New Mexico Nuclear Accident Ranks Among the Costliest In US History (latimes.com)

mdsolar quotes a report from Los Angeles Times: When a drum containing radioactive waste blew up in an underground nuclear dump in New Mexico two years ago, the Energy Department rushed to quell concerns in the Carlsbad desert community and quickly reported progress on resuming operations. The early federal statements gave no hint that the blast had caused massive long-term damage to the dump, a facility crucial to the nuclear weapons cleanup program that spans the nation, or that it would jeopardize the Energy Department's credibility in dealing with the tricky problem of radioactive waste. But the explosion ranks among the costliest nuclear accidents in U.S. history, according to a Times analysis. The long-term cost of the mishap could top $2 billion, an amount roughly in the range of the cleanup after the 1979 partial meltdown at the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant in Pennsylvania. The Feb. 14, 2014, accident is also complicating cleanup programs at about a dozen current and former nuclear weapons sites across the U.S. Thousands of tons of radioactive waste that were headed for the dump are backed up in Idaho, Washington, New Mexico and elsewhere, state officials said in interviews. "The direct cost of the cleanup is now $640 million, based on a contract modification made last month with Nuclear Waste Partnership that increased the cost from $1.3 billion to nearly $2 billion," reports Los Angeles Times. "The cost-plus contract leaves open the possibility of even higher costs as repairs continue. And it does not include the complete replacement of the contaminated ventilation system or any future costs of operating the mine longer than originally planned."

Comments

No more nukes

[Anonymous Coward]

All nukes should be banned and we should move to solar and wind, ASAP.

Re:No more nukes

[davester666]

Then we need to elect Trump now. Just tell him a windmill is actually a live camera connected to every home in America, and he will begin emitting hot air until someone tells him it isn't actually a camera.

Maybe we could just tell him he won, park him in front of a couple of them, and erect a wall around the whole system making it more efficient, prevent anyone from telling him that it isn't a camera and prevent him from wandering away.

Re:No more nukes

[Anonymous Coward]

So how do you propose to have power then when you want it?

Re: No more nukes

[Anonymous Coward]

Storage, duh.

Re:No more nukes

[ShanghaiBill]

So how do you propose to have power then when you want it?

1. Storage. The price of Powerwalls is going down, and we are making progress on grid-scale storage.
2. Long range transmission. The wind is always blowing somewhere.
3. Demand shifting. Vary the price of power to fit the supply. I have a smart meter, and I pay more for day power than for night power. So I run the clothes dryer and dishwasher after 11pm (using the delay feature). My wife has programmed her Tesla to charge at 2:30am. Smarter appliances will make demand shifting easier.

Re: No more nukes

[Rakarra]

Oh! Storage! Why, it sounds so simple.
I mean, we need to invent the technology first, but that's no biggy.

Re: No more nukes

[LinuxLuver]

Solar and wind, backed by grid-scale battery storage (as China is already doing right now) make getting rid of nuclear a no-brainer. Cested interests in the US are preventing it from moving forward in whole host of areas, from climate change to energy to reducing bureaucracy to improving democracy. The renewable solutions to energy supply are already there. Just open your eyes and see them. Unfortunately, that seems to be more than too many Americans can manage to do.

Re:No more nukes

[MercTech]

Nothing from nuclear power generation goes to New Mexico. That site is dedicated to storage of all the waste and crap from the weapons program.
        DOE has yet to take custody of any spent fuel from any of the commercial nuclear power plants even though the Atomic Energy Act of 1972 required the DOE to take custody of all used fuel by fiscal year 1998.

The cost-plus contract

[Anonymous Coward]

say no more

In need of a solution

[justcauseisjustthat]

Maybe they should just let these go to town on the cleanup?
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/09/140909093659.htm

Re:In need of a solution

[Anonymous Coward]

Clever wording "blew up" in place of "leak". Good clickbait.

Re:In need of a solution

[Anonymous Coward]

Clever wording "blew up" in place of "leak". Good clickbait.

Stupid shilling - the only people dumb enough not to check your bullshit are too stupid to vote, hold an opinion, or have an income and might spend some on nuclear power. The people you intend to bullshit will quickly check and find the drum did explode - with enough force to collapse the trench.

The problem was traced to material — actual kitty litter — used to blot up liquids in sealed drums. Lab officials had decided to substitute an organic material for a mineral one. But the new material caused a complex chemical reaction that blew the lid off a drum, sending mounds of white, radioactive foam into the air and contaminating 35% of the underground area.

tl;dr? You are the sort of scumbag who works in a takeaway food store just so they can contaminate peoples meals for "shits and giggles".

Re:In need of a solution

[Anonymous Coward]

WHAT?

That's a horrible idea.
You'll take something we could contain and make it bio-available to the food-chain very easily.

Stop it Magneto!
You can't evolve humans against their will!

Re:In need of a solution

[Anonymous Coward]

Those bacteria don't do any actual cleaning. They just help contain. The bacteria are able to consume molecules that contain nuclear elements and change the molecular structure of the radioactive waste. This change ends up preventing the waste from being dissolved in ground water, and thus preventing it from spreading around in ground water. So basically, they are able to absorb leaking waste.

Life is a chemical process. There is no life that can break down matter at the sub-atomic level. Except Godzilla!

Re: In need of a solution

[Anonymous Coward]

It did not blow up, and nothing collapsed. There was an exothermic reaction in the drum which caused gas to build up. The gas generation exceeded the capacity of the venting system on the drum causing the lid to partially pop off, and some material to spray onto nearby drums. It was less violent then your typical elephant toothpaste reaction from science class, just with added fire. The drum bursting (it was not an explosion, and therefore no blast damage) did spray hot combustable gases and solids to nearby packing materials which caused small self extinguishing smouldering fires which caused a limited airbourne release of smoke particles which contaminated the ventilation and hepa filter system. Calling it an explosion is laughably dramatic. It should also be noted that this 2 billion cleanup is in the context of a 19 billion facility, but I suppose that also sounds less dramatic. You can read the full accident report and view the limited damage here: http://www.wipp.energy.gov/wipprecovery/accident_desc.html

Re: In need of a solution

[Anonymous Coward]

What about my eyes?

Re: In need of a solution

[LinuxLuver]

So the private contractors who operate the facility reported it as what sounds like a small non-explosion that is still going to cost $2 billion to clean up. Glad it wasn't a not-quite-as-small non-explosion.

Who cares?

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't live in New Mexico. How does this affect me? Why is this news? Can't we have relevant stories that affect all of us instead of turning Slashdot into a local news channel?

Re:Who cares?

[NotInHere]

Because someone has to pay for the mishap. And that is in this case the feds.

So, essentially a $2 billion subvention for nuclear technology.

Re:Who cares?

[Anonymous Coward]

To be fair it looks like we are going to subsidize any type of energy production though; by allowing climate change we are collectively giving a much bigger hand out to the fossil fuel industry. Don't misunderstand, I'm not saying let people off the hook for actually causing problems like this or trying to be dismissive of the actual problems, but realistically, since it looks like we're already dealing with the externalities of energy, $2 billion dollars is still less than we will be paying for fossil fuels over the long run. It still sucks, but before anyone jumps on the inevitable anti-nuclear soapbox, don't forget that we're all subsidizing energy in one way or another.

Re:Who cares?

[Enigma2175]

To be fair it looks like we are going to subsidize any type of energy production though; by allowing climate change we are collectively giving a much bigger hand out to the fossil fuel industry. Don't misunderstand, I'm not saying let people off the hook for actually causing problems like this or trying to be dismissive of the actual problems, but realistically, since it looks like we're already dealing with the externalities of energy, $2 billion dollars is still less than we will be paying for fossil fuels over the long run. It still sucks, but before anyone jumps on the inevitable anti-nuclear soapbox, don't forget that we're all subsidizing energy in one way or another.

This has nothing to do with energy, this is waste from nuclear weapons production.

Re:Who cares?

[Chas]

Sure. And it's being stored away in casks, rather than being reprocessed.because of silly laws by people who think that somebody's going to make bombs out of it.
Also, it's being stored away in casks, rather than being used in reactor types that could cook it down into a form of waste that's far less long-lived.
Also, it's being stored away in casks, rather than the byproducts being dumped into the environment at large the way fossil fuel power production does.

So how cheap would fossil fuel-based power be if you had to treat the waste the way you do nuclear waste?

Re: Who cares?

[WindBourne]

Hey, quit letting facts get in the way.

Re: Who cares?

[breakermelvin]

"Cook it down" so homey... cooling with liquid radioactive sodium ... mmmmmm ....my favourite kitchen ingredient

Re: Who cares?

[LinuxLuver]

Sure. But let's subsidise an energy source that isn't toxic for longer than humans have been farming.

No, that can't be right

[Anonymous Coward]

Nuclear power is too cheap to meter.

Re:No, that can't be right

[sjames]

This is not from nuclear energy. This waste is from our nuclear weapons program, so bill it against the DOD.

Re:No, that can't be right

[Anonymous Coward]

Ah. My mistake. Thanks for the correction.

Re:No, that can't be right

[Thud457]

What's another paltry couple of billion dollars when they can't account for that they did with 6 Trillion dollars

Re:No, that can't be right

[Kreplock]

6.5 trillion in adjustments during FY2015, which had a total federal budget of 3.9 trillion. Some critical bit of information must be missing. I guess I'll just read it as 6.5 ka-jillion, it makes as much sense.

Re:No, that can't be right

[sjames]

The adjustments happened during FY2015, but covered many years of operation.

Re:No, that can't be right

[sjames]

It's beyond mere accounting issues. They have no sense of cost at all. Imagine, spending a million dollars on a smart bomb to blow up a tent in the middle of nowhere when $50k or so in dumb bombs could have done the job.

It did what it was designed to do

[Anonymous Coward]

You can say what you will about it's existence, but when the drum blew, the walls collapsed on top of it, severely limiting the spread of radioactivity.

while we may not be able to use the facility any more, this is a structural problem, not a design one. The facility worked to specification in the event. The problem was the event took place in a connecting tunnel and not a storage room.

also the amount of radioactivity that leaked was less than than you get from sleeping next to an infant. They didn't mention that.

Re:It did what it was designed to do

[Anonymous Coward]

You're one of those Slashdotters who bathes in radioactive waste, and claims that it's safer than eating a banana.

Re:It did what it was designed to do

[Anonymous Coward]

well it seems to work for me

Re:It did what it was designed to do

[Namarrgon]

It contained the leak, yes, and the public is in no danger, but for workers in that facility it's a real problem, hence the cleanup expense

The amount of radioactivity released was estimated at 2 to 10 plutonium-equivalent Curies - not a small amount. While you could walk through the room and receive an insignificant dose from a meter away, if even a tiny fraction of that got into your body (e.g. via the contaminated ventilation system), that's an entirely different matter - close-range exposure for days or months is far more serious.

Re:It did what it was designed to do

[Farmer Tim]

well it seems to work for me

But you wouldn't like him when he's angry...

Re:It did what it was designed to do

[Anonymous Coward]

You're one of those Slashdotters who bathes in radioactive waste, and claims that it's safer than eating a banana.

Most things are safer than eating a banana - if it's one of those bananas that are fertilised with radioactive material sourced from metal refining waste - like those bananas Randall "the science cartoonist" likes to trot out to impress the scientifically retarded.

Re:It did what it was designed to do

[dbIII]

Time for a redesign then if the cleanup cost was so high.
We don't get idiocy like this with oil storage anymore due to multiple levels of containment built to handle the maximum amount stored in an area.

Maybe we should treat this like a Three Mile Island event which resulted in monitoring systems going from below regulations for a fertilizer plant to the systems we have today. That accident was a perfect example of a huge shock that hurt nobody - a wakeup call that could have been far worse and led to some very dangerous practices being discontinued or revised.

Re:It did what it was designed to do

[bohmt]

Said Anonymous "we live in a post facts society" Coward ...

Re:It did what it was designed to do

[Anonymous Coward]

"more serous' doesn't mean 'dangerous'. It depends on the actual substance. Most of these substances don't stay in the body long enough to pose a significant health risk, and even if they do the small amounts result in very small health risk increases. Being extra careful regardless is the right thing.

Re:It did what it was designed to do

[drinkypoo]

We don't get idiocy like this with oil storage anymore due to multiple levels of containment built to handle the maximum amount stored in an area.

We still have idiocy like this in oil pipelines and rail transport, though. Oil pipelines are single-walled.

Re: It did what it was designed to do

[Anonymous Coward]

That makes the cars cheaper. What incentives or penalties exist to encourage more safety instead of more profits?

Re:It did what it was designed to do

[ShanghaiBill]

but for workers in that facility it's a real problem, hence the cleanup expense

Then why not just close the facility and build a new one? That should cost a lot less than 2 BILLION dollars. My guess is that they didn't do that because this is "new money" directly allocated by congress, and didn't come from their existing budget, hence they had no incentive to control costs.

Re: It did what it was designed to do

[ShanghaiBill]

What incentives or penalties exist to encourage more safety instead of more profits?

You are thinking backwards. The incentives are designed to encourage rail transport over pipelines, because rail is dirtier, noisier, more dangerous, and less efficient, and many environmental activists believe that by making oil consumption even worse, we will encourage alternative energy.

