Scientists Say Nuclear Fuel Pools Pose Safety, Health Risks (nbcnews.com)

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Scientists Say Nuclear Fuel Pools Pose Safety, Health Risks (nbcnews.com)

Posted by BeauHD on Friday May 20, 2016 @09:30PM from the public-service-announcement dept.

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."

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This is what happens... by FooAtWFU · 2016-05-20 21:32 · Score: 4, Insightful

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.

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1. Re:This is what happens... by PvtVoid · 2016-05-20 21:36 · Score: 5, Insightful
  
  Exactly. Thanks to the tireless efforts of NIMBYs and anti-nuke environmental activists, we are storing spent waste in absolutely the most dangerous possible way. The only silver lining to not having this stuff buried in Yucca Mountain is that we might finally get off our asses and start building fast burner reactors, and we can burn all the waste for power. We would get rid of all that nasty waste and replace it with far smaller amounts of waste with a much shorter half-life, and we would reduce greenhouse gas emissions at the same time.
  Nah. Who am I kidding? We'll just let it sit there until there's a huge accident, and then blame science.
2. Re:This is what happens... by K.+S.+Kyosuke · 2016-05-20 22:25 · Score: 4, Informative
  
  But you still need spent fuel pools. You can't just dump fresh waste into a mountain.
  
  --
  Ezekiel 23:20
3. Re:This is what happens... by PvtVoid · 2016-05-20 22:54 · Score: 3, Insightful
  
  But you still need spent fuel pools. You can't just dump fresh waste into a mountain.
  Nobody is contending otherwise. The issue is using them for long-term fuel storage in close proximity to heavily populated areas.
4. Re:This is what happens... by dbIII · 2016-05-20 23:12 · Score: 2
  
  and we can burn all the waste for power
  ALL the radioactive waste?
  
  then blame science
  How about learning some science. The Harford website will help.
  
  Seriously guys - it's people living in a fantasy world like the above poster that cause things like the waste being left in ponds instead of reprocessed and the remainder stored safely.
5. Re:This is what happens... by PvtVoid · 2016-05-20 23:17 · Score: 2, Informative
  
  Seriously guys - it's people living in a fantasy world like the above poster that cause things like the waste being left in ponds instead of reprocessed and the remainder stored safely.
  No, you learn some science.
  I was speaking specifically of fast burner, or fast neutron reactors which are fuel reprocessing. The result of this reprocessing is short half-life isotopes that are far less of a long-term problem than existing waste.
6. Re:This is what happens... by Mr+D+from+63 · 2016-05-21 00:07 · Score: 5, Informative
  
  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?...
7. Re:This is what happens... by Mr+D+from+63 · 2016-05-21 00:15 · Score: 5, Informative
  
  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.
8. Re:This is what happens... by TheRealHocusLocus · 2016-05-21 00:35 · Score: 3, Informative
  
  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>
9. Re:This is what happens... by Applehu+Akbar · 2016-05-21 00:53 · Score: 3, Informative
  
  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.
10. Re:This is what happens... by ShanghaiBill · 2016-05-21 00:55 · Score: 2, Interesting
  
  There is no perfect solution for storing nuclear waste, but for the next few decades, the pools are our best option from a technical perspective, and our only option from a political perspective. Despite the alarmism in TFA, the water cannot simply be "drained out" by, say, pulling a cork at the bottom of the pool. To drain a pool takes several days of pumping, which a terrorist would be unable to do. The water itself is not radioactive. Maintenance workers go into the pools with scuba equipment, and we know this is okay because Randall Monroe said it is safe.
  In the next few decades, we are likely to make a lot of progress in robots to handle radioactive materials much more inexpensively and more safely that we can do today. We are also likely to find uses for many of the isotopes, which will have economic value and no longer be considered "waste". A few decades hence, we will almost certainly be in a better position to make long term decisions about what to do with the spent fuel. In the meantime, the fuel rods are getting less and less radioactive every day.
11. Re:This is what happens... by Mr+D+from+63 · 2016-05-21 01:15 · Score: 5, Insightful
  
  But you still need spent fuel pools. You can't just dump fresh waste into a mountain.
  The fuel pools throughout Japan all withstood a major earthquake much larger than they were designed for with essentially no damage. IN addition to the huge earthquake, the pools at Fukushima also survived being hit by a tsunami, which they were not designed for, having all their safety systems disabled and severe hydrogen explosions in the building, yet still remained intact and kept the fuel safe.
  
  Yet some want to make these out to be some disaster just waiting to happen. Its very hard to even get one of these pools to leak significantly, much less lose all their water suddenly. They are extremely tough structures. The writers of the article are not privy to the security analysis and measures in place.
12. Re:This is what happens... by AmiMoJo · 2016-05-21 01:22 · Score: 1
  
  There was leakage from pools at Fukushima into the ground. That's one reason why they are building ice walls.
  The other issue is the lack of security at some sites. Google "dirty 30".
  
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13. Re:This is what happens... by dbIII · 2016-05-21 01:29 · Score: 4, Insightful
  
  I suggest you consider what released neutrons do to everything around them and you may be able to work out what low level waste is. If you have done high school level science it should be enough.
  
  I was speaking specifically of fast burner
  You wrote "all the waste", a depressing mistake since it shows you do not understand the topic at all. There is a lot more than fuel rods to deal with.
14. Re:This is what happens... by Mr+D+from+63 · 2016-05-21 01:29 · Score: 1
  
  The leakage at Fukushima is primarily from the reactors, not the fuel pools.
15. Re:This is what happens... by Mr+D+from+63 · 2016-05-21 01:31 · Score: 1
  
  ^and even with all that damage, the fuel was later safely removed from the pool. Its not like there are no options to handle the fuel even if the pools do start to lose water.
16. Re:This is what happens... by vtcodger · 2016-05-21 01:44 · Score: 1
  
  Without disagreeing about the need for Yucca Mountain or the equivalent, I think the situation is more complex. My understanding is that even with a permanent long term storage facility, some amount of waste will probably always be stored on site. That's because after refueling, it's probably safer to allow the fuel to cool down both physically and radiologically before transporting it. That would seem to make sense. Why transport Iodine-131 -- half life 8 days -- hundreds or thousands of km if the stuff will simply go away in a few months? After all, transportation accidents are probably far more likely than breeches of a well designed temporary or permanent storage facility.
  What's the optimum strategy? I have no idea. That is beyond my pay grade.
  
  --
  You can't see ANYTHING from a car, You've got to get out of the goddamned contraption and walk...Edward Abbey
17. Re:This is what happens... by MrKaos · 2016-05-21 01:51 · Score: 3, Interesting
  
  No, you learn some science.
  I was speaking specifically of fast burner
  You'll need to learn some politics too. Specifically the Integral Fast Reactor was a burner reactor prototyped in the US that showed promise with a burn up rate of 19%. It promised to replace coal and oil but Clinton shut it down and W.Bush funded its demolition in Sec 628 of the 2005 US Energy policy act. Oil and coal companies don't want something around that will replace their product, you see. To rub salt into the wound, the same act fund pilot programs to replicate some of IFR's hydrogen production functionality in Sec. 634 - as far as we know the funds haven't been accessed.
  Of course the issue with the burner technology you suggest, apart from using sodium as a coolant, is that these reactors will be insanely radioactive at the end of their service lifespan. The only proper way to deploy them would be to build them inside a mountain where the reactor could be disposed of in-situ to cool and they simply would not be economically viable unless you could make one with a service life that exceeds 100 years. You won't get that without a significant advancement in materials technology.
  I hoped burners would work too as it looked like promising technology for nuclear disarmament, however I'm afraid we are still a long way off.
  
  Thanks to the tireless efforts of NIMBYs and anti-nuke environmental activists, we are storing spent waste in absolutely the most dangerous possible way.
  
