Slashdot Mirror
First-of-Its-Kind US Nuclear Waste Dump Marks 20 Years (apnews.com)
"In a remote stretch of New Mexico desert, the U.S. government put in motion an experiment aimed at proving to the world that radioactive waste could be safely disposed of deep underground..." reports the Associated Press:
Twenty years and more than 12,380 shipments later, tons of Cold War-era waste from decades of bomb-making and nuclear research across the U.S. have been stashed in the salt caverns that make up the underground facility. Each week, several shipments of special boxes and barrels packed with lab coats, rubber gloves, tools and debris contaminated with plutonium and other radioactive elements are trucked to the site.
But the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant has not been without issues. A 2014 radiation leak forced an expensive, nearly three-year closure, delayed the federal government's cleanup program and prompted policy changes at national laboratories and defense-related sites across the U.S. More recently, the U.S. Department of Energy said it would investigate reports that workers may have been exposed last year to hazardous chemicals. Still, supporters consider the repository a success, saying it provides a viable option for dealing with a multibillion-dollar mess that stretches from a decommissioned nuclear weapons production site in Washington state to one of the nation's top nuclear research labs, in Idaho, and locations as far east as South Carolina. If it weren't for the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant, many containers of plutonium-contaminated waste would be outside, exposed to the weather and susceptible to natural disasters, said J.R. Stroble, head of business operations at the Department of Energy's Carlsbad Field Office, which oversees the contractor that operates the repository.
"The whole purpose of WIPP is to isolate this long-lived radioactive, hazardous waste from the accessible environment, from people and the things people need in order to live life on Earth," he told The Associated Press.
But the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant has not been without issues. A 2014 radiation leak forced an expensive, nearly three-year closure, delayed the federal government's cleanup program and prompted policy changes at national laboratories and defense-related sites across the U.S. More recently, the U.S. Department of Energy said it would investigate reports that workers may have been exposed last year to hazardous chemicals. Still, supporters consider the repository a success, saying it provides a viable option for dealing with a multibillion-dollar mess that stretches from a decommissioned nuclear weapons production site in Washington state to one of the nation's top nuclear research labs, in Idaho, and locations as far east as South Carolina. If it weren't for the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant, many containers of plutonium-contaminated waste would be outside, exposed to the weather and susceptible to natural disasters, said J.R. Stroble, head of business operations at the Department of Energy's Carlsbad Field Office, which oversees the contractor that operates the repository.
"The whole purpose of WIPP is to isolate this long-lived radioactive, hazardous waste from the accessible environment, from people and the things people need in order to live life on Earth," he told The Associated Press.
The U.S has an issue with the spent fuel packing density currently in use at reactor facilities. One of the easiest way's to dramatically decrease the possibility of a spent fuel pool accident and, radically decrease the severity of other types of potential nuclear accidents, is to start moving spent fuel rods from pools to dry cask storage.
At an estimated $7 Billion to do this is chump change compared to some other spending that is occurring. I also suspect that injecting that money into the U.S economy to do something good would employ a lot of people.
Considering that this is the step before underground storage, would anyone be against doing such a simple and achievable thing to improve the general safety of the Nuclear Industry?
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
Manufactured or not, the PU is not more dangerous than the U that it was produced from and as GPP correctly stated the production consumed a significant amount of the U. Natural != innocuous & man-made != poisonous to those who are not attempting to draw over-simplistic conclusions.
Democracy is a sheep and two wolves deciding what to have for lunch. Freedom is a well armed sheep contesting the issue
And by any sane standards of safety-engineering, we will start to have data of actual worth for the task at hand.
The D.O.E had a specification for achieving this called "Defense in Depth". Essentially the goal was to have a facility whose geology would act in such a way as to slow the flow of groundwater through the facility. From my understanding the specification called for building such a facility in Granite, and then to use bentonite clays to deal with the fractured nature of the granite.
It's not perfect, however it's a lot better than the pumice facility built at Yucca mountain after politics got in the way of the science.