Re: It did what it was designed to do

[Anonymous Coward]

The facility cost 19 billion

Re:It did what it was designed to do

[etudiant]

Iirc, it did not contain the leak, except in the narrow sense that the barrel did not leave the site.
In actuality, the barrel contents, a sloppy mix of nitric acid process waste and sawdust, hugely overheated and much of the material was vaporized.
Because of contractor negligence, the fire doors that should have automatically closed could not, so the contamination spread widely. The doors had been wired open because they had too many false alarms, which was inconvenient.
The venting system that should have contained the fumes did not work, so the plant environs were contaminated.
The estimated $2 billion clean up cost is an estimate, probably will be exceeded, as these cleanups rarely work as planned.
Afaik, apart from some bonus payment reductions, there has been no penalties to any entity from this disaster.
Accountability is entirely lacking by all appearances.

Fuck mdsolar

[Anonymous Coward]

Just when I thought we might be done with mdsolar spam, this article shows up. He's a biased and intellectually dishonest submitter who will do anything to try to make nuclear energy appear awful. Can we ban mdsolar from submitting more stories and spamming the queue?

Re:Fuck mdsolar

[NotInHere]

I don't think that this submission was particularly biased. Nuclear technology does get lots of subventions by the state, some of them in the form that the state takes over if there is an accident like this.

I've seen lots of MS spam lately, that's far more unpleasant to read.

Re:Fuck mdsolar

[ravenshrike]

The only reason that there is so much subvention is because certain people would fucking whine to high heaven if they switched to the nuke plants that could properly eat the majority of the truly problematic waste and use it as part of the fuel cycle.

Re: Fuck mdsolar

[K. S. Kyosuke]

I agree, we need more nuclear stories.

Re:Fuck mdsolar

[NotInHere]

Why would that be the case? Are they illuminati who want to destroy humanity or something?

Re:Fuck mdsolar

[ravenshrike]

Because they think that the plutonium produced(and mostly consumed if those reactors are allowed to keep working instead of being shut down to harvest it) will spontaneously get up and walk away.

Re:Fuck mdsolar

[Enigma2175]

I don't think that this submission was particularly biased. Nuclear technology does get lots of subventions by the state, some of them in the form that the state takes over if there is an accident like this.

I've seen lots of MS spam lately, that's far more unpleasant to read.

This isn't handouts from the state, this is nuclear weapons waste. This is the government cleaning up after itself. It's got nothing to do with subsidies.

Re:Fuck mdsolar

[tlambert]

Because they think that the plutonium produced(and mostly consumed if those reactors are allowed to keep working instead of being shut down to harvest it) will spontaneously get up and walk away.

Specifically it's to keep countries like North Korea and Pakistan from getting nuclear weapons.

Oopsie. Looks like that worked out, didn't it...

The U.S. is the only major nuclear power that doesn't reprocess spent fuel; Russia does, Japan does, France does, Great Britain did, and, until Germany recently decided to no longer be a nuclear power, they had France process their for them. Thank Jimmy Carter for the executive order; we have a nice, shiny new reprocessing plant that's been mothballed.

Re:Fuck mdsolar

[sjames]

There's a lot of truth there. At least some of what is to be stored is perfectly good plutonium that could/should be loaded into a reactor and produce electricity for years but instead we're spending millions to throw it away. It makes about as much sense as building a facility to bury gasoline.

Re:Fuck mdsolar

[Anonymous Coward]

Free speech is free speech, moron - fuck off somewhere else if you can't deal with it.

Re:Fuck mdsolar

[Anonymous Coward]

Thank Jimmy Carter for the executive order; we have a nice, shiny new reprocessing plant that's been mothballed.

Reagun recinded Carters order on reprocessing in his first term.

Re: Fuck mdsolar

[Anonymous Coward]

Like obamas dcision to throw away large military production capacbilities. These things are insanely expensive to restart.

Re:Fuck mdsolar

[bluefoxlucid]

They didn't even hype it as *the* costliest; they put it in with three-mile island. 1979, $1 billion over 12 years, three-mile island. In 1979, that'd be inflation to $3.26 billion 2014; in 1991, that'd inflate to $1.74 billion 2014. You're looking at an average in the range of $2.5 billion; counting from straight 1985, it's still $2.2 billion.

In other words: this disaster has cost less than three-mile island. Amortized over the decade it'll cost, it's actually not so bad; there are 171 million taxpaying households in the U.S., and this is less than $2/year from each. Large populations.

Re:Fuck mdsolar

[bluefoxlucid]

No, it's because reactors which recycle used fuel efficiently cost more to run. We can produce new fuel from freshly-mined uranium cheaper than we can breed and refine uranium and plutonium fuel rods. We don't even run plutonium fuel rods in reactors, usually, so there's all kinds of risk in using plutonium fuel and all kinds of costs in getting to a point where we can even attempt it.

Burning the fuel out completely is expensive.

Re:Fuck mdsolar

[MachineShedFred]

Yeah, except that this story has absolutely nothing to do with nuclear power generation. All of this waste, and this waste disposal site, is designed for material coming from the manufacture of nuclear weapons, and the output of the DoE national laboratories.

So the FUD is implicit - anything that is bad about any nuclear technology at all, mdsolar will post just because people will automatically relate it to nuclear power. I still don't know why he thinks that nuclear is such a threat to his dream of solar panels everywhere, being that solar deployments are growing, and panel prices are falling, and panel efficiencies are rising; and there's all of 1 or 2 nuclear reactors under construction in the US, for the first time since 1979.

Re:Fuck mdsolar

[MachineShedFred]

I still have never figured out how North Korea would somehow spontaneously get plutonium created at a breeder reactor in Tennessee. I guess the argument is "well if we spend billions and billions of dollars to prototype and refine the design until it actually works, then all of a sudden they have one too without all the pesky engineering and construction costs?

It's not a fucking MP3 - it can't be copied perfectly with zero cost.

Re:Fuck mdsolar

[Anonymous Coward]

Global warming is a serious threat. We need to fix the problem. The FUD from people like mdsolar is as big an obstacle as oil company propaganda.

Re:Fuck mdsolar

[Anonymous Coward]

Are you talking about the Jimmy Carter who is a nuclear engineer?

Re:Fuck mdsolar

[Anonymous Coward]

Is it more expensive than maintaining the storage facilities for the waste that would be used? Subsidize it if the total cost is lower.

Re:Fuck mdsolar

[nmb3000]

You wouldn't download a nuclear breeder reactor, would you?

Re: Fuck mdsolar

[WindBourne]

You are letting your little far right extremism brain think for the big brain. Carter stopped it, rightly, and raygun restarted it. In addition reprocessing is not the right solution.

Re: Fuck mdsolar

[WindBourne]

Really? What weapon line did obama override the military and stop production of?

Re: Fuck mdsolar

[Anonymous Coward]

Obviously he shut down the version of the F-35 that didn't kill the pilot.

Re: Fuck mdsolar

[Anonymous Coward]

It is massively biased because this had nothing to do with the nuclear energy industry, this dump is for waste from nuclear weapons production. But mdsolar was happy to imply otherwise.

Re: Fuck mdsolar

[Anonymous Coward]

What does TMI have to do with mishaps at defense waste facilities?

Re: Fuck mdsolar

[Anonymous Coward]

The still operating unit at Three Mile Island has generated plenty to cover that cost, and will continue for many years.

Re:Fuck mdsolar

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, the headline and abstract are a bit unfair to nuclear power because the waste in question that exploded the barrel was essentially cold war era arms manufacturing legacy cleanup. So, a better headline or article might be more along the lines of "The long term costs of the nuclear arms race still lingers."

Re: Fuck mdsolar

[tlambert]

You are letting your little far right extremism brain.

Sorry, I think you have "nuclear" confused with "big oil". If you want far right extremism, that's the next door down.

Carter stopped it, rightly, and raygun restarted it.

And then it was stopped again.

In addition reprocessing is not the right solution.

What is the solution, then? It's not the sun shining day and night, and it's not the wind blowing all the time.

Re:Fuck mdsolar

[Anonymous Coward]

Same Jimmy that gave the Panama Canal to China via Panama. The USA is the USA's own worst enemy. While China and Russia are building the future, the USA is busy fighting itself and worrying about trans-gendered bathrooms, white privilege, C02 emissions and religions fundamentalist with guns. Who creates this internal division? The media. Who is a major stock holder in the media? China a Russia.

But I am a crazy nut job. I am sure some American Indians who said that the Europeans were trying to take over their land and drive out their way of life were also branded nut jobs.

China, Russia, and Mexico control the thoughts of the USA through the media. Russia is exerting undue influence over the USAian elections and the right is applauding this. We have an invasion of brown people from South America, and the left is applauding this. USAian sovreignty has been sold to the global elite. Try being an illegal immigrant in Mexico, and you will get your ass handed to you. This is why Mexico is an up and coming power and the USA is a has been. Only the strong survive. The USA is not interested in being strong. It is interested in transgendered rights and sucking Putin's penis.

Re:Fuck mdsolar

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh NOES he sez things I don't agree with! I DON'T WANT TO SEE IT! BAN HIM!"

Jesus Christ, no wonder slashdot is dying.

Re: Fuck mdsolar

[WindBourne]

No, using SMRs such as Trans Atomic and Flible that can use nothing but 'waste' is the answer.
In fact, 1 thing I would love to see is for B&W to come up with a design for the back-end and a 'test-tube' rack for adding SMRs, with a set of standardized hook-ups. This way, mPower, nuScale, Trans Atomic, Flible, etc can be added or substituted in. In addition, it makes it FAST to add and tear down these units.

Re: Fuck mdsolar

[RespekMyAthorati]

It would still cost fucking billions to build, and the taxpayer would have to underwrite it since no private insurance company would touch it.

Re: Fuck mdsolar

[Anonymous Coward]

mdsolar is presenting a nuclear weapons processing facility incident and claiming it's a nuclear power incident.
This is as honest as referring to a mass shooting as proof of how dangerous fireworks are.

Re:Fuck mdsolar

[Coren22]

Yes, yes I would.

What Envirmental Wacko caused it?

[TimSSG]

From the link "The problem was traced to material — actual kitty litter — used to blot up liquids in sealed drums. Lab officials had decided to substitute an organic material for a mineral one." Tim S.

Re:What Envirmental Wacko caused it?

[Anonymous Coward]

Speaking as an engineer, the number of headaches caused by people tasked with implementation making "equivalent" substitutions are outrageous. Some bean counter second guesses a line item somewhere, the inventory isn't on-hand to fulfill a customer need so the people who suffer negative consequences if the job isn't out the door decide to improvise.

Maybe the purchasing agent couldn't buy the specified cat litter because it was back-ordered. It doesn't really matter. When you have unqualified individuals making deviations from the prescribed procedure: that is a management failure.

Re:What Envirmental Wacko caused it?

[Bryan Ischo]

Designing a system easy enough to be catastrophically broken by a single seemingly harmless substitution is a big problem too.

I have no problem with nuclear power but fragile processes are not good for anyone.

Re:What Envirmental Wacko caused it?

[Anonymous Coward]

"Seemingly harmless" depends a lot on the ignorance of the ones making the substitution. After all, bleach is a good cleaner as is ammonia. I'm mostly out of bleach and the store only had ammonia so lets mix the two!

Re:What Envirmental Wacko caused it?

[Sarten-X]

The system itself worked correctly, as the containment system properly contained the leak. The problem is that the "seemingly harmless" substitution wouldn't have appeared harmless to an engineer who knew what was going on, but the person who made the substitution didn't understand the requirements for the part he was substituting.

When I worked on government computers, I often saw similar problems. The developers would specify certain hardware requirements, but over the life of a program, as equipment went obsolete, other people would make substitutions based on the specs of the old part. After a few years, the same software was running on high-end components, at only about 1% utilization. Nobody ever wanted to be the guy who made the system less capable, even though the lower-end hardware would have cost far less.

Re:What Envirmental Wacko caused it?

[Anonymous Coward]

Why is why those cleaning products have labels on them that say "do not mix with any other cleaning product".

And why this nuclear waste disposal thing using kitty litter should have had written somewhere "do not substitute this kitty litter for any other brand or type, under pain of death".

Re:What Envirmental Wacko caused it?

[tlambert]

Why is why those cleaning products have labels on them that say "do not mix with any other cleaning product".

I believe the thinking (such as it is) goes something like:

"They're just trying to get you to not buy a competing product, once you've bought theirs... they are both cleaners, right?"

Re:What Envirmental Wacko caused it?

[mdsolar]

So, how many more mistakes before there is a release into the environment?

Re:What Envirmental Wacko caused it?

[AmiMoJo]

Interesting that you would assume the word "organic" means it must have been done for environmental reasons. It wasn't.

This was just a case of cost-cutting. Cat litter is cheaper than the stuff they were supposed to use and seemed to do the same job. They just didn't realize that it created a hazard.

This is the fundamental problem with nuclear. You can try to build it to be as safe as possible, but it still has to be operated by idiots for 60+ years.

Re:What Envirmental Wacko caused it?

[DerekLyons]

The system itself worked correctly, as the containment system properly contained the leak.

o.0 A huge chunk of the storage facility is contaminated because a supposedly stable drum exploded - no, the system emphatically did not work correctly. It was never supposed to blow up in the first place.

Re:What Envirmental Wacko caused it?

[sjames]

No, the problem is a management that guesses that a substitution might be harmless. There is no way to design around that other than just saying anyone who makes an unauthorized substitution will lose a finger at least.

In this case, it shouldn't have been that hard to guess that organic matter wouldn't make a good substitution for inorganic clay.

Re:What Envirmental Wacko caused it?