  You nukkers should stop blaming NIMBYs all the time because they have no political power in the placement of nuclear facilities. Yucca is not being used because it is about as effective at storing radio-isotopes as a sponge is to carry water. Hopefully some geologists here will chime in with some more details but getting the geology right for storing nuclear materials is very difficult in granite (the DOE's prefered choice) due to the way the rock fractures, let alone the pumice Yucca mountain is made of.
  Yucca was selected because one of the representatives from Nevada didn't show up for the vote that placed it - nothing to do with science, it was placed inappropriately *because* of NIMBYism. There are probably more approriate sites in the US to choose from if science is applied to selecting one instead of politics. Once you do place it you are going to be building a lot of railways to move the spent fuel and NIMBYs and environmentalists have no control over investment funding for that.
  You nukkers should start to look at how the oil and coal industry affects the nuclear industry with their lobbying power instead of blaming environmentalists and NIMBYs who have very little influence. It's all there (and more) in the laws that govern the way the taxpayer and government interact with funding of all of the energy industries. A core component of the US 'New Deal' the PUCHA is repealed in the 2005 energy act (see Subtitle F—Repeal of PUHCA in the same act) so that oil and coal interests can access taxpayer funding via accessing provisions in Sec 638 of the same act. They were *exactly* the conditions that created the US depression in the first place only this time oil and coal are using the nuclear industry to access the taxpayer's rates instead of other utilities.
  "NIMBY" is a tired accusation that ignores how coal and oil interests are the main face of lobbying power that determines how these laws are shaped to distribute funding.
  
  --
  My ism, it's full of beliefs.
18. Re:This is what happens... by vtcodger · 2016-05-21 02:06 · Score: 1
  
  The rationale for Yucca Mountain is that the water table there is WAY down. So that even if the storage containers are somehow breached, waste is not going to end up contaminating streams and/or aquifers before it is cleaned up. On top of which, the drainage, such as it is, from Yucca Mountain is via dry stream beds into unpopulated arid basins. You could probably assemble the entire population that could be affected by a worst-case breach in a small town high school auditorium.
  We're told that the amount of waste to be stored is pretty small. Yucca Mountain is reasonably tall (6700 feet ASL, 1300 feet above surrounding terrain) and quite long. Wikipedia has a picture. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... Hopefully, it's unlikely they would ever "Fill it up".
  
  --
  You can't see ANYTHING from a car, You've got to get out of the goddamned contraption and walk...Edward Abbey
19. Re:This is what happens... by MightyYar · 2016-05-21 02:12 · Score: 1
  
  Hope is not lost! There is still time! President Trump will seal off our dangerous southern border and he'll intern all of our Muslims. Finally America will resemble the kind of safe country that our founding fathers envisioned.
  
  --
  W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
20. Re:This is what happens... by Immerman · 2016-05-21 02:47 · Score: 1
  
  Why would a terrorist use a pump? We have these things called "bombs" that are really good at rapidly making large holes in things. Things like the side of the pool holding the shielding water. Which would then drain very rapidly. All it takes is one guy with the right briefcase getting against the outside, underside, or inside of the storage room. And from what I've heard, the security in a nuclear plant isn't nearly as tight as you would hope.
  
  --
  --- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
21. Re:This is what happens... by Immerman · 2016-05-21 02:53 · Score: 1
  
  What, you mean make it mildly radioactive for a short half life? That's not nuclear waste in any real sense. I mean, yeah, you probably don't want to roll around in it right away, but shove it all in a hole in the ground for a few decades and it will be perfectly safe.
  
  --
  --- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
22. Re:This is what happens... by PvtVoid · 2016-05-21 03:05 · Score: 1
  
  you didn't need to qualify this idiot with a response.
  
  Good point.
23. Re:This is what happens... by dbIII · 2016-05-21 03:26 · Score: 1
  
  What, you mean make it mildly radioactive for a short half life?
  
  No.
  Please go look at something like the Harford site or read something else about radioactive waste instead of just guessing.
  Stuff like synrok would not have needed to have been developed if reality matched the fantasy.
24. Re:This is what happens... by ShanghaiBill · 2016-05-21 03:29 · Score: 1
  
  Things like the side of the pool holding the shielding water. Which would then drain very rapidly.
  No. The pools are below ground level. They would not "drain rapidly". If the pool was ruptured, the (non-radioactive) water would slowly seep out. Meanwhile, the pool could be kept topped off with a hose while the waste was transferred to another pool, or the pool could be repaired with hydraulic concrete.
25. Re:This is what happens... by HornWumpus · 2016-05-21 03:35 · Score: 1
  
  Including the isotopes already used in medicine or industry?
  You're basically saying the republicans will shut down industrial x ray inspection as a thing? Radioisotopes as sources for radiation therapy? Every research reactor as well?
  No chance. Couldn't build pipelines without x raying the welds. Used as parts of sensors when drilling. Oil industry can't live without a radioisotope, here or there. Most families have also had some direct experience with nuclear medicine.
  Choke on your tone as well. Condescending _and_ stupid is no way to go through life kid.
  
  --
  John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
26. Re:This is what happens... by dbIII · 2016-05-21 03:36 · Score: 2
  
  It promised to replace coal and oil but Clinton shut it down
  The even more annoying thing is he did it at least partly because Westinghouse and other parts of the nuclear lobby spent a lot of money convincing him to do so. Apparently they saw it as a threat to their business model because they had sunk money into Uranium and it used Thorium. While I think he should have told them to go fuck themselves because they themselves were using previous government nuclear research and should not stand in the way of others doing the same it played out the way it did - donor money won.
  Despite "winning" by shutting down the program they defamed the head of the IFR project and drove him out of the nuclear industry.
27. Re:This is what happens... by HornWumpus · 2016-05-21 03:43 · Score: 1
  
  AC is just trolling. Calling yucca mountain a 'landfill' says it all. Idiot with bad memory parroting.
  
  --
  John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
28. Re:This is what happens... by Lord+Apathy · 2016-05-21 04:43 · Score: 1
  
  Thank the gods someone else sees this too. I have been saying for decades that anti nuke movement from the 60's has done more damage to the planet then all the corporate greed and environmental disasters put together. But try to tell that to a hippie, most can't see past the haze of pot that surrounds them.
  For those of you that are not on the same page with me, let me explain why. In 1945 we built two nuclear bombs and nuked Japan. Now, I'm not going to say that was a good thing or a bad thing, but it did tarnish nuclear power forever. Over the next several decades we spent lots of money and time developing better and better ways to use nuclear energy to exterminate ourselves. A few times we came really close to it.
  Don't get me wrong, protesting the use of nuclear power for bombs was a good thing. I'm all for that. But the hippies didn't stop longer than it took to load new pot in their bongs. They tared all nuclear energy with the same brush, nuclear medicine, nuclear research, and nuclear power. Things that most of them knew nothing about, all they heard is nuclear, and they went nuclear on it.
  Thanks to the hippie anti nuke movement all research into peaceful nuclear power ground to a halt in the early 70's. That is why we are suck with all the nuclear problems we have today with the current generation of nuclear power plants. All the technology is from the late 60's and early 70's.
  Because of the movement there have no real advancements since then and no new power plants have been built. Instead we have built new coal plants which are hundreds of times more destructive to the environment than nuclear power. Even the primitive plants we have today.
  If the hippie movement would have just stuck to nuclear weapons, nuclear research into peaceful power would have continued. If that would have happened the nuclear plants today would be hundreds of times safer and more efficient. We might have even eliminated the nuclear waste problem itself
  More importantly, if research would have continued into nuclear power we would have had lots more funding into fusion research. If the hippies had stuck to nuclear weapons we might have had the fusion problems solved. That would have lead to the cleanest energy source ever. That would have eliminated all the coal plants, all the hydro, and all the fission plants. It would practically eliminated all uses of fossil fuels on the planet.
  if the hippies of the '60's had paid attention and protest the wrongful uses of nuclear power instead of all of them, Earth might be a paradise today.
  
  --
  Supporting World Peace Through Nuclear Pacification
29. Re:This is what happens... by dunkelfalke · 2016-05-21 05:01 · Score: 1
  
  Stop lying.
  TEPCO themselves have confirmed that several fuel rods in the reactor 4 storage pool have been damaged, releasing 134Cs and 137Cs and that there were leakages.
  
