Slashdot Mirror
Scientists Say Nuclear Fuel Pools Pose Safety, Health Risks (nbcnews.com)
mdsolar quotes a report from NBC News: Ninety-six aboveground, aquamarine pools around the country that hold the nuclear industry's spent reactor fuel may not be as safe as U.S. regulators and the nuclear industry have publicly asserted, a study released May 20 by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine warned. Citing a little-noticed study by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, the academies said that if an accident or an act of terrorism at a densely-filled pool caused a leak that drains the water away from the rods, a cataclysmic release of long-lasting radiation could force the extended evacuation of nearly 3.5 million people from territory larger than the state of New Jersey. It could also cause thousands of cancer deaths from excess radiation exposure, and as much as $700 billion dollars in costs to the national economy. The report is the second and final study of Japan's Fukushima Daiichi power plant, which was pummeled from a tsunami on March 11, 2011. The authors suggest the U.S. examine the benefits of withdrawing the spent fuel rods from the pools and storing them instead in dry casks aboveground in an effort to avoid possible catastrophes. The idea is nothing new, but it's been opposed by the industry because it could cost as much as $4 billion. The latest report contradicts parts of a study by Nuclear Regulatory Commission staff released two years after the Fukushima incident. The NRC staff in its 2014 study said a major earthquake could be expected to strike an area where spent fuel is stored in a pool once in 10 million years or less, and even then, "spent fuel pools are likely to withstand severe earthquakes without leaking."
We have a good use, but it is blocked by people hoping to create enough problems to kill nuclear power (A bit like chopping your feet off to make sure you don't get an ingrown toenail).
We could reprocess it and end up with new fuel and a much smaller pile of waste that will be safe in 200-500 years.
But you still need spent fuel pools. You can't just dump fresh waste into a mountain.
Ezekiel 23:20
This is what happens when you don't build the Yucca Mountain (or equivalent) long-term waste-storage facility. The waste just sits somewhere else, even more vulnerable and more at risk of damaging the environment in both the short and long term.
This is also what happens when people do studies with an outcome in mind, and don't understand the risks to begin with. They claim the NRC failed to include security risks in their recent rulings, but they failed to mention that the NRC has fully considered those risks elsewhere, so they didn't need to be included. That one oversight is a demonstration of incompetence in understanding the regulatory structure. They also completely fail to state a credible path for such a terror attack to be successful.
They claim that a fuel pool accident will cause widespread evacuations. In fact, even in a major fuel pool accident that should be unnecessary. The wording in the report says 'might', because they don't have enough of a case to say 'will' or even 'is likely to'. They fail to recognize that most of the older fuel rods are not a threat, and the more recent rods are the concern, and those are manageable with simple measures. They don't even state the post accident measures that are available, nor even acknowledge they exist.
And as usual, the underlying basis is a completely skewed misperception of radiation risk. They are doing more damage creating fear than fixing an imagined disaster. Every one of them should spend a little time learning what we know now. Here is a great start;
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
Just to be clear, this study was done by reporters. "The Center for Public Integrity" is a news organization in Washington, D.C
In no way are they qualified to do this type of study. They basically are just interviewing people and cherry picking the stuff they think will scare you.
They transport nuclear fuel all the time, there are tractor trailer sized casks specifically designed for it. They are tested by burning them in jet fuel for over an hour, dropping them from helicopter, and slamming them into concrete walls at over 80 mph. It would be a time consuming task but transportation of nuclear fuel is not an issue. Storage is idiotic though, a vast majority of the "waste" that comes out of reactors is still perfectly good fuel, it needs to be reprocessed to remove the small amount of highly radioactive material.
http://www.nrc.gov/waste/spent-fuel-storage/diagram-typical-trans-cask-system-2.pdf
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U1nvRBk4W3o
This is what happens when you don't build the Yucca Mountain (or equivalent) long-term waste-storage facility. The waste just sits somewhere else, even more vulnerable and more at risk of damaging the environment in both the short and long term.
You're right, but I also feel this approach is ultimately wrong, as in 'was never a good solution'. Why do we have nuclear waste that will not be walk away safe for a hundred thousand years... instead of a smaller volume of waste that would be walk-away safe in a few hundred?
Because the we broke the promises we had made to help solve the problem. First by halting reprocessing in the United States, then failing to find off-plant storage, then ultimately shutting down the last fast neutron reactor, having never even begun to use this technology to render waste into electricity and a much smaller volume of short-lived actinides. In short, left the job unfinished.
We live in a world where mean people people love to blow things up, unfortunately. This means even Yucca Mountain is a bad idea. For once you create any single point of failure, such as collapsing its entrance, the meanest people steer history and paralyze the waste storage process indefinitely. Contrast that 'bury deep and forget it' approach to a number of well-constructed but shallower storage areas, where even a worst case scenario leaves the waste remains accessible for cleanup and re-use or subsequent processing. I'd even be wary of people who push 'bury and forget it' solutions, for deep down they are counting on this disaster to happen, and they know some day someone will make it happen.
Consider the hypothetical town of TBA who welcomes the safe storage of nuclear waste and ask yourself, what kind of future would you rather?
Must be a slow solar news day.
<blink>down the rabbit hole</blink>
As isotopes of short half life break down, the radioactivity of each spent fuel rod goes down exponentially. The fuel pools at nuclear plants were all designed to hold spent rods for the year or so it takes for the hottest isotopes, like iodine, to cook off. The intention was to then move them to buffer storage, like Yucca Mountain, for eventual recycling into new fuel. Let's see if Trump can get the recycling plant built at Yucca, which would provide a lot of ongoing jobs, not just construction, for Nevadans.