[serviscope_minor]

It's nested fail safes. The drum was never supposed to blow. But we knew that and if "never supposed to" meant "never" then you could just stack the drums on the surface. The point of digging it into a salt mine was that if the drum did happen to blow, it would be contained. It did and it was.

It's like the difference between TMI and Chernobyl. TMI was built with nested failsafes. In fact the design assumed that the core would melt down and was designed to dilute the core to noncriticality, then spread out the molten stuff to cool it so it would not break out of the containment. That happened and that's why there was almost no external contamination.

Re:What Envirmental Wacko caused it?

[serviscope_minor]

So, how many more mistakes before there is a release into the environment?

What would you suggest they do? Build a giant solar death ray in the 1950s instead?

Re:What Envirmental Wacko caused it?

[joe_frisch]

The really interesting question is who made the substitution and why. There is a lot of pressure to use COTS (commercial off the shelf) products to save money. Was this a case where the commercial products had the same or very similar names but were completely different? Was this someone trying to save money but not doing a proper review? Was it simply a blunder: accidentally ordering the wrong product?

Should certified "nuclear clean up absorbent powder" rather than kitty litter have been used in the first place (at spectacularly higher cost).

There is a LOT of review of purchasing in these organizations, and here it failed. Its very important to know why.

Re:What Envirmental Wacko caused it?

[Anonymous Coward]

mod parent down to oblivion for idiocy

Re:What Envirmental Wacko caused it?

[Anonymous Coward]

nuclear waste disposal thing using kitty litter

Dat cat's shit iz nuclear!

Re:What Envirmental Wacko caused it?

[Anonymous Coward]

What would you suggest they do? Build a giant solar death ray in the 1950s instead?

That would be cool.

Re:What Envirmental Wacko caused it?

[Anonymous Coward]

"The problem was traced to material — actual kitty litter — used to blot up liquids in sealed drums"

CATS: All your plutonium are belong to us.

Re:What Envirmental Wacko caused it?

[bluefoxlucid]

Try substituting ethanol for methanol in your whiskey. They're both alcohol...

Re:What Envirmental Wacko caused it?

[bluefoxlucid]

No, wrong. It's nuclear waste disposal. It has a precise set of instructions and materials. Do not substitute anything for anything else without involving a nuclear waste disposal engineer. Don't even consider a different type of *steel* for the barrels--steel made from ore sourced from a different mine can have a much different chemical composition, including different levels of vanadium or copper or whatnot, so only used the approved material from the approved manufacturer operating on approved quality controls.

Re:What Envirmental Wacko caused it?

[angel'o'sphere]

The thinking of whom? The cleaning product makers or the customers who mix them anyway?

Re:What Envirmental Wacko caused it?

[Anonymous Coward]

It saw the word "organic" and was triggered, poor thing.

Re:What Envirmental Wacko caused it?

[MachineShedFred]

Clearly all kitty litter bags should now have a warning label: "Warning: usage of this product for the cleanup of liquid radioactive waste may result in release of gases that may overpressurize any containment vessel."

That would have solved this!

Re:What Envirmental Wacko caused it?

[bluefoxlucid]

A multi-cat household can be hard on even the toughest kitty litter; so when your litterbox needs a change, go for the Nuclear Option. Containment 100% silica-based kitty litter can handle even the toughest jobs, whether you're managing a two-cat household or a nuclear waste disposal site.

Containment 100% silica-based kitty litter: don't let your waste go nuclear.

Re:What Envirmental Wacko caused it?

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, it's mdsolar! He doesn't offer solutions to problems, he just points out the problems with other solutions and downplays any positives while completely ignoring any downsides to his solution of choice.

Wait, these problems already exist and aren't going anywhere unless we do something about them? Then clearly that's something to yell "nyaah nyaah!" about and point out even the slightest example of when something goes wrong, even though doing nothing about it would be far more wrong, and would also be pointed out as evidence of "nuclear bad." Never mind that this article, and not a single atom of the nuclear waste it talks about has anything to do with commercial energy generation, and it's all output from decades of nuclear weapons programs and the associated research at the DoE labs around the nation.

But those are facts that don't play with mdsolar's narrative of choice, so they will be conveniently omitted or forgotten. Because "nuclear bad."

Re:What Envirmental Wacko caused it?

[Anonymous Coward]

This was cased by an Idiot trying to be green. This was not a cost saving issue.
The original absorbent was dried clay. Old school Kitty litter.
Someone decide that All natural would be greener. (not understanding the original stuff was dirt)
They passed it up the chain, and no one said no, or even looked in to it.
Apparently organics are more reactive then clay. Who Knew?

Re:What Envirmental Wacko caused it?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm glad I didn't have a mouthful of coffee when I read this.

Re:What Envirmental Wacko caused it?

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't you mean that the other way around?

Re:What Envirmental Wacko caused it?

[Anonymous Coward]

You must be new here. Management failures are de rigueur. Corruption, greed, cutting corners, office politics, kickbacks, you-name-it, it's there. Even in the military, in case you haven't noticed-- or maybe, *especially* in the military, depending on who you talk to. We've seen it happen in the management of oil refinement and handling as well, and in the management of pretty much any human enterprise. With some however, the consequences are greater than with others. And this is EXACTLY why nuclear power is too risky-- humans are fallible and screwups happen, and when they do, you see an o-ring failure on a space shuttle launch, nuclear meltdowns, toxic releases and explosions. While it is theoretically possible to have safe nuclear power, as long as humans are involved in the process, the practicality of it is pretty awful, as is its record. Look at the history of nuclear disasters, and recognize humans are just too incompetent to be trusted to keep us safe from the hazards. As has been pointed out many times, the fact "we haven't had a problem yet" is too often used to argue that the system is sufficiently designed for safety-- "pushing your luck" is not a useful metric for safety.

Re:What Envirmental Wacko caused it?

[Anonymous Coward]

Engineers die off, and new replacements may end up thinking things are more stable than they are. The reasons for things may be forgotten, and the impact of minor changes obscured. That's how human management works-- do we really want to trust that they can keep nuclear power under control? Has history shown they've done so, so far?

Re:What Envirmental Wacko caused it?

[K. S. Kyosuke]

Well, bentonite is the "certified nuclear clean up absorbent powder" that also gets used as kitty litter. It's generally not the other way round.

Re:What Envirmental Wacko caused it?

[Anonymous Coward]

The problem was that the spec sheet use to to say "inorganic" and at some point the word was incorrectly changed to "organic" kitty litter. Two letters deleted caused this mess. It was not the technicians substituting organic - the spec sheet was changed (by mistake)

Re:What Envirmental Wacko caused it?

[doom]

This is the fundamental problem with nuclear. You can try to build it to be as safe as possible, but it still has to be operated by idiots for 60+ years.

Nah, the actual trouble with nuclear power is there are a lot of alarmist idiots who've convinced a bunch of other idiots that radioactivity is so horrible, horrible that absolute perfection is necessary to deal with it, and since perfection is impoosible, QED.

Thought experiment: if this were a plane crash caused by substituting the wrong kind of bolts, what would the result be? (1) It would actually kill people, not just cost a bunch of money; (2) No one would claim it meant we should ban airplanes forever.

Re:What Envirmental Wacko caused it?

[oneiros27]

Actually, they were following instructions. There were a few articles shortly after the incident that said that LANL had updated their procedures documentation, and somehow the LANL documentation specified 'organic' instead of 'inorganic':

From http://www.santafenewmexican.c...

A typographical error in a revision to a LANL policy manual for repackaging waste led to a wholesale shift from clay litter to the wheat-based variety.

The revision, approved by LANL, took effect Aug. 1, 2012, mere days after the governor's celebratory visit to Los Alamos, and explicitly directed waste packagers at the lab to "ENSURE an organic absorbent (kitty litter) is added to the waste" when packaging drums of nitrate salt.

"Does it seem strange that the procedure was revised to specifically require organic kitty litter to process nitrate salt drums?" Freeman, Nuclear Waste Partnership's chief nuclear engineer at WIPP, asked a colleague in a May 28 email.

Freeman went on to echo some of the possible reasons for the change bandied about in earlier emails, such as the off-putting dust or perfumed scents characteristic of clay litter. But his colleague, Mark Pearcy, a member of the team that reviews waste to ensure it is acceptable to be stored at WIPP, offered a surprising explanation.

"General consensus is that the 'organic' designation was a typo that wasn't caught," he wrote, implying that the directions should have called for inorganic litter.

Officials at LANL declined to comment about whether a typographical error led to the switch to organic kitty litter.

Re:What Envirmental Wacko caused it?

[Lost Race]

It was a typo. Spec called for "inorganic" kitty litter" and a spec revision accidentally changed it to "organic". Nobody had any reason for changing it, neither cost-cutting nor green-washing. It was just a dumb accident.

Re:What Envirmental Wacko caused it?

[Anonymous Coward]

Then you seriously don't want to look too hard at the pharmaceutical and medical device industries. The risk of "equivalent substitution" is so substantial that the FDA has to approve each one before it goes to market.

Re:What Envirmental Wacko caused it?

[Coren22]

The problem was the use of non clay based cat litter. The exact clay based cat litter is proscribed because it won't react with the waste, but will absorb it and contain it.

Re:What Envirmental Wacko caused it?

[RockDoctor]

My, what an unforeseeable problem. nobody could possibly have predicted this could happen in 2014.

Unless, of course, they'd had any involvement with chemical plant safety since about 1990, which was the first time I encountered exactly this problem with "oil absorbent" material reacting with a chemical to catalyse an exothermic reaction. And a literature search then (which I did by taking the bus to the university library and persuading a friend who worked there to let me use a terminal and his log in details. Work had fax machines, but no email or any other internet access.) revealed the problem to have been known for decades - including in the nuclear industry.

Yawn. no surprise. Makes work for people.

Re:What Envirmental Wacko caused it?

[Agripa]

Why is why those cleaning products have labels on them that say "do not mix with any other cleaning product".

They used to at least have to list active and inactive ingredients in rough order of composition but over the past decade, the government must have accepted a bribe because that is no longer a requirement. This makes it difficult to find for instance an acidic bathroom cleaner for dealing with hard water deposits.

Re:What Envirmental Wacko caused it?

[MercTech]

The engineer who wrote the procedure wrote "kitty litter" when he should have used the actual specification of "sintered diatomacious clay" - aka, the cheap old kitty litter with no additives.
            The way I heard it, someone in procurement read "kitty litter" and ordered "recycled cellulose kitty litter with chlorophyll to reduce odor". The kitty litter outgassed chlorine in the sealed drums. The waste out-gases hydrogen. Back in WWII, the Germans filled torpedoes with a mix of hydrogen and chlorine and it was known as "blasting gas". Big boom and hydrochloric acid as the end product. (Anecdote from a worker at WIPP)
        Anyway, the take away lesson is to specify exactly what you want and don't rely on jargon. The actual cleanup of the tunnel and the ventilation system probably won't be that expensive but the multi billion dollar budget is 90% for studying the problem and deciding how to proceed. HEPA Ventilation, containment, and respirators for certain.

Re:What Envirmental Wacko caused it?

[MercTech]

Two miles down in a salt dome is where it belongs. Trust me, you don't want the weapons waste sitting where it can blow in the wind or sitting in decaying buildings that were closed up in 1989 when the Berlin Wall fell.
              Perception is NOT reality. After decades of cleaning up Uncle Sugar's waste; it gets tiresome dealing with the resistance on the part of the general public to putting hazardous waste into a safe condition.

Re:What Envirmental Wacko caused it?

[mdsolar]

No oops this time.

Reminds me of a crazy, hot girlfriend

[millertym]

Nuclear energy is the crazy hot girlfriend of energy. She may be nice, kind, and wonderful for days, months, or years - maybe decades. But someday, somehow, she's going to go berserk on you. 100% chance. And cleaning up the mess at that point will leave you with a very long term scar.

Re:Reminds me of a crazy, hot girlfriend

[bloodhawk]

only if you mistreat or neglect her, otherwise she is far more stable and certainly environmentally cleaner than just about any other option currently available.

Re:Reminds me of a crazy, hot girlfriend

[youngone]

Also she looks great in a short skirt. I might be thinking of someone else.

Re:Reminds me of a crazy, hot girlfriend

[NotInHere]

You get an economic benefit from mistreating and neglecting her. If she freaks out, you don't have to pay for the outcome, the federals do. Just look at japan, where tepco now got money from the government to clean up the fukushima mess. And in this case, the feds have to pay as well.

So if there is no consequence to fear, why shouldn't you mistreat and neglect her?

Re:Reminds me of a crazy, hot girlfriend

[Anonymous Coward]

still far safer, cleaner, more efficient and better than coal, gas, wind, solar etc etc.

Re:Reminds me of a crazy, hot girlfriend

[Anonymous Coward]

> She may be nice, kind, and wonderful for days, months, or years - maybe decades. But someday, somehow, she's going to go berserk on you.

Decades? Keep. That's indistinguishable from a normal woman, overall. My experience is more like "months". Decades is a clear win.

Re:Reminds me of a crazy, hot girlfriend

[Falos]

OP's mom.

*holds up hand for high-five*

No one? No one? Whatever, worth it.

Re:Reminds me of a crazy, hot girlfriend

[Procrasti]

> still far safer, cleaner, more efficient and better than coal, gas, wind, solar etc etc.

This got voted -1, but statistically, nuclear actually does cause the lowest number of deaths per MWh energy produced.

http://www.nextbigfuture.com/2...

There really is nothing safer than nuclear, and the facts back this up. Still, when did /. moderation ever have anything to do with reality?

