff gets through. Hence my "exaggerated example" of putting some tons in the front of your house.

Did I even suggest that someone eat the stuff? I'm quite sure I didn't. I thought I was quite clear that this stuff should be handled like any other heavy metal, gloves, goggles, mask, hard hat, and steel toed boots.
You mention all the time that the regulations are to strict, now you seem to approve that most of them are correct ... or not?

Plutonium is probably a lower hazard since it is not taken up in the body like uranium It is.
All "heavy metals" are taken up ... and Plutonium is especially nasty as it travels into your bone marrows and lungs. The deadly dose is less than 50mg for a human.

Cement?!? I can give you my mom's

[Anonymous Coward]

If I can find it they can have my mom's old biscuit recipe. That should work.
Sadly, it was one of her better recipes

whatever happened to glass?

[ihtoit]

Has it suddenly become incapable of containing LLNW? Should I return my almost-antique radioluminescent bowls? And to whom should I return them?

1978 called, it wants Synroc back

[dj_nme]

I mean this is pretty much exactly the same as what was developed in 1978 at ANU and ANSTO, but never licenced for use by any of the nuclear energy using countries. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

I would like to join

[argStyopa]

....any project where my success or failure will not be determined for at least 50,000 years.

I am absolutely certain that I could guarantee results in that timeframe.

This isn't waste, it's fuel

[Anonymous Coward]

Can't we repurpose this waste as fuel? Surely a properly operated LFTR reactor using thorium can burn most of the longer life-span nuclear waste.

Oh, right, we don't have commercially available LFTR reactors yet. My bad.