  --
  "It's such a fine line between stupid and clever" -- David St. Hubbins, Spinal Tap
30. Re:This is what happens... by thegarbz · 2016-05-21 05:24 · Score: 1
  
  Yet some want to make these out to be some disaster just waiting to happen.
  Hardly. No one is saying that these aren't well built. But what people are saying is that there's no reason to store them in a populated area. Basic risk analysis. If there's no one to kill then there's no one to kill. Storage of spent fuel is not needed close to the reactor for operational reasons, so why not move it into the desert?
  The world is huge yet we have this amazing ability to build dangerous things and the magically pop a town up next door. Then that local town start bitching about how dangerous things are. Yet here is one case where we can actually reduce the danger but don't because the NIMBY's are actually saying "Please In My BackYard, and not in the middle of the desert" without realising it.
31. Re:This is what happens... by thegarbz · 2016-05-21 05:26 · Score: 4, Insightful
  
  They basically are just interviewing people and cherry picking the stuff they think will scare you.
  That much was obvious when we saw who posted it to Slashdot.
32. Re:This is what happens... by DarkOx · 2016-05-21 06:04 · Score: 1
  
  Not really, its more when you insist on not reprocessing fuel because of irrational fears about proliferation. The only reason we have a problem with waste is the first place is that Jimmy Carter should stayed on the peanut farm.
  
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33. Re:This is what happens... by Mr+D+from+63 · 2016-05-21 06:17 · Score: 1
  
  How would somebody possibly get killed? The fact that you think its plausible tells me you don't understand the risks.
34. Re:This is what happens... by Mr+D+from+63 · 2016-05-21 06:20 · Score: 1
  
  I never said no rods were damaged. But none were damaged due to leakage or overheating, and the only leakages were some drain pipes adn feed pipes that were small and easily managed and at worst could only drain the pools partially. There was some fuel damage from the hydrogen explosion debris falling into the pool. But at no time was there melting of the fuel.
35. Re:This is what happens... by hey! · 2016-05-21 06:55 · Score: 1
  
  Yes. Beware any solution that is good enough for the short term. People will prefer it over a solution that's problematic in the long term, but better than the short term solution is in the long term.
  
  --
  Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
36. Re:This is what happens... by WaterDamage · 2016-05-21 07:24 · Score: 1
  
  Not true, a dirty bomb could happen as easily as 911. Before 911, no one even imagined terrorists would hit skyscrapers with a passenger airplane. Even the FBI ignored their own intelligence of the attack as unlikely days before the strike occurred. Since then, many security analysts have re-evaluated their position of the extent terrorists will go to to send their message.
37. Re:This is what happens... by WaterDamage · 2016-05-21 07:26 · Score: 1
  
  In any case, nuclear power is dead in the USA. Stop wasting your time trying to push your agenda to build new reactors regardless of their claimed efficiency or supposed safety. We as a human civilization F%#@ed up too many times with nuclear power due to sheer stupidity and greed. There have been numerous accidents all over the world some very severe and some less severe and countless many more where they just kept their mouth shut hoping residents and the govt won't notice. We've all been lied to for too long by the NRC and the power companies that own these to avoid lawsuits. The citizens in the US wised up and put their foot down and I'm glad they did. All remaining nuke plants should be retired once their permits expire. As far as disposal, I've always advocated dumping the spent fuel along the US/Mexico border. It would solve the crossing of illegals and cost nothing compared to Yucca Mountain to dump all of it a few feet underground right along the border in areas that aren't populated and where no real fence or patrol exists.
38. Re:This is what happens... by WaterDamage · 2016-05-21 07:39 · Score: 1
  
  In any case, nuclear power is dead in the USA. Stop wasting your time trying to push your agenda to build new reactors regardless of their claimed efficiency or supposed safety. We as a human civilization F%#@ed up too many times with nuclear power due to sheer stupidity and greed. There have been numerous accidents all over the world some very severe and some less severe and countless many more where they just kept their mouth shut hoping residents and the govt won't notice. We've all been lied to for too long by the NRC and the power companies that own these to avoid lawsuits. The citizens in the US wised up and put their foot down and I'm glad they did. All remaining nuke plants should be retired once their permits expire.
  
  As far as disposal, I've always advocated dumping the spent fuel along the US/Mexico border. It would solve the crossing of illegals and cost nothing compared to Yucca Mountain to dump all of it a few feet underground right along the border in areas that aren't populated and where no real fence or patrol exists.
39. Re:This is what happens... by WaterDamage · 2016-05-21 07:56 · Score: 1
  
  Very well said! Wish I had mod point to give you.
  
  The future of nuclear power plants is practically dead in the USA. A lot of these nukkers keep wasting time trying to push their agenda to build new reactors regardless of their claimed efficiency or supposed safety. We as a human civilization F%#@ed up too many times with nuclear power due to sheer stupidity and greed. There have been numerous accidents all over the world some very severe and some less severe and countless many more where they just kept their mouth shut hoping residents and the government won't notice. We've all been lied to for too long by the NRC and the power companies that own these to avoid lawsuits. The citizens in the US wised up and put their foot down and I'm glad they did. All remaining nuke plants should be decommissioned once their permits expire.
  
  As far as disposal, I've always advocated dumping the spent fuel along the US/Mexico border. It would solve the crossing of illegals and cost nothing compared to Yucca Mountain to dump all of it a few feet underground right along the border in areas that aren't populated and where no real fence or patrol exists.
40. Re:This is what happens... by davester666 · 2016-05-21 09:17 · Score: 1
  
  so then explain why are anal probes not required to fly yet? we've had the shoe bomber, then the underwear bomber. anal cavity bomber is clearly next on the list.
  
  --
  Sleep your way to a whiter smile...date a dentist!
41. Re:This is what happens... by brausch · 2016-05-21 12:35 · Score: 1
  
  Uh, no, the pools are not necessarily below ground level. In fact, that is what got the Fukushima folks. Their pools were nearly at the highest elevation in the plants.
  Two of the spent fuel pools I've been to were about five stories UP from ground level. One was below ground level.
  Not sure where the majority of them are.
  
  --
  "Almost every wise saying has an opposite one, no less wise, to balance it." - George Santayana
42. Re:This is what happens... by WaterDamage · 2016-05-21 18:28 · Score: 1
  
  I'm not sure I get your point since you entirely changed the subject. Maybe you replied to me by mistake? But to answer your question if you are referring to me is a dirty bomb could be mailed or on a container cargo ship as those areas have few and very lax security checks due to massive amounts of shipments. Making the assumption that a dirty bomb would be strictly in some idiots cavity as they board an airplane only shows your poor understanding of security in many areas. Maybe you're only 13 years old or have a brain of a 13 year old but I'll forgive you if you're a young teen but if you're an adult I'm sure once you sell your soul to Satan since your handle has 666, he'll prob give you some wisdom on how to shove that watermelon sized dirty bomb up your A$$ so you can show your ISIS buddies back in Ichi Karachi what a real man you are.
43. Re:This is what happens... by PvtVoid · 2016-05-21 20:36 · Score: 1
  
  Just share with us the massive accidents and all the destruction coal plants have done.
  
  OK. Here's a map of deaths per 100,000 population per year due to coal:
  http://www.catf.us/fossil/prob...
  As of 2004, coal is estimated to have been responsible for 24,000 deaths a year, down to 13,000 by 2010. By contrast, the IAEA and WHO estimate the total number of deaths from Chernobyl, not per year, but total, to be around 4,000:
  http://www.who.int/mediacentre...
  Happy to help.
44. Re:This is what happens... by thegarbz · 2016-05-21 21:09 · Score: 1
  
  Someone could be moving one of them and it falls on them and they die. Done. Someone got killed.
  The fact that you take an all or nothing approach when it comes to any industrial risk shows that YOU do not understand risk in the slightest.
  Incidentally I'm not an expert, so I defer to experts on matters such as this, experts like the ones at TEPCO who were concerned enough that the cooling water in one of the spent fuel pools at Fukushima was boiling that they announced it to the IAEA and then moved the rods to another pool out of safety concerns. Could they have killed everyone in Japan? No. Could it have caused a problem for the locals? Not only plausible but actually rather likely, otherwise why take the risk of moving it.
45. Re:This is what happens... by Mr+D+from+63 · 2016-05-21 23:11 · Score: 1
  
  Someone could be moving one of them and it falls on them and they die. Done. Someone got killed.
  The fact that you take an all or nothing approach when it comes to any industrial risk shows that YOU do not understand risk in the slightest.
  Incidentally I'm not an expert, so I defer to experts on matters such as this, experts like the ones at TEPCO who were concerned enough that the cooling water in one of the spent fuel pools at Fukushima was boiling that they announced it to the IAEA and then moved the rods to another pool out of safety concerns. Could they have killed everyone in Japan? No. Could it have caused a problem for the locals? Not only plausible but actually rather likely, otherwise why take the risk of moving it.
  There are always a risk of industrial accidents. In fact, nuclear power has the safety industrial accident record by far. There have been people killed working on renewable energy projects. That is a cop-out when we are talking about radiological risks.
  