Re:Reminds me of a crazy, hot girlfriend

[Anonymous Coward]

hardly, TEPCO isn't making money from the disaster and this plant was not built/designed by them, it was done for them by general general electric.

Re:Reminds me of a crazy, hot girlfriend

[bloodhawk]

Fukishima suffered from a design flaw not neglect. They simply did not understand the true scale that a large tsunami could reach.

Re:Reminds me of a crazy, hot girlfriend

[tlambert]

Nuclear energy is the crazy hot girlfriend of energy. She may be nice, kind, and wonderful for days, months, or years - maybe decades. But someday, somehow, she's going to go berserk on you. 100% chance.

She wouldn't have gone off on you, if you hadn't also been porking Coal, Oil, Solar, and now that bitch Wind!

Re:Reminds me of a crazy, hot girlfriend

[tlambert]

Masataka Shimizu, president and CEO of TEPCO, is now an executive director at Fuji Oil.

Coincidence?

Re:Reminds me of a crazy, hot girlfriend

[Khyber]

Your mom was worth more. :)

Re:Reminds me of a crazy, hot girlfriend

[Anonymous Coward]

As a foreign stockholder I expect them to mistreat and neglect the bitch. Bring it OOOON BITCHES!!!

Re:Reminds me of a crazy, hot girlfriend

[AmiMoJo]

Deaths per MWh is a really bad metric though. It ignores the vast economic damage, the loss of valuable land, the social ramifications of losing whole towns and communities. The people who were evacuated from the area around Fukushima may still be alive, but their lives were blighted by what happened and they are still struggling to get compensation for what they have lost.

Even once cleaned up, those towns and communities won't just magically appear again. A lot of people moved away permanently, found new jobs. After years of decay and unrepaired earthquake damage many of the buildings need to be torn down and replaced, but the insurance money and compensation payouts have already been spent elsewhere setting up new homes and businesses. That's why many of the residents are pushing for the full value of their homes and property - if TEPCO can argue that repairs are cheaper, they will be left with largely worthless buildings that no-one wants in a place with no economic prospects.

Re:Reminds me of a crazy, hot girlfriend

[Mr D from 63]

There was no design flaw in the reactor itself, it was not designed to be suddenly deluged nor should it have been...It was improperly built in a location where it could be hit by a tsunami. But this was not a nuclear specific error, as many towns were also built where they could be hit by a tsunami. The latter was truly tragic as many lives were lost, many homes destroy. That is the real disaster that few care to talk about.

Re:Reminds me of a crazy, hot girlfriend

[Anonymous Coward]

only if you mistreat or neglect her, otherwise she is far more stable and certainly environmentally cleaner than just about any other option currently available.

You've not been with many hot chicks, have you.

Re:Reminds me of a crazy, hot girlfriend

[Anonymous Coward]

Funny how *every* time we have a major incident in the nuclear power business it because of "design flaws". One could be forgiven for believing it's impossible to design a flawless nuclear reactor.

Maybe we should take a hint, eh? But no worries, much like Wiley Coyote, we'll get it right NEXT time.

Re:Reminds me of a crazy, hot girlfriend

[debrain]

> Nuclear energy is the crazy hot girlfriend of energy. She may be nice, kind, and wonderful for days, months, or years - maybe decades. But someday, somehow, she's going to go berserk on you. 100% chance. And cleaning up the mess at that point will leave you with a very long term scar.

Coal is the dysfunctional fat chick that'll take anyone for a ride, but eventually comes knocking on your door pregnant and tagging along a few babies, named Katrina, Sandy, Ike, .... Keep banging coal and whatever life you had before will end up being over.

Re:Reminds me of a crazy, hot girlfriend

[drinkypoo]

This got voted -1, but statistically, nuclear actually does cause the lowest number of deaths per MWh energy produced.

Because nuclear leaves waste that persists for thousands of years, you don't get to determine how many deaths nuclear power causes for thousands of years. You can only determine how many it's caused so far. There's plenty of time for inadequate waste management practices to kill more people.

Re:Reminds me of a crazy, hot girlfriend

[bluefoxlucid]

In economies, you expand population until you end up with the haves and the have-nots. 40% of the American workforce turns over every year, and there are job postings everywhere; the 5% unemployed have 6 months of unemployment insurance before they run out, and our unemployment system thus relies on some of that 40% turn-over ending up unemployed as someone else snaps up their job and escapes the jaws of economic death.

A nuclear accident wobbles your economy for sure. Some source of production is gone, thus a chunk of wealth vanishes. A strong economy can recover from this in short years, rather than decades; some of the people whose lives and livelihoods were destroyed will get back on their feet, others will take the place of some other poor sod who got their place in society instead. Who are you to judge whether the terminally-poor should remain that way or have his chance? Either decision throws somebody into the gutter to fight with the rats.

The base problem here (unemployment is a fact of economics) is why we need a universal social security; and it also blunts the concern about ruined lives and lost jobs, because the void fills back in. You can claim it's unfair--it's no fun to be working, then not working, then remain not working because someone else got your job--but what is fairness? There are 3 people and 2 jobs, and this situation is entirely unresolvable by any means; is it fair that one person must be condemned to eternal poverty, or fair that he get his chance now and then at the expense of someone else?

Nuclear power provides strong value to society in terms of dense power production, low environmental impact, and a reduction of lives lost. Everyone--rich and poor--enjoys this benefit; and a nuclear powerplant exports energy in a wide geographical area, bringing purchasing power to the town, raising the average income class, lowering crime, and generally making everyone's lives better. It's like living in Cupertino with Apple bringing $2 billion in employee salaries to that tiny little scrap of a town. If you live in such wealth while others live in poverty, is it fair to make you accept the risk that, one day, your life might get uprooted, and one of those others might jump into your place before you can get back on your feet? Does privilege mean you can demand your place be held and rebuilt for you?

Re:Reminds me of a crazy, hot girlfriend

[bluefoxlucid]

Hey, hey, hold on now. Wind just blows a lot; she can't be too upset about that.

Re:Reminds me of a crazy, hot girlfriend

[Anonymous Coward]

I want to see where those numbers come from, they'd be far too easy to cook up. For a death to count as a coal death what are the criteria? If someone dies mining coal is that a coal-related death? If they cut someone open and find black lungs covered in coal dust is that a coal-related death?

Meanwhile if someone gets crushed in a uranium mine it's a uranium-mining-related death, not a nuclear death. If someone who lived next door to a reactor turns up on a slab riddled with tumors it's a cancer-related death, not a nuclear death. If someone dives into a cooling pool and gets found 2 weeks later on the bottom of the pool it's a drowning, not a nuclear death. Heck, if someone falls into a drum of waste at a reprocessing facility then it's technically not a problem with nuclear-power - reprocessing facilities don't produce power.

See how easy that is? You can't cut the body open and see the "nuclears", you can't count the "nuclears" and you can't put "yeah, he died from the nuclears" on the death certificate.

Depending on who you believe the Chernobyl death toll ranges from 31 to 1,000,000. Heck, the moment the thing blew up Russia immediately went into cover-up mode because they felt embarrassed being caught with their pants down (remember: the Chernobyl disaster was revealed by Sweden). The fact is no-one dies from nuclear because we stopped counting the deaths - because it got too expensive and we felt embarrassed.

Re:Reminds me of a crazy, hot girlfriend

[nickersonm]

If it persists for thousands of years, it's not that dangerous.

Re:Reminds me of a crazy, hot girlfriend

[MachineShedFred]

Yeah, except nowhere in this article is anything about nuclear power actually mentioned. This article, and storage facility, are for the waste coming from nuclear weapons production and research.

I guess that's "nuclear energy" in a way, but commercial nuclear energy generation has vastly different waste outputs, with completely different handling procedures. For example, you usually don't have liquid radioactive waste that needs blotting up and stored in barrels, because you haven't dissolved the nuclear material in nitric acid in order to extract the remaining plutonium and uranium from all the other crap you don't want.

Re: Reminds me of a crazy, hot girlfriend

[WindBourne]

No, it doesn't. It does at the moment, but if we use the 'waste' in gen 4 reactors, not only do we not mine more, but, the 5% remaining is safe in 200 years.

Re:Reminds me of a crazy, hot girlfriend

[MachineShedFred]

Not saying you are wrong, but let's put the same metrics to use on other energy sources: how much economic damage, loss of valuable land, and social ramifications of losing entire cities to sea level rise from the continued emission of burning oil and coal?

Every source of energy has it's costs. With properly run nuclear*, you get an amount of waste that is very dangerous, but concentrated and manageable. With fossil fuels, you get less dangerous waste, dispersed into the atmosphere until it causes global catastrophe. With solar, you get mine tailings from producing the panels. With wind, you get localized weather changes, bird deaths, low frequency noise pollution. With hydroelectric, you get fish kills, flooding of thousands of acres of land into a reservoir. Etc. etc. And none of them are perfect for 100% of our needs.

So let's go with the least harm principle, and get the fuck off fossil fuels as fast as possible, by whatever means we have possible today, instead of waiting for what might be tomorrow while we still spew gigatons of shit into the air.

* yes, it's debatable if this has ever existed. The United States Navy makes a compelling argument with running many dozens of reactors over the last 60+ years with zero incidents. Commercial power plants make a compelling counter-argument with their long list of low-level fuck-ups, and a few very high-profile fuck-ups.

Re: Reminds me of a crazy, hot girlfriend

[WindBourne]

No, it was not by GE. Tepco was told to add generators, just like we have in America. Their management cut corners and did not put it there counting on being able to get energy from the grid.

Re:Reminds me of a crazy, hot girlfriend

[Anonymous Coward]

Deaths per MWh is a really bad metric though. It ignores the vast economic damage, the loss of valuable land, the social ramifications of losing whole towns and communities. The people who were evacuated from the area around Fukushima may still be alive, but their lives were blighted by what happened and they are still struggling to get compensation for what they have lost.

If you're complaining about the loss of valuable land, a nuclear power only uses up a ton of land when a serious accident occurs.

Solar and wind uses a lot of land by design.

Re:Reminds me of a crazy, hot girlfriend

[afidel]

Uh, this facility is about cleaning up nuclear weapons and weapon research materials, nothing to do with nuclear power so of course the feds have to pick up the cost, who else is going to?

Re:Reminds me of a crazy, hot girlfriend

[Anonymous Coward]

As opposed to global warming and famine that will be caused by fossil fuels - how many deaths is that going to cause? How many deaths has it already caused through more powerful storms and flooding?

Re:Reminds me of a crazy, hot girlfriend

[MachineShedFred]

Right. If only those assholes in the 1950s would have designed a perfect system without the benefit of 60 years of hindsight and iterative process improvement, and without the 60 years of improved understanding of nuclear physics, and 60 years of improved tools. You know, like computers actually existing now instead of doing the whole fucking thing on blue paper and chalkboards with a slide rule.

What a bunch of assholes.

Re:Reminds me of a crazy, hot girlfriend

[Anonymous Coward]

If coal causes hurricanes, and China is building coal plants like there's no tomorrow, why has there been an historic lull in hurricanes?
Not just ones hitting populated areas, but overall.
You're making climate changers look bad.

Re:Reminds me of a crazy, hot girlfriend

[AmiMoJo]

Not saying you are wrong, but let's put the same metrics to use on other energy sources: how much economic damage, loss of valuable land, and social ramifications of losing entire cities to sea level rise from the continued emission of burning oil and coal?

I fully agree that would be a disaster. That's why I'm advocating renewables as an alternative.

Re:Reminds me of a crazy, hot girlfriend

[Chas]

Kinda like the mine fire in Centralia, PA right?

A mine fire that's been burning roughly 53 years and could burn at least another 250.

Meanwhile, the byproducts of that fire are going up into the atmosphere with zero filtration.

Town was evacuated and claimed via Eminent Domain. Nobody's going back there any time in the foreseeable future.

So stop pretending that this is a problem unique to nuclear power.

Re:Reminds me of a crazy, hot girlfriend

[Anonymous Coward]

http://www.ucsusa.org/clean_energy/our-energy-choices/renewable-energy/environmental-impacts-hydroelectric-power.html#bf-toc-0
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_Gorges_Dam#Relocation_of_residents

Re: Reminds me of a crazy, hot girlfriend

[Anonymous Coward]

You'd lose far more land deploying equivalent capacity solar.

Re:Reminds me of a crazy, hot girlfriend

[Chas]

You DO understand that how long something is radioactive for is inversely proportional to how radioactive it is.

Stuff that's really, seriously virulently radioactive? The stuff is really REALLY "hot" and decays down quickly.

The stuff that takes tens or hundreds of thousands of years to cook down? You could bask in it pretty much every day and your yearly exposure levels would barely blip up.

Part of the reason many of these wastes are in storage is they're CHEMICALLY reactive or are dangerous as a biological contaminant. (You can actually hold a chunk of plutonium. But if you start accumulating it in your body, you have a problem.)

Re:Reminds me of a crazy, hot girlfriend

[Chas]

Oh. No. The Japanese DID understand.

The engineers had recommended bolstering the wall height to deal with larger waves.

TEPCO just stuffed their fingers in their ears and cheaped out.

Re: Reminds me of a crazy, hot girlfriend

[Anonymous Coward]

Somehow, I don't think saying "It was just a blow job" is going to help much.

Re:Reminds me of a crazy, hot girlfriend

[AmiMoJo]

Who proposed mines as the alternative to nuclear power?

Re:Reminds me of a crazy, hot girlfriend

[Anonymous Coward]

And coal does not destroy big chunks of valuable land?
Oil-fields does not destroy big chunks of valuable land?
Hydropower does not destroy big chunks of valuable land?