The political story went something like this. From my understanding Nevada only got the facility because one of the states representatives was ill and missed objecting to the matter. To seal Nevada's fate in 1987 Idaho moved for amendments to the 1982 Nuclear Waste Policy Act to:
So there were a lot of sane people who understood how to engineer such a facility. The political will to build it does not exist.
Nuclear could be made safe, but not by these people. It cannot, at this time, be made both cost-efficient and safe. That will require more research.
As you can see, such research was de-funded and thus will not occur.
So far the only non-porus way to store the spent fuel is in crystalline structures which in the 00's, somewhat ironically, the CSIRO discovered form in granite. So politics not only got in the way of the engineering, it also got in the way of the potential benefits of the scientific discoveries that may have been made a decade or two earlier.
Forming these crystals artificially is the obvious goal to complete the uranium fuel cycle as these would be benign and may have industrial applications. Consequently U.S law is the obstacle to making any progress in this area and is unlikely to change until people understand these complex issues enough to lobby politicians appropriately.
This is the unfortunate consequence of the polarization of this debate.
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
A nuclear reactor "Burns" radiation to run a steam engine. Dumping radioactive waste in the ground is dumping fuel in the ground. Use fuel reprossessing to remove the contaminants that prevent it working in a normal reactor and re-use it as new fuel. We have the technology to permanenly and safely dispose of all radioactive isotopes, it just costs more than dumping.
Radioactive isotopes with long half-lives, even in minute quantities, are quite effective at causing cancer in humans if they're ingested. There is no such thing as "a little harmless pollution" with these substances.
You do realize that there are a number of naturally occurring radioactive elements?
Did you know the radioactive elements naturally present in the granite used to build Grand Central Station actually makes the background radiation in that station higher than what is allowed for any nuclear facility in the US?
Also, most materials and shielding used in a radioactive environment are considered to be 'hot' and need to be disposed of as nuclear waste even if those materials are less radioactive than the bananas in your grocery store.
Yes, Bananas are more radioactive than other fruits because they have more potassium in them. And if you don't eat enough potassium you get sick.
The claim that all radiation is harmful is an artifact of a study that found that 100x radiation would kill 100 people, and 1x radiation kills 1 person, made the blanket assumption that 0.01x radiation must kill 0.01 people.
There is literally nothing else that works like that.
Not poisons, not diseases, not blood loss, and not blunt force trauma.
A nuclear reactor "Burns" radiation to run a steam engine. Dumping radioactive waste in the ground is dumping fuel in the ground. Use fuel reprossessing to remove the contaminants that prevent it working in a normal reactor and re-use it as new fuel. We have the technology to permanenly and safely dispose of all radioactive isotopes, it just costs more than dumping.
That's not accurate. The 93% of the heat in a reactor is from fission and not from radioactive decay as you state. And the issues raised about fuel reprocessing aren't about cost either. Its about nuclear proliferation risks.
The worry is that during the reprocessing, someone will steal pure fissionable produce from the reprocessing station. Now, often that requires a nation-state level of industrial facilities to process the fissionable material from the unused fuel and fission products. The problem is that the same purification systems used in reprocessing can be repurposed and used to enrich fissionable material which is a step in making bombs. The other problem is that nuclear fuel in our current civilian reactors is only 4% used up so there are lots of fissionable isotopes left in the "waste". However, this isn't true for the Th-U fuel cycle and Thorium reactors wouldn't have this issue as they burn up 96% of their fissionable material and their waste stream doesn't have enough fissionable material left to make weapons. It would be easier to start with natural Uranium ore than the waste from a Thorium reactor.
When a reactor operates, it fissions the fuel and creates fission products. Based upon the fuel cycle and energy of the neutrons in the reactor (and other factors), you can calculate what fission products are created. The fission products are the waste and will decay on a specific period. Reactors with lots of Pu will make waste that takes as long as 10,000 to decay to natural levels of radiation (at which point its "safe"). Reactors with lots of U-233 (Thorium breeders) make waste that lasts *only* 300 years. Thorium reactors burn up 96% of their nuclear fuel leaving very little fissionable material in the waste stream making reprocessing of this material safe in comparison with the reprocessing that happens with a current generation U-Pu reactor.
"Those that start by burning books, will end by burning men."