  But I see you have revised your statement from 'someone could get killed' to 'could cause a problem'.
46. Re:This is what happens... by Immerman · 2016-05-22 02:22 · Score: 1
  
  Synrock is not designed to contain low-level nuclear waste like neutron-activated surroundings. It's designed to store the high-level waste that remains highly radioactive on geologic timescales.
  There are of course some elements that react more unpleasantly to neutron activation, but the solution is simple - don't use those elements. There's also several elements that are essentially completely inert, and simply become hydrogen impregnated instead.
  
  --
  --- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
47. Re:This is what happens... by MrKaos · 2016-05-22 14:53 · Score: 1
  
  To get an idea of what's already in the general area of Yucca Mountain, completely uncontained, go to Google Earth and search for "Sedan Crater." Scan south from there. Count the nuclear bomb craters.
  
  non sequitur
  
  I've yet to hear any explanation, or even wacky hypothesis, as to how glassified waste at Yucca Mountain could be more hazardous than what's already there.
  Why do you nukkers *always* jump straight to the ad hom. If you are still there I'll explain, but please don't be a fanboi.
  
  --
  My ism, it's full of beliefs.
48. Re:This is what happens... by delt0r · 2016-05-22 14:57 · Score: 1
  
  If you can get a bomb into a highly secure nuclear facility, there are much better things to actually bomb. Say the primary coolant loop in the reactor. Or security for security just bomb the oval office. Probably easier to get in to.
  
  --
  If information wants to be free, why does my internet connection cost so much?
49. Re:This is what happens... by delt0r · 2016-05-22 14:59 · Score: 1
  
  The story is from mdsolar, so yea that guy really thinks we are all gunna die from nuclear.
  
  --
  If information wants to be free, why does my internet connection cost so much?
50. Re:This is what happens... by Lord+Apathy · 2016-05-22 17:37 · Score: 1
  
  Oh look. One of the hippies has popped up and he is just as uneducated as the rest of his pot smoking tribe. Like the rest of them he hasn't a clue what he is talking about. Looks like some other posters have beating me to showing you the fool you are, but let me add to your education.
  All coal contain natural radioactive components. When this coal is burned in a power plant that radioactive component is released right into the environment. Coal burning power plants also are a major cause of green house gases, something nuclear power plants are not. If man made climate change is a reality coal burning plants are a major cause of that. Nuclear power is not. Burning coal in unclean plants release tons of sulfur into the atmosphere which turns into acid rain. This acid rain kill millions of acre of trees and plant life each year. Coal also is a major cause of human repertory problems too. Nuclear power plants cause none of this.
  Releasing radioactivity for hundreds of millions of years? What is in that weed you are smoking? Seriously, you really should attempt to educate yourself on a subject before you speak. Even the worse nuclear disaster in history, Chernobyl, will not continue to radiate for hundreds of millions of years. As for the Fukushima, those power plants where hit with a disaster clearly they where not designed for. But if you hippies had shut your bong holes those plants would have been long retired and replace with a much safer design.
  Yes, eliminated, as in nuclear waste. The only reason its waste is because we can't do anything with it because you fucking hippies had to keep protesting and the research stopped. That left us with the only option to store it on site. When we try to move to a safer site, you fools line the roads to stop the shipments.
  If the research could have continued we could have be re-manufacturing the wastes instead of storing it. In spent fuel rods over 80% of it is still usable if the spent part is processed out. That fuel rod could be reintroduced and the used again. As for the remaining wastes, if research could have continued we might have a productive use for it too.
  If fools like you had kept your mouth shut about thing you know nothing about, as you clearly do not, we might have had reactors that are 100 times as efficient as the crap we have today. We might have reactors in use who's design would have made events like fukushima and chernobyl impossible because of the way they are designed..
  And finally you god damn fucking hippie. We might have fusion working today. Fusion you god damn pot headed bastard. Fusion, the cleanest source of power there is. If uneducated fools like you had kept your mouths shut there would be no fission, no coal plants, no rivers damned, no fossil fuels, and no green house gases. We might have had a clean and unlimited source of energy. There would be no fighting in the middle east over oil resources. None of that would exist. With that source of energy we could have turned this god forsaken mud ball in to a paradise.
  But you fucking hippies had to fuck it all up because you where to damn stupid to try to understand what you where protesting. Thank you very fucking much.
  
  --
  Supporting World Peace Through Nuclear Pacification
51. Re:This is what happens... by tigersha · 2016-05-23 02:30 · Score: 2
  
  Oh FFS, don't blame Jimmy Carter. He was a nuclear engineer in the navy, and actually did some work INSIDE a running nuclear reactor undergoing a meltdown. When Three Mile Island popped he was one of the experts on site.
  http://www.patheos.com/blogs/s...
  http://www.theglobeandmail.com...
  
  --
  The dangers of excessive individualism are nothing compared to the oppressiveness of excessive collectivism
52. Re:This is what happens... by RockDoctor · 2016-05-23 10:35 · Score: 2
  
  No chance. Couldn't build pipelines without x raying the welds.
  ... for which you don't actually need radioactive sources, if you're talking about X-rays. What you do is build a high-voltage electricity generator (a few tens of kilovolts) and use it to accelerate electrons to collide with a metal target (copper, tungsten, it varies with need) whereupon an uncollimated beam of x-rays is produced. A guy called Roentgen started development in the 1880s ; they're quite a mature technology.
  
  Used as parts of sensors when drilling. Oil industry can't live without a radioisotope, here or there.
  Hmmm, speaking as an oilfield geologist, supervising the use of thse machines on a day-to-day basis, you clearly haven't heard of developments over the last decade or so. Because of the surface costs (clearing non-essential personnel from the area when handling sources) and the contingency costs (fishing for sources "lost in hole" along with drill strings can cost tens of millions of dollars per event ; also, in some countries, the truckload of soldiers to "escort" the sources to the site are basically a tax, which takes some days to pay), most logging companies have put substantial effort into developing source-less logging suites. Now, they are billed more expensively (it's "ecological", so you charge higher), and more importantly, their results are not directly comparable with wells (or the same well) logged with radioactive logs. So they've by no means taken over the industry. But they do exist and they're not new. 2003 was the first time I supervised a source-free logging job, which was being done as a freebie "technology demonstrator". It worked no worse than the conventional tools (which were paid to run as well).
  
  --
  Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"
53. Re:This is what happens... by Coren22 · 2016-05-24 06:15 · Score: 1
  
  Only because nuclear panic grows his solar business.
  
  --
  APK likes to ask for responses to the same things over and over. Maybe he just likes the responses?
54. Re:This is what happens... by WolfWithoutAClause · 2016-05-24 08:58 · Score: 1
  
  As dunkelfalke says, that's lying by omission.
  