Re:Reminds me of a crazy, hot girlfriend

[Anonymous Coward]

You don't get it, do you?

Nuclear power is inherently devastating. We can't afford to keep laying waste to vast expanses of land and killing thousands of people, potentially millions in the vain hope that some day, some time, we will come up with a design that can't be fucked up, by arrogance, ignorance or fully intentionally. You do know what they say about idiots and supposedly idiot proof things, right?

The only reason we have nuclear power today, is that people back in the 50's where ridiculously ignorant, optimistic and cavalier about the involved costs and risks[1], much like you, who just don't want to see the facts. Just the fact that you chose to respond with arrogance and "sarcasm" which neatly displays that you A) are an idiot, and B) don't really have any comeback, shows it all.

This is not an area of science that is suitable for trial and error. The cost and repercussions of failure is far too severe.

[1] Please google for some material from those days, "what will the future be like" stuff. You'll find all kinds of weird ideas, like "everyone is going to have a nuclear reactor in their basement" etc. And they were not joking. It's the genuine level of their ignorance. Half the time you don't know whether to laugh or shit your pants. OTOH, given your display so far, I guess I shouldn't tell you this; I can totally see a new post coming about how "paranoia killed all these great ideas!","I want a nuclear car!"

Re: Reminds me of a crazy, hot girlfriend

[Anonymous Coward]

There were generators but they were destroyed by the tsunami, and mobile backups could not reach the site due to significant road damage.

Re:Reminds me of a crazy, hot girlfriend

[Anonymous Coward]

> There really is nothing safer than nuclear, and the facts back this up. Still, when did /. moderation ever have anything to do with reality?

As much as the slashdot neckbeard nuclear power circlejerk likes to tout their reasoning power, this is a shallow emotional appeal.

The death toll not an important stastic. Probably cherry picked too, as I doubt it accounts for man-work-hours. Other power industries have higher deaths because they require more labor (Coal miners, oil workers, wind tower construction and maint, etc) - Nuclear power plants require not many people once they are up and running. There ardent many people in harm's way when something goes wrong because there's generally a bit of warning.

What's important is the economics of the industry - A nuclear accident costs billions to clean up, displaces a lot of people, and makes useful land useless for long periods of time, causing economic depression for anything near it.

A wind tower falls over and kills a worker. A tunnel colapses and kills a few dozen workers. - Everyone picks up an moves on in a few weeks or months. Fukashima will be a problem for the great great great grandchildren of today's citizens.

Nuclear power is dangerous because it's a scam, not because it kills people.

Re:Reminds me of a crazy, hot girlfriend

[Anonymous Coward]

You say that but president Obama is saying that CO2 produced by evil coal and the respiration of white people is causing the deaths of trillions of people every second. So how do you weigh and contrast the evils of Nuclear with the evils of Fossil fuels?

Re:Reminds me of a crazy, hot girlfriend

[Anonymous Coward]

You realized this is literally legal, textbook neglect right?

Re:Reminds me of a crazy, hot girlfriend

[Rakarra]

Not saying you are wrong, but let's put the same metrics to use on other energy sources: how much economic damage, loss of valuable land, and social ramifications of losing entire cities to sea level rise from the continued emission of burning oil and coal?

I fully agree that would be a disaster. That's why I'm advocating renewables as an alternative.

Renewables are great, but they don't yet generate baseload, always-on power, and we have yet to find the magic batteries that would allow wind/solar/etc to function as that. Hydro works, but that's not available everywhere. The baseload power generators at the moment are coal, gas, and nuclear.

Re:Reminds me of a crazy, hot girlfriend

[Chas]

No AmiMoJo, you were talking about losing whole towns.

How is something like the loss of the Fukushima Exclusion Zone or the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone QUALITATIVELY any different from what happened in Centralia, PA?

Re:Reminds me of a crazy, hot girlfriend

[Rakarra]

Nuclear power is inherently devastating. We can't afford to keep laying waste to vast expanses of land and killing thousands of people, potentially millions in the vain hope that some day, some time, we will come up with a design that can't be fucked up, by arrogance, ignorance or fully intentionally. You do know what they say about idiots and supposedly idiot proof things, right?

What do you mean, we can't "keep" doing that, when it's only happened once (Chernobyl) since the advent of nuclear power?

Re:Reminds me of a crazy, hot girlfriend

[AmiMoJo]

Why are you trying to compare these two things? What does one have to do with the other? Are you trying to say that on the scale of human misery Fukushima isn't so bad or something? Please explain.

Re:Reminds me of a crazy, hot girlfriend

[Anonymous Coward]

I am not the one who subscribes to the "keep trying" mentality. It's the poster I'm replying to, who insists that we've learned so much from our past (and extremely costly) mistakes, which we shouldn't have made in the first place if not for the factors I iterated above, that we now are completely fail safe.

So far though, we have had:

At least 11 direct military attacks on various nuclear plants around the world, with undisclosed consequences. (80, 81, 6 against the same target 84-87, and another two in 1991). I don't care about the reasons, or how effective it was, they deliberately attacked something which could lead to extensive radioactive contamination.

At least 8 well known and publicly listed acts of sabotage on nuclear power plants. Results unknown, but that's not the point, the point is that this is a very real risk.

At least two successful "cyber attacks" one of which was extremely successful, heard of stuxnet?

At least 16 complete or partial meltdowns, luckily most of them minor, but that's just that, "luckily".

We are playing with fire and have been badly burned more than once, and Mr Happy-Go-Lucky says "we're fine".
That's what I mean.

If you really think Chernobyl was the only bad thing that ever happened, please go read here and here.

Re: Reminds me of a crazy, hot girlfriend

[WindBourne]

simple helicopters would have done the trick. The issue is that the management did not plan on this and simply let this go.

Re:Reminds me of a crazy, hot girlfriend

[Chas]

Basic English here.

What is the qualitative difference between a town that is abandoned due to nuclear fallout/waste and a town that's abandoned due to a coal mine fire underneath it?

Re:Reminds me of a crazy, hot girlfriend

[AmiMoJo]

I don't know, I haven't given it much thought. I mean, who cares, what is the point of comparing these things? They are both obviously pretty bad.

Re:Reminds me of a crazy, hot girlfriend

[Anonymous Coward]

Your mom was worth more. :)

We better get off moms because I just got off yours.

Re:Reminds me of a crazy, hot girlfriend

[drinkypoo]

You DO understand that how long something is radioactive for is inversely proportional to how radioactive it is.

You do understand that it's all bad if it's in your water

Re:Reminds me of a crazy, hot girlfriend

[Chas]

The thing is, YOU were talking about economic damage, loss of land, social ramifications, etc of flat out losing a town/community from a nuclear accident.

My point is that nuclear power isn't the only way to leave people bereft of a town, and that similar problems, along with historical examples, exist with regards to fossil fuel as well.

Now I DO agree with you that Fukushima residents should probably be reimbursed for the full, pre-accident value of their homes and belongings, as well as compensation for the damage done to their lives.

Re:Reminds me of a crazy, hot girlfriend

[AmiMoJo]

Okay, but I never said that nuclear disaster was the only way that kind of thing happens, which is why it seems odd that you would bring it up.

Re:Reminds me of a crazy, hot girlfriend

[Anonymous Coward]

>Deaths per MWh is a really bad metric though. It ignores the vast economic damage, the loss of valuable land, the social ramifications of losing whole towns and communities

A nuclear power plant takes only the space required to run it, plus the land to required for the factories that produce the materials to build the nuclear power plant (concrete factories, etc).

Solar panels require a vast industry that results in the loss of valuable land to giant factories building solar panels, and that loss is immediate and necessary to even build the first solar panel. The loss of land scales up directly with the number of solar panels required and is unavoidable. Plus the land required for the factories that produce the materials to build the solar panel factory.

I will say that we can ignore the concrete factories since both industries need them.

With nuclear power you have a very small amount of guaranteed land lost used to generate the power, much small than the factories required to output enough solar panels (and their replacements every 20 years) to generate an equal amount of power. You have a small and incredibly unlikely (but, on the scale of things, it can and does rarely happen) to lose much more land.

So, if we base this on the land loss argument, you have a choice of large guaranteed land loss with no likely further loss (solar), or a small guaranteed land loss with a very small chance of further land loss (nuclear). The obvious choice is nuclear from the land loss standpoint, because you guarantee a small land loss, with only a small change of a large loss vs. guaranteed large loss of land.

Don't believe me that China loses land for factories in the same way that nuclear power (when things go wrong) destroys what is on the nearby land? How do you think Shenzhen appeared?

Re:Reminds me of a crazy, hot girlfriend

[Agripa]

Right. If only those assholes in the 1950s would have designed a perfect system without the benefit of 60 years of hindsight and iterative process improvement, and without the 60 years of improved understanding of nuclear physics, and 60 years of improved tools. You know, like computers actually existing now instead of doing the whole fucking thing on blue paper and chalkboards with a slide rule.

Or if they had taken into account that the chance of failure of the individual backup power systems would not be independent for one of the major catastrophes they were suppose to design against.

The subprime mortgage crisis was caused by the same issue showing that 60 years of hindsight is not enough.

Re:Reminds me of a crazy, hot girlfriend

[Anonymous Coward]

Why do I have a feeling you're one of these guys that screams "LOOK AT THE SCIENCE" when it comes to climate change, but absolutely refuses to look at the science when it comes to nuclear physics?

As for your Chicken Little post, how many direct military attacks have there been against oil refineries, wells, and pipeline infrastructure?

How many acts of sabotage against the same?

You can wring your hands and cry all you want, but infrastructure is a target, no matter what it is. As far as accidents go, how many fertilizer plants have exploded? How many oil tanker trains have derailed in the last 5 years doing massive environmental damage, if not demolishing entire towns? How many coal mine fires are STILL burning today, after decades? But apparently instead of trying to do something to get off fossil fuels, you would rather accept the status quo of more toxic gases being spewed into the air at ever increasing rates.

Also, what you call "luckily" being minor, most people would call "successful intervention of safety systems." Containment worked. The shutdowns and safeties worked. The only reason Chernobyl went the way it did was because it was a HORRIBLE design, combined with technicians actively disabling the safeties from working for a 'test'. They went out of their way to do something very stupid on a reactor design that did nothing to prevent runaway reaction during a loss of coolant, and it resulted in something incredibly bad happening - something that is physically impossible at any reactor operating in the US.

See: positive void coefficient (Chernobyl / RBMK reactor design) versus negative void coefficient (all certified PWR reactors operating in the US). Don't just spread FUD. Learn something.

Harry Reid

[the_Bionic_lemming]

It's a damn good thing that Harry Reid and Obama was able to stop an investment in containing things like this - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... - or so I am told.

Me? I think it was stupid to stop it.

Re:Harry Reid

[dbIII]

Apparently Yucca Mountain is too wet for vitrified waste.
A far better location would be a bit west of that in California.

Re:Harry Reid

[Mr D from 63]

It was stupid to stop Yucca. But don't confuse cold war waste with spent fuel. Spent fuel is quite easy to safely store, nothing like the challenges posed by the nasty chemicals produced for defense, improperly stored from the start with no management plan. Solid spent fuel is quite inert by comparison.

Re: Harry Reid

[WindBourne]

Actually, the best place was in.west Texas. Guess why bush chose nv.

Re: Harry Reid

[the_Bionic_lemming]

Cheaper property.

Apples to Oranges

[atomicalgebra]

It should be noted that the waste was from nuclear weapons production not nuclear power. It is disingenuous to compare them because they are not the same.

Re:Apples to Oranges

[Black Parrot]

It should be noted that the waste was from nuclear weapons production not nuclear power.

That makes it hard to spot the News for Nerds angle. If it was power generation we could assume that someone used the electricity to charge a Tesla or run a computer mining bitcoin.

Re:Apples to Oranges

[angel'o'sphere]

Unless you do reprocessing.
Then you produce the exact same waste as in nuclear weapons programs.

Re:Apples to Oranges

[Anonymous Coward]

Unless you do reprocessing.
Then you produce the exact same waste as in nuclear weapons programs.

Absolutely false.

Re:Apples to Oranges

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, because the nuclear physicists involved in creating the nations nuclear deterrent absolutely were not nerds.

Re:Apples to Oranges

[Anonymous Coward]

How can you Parrot all that nonsense with a Black dick in your mouth, old man?

Just another externality

[Anonymous Coward]

.. and that's why they want Australia to become a nuclear waste dump.. ours for 25,000 years. Wonder if the cheques will still be coming in then?

No big deal

[Crashmarik]

No outside contamination and a badly written cost plus contract.

If that's as bad as it gets, it's pretty damn good.

It worked as planned

[Anonymous Coward]

The point was to have it some place away from people so when problems happen, they are contained. It was contained. It's not an "accident", it worked as planned. Just think what would have happened if this crap was still stored on-site instead of in this hole - problem would have been much much worse. Now think about all the stuff stored next to nuke plants instead of a hole in the ground in Nevada and wonder why we still haven't built that place.

Re:It worked as planned

[MachineShedFred]

Wow, that's a lot of hand waving you've got going on there. Nothing to see here, move along!

Except that it was an accident - they didn't plan to have a barrel of waste overpressurize and pop in a transport tunnel, shutting down the entire facility and requiring several billion dollars of cleanup, and the delay of other barrels of waste ready for transport to this location.

