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

Posted by BeauHD on 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."

12 of 166 comments (clear)

  1. This is what happens... by FooAtWFU · · 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.

    --
    The World Wide Web is dying. Soon, we shall have only the Internet.
    1. Re:This is what happens... by PvtVoid · · 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 · · 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 Mr+D+from+63 · · 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?...

    4. Re:This is what happens... by Mr+D+from+63 · · 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.

    5. Re:This is what happens... by Mr+D+from+63 · · 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.

    6. Re:This is what happens... by dbIII · · 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.

    7. Re:This is what happens... by thegarbz · · 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.

  2. What a surprise that mdsolar posted this shit by Anonymous Coward · · 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.

  3. One word answer by Required+Snark · · 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 thegarbz · · 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.

  4. Re:Yucca Mountain was always vaporware. by Anonymous Coward · · 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