  --
  -WolfWithoutAClause
  "Gravity is only a theory, not a fact!"
55. Re:This is what happens... by Mr+D+from+63 · 2016-05-24 09:10 · Score: 1
  
  Don't accuse people of lying when you don't understand the topic. You clearly do not understand the very big difference between fuel-melt damage and debris hitting a fuel assembly, leaving the fuel assembly bent or distorted but the fuel still perfectly intact. Essentially no damage and still safe with no release.
What a surprise that mdsolar posted this shit by Anonymous Coward · 2016-05-20 21:50 · Score: 5, Insightful

Seriously, this isn't news. Besides, it's not that big of an issue.
Yes, spent fuel rods are radioactive waste. However, there are two obvious problems with the article.
1) Simply store the waste in a permanent disposal location, such as burying it at Yucca Mountain. It's extremely unlikely to leak there, nor is there much of a risk in transporting the waste if reasonable safety measures are employed. The environmental hazards are way overstated and significant release of radioactive isotopes is very unlikely during transport or disposal.
2) The article cites the Fukushima Daiichi disaster, but that wouldn't have happened if power hadn't been lost to the pumps circulating water to cool the reactor and keep the spent fuel rods underwater. Obviously, if you don't keep the spent fuel rods underwater, you're not providing shielding from radiation and you're letting them heat up. The failure was not the storage of spent fuel rods but that the pumps failed. This lesson has been learned and steps have been taken to ensure such an incident doesn't happen again.
This is fear mongering, which is pretty typical of mdsolar. I don't understand why the editors continue to post his crap.
1. Re:What a surprise that mdsolar posted this shit by Anonymous Coward · 2016-05-20 22:09 · Score: 2, Funny
  
  Seriously? Did you need to have fukushima to be aware that pumps shouldn't fail?
  Nuclear energy, if we use it at all, should never be in the hands of private companies.
2. Re:What a surprise that mdsolar posted this shit by Zumbs · 2016-05-20 22:40 · Score: 2
  
  Simply store the waste in a permanent disposal location, such as burying it at Yucca Mountain
  If it's that simple, why isn't it being done?
  
  --
  The truth may be out there, but lies are inside your head
3. Re:What a surprise that mdsolar posted this shit by Anonymous Coward · 2016-05-20 23:25 · Score: 1
  
  "Nuclear energy, if we use it at all, should never be in the hands of private companies."
  You are right of course. Any economic framework that by its nature puts profit ahead of responsibility is ill-suited to deal with the centuries-long waste legacy of Nuclear power.
  Unfortunately, all of the other frameworks are as bad, if not worse. Remember the old USSR? And then there is China...
  I'm an ex-Nukee. I worked in the field for three decades, and I've sent my share of barrels to Hanford. Mostly low-level stuff; tools, gloves and bunny suits. It was one of the few jobs where you have to pee in a cup _after_ leaving employment.
  There is no solution to the problem of Nuclear waste that relies on Guardianship. Hell, the only modern Institution that has lasted more than three centuries is the Roman Catholic Church. There have been enough crazy Popes to scuttle that idea.
  No, the only practical solutions either involve Reclamation- horrifically expensive and dirty, or Sequestration, preferably in active Subduction zones. (This has yet to be tried.)
  Digging storage holes in Mountains is stupid, as is returning waste in diluted forms to the original sources- the Mines. The stuff has to be put where, at least with current technology, it can't be gotten to ever again, by anybody.
  This doesn't just involve spent fuel cells. For every gram of spent fuel, there is maybe a ton of "Low Level" waste, from cooling water to contaminated bunny suits.
  And given all this... I'm still pro-Nuke. There _are_ technological solutions for all its technological problems. It's a fascinating field, with some very bright people working in it still. But the Social problems are as yet intractable.
  Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?
4. Re:What a surprise that mdsolar posted this shit by Mr+D+from+63 · 2016-05-21 00:10 · Score: 1
  
  Seriously? Did you need to have fukushima to be aware that pumps shouldn't fail?
  Existing plants are designed to be able to handle multiple pump failures with no problems whatsoever. They are not designed to handle them after being deluged by a tsunami which rendered too many safety devices inoperable. Which is why we should not place a plant where it can be hit by a tsunami, or suddenly deluged in a similar manner.
5. Re:What a surprise that mdsolar posted this shit by TheRealHocusLocus · 2016-05-21 01:17 · Score: 1
  
  Nuclear energy, if we use it at all, should never be in the hands of private companies.
  And your model for making this assertion is... TSA/DHS?
  
  --
  <blink>down the rabbit hole</blink>
6. Re:What a surprise that mdsolar posted this shit by mvdwege · 2016-05-21 01:28 · Score: 1
  
  Existing plants are build to require active input to maintain their safety. The question is not if things will go wrong, but when.
  What Fukushima showed is that the current nuclear safety model is fundamentally unsafe.
  
  --
  "I know I will be modded down for this": where's the option '-1, Asking for it'?
7. Re:What a surprise that mdsolar posted this shit by Mr+D+from+63 · 2016-05-21 01:34 · Score: 1
  
  Zero deaths, projected zero health impacts due to exposure. That even with placing a plant not designed to be underwater being smashed by a huge tsunami. How is that fundamentally unsafe? This was a worst case scenario, yet no radiological health impacts will be seen.
8. Re:What a surprise that mdsolar posted this shit by mvdwege · 2016-05-21 02:46 · Score: 1
  
  >blockquote>Zero deaths, projected zero health impacts due to exposure.
  Several billions cleanup costs.
  Really, apologists for the current nuclear industry are masters at goalpost moving.
  
  --
  "I know I will be modded down for this": where's the option '-1, Asking for it'?
9. Re:What a surprise that mdsolar posted this shit by Mr+D+from+63 · 2016-05-21 02:52 · Score: 1
  
  Expensive to clean up, yes, but not unsafe.
10. Re:What a surprise that mdsolar posted this shit by mvdwege · 2016-05-21 03:07 · Score: 1
  
  It's billions of damage; something capable of causing that kind of damage is unsafe.
  
  --
  "I know I will be modded down for this": where's the option '-1, Asking for it'?
11. Re:What a surprise that mdsolar posted this shit by Mr+D+from+63 · 2016-05-21 03:19 · Score: 1
  
  It was not unsafe from a human health standpoint. If you consider those billions to be the added cost of producing huge amounts of carbon free, particulate free power over decades, then it is well spent from a health perspective. The lives saved already by using nuclear vs. coal is tremendous, and the added benefits of improving our position in the fight against AGW are worth many times this cost.
12. Re:What a surprise that mdsolar posted this shit by dunkelfalke · 2016-05-21 05:14 · Score: 1
  
  Again, stop lying, you bloody atomic playboy. Several workers died during the cleanup, several sailors from the USS Ronald Reagan had to have their thyroids removed, two of them died so far.
  
  --
  "It's such a fine line between stupid and clever" -- David St. Hubbins, Spinal Tap
13. Re:What a surprise that mdsolar posted this shit by blindseer · 2016-05-21 05:56 · Score: 1
  
  Interesting. I have not heard of any deaths. Do you have their names? The stated causes of their deaths? The date of their deaths?
  Also, the US sailors that had their thyroids removed, do you have their names, dates of their surgeries, or anything about them really?
  Anyone that died in this cleanup effort should be recognized for their sacrifice. The least we could do is know their names.
  
  --
  I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
14. Re:What a surprise that mdsolar posted this shit by blindseer · 2016-05-21 06:11 · Score: 1
  
  It isn't being done because a small number of US Senators bought votes in their state by authorizing the construction of the site and then later bought more votes by not allowing the radioactive material to actually enter the site.
  This way they buy votes building a nuclear waste site here AND there to store the same nuclear waste. They robbed us to make busy work for their buddies.
  They also won't allow for the construction of nuclear reactors that can use some of this waste for fuel. Because if they solve this nuclear waste problem by building more nuclear reactors then they cannot keep coming back to the public to demand more money building more nuclear waste holding sites.
  Then they take our money to give to their buddies making solar panels and windmills because we need "green" electricity. Because if they solve our energy problems by building nuclear reactors then they can't keep the fear mongering going of rising energy costs to enable them to raise our taxes. They take our money to send to ethanol and wind mill factories in Iowa to buy votes in an early primary state.
  These US Senators have been in office for a very long time and have learned how to maximize the collection of taxes to buy votes. They do this by creating problems that they are perfectly capable of solving but by not solving the problem they can keep using the same old tactics to draw money from the citizenry to buy votes from an exceedingly small number of number of politically active voters.
  In short it's not getting done because we keep voting these same fuckers into office. No more incumbents and I believe we'd solve a lot of our problems.
  