Sure, if this would have happened 15 years from now after everything they planned on putting down there was already down there and the place was sealed up - fine. But that was not the operating environment. They were lucky nobody was in the place when this happened, or they would be dead right now.

Oh, but right - it wasn't an accident because it wasn't the absolute worst case scenario. Sell crazy somewhere else, we're all stocked up. And I say this as someone who would be happy to see more nuclear power deployed, but also isn't a fucking lunatic.

Forget it, Jake, it's New Mexico

[PopeRatzo]

How did anyone even notice that there had been a nuclear accident in New Mexico? It already looks like Fallout 3. I'm pretty sure there are already feral ghouls and radscorpions there.

But anyway, any excuse to play this:

https://youtu.be/GFfaR3I--zI

It's all about cat litter.

[thexfile]

They used the wrong kitty litter in the drums causing the drum material to heat up and pop it's top.

All of a sudden

[Anonymous Coward]

Solar and wind power look like they have a much better ROI!

Re:All of a sudden

[sjames]

Any energy source has a better ROI than the nuclear weapons this waste came from.

Re: All of a sudden

[WindBourne]

No. Wind is not bad, but solar still does not approach nuclear for ROI.

Re:All of a sudden

[MachineShedFred]

Yeah, and all of a sudden that orange has a much better ROI than this club made out of a trunk from the orange tree.

Wait, two vastly different things are vastly different?

We need a solution...

[LynnwoodRooster]

If only we had a place to put the waste. Something that wasn't closed because of politics.

Need to compare on an energy generated basis

[Solandri]

The long-term cost of the mishap could top $2 billion, an amount roughly in the range of the cleanup after the 1979 partial meltdown at the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant in Pennsylvania.

Three Mile Island has been operating since 1974 generating on average 6645 GWh of electricity each year (yes it's still operating). At the U.S. average of 11.5 cents/kWh, that's $764.2 million/yr worth of electricity. Over it's 42 year history, that would be $32.1 billion worth of electricity generated by the plant.

So the $2 billion to clean up the partial meltdown of TMI reactor #2 amounted to an extra 11.5 * 2 / 32.1 = 0.72 cents per kWh.

Now consider that TMI was the only major commercial nuclear accident in U.S. history, and nuclear power in the U.S. has generated 24,196,167 GWh between 1971-2015. Then the $2 billion cost to clean up TMI works out to just 0.0083 cents per kWh.

Now consider that mdsolar's favored solar receives a subsidy of 96.8 cents per kWh. Or in other words, per unit of energy generated, the subsidy for solar is 11,711x more expensive than cleaning up TMI was.

Re:Need to compare on an energy generated basis

[Anonymous Coward]

Plz to be voting parent up.

Re:Need to compare on an energy generated basis

[kelv]

Can you honestly put your hand on your heart and say the true decommissioning costs of these nuclear plants are built into the prices today? I don't think anyone can. We have properly decommissioned and cleaned up so few nuclear plants that all of the cost estimates I see have a massive risk of cost overruns associated with them. The unfortunate feature of such a long-lived asset and then waste stream is that it's very hard to price in the true cost and the community end up wearing the risk if these are miscalculated. I don't claim malice or conspiracy, just that pricing long term costs is really, really hard.

Re:Need to compare on an energy generated basis

[AmiMoJo]

That's a bad comparison, not comparing like-for-like. Solar is still developing rapidly and the subsidies are falling away, so a fairer comparison would be with the money invested in developing nuclear from the early days. It's difficult to do because a lot of that investment was for military purposes, but it's still a very significant amount of money.

In any case, what really matters is the economics of the two options today. Nuclear is vastly more expensive than renewables in Europe, maybe someone else has figures for the US.

Re:Need to compare on an energy generated basis

[Anonymous Coward]

Plz to be voting parent up.

Slashdot keeps telling me I can't vote it any higher.

Re:Need to compare on an energy generated basis

[Drethon]

Can you honestly put your hand on your heart and say the true decommissioning costs of these solar plants are built into the prices today?

Yes nuke plants have a lot of nasty radioactive materials but solar panels and electronics have a lot of nasty materials of their own that most people ignore.

Re:Need to compare on an energy generated basis

[drinkypoo]

Can you honestly put your hand on your heart and say the true decommissioning costs of these solar plants are built into the prices today?

Of new ones? Yes. Modern panels are required to be recyclable. But even of old ones, it's not anywhere near as big a deal as it is to decommission a nuclear plant. It's not the same ballpark. It ain't even the same motherfuckin' sport.

Yes nuke plants have a lot of nasty radioactive materials but solar panels and electronics have a lot of nasty materials of their own that most people ignore.

Not a lot. A small amount. A tiny, minuscule amount compared to nuclear waste. Nice FUD though, troll.

Re:Need to compare on an energy generated basis

[Anonymous Coward]

Switching off a coal or gas plant might take up to a year of red tape. 1 year later it costs you no money.
Switching off a nuclear plant might take longer than the human race has left. 100 years later it's still costing you money.

Businesses don't even survive for these lifetimes so any notion of contract obligation won't work here. The only thing left that can pay is the public because they're the only thing left that has a stake in mitigating the effect (they have to keep surviving). The businesses have long since rebranded so they can go fuck up another eco-system.

Re: Need to compare on an energy generated basis

[WindBourne]

To be fair, nuke also received massive subsidies in the git-go . In addition, it needs a lot more, esp on gen 4 reactors.

Re:Need to compare on an energy generated basis

[Anonymous Coward]

We'll have to wait and see how retired wind and solar assets are handled. There is certainly zero funding set aside, and no apparent accountability in legal space. If federal subsidies reduce significantly over time, the incentive to abandon over replace becomes stronger.

Probably the biggest risk is offshore farms, where the brutal conditions can quickly accelerate decay that is not properly managed, and the additional cost of maintenance at sea becomes a factor. Will the higher output of sea based turbines be enough incentive to keep them going? That may depend on the relative cost of land based generation going forward.

Re: Need to compare on an energy generated basis

[WindBourne]

Oh, the money is there and should cover it, depending on management. But, even better would be to use that money to add SMRs like trans atomic and flible and then burn up the nuke waste that they have. In the mean time, the profits would be used to take down the old inefficient reactors.

Re:Need to compare on an energy generated basis

[Anonymous Coward]

Modern panels are required to be recyclable.

Are they recycled in theory, or in practice?

A tiny, minuscule amount compared to nuclear waste.

How tiny when we compare apples to apples? Google says nuclear produces 2,300 metric tons of nuclear fuel waste per year in the US. Those plants created 797 terawatt-hours of electricity. That's 0.003 grams per kwh.

What's the waste per kwh for solar?

Re:Need to compare on an energy generated basis

[Solandri]

Can you honestly put your hand on your heart and say the true decommissioning costs of these nuclear plants are built into the prices today?

Decommissioning costs are built into the price today. The NRC (Nuclear Regulatory Commission) requires utilities operating a nuclear plant to put aside a portion of their revenue into a decommissioning trust fund to cover decommissioning costs for the plants.

Re:Need to compare on an energy generated basis

[Anonymous Coward]

Connecticut Yankee seems to have been cleaned up pretty well.

Re:Need to compare on an energy generated basis

[Anonymous Coward]

You can recycle nuclear fuel, too, in a breeder reactor, but it doesn't mean people will let that happen.

As for the solar panels, they'll probably get shipped out to the "recyclers" in China as an act of greenwashing.

Go look up what really happens to that stuff. It's far less environmental than most people are led to believe.

Re:Need to compare on an energy generated basis

[Drethon]

Can you honestly put your hand on your heart and say the true decommissioning costs of these solar plants are built into the prices today?

Of new ones? Yes. Modern panels are required to be recyclable. But even of old ones, it's not anywhere near as big a deal as it is to decommission a nuclear plant. It's not the same ballpark. It ain't even the same motherfuckin' sport.

Yes nuke plants have a lot of nasty radioactive materials but solar panels and electronics have a lot of nasty materials of their own that most people ignore.

So how is the recycling currently going of these modern panels? Just as good as projections?

Not a lot. A small amount. A tiny, minuscule amount compared to nuclear waste. Nice FUD though, troll.

Re:Need to compare on an energy generated basis

[Anonymous Coward]

Why don't you ask the manufacturer of said modern solar panels, since they are the only ones likely to recycle a modern solar panel...? FTR it's in their own interest to make it reasonably easy, since the more material they can reuse from panels which for various reasons turn out to be substandard, the better - both for the environment and the bottom line.

Re:Need to compare on an energy generated basis

[Anonymous Coward]

You can just send the solar panels back as e-waste to a waste dumping site in rural China. Then it doesn't matter.

If only we did the same with nuclear waste...

Effective and amazing

[Victorytractors]

Woww.. this post was very effective and amazing and quit useful.

uranium runs out

[mdsolar]

Since uranium runs out, the subsidies for nuclear never tend to zero the way the do for solar which can produce energy without bound long after subsidies end. With the nuclear waste problem, subsidies for nuclear likely increase without bound. You've misunderstood the situation.

Re:uranium runs out

[Khyber]

Bitch your ass is subsidized by the fucking NUCLEAR FURNACE in the sky.

You claim to know of subsidies but refuse to acknowledge that your very own subsidy is provided by multiple things.

Re:uranium runs out

[tlambert]

Since uranium runs out, the subsidies for nuclear never tend to zero the way the do for solar which can produce energy without bound long after subsidies end.

Uranium doesn't "run out" if you use breeder reactors. They effectively have fuel indefinitely.

Solar panels are good for about 20 years. That's what the three major Solar sales companies in the Bay Area said, when they visited my house, and we talked about it. Sadly, on the lease program, Solar City was not willing to install updated panels when better panels became available: I was stuck with them for the "full lifetime of 20 years". Also on the lease programs, all three companies owned the panels on my roof, which means that they, not I, got the tax subsidy for them.

Basically: none of them produced quite enough power for both my house and my cottage tenant, they all wanted me to use PG&E as a battery, but admitted that the Nevada PUC decision to disallow net metering was probably going to happen soon in my area as well, since the electric companies really dislike net metering, and they agreed, that because the Smart Meters(tm) required to have Solar in the first place allowed differential rates of payment at different times of day, that I would likely get paid less during the day when my panels were generating electricity, and have to pay more in the mornings and evenings (when I was actually home from work, duh!).

Their suggestion was to put all my appliances on timers so that they ran while I was at work; I asked for their advice on where to buy a robot to move clothes from my washer to my dryer, so that I didn't have to run the dryer at night, either. They had no answer.

With the nuclear waste problem, subsidies for nuclear likely increase without bound. You've misunderstood the situation.

What nuclear waste situation? Oh. You mean the one Jimmy Carter created on April 7, 1977, when he ordered support cut for the Barnwell reprocessing plant or the construction of the Clinch River Breeder Reactor.

The one we could make "go away" pretty easily by reversing his executive order.

That nuclear waste problem, right?

Re:uranium runs out

[mdsolar]

Sounds like the worry is that solar is getting too cheap.

Re:uranium runs out

[Mike Van Pelt]

This.

Just reprocessing fuel from ordinary reactors and putting the unburnt plutonium and U235 back into new fuel rods greatly increases the years of proven reserves we have of uranium. Breeders ups it another order of magnitude. Beyond that, ion exchange processes have demonstrated extraction of uranium from sea water. This was demonstrated by the Japanese back in 1970something, at a cost of a few hundred dollars per pound. Not economical now, but at some point it would be.

Not to mention thorium. My CRC Handbook says that the available energy in the earth's crust from thorium is greater than uranium and all fossil fuels put together; thorium is about as common as lead.

Re:uranium runs out

[dunkelfalke]

Just how many operating commercial breeder reactors are there? Exactly, just two, both in Russia. There are other two, in India and Japan, but these are just research reactors. Even the reactors in Russia are still considered prototypes. Breeders are very difficult and expensive to build and operate. Solar power is cheap as dirt compared to the cost of operating a breeder reactor.

Re:uranium runs out

[thegarbz]

There's the whole heat death of the universe to worry about as well. It's just as much of a problem to is as uranium running out.

Re:uranium runs out

[Anonymous Coward]

you are a fucking retard

Re:uranium runs out

[Jzanu]

Ignore the idiots here, your position is the only legitimate one MDSolar. Meta-moderation will punish those abusing their allotment to bully you. In specific applications certain technologies like radioactive decay in space probes are more effective as they move away from the sun, but for Earth which simply rotates in a consistent manner the technology should be the focus of energy development for everything from Industry to daily use. Porsche has show it is possible to run a manufacturing facility from a large PV pylon, but for cost efficiency I believe the more traditional solar array and sterling engine approach is very promising. And of course, engineered algae production of biofuel on the biotechnology side, for those applications where liquid fuels can't be substituted by stored solutions - battery, or kinetic, etc.

Re:uranium runs out

[Anonymous Coward]

I love watching you roll out butthurt to these nuclear shilling morons, keep it up.

Re:uranium runs out

[AmiMoJo]

Most solar PV panels are guaranteed for 20-25 years, but should last much longer than the guarantee. We have 40 year old panels still going strong.

The problem with breeders and thorium reactors is that they are unproven on commercial scale. Every time anyone has attempted them, there have been many serious and expensive problems. Thus no-one wants to invest in such a risky proposition, except governments where cost isn't the primary motivating factor.

In any case, even the current reactors are way too expensive. In the UK the new one we want to build, or rather we want the French to build for us using Chinese investment money, is going to cost about twice as much per MWh as renewables the day it is switched on, and only get worse from there.

Re:uranium runs out

[Anonymous Coward]

What nuclear waste situation? Oh. You mean the one Jimmy Carter created on April 7, 1977, when he ordered support cut for the Barnwell reprocessing plant or the construction of the Clinch River Breeder Reactor.

The one we could make "go away" pretty easily by reversing his executive order.

That nuclear waste problem, right?

Yeah, the one Reagun recinded as soon as he got into office. You have a really selective argument there.

And Breeder reactors create *more* plutonium, that's why they are called "b.r.e.e.d.e.r.s". Carter's idea was a good one to prevent a plutonium economy because it is a bad idea so even though Reagun rescinded the Act you don't have a plutonium economy because it's a really bad idea.

Fortunately the people who matter when making these decisions are better informed.

Re:uranium runs out

[MrKaos]

Just how many operating commercial breeder reactors are there? Exactly, just two, both in Russia.

OMG, Russian? - We're All Gonna Die!

Re:uranium runs out

[QuantumPion]

Uranium will never run out. We have enough depleted uranium sitting around unused as by-product of enrichment process to power the entire earth for 10,000 years if utilized in fast reactors. That is just the uranium sitting around in barrels now. Not including all known uranium deposits, all unknown uranium deposits, uranium recoverable from spent fuel, and uranium distilled from seawater. And not to even mention thorium, which is much more abundant than uranium.

Re:uranium runs out

[Anonymous Coward]

god you are stupid

Re:uranium runs out

[debrain]

> Not to mention thorium. My CRC Handbook says that the available energy in the earth's crust from thorium is greater than uranium and all fossil fuels put together; thorium is about as common as lead.

The problem appears to be that you can't make plutonium from thorium.

And plutonium is the military industrial's buy in.

Otherwise it's just relatively inexpensive, safe energy. Clearly nobody actually wants that.

On point, the explosion in question was waste from nuclear weapons production.

Re: uranium runs out

[WindBourne]

Not if we will quit trying to buy this before we use it all up. Then the remaining 5 % would be cheap and trivial to bury. Best of all, by combining nuke with solar, we can solve the co2 issue.

Re:uranium runs out

[Anonymous Coward]

40 year old panels that are still working are in locations that have low irradiance and in a mild climate. There is no data that suggests todays' mass produced panels in areas of high solar insolation can last nearly that long. And warrantees are meaningless toward end of life. A 30 year warranty is basically worthless after 20 years.

Re: uranium runs out

[WindBourne]

Reprocessing it in that fashion is worthless. Far better to enact trans atomic and flible and burn up the waste.

Re: uranium runs out

[WindBourne]

Baloney. Ft st vrain ran fine except for the back end. The reactor was perfect.

Re: uranium runs out

[WindBourne]

Look, it is good that we have solar and wind. But when a volcano erupts, esp one like Yellowstone, solar/wind fail right when you need them. So, if we add geo-thermal, hydro, AND nukes to the mix, we then have decent baseload power.

Re:uranium runs out

[Anonymous Coward]

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

Re:uranium runs out

[Anonymous Coward]

Would you like to know how I know you don't know what you're talking about? It's that you say nobody uses breeder reactors. The US used a form of breeder reactor for a very long time. It's how we got our plutonium reserves. You are aware that plutonium isn't a naturally occurring element, right? It's a byproduct of nuclear fission. Certain methods of fission don't produce much plutonium, some methods do. The methods that do are called breeder reactors. The vast majority of the plutonium humans have ever used has come from breeder reactors specifically.

Now, your probably under the impression that breeder reactors require re-feeding in the spent fuel over and over and over, but no. A breeder reactor is simply any reactor that makes heavier elements from lighter ones in substantial quantities. And when you're talking going from uranium to plutonium, well, it's not a real big jump up the periodic table. Thorium reactors are a form of breeder reactor, yes, but we don't actually know how viable they are. They're not good at making plutonium, and in the early days of nuclear, if it didn't make plutonium, then nobody wanted it, so they weren't really funded much. Interest in them has only really come back in to fashion within the last decade. And if they can be created to be as reliable as uranium reactors, they really are a very good option. Can they be made reliable? Who knows, but because you seem to be under the impression that they've had lots of research put in to them, they really haven't been actively researched since the 50s.

Re: uranium runs out

[AmiMoJo]

Fort St. Vrain is a great example of why no-one wants to build reactors like that. There were a lot of expensive problems with a design that produced 330MWe. It's likely that there would be more if the design was scaled up. Decommissioning anything that uses thorium is a bugger too.

In the end, while technically interesting it just isn't a commercially viable proposition. The risks are too high for too little reward, compared to a much safer design based on tested technology.

If you want new nuclear, especially new designs, you have to make the economic case for them. It's more important that the technical aspects of the design, in fact, because no matter how great it is you still have to convince someone to invest billions of dollars and decades of time into the thing.

Re: uranium runs out

[WindBourne]

Ft st vrain ran great except for some h2o sensors in the back area. The reactor itself was rock solid. The problem was Everytime the sensor went off, they had to scam the system at which point it would take a month before it could restart. And even when Xcel bought our company, they shut it down in the first year so as to move to coal and Nat gas. At the same time, they sold off our Nat gas lines and then bought from companies that the executives owned. Xcell remains a nightmare of a company. Finally, the decommissioning of fsv was the fastest and cheapest that has been done.

Re: uranium runs out

[AmiMoJo]

The sensors were hardly the only problem. They had coolant leaks and water ingress. Both were pretty serious and expensive to fix. Being down for a month after a scram seems like a fairly major design flaw too, since scrams are not that uncommon.

Re:uranium runs out

[MachineShedFred]

Yeah, solar runs out too. I mean, if you're going to talk about things that are thousands of years in the future, I can talk about things that are millions of years in the future too.

You've hyperbolized the situation.

Re:uranium runs out

[MachineShedFred]

Not discounting the other things you said, but why invent a robot to move laundry between a washer and dryer, when you can just get one unit that does both without inter-unit movement?

http://www.bestbuy.com/site/wa...

There's already a solution for that, and it even saves space.

Re:uranium runs out

[MachineShedFred]

Good thing you are not one of those people, because you don't appear to be very informed at all.

The executive order killing the construction and operation of the research facilities for breeder reactors was rescinded without reinstating the budget for them. We might as well have said "it's now fully legal to flap your arms and fly to the moon" by executive order, because both were as likely to happen without funding.

Also, all plutonium isotopes are not created equal as far as weapons use goes, and there is no method to separate the one isotope you want for weapons from the others that you don't. This is why we have monitoring systems and such that the UN uses to make sure everyone is in compliance with the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. Because as it turns out, if you use a PWR to create power, and actually use the fuel load economically, you don't make weapons grade material. If you shut the place down after 6 months and swap fuel in the most costly manner possible, you get weapons grade plutonium inside of a whole lot of other shit you don't want (trans-uranic elements that are amazingly deadly).

However, those spontaneously fissile plutonium isotopes that ruin a bomb still work really good in a reactor, so breeding plutonium that has a higher percentage of Pu-240 and Pu-241 isn't a problem for that use.

Re:uranium runs out

[Chas]

The problem appears to be that you can't make plutonium from thorium.

Uhm, Actually, one of the byproducts in a Thorium LFTR design is P-238 (which is used in "nuclear batteries").

Re:uranium runs out

[Chas]

The problem with breeders and thorium reactors is that they are unproven on commercial scale. Every time anyone has attempted them, there have been many serious and expensive problems.

The main expense is trying to actually get anyone from the government to actually talk with you about them in the first place. Because the current political climate runs something like this:

NRCGuy: Hi! What can I do for you!
You: Hi! I'd like to talk about building a small-scale Thorium reactor for research purposes.
NRCGuy: *Holds hand out, expecting money*
*After you pay the fee.*
NRCGuy: Okay! Thanks! Your time is up! *Holds hand out, expecting more money.*

Re:uranium runs out

[Chas]

No, actually a breeder reactor is a reactor that produces more fissile material than it consumes.

Re:uranium runs out

[Chas]

However there's even MORE Thorium out there.

And mining thorium would allow places like the US to restart their rare earths mining, and stop depending on China.

Re:uranium runs out

[mdsolar]

Only 80 years of uranium left at the current rate of use. Everything you suggest is wildly expensive requiring exponentially increasing subsidies for nuclear.

Re: uranium runs out

[mdsolar]

Emissions seem to reduce fast without nuclear power. http://m.phys.org/news/2016-08...

Re:uranium runs out

[mdsolar]

Oops, your denominator is showing.

Re:uranium runs out

[Anonymous Coward]

Your stupid is showing. But that's normal.

Re:uranium runs out

[tlambert]

On point, the explosion in question was waste from nuclear weapons production.

Actually, the explosion was from cat poop. They bought the wrong kind of kitty litter to put in their barrels.

Re:uranium runs out

[tlambert]

Not discounting the other things you said, but why invent a robot to move laundry between a washer and dryer, when you can just get one unit that does both without inter-unit movement?

Now have it put the next load in...

Re:uranium runs out

[Anonymous Coward]

Their suggestion was to put all my appliances on timers so that they ran while I was at work; I asked for their advice on where to buy a robot to move clothes from my washer to my dryer, so that I didn't have to run the dryer at night, either. They had no answer.

Combination washer/dryer:

http://www.homedepot.com/b/Appliances-Washers-Dryers-All-In-One-Washer-Dryer/N-5yc1vZc3ot

Re:uranium runs out

[Anonymous Coward]

Fuel breeding means fuel reprocessing.

Nobody has ever shown an economically viable method of fuel reprocessing. It's the ??? step before Profit!

Imagine starting with the hottest, most nasty rector waste. Take it to a factory. Separate out the fuel from the waste-waste. Now think about doing that on an industrial scale. Transportation, handling, all that.

Yeah. That's never going to happen. Ever. We can't even can up and dump spent waste underground in the middle of the fucking burned out useless desert.

Breeder reactors, including Thorium, will never happen.

Re: uranium runs out

[Anonymous Coward]

So, fantasy scenarios eh? Well in that case we just use our solar satellites with microwave beaming to earth. Just as plausible, really.

Re:uranium runs out

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, that's still an issue. Except...you're running your laundry on a timer now. Just have it set to run twice each week on different days instead of twice in one day, back-to-back. Put in the next load before you go to work, take the dry clothes out when you get home, no problem.

It's not a perfect "swap in the solar panels and change nothing else" solution, but hey - you're already changing things by installing solar. Is it outrageous to change a couple of habits?

* In all fairness, all this is ignoring the costs involved in replacing an otherwise perfectly-good washer and dryer, too.

Re: uranium runs out

[WindBourne]

and yet, it was solid and profitable towards the end. The problem was that a backend expensive part needed replacement.

Re: uranium runs out

[WindBourne]

fantasy scenarios? You have to be kidding. Volcanoes blow all the time. The west coast has multiple volcanos that are bigger than mt. st. helens and that have been quiet for a LONG time. IOW, they are due. When MSH went, it dropped solar in the west a good 10-15%. In addition, that also lowered our winds.

Re: uranium runs out

[WindBourne]

so?
This paragraph says a lot about the study:

The UK is a mixed picture. Emissions have been reduced by 16 per cent, bucking the trend of other pro-nuclear countries. However, only five per cent of its energy comes from renewables, which is among the lowest in Europe, pipped only by Luxembourg, Malta and the Netherlands.

They, like you, are more concerned about the energy being renewables than they are about lowering their CO2. That alone makes the study suspect.
The problem is, that our issue today, is the fact that we became dependent on one main form of energy, which is fossil fuels. We need to have a diversified energy matrix. UK is correct in seeking to keep nukes going. They are also correct in pushing solar and wind. With these 3, they can have CHEAP energy, combined with energy security.
Here in the states, I look forward to getting my powerwall on our house. Between a 10 KW solar system, an 85 kwh MS, a coming Model 3, and hopefully, a 10 kwh battery, I think that we shall have energy independence in OUR house.

Re:uranium runs out

[tlambert]

Yeah, that's still an issue. Except...you're running your laundry on a timer now.

The models you listed on that link do not have start timers. Electronic controls, yes; but without timers, all that means is you can't mechanically set a setting, and then have a timer power the thing on at a specific time. Nor do they have protocol based external management, so you could trigger them at a particular solar generating level that's sustained over a period of time to avoid using grid power, and program a (much smarter) external system to run them.

These appliances are not as smart as they'd need to be, and even if they are, they're not smart in the right direction, nor are the external control management systems there yet for doing things like coordinating the dishwasher vs. the laundry.

Just have it set to run twice each week on different days instead of twice in one day, back-to-back.

Dude or dudette, I totally promise not to tell your SO that you just put their favorite yellow shorts that they've had since college in with your new blue shirt and turned them green. But you *will* be buying them that expensive dinner by way of apology.

Us laundry ninjas know you can't just throw in anything with anything else. Some things will simply shred if you put them in with some other things, like delicates and thick towels, instead of putting them on a different cycle. What this boils down to is that any given laundry day requires multiple loads.

Put in the next load before you go to work, take the dry clothes out when you get home, no problem.

And forget this, if you have kids: there's no such thing as a small amount of laundry, or two day a week laundry.

---

Look, personally, I want local energy storage: I don't want to have to change everything, just because I'm going to be powering everything with the big fusion reactor up in the sky, instead of the little fission reactor down the coast. At some point, it becomes a quality of life issue, and that point hits pretty hard with solar in a different way.