  --
  I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
15. Re:What a surprise that mdsolar posted this shit by Mr+D+from+63 · 2016-05-21 06:29 · Score: 2
  
  It is a shame that people believe all the hyperbolic journalistic crap written about the event. Its also nice to see there are at least a reasonable number of people that can spot that type of reporting.
  
  There are thousand of Japanese that, to this day, can not return to their homes which were damaged from the tsunami, and are well away for Fukushima. They simply can't just rebuild villages in a potential tsunami zone. Nobody cares about the real disaster. And yet a lot of people seem to believe all Japan's troubles lie in the Fukushima precinct. The greatest problem is ignorance and fear. Reporters think a radiological event is like what we see in the movies, and Joe public just eats that stuff up.
16. Re:What a surprise that mdsolar posted this shit by mvdwege · 2016-05-21 09:51 · Score: 1
  
  Irrelevant. You're moving the goalposts; I wasn't constraining myself to health risks only, I was making an observation that systems that depend on active input do not fail safe and are therefore fundamentally unsafe. You have not addressed that.
  
  --
  "I know I will be modded down for this": where's the option '-1, Asking for it'?
17. Re:What a surprise that mdsolar posted this shit by Mr+D+from+63 · 2016-05-21 10:08 · Score: 1
  
  It was you who moved the goalposts. You said "What Fukushima showed is that the current nuclear safety model is fundamentally unsafe." Then after I corrected you, you changed it to causing 'damage', the you added 'billions' as a cost reference. Now you are back to safety but just safety excluding health risks.
  
  I did address safety. I am talking about human health and safety, that is all I have talked about, and I have not moved from that at all, just read my posts. Fukushima, which is basically a worst case scenario, will not harm anyone radiologically. This even though the plant was taken way beyond its design basis by the tsunami. And, by offsetting huge amounts of emission, nuclear energy has done more to improve the general health of societies that use it.
18. Re:What a surprise that mdsolar posted this shit by dunkelfalke · 2016-05-21 10:16 · Score: 2
  
  https://news.vice.com/article/...
  http://www.theguardian.com/wor...
  http://www.spiegel.de/internat...
  Here you go. There is more if you actually bother to look it up.
  
  --
  "It's such a fine line between stupid and clever" -- David St. Hubbins, Spinal Tap
19. Re:What a surprise that mdsolar posted this shit by mvdwege · 2016-05-22 03:14 · Score: 1
  
  Nope, I did not. I pointed out specifically that the current safety model as it depends on active input is unsafe. That's common sense. You brought up the health risks.
  So fuck off, you blind apologist. I don't talk to stupid people.
  
  --
  "I know I will be modded down for this": where's the option '-1, Asking for it'?
20. Re:What a surprise that mdsolar posted this shit by Mr+D+from+63 · 2016-05-22 03:48 · Score: 1
  
  If you use the term unsafe and you don't mean human health and safety, then you should clarify in the future.
Call Superman by Anonymous Coward · 2016-05-20 22:03 · Score: 1

and throw them into the Sun.
What could be safer? by AndyKron · 2016-05-20 22:06 · Score: 2

What could be safer than an artificially maintained pool of water filled with highly radioactive spent fuel rods?
1. Re:What could be safer? by inode_buddha · 2016-05-20 22:21 · Score: 1
  
  An Apple store? Dunno.....
  
  --
  C|N>K
2. Re:What could be safer? by Anonymous Coward · 2016-05-21 00:04 · Score: 1
  
  Nah, Apple stores are always full of people and their microbes. For real safety go somewhere you'll be all alone: A Microsoft store.
Re:Or... by sjames · 2016-05-20 22:19 · Score: 3, Informative

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.
Yucca Mountain was always vaporware. by Anonymous Coward · 2016-05-20 22:25 · Score: 1

Yucca Mtn. was never a possible solution. Maybe it could work, if it were possible to safely transport nuclear fuel from all over the country (and that is not clear). Maybe it was real enough to those that conceived and designed it. But it was never actually going to be built. It was and is and will remain a political fiction. I wish slashdotters would stop holding it up like some kind of nuclear magical healing caduceus. It was an idea to show that politicians were doing something even when they weren't. It is bogus. It remains bogus.
1. Re:Yucca Mountain was always vaporware. by Gravis+Zero · 2016-05-21 00:18 · Score: 1
  
  But it was never actually going to be built
  ACs are so ignorant. it was partially build
  
  --
  Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
2. Re:Yucca Mountain was always vaporware. by Anonymous Coward · 2016-05-21 00:19 · Score: 4, Informative
  
  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
3. Re:Yucca Mountain was always vaporware. by 110010001000 · 2016-05-21 01:11 · Score: 1
  
  Why already spent $9 billion building it! You can go tour it now if you want. They have public tours.
Finally by hackertourist · 2016-05-20 22:30 · Score: 3, Funny

I was getting worried I'd have to do without my weekly dose of antinuclear FUD. mdsolar to the rescue yet again!
1. Re:Finally by Mashiki · 2016-05-20 23:41 · Score: 1
  
  How about the criminality of the solar or wind industry in supporting conflict minerals.
  
  --
  Om, nomnomnom...
2. Re:Finally by mdsolar · 2016-05-21 01:06 · Score: 1
  
  Which minerals are those?
3. Re:Finally by Mashiki · 2016-05-21 17:23 · Score: 1
  
  Which one would you like? There are more of them out there. But don't worry if your propaganda makes you feel good.
  
  --
  Om, nomnomnom...
4. Re:Finally by mdsolar · 2016-05-22 02:55 · Score: 1
  
  Which of those are used in RE?
mdsolar quotes by thegarbz · 2016-05-20 22:53 · Score: 2

I know I openly criticise people for failing to RTFS, but I got to mdsolar and just figured I know the answer to whatever alarmist bullshit he posted today.
Hey everyone, you're going to be alright, whatever weird scenario he's "researched" this time.
1. Re:mdsolar quotes by 110010001000 · 2016-05-20 23:18 · Score: 2
  
  This sceanrio wouldn't have been so alarming, but people like mdsolar didn't like the Yucca storage facility that would have solved this issue either. We spent $9 billion building it, only to shut it down.
Key conclusion from the report by Registered+Coward+v2 · 2016-05-20 23:51 · Score: 2

The committee that carried out the study and authored the Phase 2 report found that spent fuel storage facilities -- both spent fuel pools used to store fuel under water and casks used to dry-store fuel -- at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant maintained their containment functions during and after the March 11, 2011, Great East Japan Earthquake and tsunami.
and
The committee recommended that the USNRC perform a spent fuel storage risk assessment that addresses both accident and sabotage risks for both pool and dry cask storage. USNRC staff informed the committee that it is already thinking about how to expand its risk assessment methodologies to include sabotage risks.
Not exactly a doomsday scenario. Seems reasonable to do more risk assessments but it's not like they are yelling "Danger Danger Will Robinson..."

--
I'm a consultant - I convert gibberish into cash-flow.
Re:Not the point by Gojira+Shipi-Taro · 2016-05-21 00:08 · Score: 1

And yet with your historical bias, it's difficult for any of us to take what you say, or what you post, at face value.
Interesting points, but do understand that you are WELL known to have an agenda in this area of science, and your posts are seen through a filter as a result.

--
"Oh my God. This is terrible. This is the end of my Presidency. I'm fucked."; ~ Donald J. Trump
One word answer by Required+Snark · 2016-05-21 00:09 · Score: 5, Insightful

Every time someone in the nuclear establishment says that a particular kind of horrible worse case accident can't happen, there is a one word answer: Fukushima.
The one country in the world that had experienced nuclear devastation, with one of the most technologically advanced cultures in the world, couldn't get it right. This was not the bureaucratically hide bound Soviet Union, where technical expertise coexisted with a struggling backwards economic system, this was the home of the bullet train that always ran on time and they still couldn't get it right.
So when a bunch of really smart people point out a serious problem that the nuclear establishment (called the "nuclear village" in Japan) say is impossible, it's time to take it seriously. That is exactly what happened in Japan when it was pointed out that a much larger tsunami could over run the Fukushima power station. The industry made a decision based on their pocketbooks, the pretend regulators agreed, and the time bomb started ticking. So this class of failure has happened before.
Arguing that the article is tainted because it is somehow associated with the solar power field is a paranoid delusion. If you can't criticize the findings on their technical merits then you are the ones engaged in propaganda arguments. As the Russians and Japanese have already found out, nuclear materials go critical based on laws of physics and do not respond to overly optimistic planning documents. When things go bad because of an unplanned critical mass it gets very ugly very fast and there is little to be done to stop it.