As soon as there's enough solar capacity, and people aren't home to use it, then it redefined "off peak" and "on peak". The "off peak" hours are during the day, when generating capacity exceeds demand, and the "on peak" hours are during the morning and evening, when you're at home and awake, but the sun isn't shining, so there's more demand on the grid, because everyone else keeps the same hours you do.

One of the reasons the PUC in Nevada got rid of net metering was because Nevada was on a trajectory to eventually hit this "solar tipping point", and it was obvious to the utility company that at that point, they'd be paying spot market prices for energy, mostly in the evenings, and they'd end up pretty screwed.

Unless I can have local storage, and it's got to be able to store everything I can generate all day, assuming it starts out dry, the "grid battery" approach looks to be doomed to jacking my utility bills right back to where they used to be, so the power company can maintain revenue under the pretense of "we have to maintain the grid, but all these people have solar, and aren't paying us enough for us to be able to afford to maintain it".

The only viable alternative is to be able to pull the plug completely. And sadly, solar is just not there yet.

Re: uranium runs out

[mdsolar]

So, no market for nuclear at your place.

Re: uranium runs out

[WindBourne]

I'm good with having nuclear on the grid. Our house will be able to provide power to help load balance, but in the event of war with China, or a large volcano, I like the idea of being able to get electricity.

Re:uranium runs out

[debrain]

Good catch. Thorium can't be used to produce weaponizable plutonium. My recollection is:

P-239 is weapons-grade plutonium.

U-238 is weapons-grade uranium.

P-238 is an alpha emitter, degrading to U-234(5?) (i.e. it skips U-238).

Thorium produces P-238 (and not P-239/U-238), so it is not useful for nuclear fission weapons.

In any case, I recall back in the debate about uranium or thorium reactors, DoD refused to produce Thorium precisely because they cannot be used to produce nuclear weapons.

Re:uranium runs out

[david_thornley]

You can't make U-238 go boom. The isotopes normally used in bombs are U-235 and Pu-239. (Usually plutonium these days. A gun-type bomb is relatively easy to construct if you can get your hands on enough weapons-grade U-235, but acquisition is difficult.) Pu-238 is an alpha emitter, so it loses two protons and two neutrons per decay, resulting in U-234. I seem to remember that U-233 can go boom, also, but getting enough of it together is a big problem.

Also, from what I've read, we don't have enough Pu-238 for NASA's use, so it would be nice to get some more.

Re:uranium runs out

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't forget that the cost of operating a breeder reactor is offset by the value of the products produced in such breeder reactors - radio isotopes and the like used in medicine are quite valuable, and probably a host of other cool radioactive materials that have other commercial uses and value...

Re:uranium runs out

[Anonymous Coward]

This is not correct. Depleted uranium is uranium in which most of the more fissile U-235 has been removed, and all that remains is the less fissile U-238. It is less radioactive than the ore from which it started. It is not used for power production, and mainly finds use in bombardment or anti-bunker weapons because it has a much higher mass/density than lead.

The uranium sitting around in barrels, as you put it, is not depleted uranium... Rather, it is spent uranium U-235 which is no longer viable in a reactor core, but it is highly radioactive... It still contains some useful U-235 but needs to be re-processed to make it efficient again through enrichment.

Slashdot noticed

[mdsolar]

https://news.slashdot.org/stor...

What's the lesson here?

[mpoulton]

So the amount of radioactive material is comparable to amounts commonly *lost* due to carelessness in the early 20th century (see "Radium Lost and Found" by Burbidge Taft), and we've freaked out and spent $2 billion on it even though the contaminated area was inherently limited. Isn't the lesson here that government is grossly inefficient and irrational reactions need to be kept in check?

Re:What's the lesson here?

[Anonymous Coward]

Nope, the lesson is that you need to learn about how radiation exposure works, especially for workers in confined environments.

Shortcut

[dbIII]

They simply did not understand the true scale that a large tsunami could reach

Seriously? The Japanese with what looks to an outsider like ridiculous amounts of infrastructure to deal with tsunamis didn't understand?

It's been mentioned frequently elsewhere that the initial design would have dealt with it but to save costs it was done in a different way.

Re:Shortcut

[Anonymous Coward]

Which story did you read? I mean, you can always build a higher seawall and they had one to deal with ridiculously large tsunamis. Then they got an even bigger one.

Even with everything that went wrong, people got terrified by the plant but the tsunami is what actually killed people. Looking at the fatalities on site, you see it was a crane dropping on some people, not radiation, that caused deaths.

Re:Shortcut

[Rakarra]

Of course it's a tsunami that actually did the damage, but yes, you have to plan around it. The wall was not high enough, but worse than that, the switching stations for the pre-1990s generators were still located in poorly or unprotected low-level ground. Emergency diesel generators and batteries were located in the -basement-, and engineers raised red flags that this was dangerous, concerns that were left unaddressed. There were two Fukushima nuclear plants, and Fukushima II didn't have nearly the sorts of problems that Fukushima I had..

Re:Shortcut

[dbIII]

I mean, you can always build a higher seawall

Not the problem, the pumps were sited too close to sea level to save money. If they were up at the level of the reactor building as had been suggested in an earlier design the problem would not have happened.

Re:Shortcut

[Anonymous Coward]

The Fukushima units that were not deluged by the tsunami above their design flood level were the ones that had no problems shutting down safety. The points regarding the generators and pump and batteries location are mute points, as the plant was not designed to be deluged above a certain level, at which those items would still be available. The plant simply should not have been sited where it could be deluged. You could try to make that design 'waterproof', but it would be hard, expensive, and there is no reason to if you simply locate it in the right place.

The plant design clearly states what the maximum flood level is in the structure. That was exceeded. That is not a design problem, that is an application problem. Its like blaming the designers of a gas car for a failing engine when someone puts diesel fuel in it. You could claim it was a design flaw, that it should have been designed to also run on diesel, but that also would not make sense.

Say what?!

[buss_error]

"When a drum containing radioactive waste blew up..."

I about dropped my jaw when I read that. "What!?" I said to myself. Then poking around, I found that it was the Kitty Litter accident as I call it. The drum did not "blow up" in the sense of explosion, either chemical or criticality, but the kitty litter used expanded and burst the container. Ok, that was pretty stupid (the kitty litter).

What exceeds "Dumb as a box of rocks with all the smart rocks thrown out" followed that trying to clean it up.

We must build a (radiation-proof) wall...

[Anonymous Coward]

...around New Mexico.

"Blew Up?"

[cirby]

They make it sound like there was some sort of big explosion. There wasn't. One drum ruptured, and leaked some radioactive material.

The material wasn't high level, and only trace amounts made it through the facility.

Someone's looking for a lucrative payout.

And yet, this cost more ...

[WindBourne]

What we invested into O's solar project: http://m.washingtontimes.com/n...

Re:And yet, this cost more ...

[drinkypoo]

What we invested into O's solar project: http://m.washingtontimes.com/n...

Solyndra was an obvious scam and Obama should be taken to task for funding it. But the other solar investments paid out, which proves the point that solar isn't bad. Corporatism is.

Re: And yet, this cost more ...

[WindBourne]

Sounds was not a scam. Their issue was that china dumped on America before companies like this could compete. Sadly, our gov seems to encourage China to dump on us.

Re:And yet, this cost more ...

[Anonymous Coward]

Not even corporatism, but cronyism and fraud are bad.

And neither cronyism nor fraud are limited to this particular administration. They are as old as government itself.

Welcome back

[thegarbz]

We missed you mdsolar. Was your summer break good? Slashdot just wasn't the same without your alarmist contributions.

Re:Welcome back

[tomhath]

He never left. If you follow the submissions you would see him on a regular basis. Almost all of his are quickly voted down, but once in a while the editors let one through to stir the pot..

Well...

[MitchDev]

Need safe reliable rockets and just blast the waste into the sun rather than leaving it here on Earth to waste taxpayers money....

Re: Well...

[WindBourne]

Worst idea going. Far better to use it up and then bury the remaining 5%

Re:Well...

[MachineShedFred]

Yeah, because using rockets that cost several hundred million dollars to put a couple tons of what is mostly reusable fuel into the sun is absolutely going to be cheaper than storing it underground.

I'm really hoping you were joking.

Re: Well...

[MitchDev]

And what can nuclear waste be used for and leave only 5% of itself behind?

Re:Well...

[MitchDev]

IF it's useful, then leaving it sitting around in storage seems to be a big waste...

Re:Well...

[MachineShedFred]

You can always open the door...

Re: Well...

[WindBourne]

trans atomic and flible can both do that.

And yet it's still safer

[Anonymous Coward]

Watt for Watt, Solar kills more people than Nuclear power ever has. Even if you include disasters that would have been entirely avoidable if you had sane people running things (*cough* Chernobyl *cough*).

How often...

[Dareth]

How often...does the EPA inspect these sites?
Inspector: "Hey, this badge lets me go thru this door!"
Engineer: "And this badge will tell you that you are going to die as soon as you do. Have a nice day." (Runs away!)

need a brain

[Anonymous Coward]

Of new ones? Yes. Modern panels are required to be recyclable.

"required" what a USELESS word, means whatever it wants to mean.

Flawed statements.

[Anonymous Coward]

"...the explosion ranks among the costliest nuclear accidents in U.S. history, according to a Times analysis."

That statement is entirely inaccurate. The explosion is a waste storage accident, not a nuclear accident. Their statement is like calling drunk driving accident an automobile design flaw.

It's too bad there are so man thorium reactor deniers out there because there are no extreme thorium reactor hazards compared to the ancient reactor designs in use today. Look no further than Three Mile Island, Chernobyl, Fukushima and New Mexico for reasons why we should be embracing thorium reactors which there are working designs in use as we speak.

Wait for it...yes, thorium reactor deniers are most assuredly like holocaust deniers.
         

And this is why

[bravecanadian]

every time nuclear power is touted as the end all be all solution going forward (by people here and on other sites), I shake my head.

I know that the technical problems have all been solved and we have breeder reactors and everything is unicorns and rainbows.. until you involve people and the dollars and cents.

Then corners get cut, the technical people aren't listened to, and we deal with enormous costs (transferred to the public) and with the possibility of radioactivity for thousands of years.

Look at all the nukker BUTTHURT

[Anonymous Coward]

butt is hurting bitches.

Was this the cause of the explosion?

[pyroclast]

https://xkcd.com/1168/

MachineSaidFred's butthurt

[Anonymous Coward]

I still don't know why he thinks that nuclear is such a threat to his dream of solar panels everywhere, being that solar deployments are growing, and panel prices are falling, and panel efficiencies are rising; and there's all of 1 or 2 nuclear reactors under construction in the US, for the first time since 1979.

Because solar being really good has nothing to do with nuclear being really bad. It's a butthurt bomb.

Re:MachineSaidFred's butthurt

[MachineShedFred]

Oh look, someone's being an Internet tough guy and using super cool words like "butthurt" and without offering any actual value to the conversation.

Sounds like they got this ass-backwards

[dasgoober]

A ventilation system is gonna take 5 years and cost how much???
Maybe I'm missing something....
If their plan is to have this thing seal up, what is the ventilation system for?
And when it does seal up, he equipment cost/time for the ventilation is lost?

Re:Sounds like they got this ass-backwards

[Anonymous Coward]

The reason is that until it is sealed up, you need people to go down there and work. As in, go down and load/unload barrels of nuclear waste, dig new tunnels and rooms for more storage, etc, etc. There's problems in deep mines with maintaining a breathable atmosphere with all the running equipment and such. Hence the ventilation system. The ventilation system is necessarily pretty complex, since simply running a duct to the surface with a fan would leak radiation and/or toxic gases to the surface in that event of a major leak. Exactly what the mine is supposed to prevent! So there has to be several filtration steps and no direct path to the surface atmosphere. Someday, perhaps 2 years or 25, they will say "all done" to sending humans down there ever again and seal up everything. Until then, the overly complicated ventilation system will need to exist for exactly this type of scenario.

Stupid is as stupid says ...

[Anonymous Coward]

You can say the same for solar and even wind power.
Some day the sun is going to go boom and destroy the earth which will be much more damaging than any nuclear plant disaster.
Nearly every year the wind is going to create massive destruction (hurrican, typhon, cyclone, etc) and kill many many people. Over a decade that will be many more than nuclear plants kill.

FBI HAVE US GOVERNMENT ACTING USEFUL HERE

[Anonymous Coward]

Like oh no what if say .. an accident were to happen .. and you know .. like some nuclear material were spilled in oh I don't know maybe um ..

Idaho, Washington, New Mexico and elsewhere

How urgent is it that the spy agencies are hunted down?

Follow the money

[dbIII]

That's assuming environmental activists have actual political power and those who get money from rail transport do not - which is really getting things backwards.
Follow the money.

Re: Follow the money

[Anonymous Coward]

*best Sean Connery voice*
I did follow the money and it led me to your mother's bedroom. She's a filthy whore.

To be fair to the person who ordered it...

[Anonymous Coward]

Who would have known there were 2 different types of kitty litter?

Why not use sand instead?

It seems that in recent years many of the big engineering issues come down to seemingly 'benign' problems. I think this would be actually a good example for engineering students for pit falls to avoid.

(Products with similar name or compound that someone might think its close enough, when in reality it could cause a big problem...)

Like using potable water in-lieu of demineralized water...

that is right

[Anonymous Coward]

That's awful. As I know radioactive waste is dangerous for environment and people around. Constant area monitoring and personnel exposure monitoring are compulsory measures in such conditions. But still there are a lot of Ecotestgroup
devices which are used to prevent the illicit transfer of radioactive and nuclear materials and to ensure response in case of emergencies.