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Why is Snark Required?
1. Re:One word answer by Ol+Olsoc · 2016-05-21 02:08 · Score: 2
  
  The one country in the world that had experienced nuclear devastation, with one of the most technologically advanced cultures in the world, couldn't get it right. This was not the bureaucratically hide bound Soviet Union, where technical expertise coexisted with a struggling backwards economic system, this was the home of the bullet train that always ran on time and they still couldn't get it right.
  It always boils down to people. So much about Fukushima reeks of bad decisions at every level, from siting to accounting to management. And while hindsight is always 20/20, the combination of location, and insufficient seawall height made the accident almost inevitable. The only way it wasn't going to happen was if plate tectonics gave it a lucky break and no Tsunami happened during the reactor lifetime and decommissioning. Simple study shows those seawalls would be breached, and if the historical record isn't enough, the rubble patterns left by previous tsunami surely should. No doubt they saved money on lower seawalls.
  A huge amount of energy encased in a small volume, and humanity's inherent corruption and hubris makes for a bad combo.
  Just an example of this sort of whackadoodle crap - the US interstate system has rules that a fence be built along the highways to keep deer and other animals off the highways - good idea.
  But fencing thousands of miles on both sides is expensive. So they lowered the height of the fences - below the height that a deer can jump. And the highways are such that the fences tend to be near the tops of hills, or partway down. So the deer can jump in, but getting back out is a big problem.
  So we're treated to a shitload of carnage as bambi meets bumper. Coupled with the arrogance of some pro-nuc folks, and you have a difficult job to re-energize the nuc power industry.
  
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  The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
2. Re:One word answer by thegarbz · 2016-05-21 05:35 · Score: 5, Insightful
  
  nuclear establishment ... there is a one word answer: Fukushima
  Everytime someone gives a one word answer to describe a fluid technology that has been changed, developed, and despite all pushback AGAINST making it safer has an excellent safety record i also have a one word answer: Idiot.
  
  So when a bunch of really smart people point out a serious problem that the nuclear establishment (called the "nuclear village" in Japan) say is impossible, it's time to take it seriously.
  Really? Because I cherry picked my results and published them too and everything came up as 100% safe. The article isn't tainted because it's associated with solar power, it's tainted because it's a fake study done by reporters who cherry picked answers to "prove" their pre-determined outcome.
3. Re:One word answer by MtViewGuy · 2016-05-21 06:11 · Score: 1
  
  Fukushima Dai-Ichi was a BAD nuclear plant design--no modern containment structures and highly vulnerable to a tsunami in the first place. They should have decommissioned that power plant by the late 1990's and replaced it with a more modern nuclear power plant located further inland with real containment structures around the reactor.
As a nuclear physicist: Yes, that's true. But... by tlambert · 2016-05-21 01:04 · Score: 3, Insightful

As a nuclear physicist: Yes, that's true. But if you reprocessed the fuel rods instead of treating them as waste, they wouldn't be sitting in a pool being radioactive.
This is the real reason why people are against nuc by cyber-vandal · 2016-05-21 01:10 · Score: 1

No matter how good the technology, it's run by people and they lie, don't tell the whole truth and cut corners to save money.
Anyone else notice that by Pikoro · 2016-05-21 01:15 · Score: 1

Anyone else notice that every article that BeauHD posts is either clickbait and/or meant to inspire rage/anger?

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"Freedom in the USA is not the ability to do what you want. It is the ability to stop others from doing what THEY want"
1. Re:Anyone else notice that by Pikoro · 2016-05-21 01:20 · Score: 1
  
  Sorry to reply to my own, but seriously. Looking at only the stuff posted by BeauHD today:
  Scientists Say Nuclear Fuel Pools Pose Safety, Health Risks
  DARPA Extreme DDOS Project Transforming Network Attack Mitigation
  Microsoft Finds Legal Path To Launch Minecraft In China
  A Third Of Cash Is Held By 5 US Tech Companies
  Apple Opens First 'Next Generation' Retail Store
  Wristband Gives You An Electric Shock When You Overspend
  Real-Life RoboCop Guards Shopping Centers In California
  AI Will Create 'Useless Class' Of Human, Predicts Bestselling Historian
  Oculus No Longer Lets Customers Move Purchased Software To Non-Oculus Hardware
  Judge Orders 'Intentionally Deceptive' DOJ Lawyers To Take Remedial Ethics Class
  Is there a tech/geek minded story in the list at all? It's all designed to generate outrage or tap into slashdot's groupthink.
  
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  "Freedom in the USA is not the ability to do what you want. It is the ability to stop others from doing what THEY want"
Re:As a nuclear physicist: Yes, that's true. But.. by Ol+Olsoc · 2016-05-21 01:33 · Score: 2

As a nuclear physicist: Yes, that's true. But if you reprocessed the fuel rods instead of treating them as waste, they wouldn't be sitting in a pool being radioactive.
As a hoomin bean, then we'd be talking about the safety, security and health risks of reprocessing.

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The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
The "Used Fuel" pools were not meant to last by pjv936 · 2016-05-21 03:03 · Score: 1

forever. They were meant to be temporary storage for the used fuel rods. The used fuel rods were then supposed to be transported to a processing plant where plutonium and U235 would be extracted. The leftover waste was to be encased in a long lasting container and shipped to long term storage. That was never done. Now we are stuck with large amount of used fuel rods in storage. Those who advocate for nuclear power need to make sure that the end of the used fuel rod cycle is put in place.
We need to use this up by WindBourne · 2016-05-21 04:21 · Score: 1

Seriously, burying this makes little sense, which is why Yucca mtn was stopped.
So, if we spend a couple of billion NOW, we can have multiple reactors that are designed to burn this up and leave us with minor amounts of radioactive material that will be safe within 200 years.

The fact that we have NOT solve this is because the dems are as anti-science as the GOP.

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I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
1. Re:We need to use this up by MtViewGuy · 2016-05-21 06:15 · Score: 1
  
  Completely correct. That's why there is a lot of interest in molten-salt reactors (MSR's), where the nuclear fuel (normally thorium-232) is dissolved in molten sodium fluoride salts. In fact, MSR's could even use reprocessed spent uranium-235 fuel rods or even plutonium-239/241 from dismantled nuclear weapons dissolved in molten fluoride salts as fuel.
2. Re:We need to use this up by WindBourne · 2016-05-21 09:29 · Score: 1
  
  It is particularly frustrating when you realize that all of the current and old nuke sites had/have plenty of cooling and transmission capability. It is actually relatively cheap to add these small reactors to these sites and then use up the old fuel. Worst of all, we are going to need to replace not just coal and nat gas plants, which is around 66%, but 20% is nukes and will require replacement. With these smaller reactors, we can place 10-15 of these to replace 1-2 GW reactors
  
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  I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Birds by xxxJonBoyxxx · 2016-05-21 05:19 · Score: 1

>> conflict minerals?

Birds. When their flight paths conflict with wind turbines or solar concentrators, birds are converted back into their base elements (through incineration or mechanical separation).
It's not just NIMBYs by rsilvergun · 2016-05-21 05:23 · Score: 2

we've been cutting funding to infrastructure since the Clinton (Bill) era. I'm a NIMBY too. I'll be a NIMBY until you can get the average joe to stop voting against necessary investments in the name of "Small" gov't and Freedom. Look at Flint, Mi and how something as critical as a city's water supply was handled. You wanna drop nuclear waste near me, stored and maintained by the lowest bidder with the highest profit margin? Of course I don't want that.

Change our politics if you want nuclear to work. Otherwise I'll continue hoping that some other poor sods get stuck with the inevitable disaster. Yeah, that's messed up, but I don't know what else to do about it.

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Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
This is what happens when reprocessing is outlawed by kriston · 2016-05-21 09:09 · Score: 1

This is what happens when reprocessing is forbidden in the United States.
We don't need very large deep repositories. Reprocessing spent fuel generates power and reduces the amount of dangerous waste. Why don't we do it? Because of some hypothetical proliferation risk that turns out doesn't actually exist in those countries that do reprocess spent fuel.
And we shouldn't be dry-casking, because that makes it so much more difficult to extract and reprocess. God forbid we glassify the waste, spending orders of magnitude more money and effort than it would cost to reprocess fuel.
We figured out a way to reprocess "unusable" anthracite coal waste (culm) profitably. Likewise, the rest of the world has been reprocessing spent nuclear fuel for decades.
What's the Department of Energy's actual problem, here?

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Kriston
Just the Iran Iraq War by Anonymous Coward · 2016-05-21 09:18 · Score: 1

Killed 100 times more people than Tshernobyl and Fukushima together.
Then they had two more oil wars and the Syrian war is also fuelled by the Wahabist Oil Money.
9/11 was funded by Wahabist Oil Money and it killed more people than Tshernobyl.
You lefties have whored yourself to the enemies of our civilization, because Marxism essentially is Devil Worshipping.
Patriots vote Trump (he blasted the oil brutes) while traitors vote Clinton. She is financed by them, like so many lefties.
Beware experts dismissing risks without fact-check by waterbear · 2016-05-21 10:12 · Score: 1

Every time someone in the nuclear establishment says that a particular kind of horrible worse case accident can't happen, there is a one word answer: Fukushima.
This. Also, part of the technique for the 'can't happen' brush-off is to quote enormous odds against. After the 2011 Japan earthquake/tsunami we heard first how such things were about one-in-a-thousand-years, now we're hearing 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.
They have all omitted to mention the 1896 Sanriku earthquake and tsunami, which was practically as devastating as the 2011 event, and in the same general area, killing even more thousands of people. Maybe the experts would try to use the excuse that the magnitude in 1896 was just a little smaller than in 2011. But it certainly was in a similar league, and so the risk of such events causing that order of devastation in that area is more like once in 120 years, not 1000 or 10,000,000.
Ok, so that applies to a specific seismically active geographical area. But the unjustified brush-off merchants are mobile, and express their 'expert' views everywhere. So we need to beware so-called experts using brush-off statistics, and look carefully into their so-called facts.
-wb-
Re:Really ? by WaterDamage · 2016-05-21 18:53 · Score: 1

Trolling with AC, ehhh? Well, it's true that there are probably 10 times more people killed by oil per kWh, because 87% of the worlds energy is from gas, coal and oil. Naturally, you're going to have a higher death rate, moron. Just like you'll have more dead people in a city with a population of 20 million vs a population of 1,000 in a small town!

A whore for the Sudies? I think you're the real whore hiding under anonymous coward which rightly labels your comment. I support solar and alternative energy. I once used to even support nuclear until I learned the truth over many years as I studied it deeper and concluded that nuclear safety is all a lie with the significant countless accidents they keep having and roughly massive accident every 20 years that far exceeds any oil accident.

Let the Chinese build all the reactors they want, I'm not jealous, seriously, I'm not! Just like the air pollution they now have from all the factories they built, the'll soon have tons of Cesium-131 & Cesium-137 floating around killing them off like flies the next time they blow up one of their cheaply made reactors. I encourage you to move there since you're so fond of nuclear power. Shit, why not even get a job as a nuclear worker at one of their newly built plants, I'm sure their past quality issues with the buildings they build as well as product quality they're known for won't matter much since you will ensure they do it right!
There's many levels of waste by dbIII · 2016-05-22 15:13 · Score: 1

It's designed to store the high-level waste that remains highly radioactive on geologic timescales.
There are many levels of waste and fuel can only be processed from a very small portion of that total, thus leaving a lot of waste that remains highly radioactive.

There are of course some elements that react more unpleasantly to neutron activation, but the solution is simple - don't use those elements
WTF? That "some" is that majority of all elements known!
1. Re:There's many levels of waste by Immerman · 2016-05-23 13:29 · Score: 1
  
  No, many/most things become radioactive under neutron bombardment, but generally they have a short halflife so it's not really a storage issue, and/or they decay into something stable via alpha or beta radiation, which only cause transient ionization issues.
  It's really only the medium range half-lives that are a storage problem, in the years to decades range. Short half lives are extremely dangerous, but by the same token they usually decay to stable forms rapidly. And long half lives by definition aren't particularly radioactive, so safety isn't much of an issue.
  The real problem with storing spent fuel is that you're storing short-to-medium fission waste products that emit high-energy neutrons still mixed in with relatively stable unused fuel - so as the radioactive stuff decays it causes fission in the unspent fuel, producing more waste, and will continue to do so on geologic timescales.
  
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  --- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
2. Re:There's many levels of waste by dbIII · 2016-05-23 13:51 · Score: 1
  
  No, many/most things become radioactive under neutron bombardment, but generally they have a short halflife
  When you are dealing with very large amounts of material and a lot of neutrons, and have a definition of "short" that does not allow you to wait a decade or two then there is a lot of waste that should not be waved away as if magic can make it vanish. Hence needing storage solutions. Several exist.
  
  As I mentioned well above the Harford web site is a good place to start for those that know little about the subject but still wish to discuss it just the same. It will help you understand that the simple back of a cornflake packet summaries you've been given in the past don't completely apply on an industrial scale - where "not much" waste means loading up a railcar or two.
  
  Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you
  I really hope there is a lot more than that going on.
3. Re:There's many levels of waste by Immerman · 2016-05-24 13:53 · Score: 1
  
  Yes, absolutely, short-lived waste needs to be stored safely too, but that storage isn't a problem in any technical sense. I figured I had expressed that with my semi-facetious "shove it in a hole in the ground" comment. Building storage sites that will outlast such low-level radioactive contamination is a non-issue, and it's a political issue primarily because there's a track record of cheapskates cutting corners, as well as sites designed for low-level waste being used to quietly store high-level waste that will inevitably become a major problem in a site grossly inadequate for the job.
  Nuclear waste storage is a genuine problem, but we need to understand the problem properly before we can solve it. And right now, most of the major problems are down to fraud and stupid policy. Low-level/neutron activated waste is typically a non-issue from a technical standpoint. And even actual spent fuel generally wouldn't be a long-term storage problem if we reprocessed it first so it would burn out quickly. Even railroad cars worth of stuff that's going to be dangerous for centuries aren't a huge issue with storage options like synrock, etc. Dilute it enough that thermal buildup plateaus at a manageable level, and store it someplace where nobody will blunder into it and groundwater won't corrode the storage. Trying to do that for a century or two, until it's decayed to ambient levels, is still seriously challenging, but not so completely infeasible as the current situation where we're trying to store waste that will still be dangerous thousands of years later.
  
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  --- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
4. Re:There's many levels of waste by dbIII · 2016-05-24 16:10 · Score: 1
  
  Yes, absolutely, short-lived waste needs to be stored safely too, but that storage isn't a problem in any technical sense
  The entire point of my comments on this thread is to correct those that deny that such a thing exists and that it needs to be dealt with instead of being ignored.
  
  So many people erroneously see fast breeder reactors as a total waste solution instead of a partial fuel solution.
  
  and groundwater won't corrode the storage
  Incorporation, such as synrok, instead of encapsulation in some sort of glass, solves that problem.
  
  but not so completely infeasible
  I never suggested that. I merely object to things like the ignorant fanboi far above who decided to lecture us on how some sort of magic is going to fix everything. If he had actually learned more about the reactors he mentioned he could have written something far less boring and stupid.
5. Re:There's many levels of waste by Immerman · 2016-05-24 16:33 · Score: 1
  
  Okay, rereading the thread I think we're actually basically in agreement.
  Low level waste is a large-volume issue, just not a technologically challenging one.
  
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  --- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.