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.

Comments

/if-trump-obstructed-justice-he-cant-be-exonerated

[Anonymous Coward]

http://nymag.com/intelligencer/2019/03/if-trump-obstructed-justice-he-cant-be-exonerated.html

Barr's dishonest characterization is an intentional slap in the face to all Americans and it will be exposed for its mealy-mouthed weasel words shortly. The fact that Mueller's investigation is concluded is certainly not an exoneration of Trump from wrongdoing or criminal actions. Rather, the contrary - Mueller demurred on concluding either way on whether Trump obstructed justice, because as he works for the AG and the AG decided over a year ago in an op-ed he wasn't going to charge Trump for obstruction pretty much under any circumstances while he was in office, and has now put that onus back on Congress where it ultimately always resided until he is forced from office. Those investigations will continue apace, as will the SDNY and other Federal investigations into, among other things, emoluments, conspiracy, fraud, charity fraud, campaign finance fraud, self-dealing with government monies, obstruction of justice ongoing, lies his son and daughter told to Congress, among a myriad of other unknown charges that will be coming to light over the next year to two years.

In short, exoneration is one of the words Bob Mueller specifically used, and specifically denied Trump verbatim.

Barr, Huckabee-Sanders, and anyone else who would make such a claim that he's at all "exonerated" is 100% a liar in the determination of Robert Swan Mueller III, verbatim.

Dealing With The Death of BSD

[Anonymous Coward]

Of course you mourn the demise of *BSD. It's only natural. Dealing with the death of an operating system close to you can be one of the most traumatic experiences of your life, and you're bound to go through a range of emotions. While you may be able to work through those feelings on your own, it's often helpful to talk to a friend, a family member, or a counselor. You might also seek out a support group for people who are grieving.

Grieving is a process, and it's totally normal to go through feelings of shock, sadness, anger even guilt. The healing process is different for everyone. It might take you six weeks to move on, or it might take you six years. Don't beat yourself up because you're not "over it" yet. It takes time to heal wounds.

So what else can you do to feel better? It might sound corny, but try writing a letter, making a collage, or planting a tree in memory of the operating system you've lost. Remembering and celebrating all the good things *BSD brought to your life might help give you some closure, and having a keepsake to honor *BSD may help you get through some tough times in the future when you'll be missing it.

It's true that life won't be the same without *BSD around. It may seem like you'll never feel better, but eventually you will. Take some comfort in the old saying, "Time heals all wounds," and remember that *BSD will always be with you in your heart.

Re: Dealing With The Death of BSD

[Anonymous Coward]

Who writes such nonsense?

Re:/if-trump-obstructed-justice-he-cant-be-exonera

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow, you sound extra butthurt with cherry on Top.

Indeed

[nospam007]

""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," ...with armed guards for 184.000 years only, a piece of cake, cost-wise.

Re:Indeed

[Anonymous Coward]

We could, you know, put there some solar and nuclear waste powered murder bots equipped with plutonium tipped projectile weapons. Carbon-nanotube logic and memory for that 10000 year lifespan, and the capability of self-repair and replication is all that is needed additionally. That's a three-Congress-law safe robot, right there.

Re:Indeed

[currently_awake]

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.

Re:Indeed

[religionofpeas]

We have the technology to permanenly and safely dispose of all radioactive isotopes,

So why isn't it used on a wide scale ?

Re:Indeed

[b0s0z0ku]

You need both: waste storage and reprocessing. Some contaminants are also highly radioactive (like Sr-90 and Cs-137), but aren't terribly useful in a reactor. Yeah, yeah, you can use Sr-90 in a radiothermal generator, but it isn't terribly safe or economical to do so.

Re:Indeed

[ShanghaiBill]

So why isn't it used on a wide scale ?

Because mining new uranium is way cheaper than reprocessing highly radioactive waste.

Re:Indeed

[CrimsonAvenger]

So why isn't it used on a wide scale ?

Because the anti-nuke hysterics scream bloody murder whenever the idea is floated?

And do note that this is not about waste storage from a normal reactor. This is about waste storage from a reactor designed to produce Pu-239....

Re: Indeed

[Anonymous Coward]

Especially if it's so toxic it has to be cooled down first

Re:Indeed

[Uberbah]

Because the hysterical nuke fanbosy scream bloody murder whenever the unjustifiable cost of nuclear power is pointed out to them

Fixed.

Re:Indeed

[Anonymous Coward]

If a slab of Trotsky-slut warmist DemoRat bones were included the cost of internment would be faire at any price point. Slap them down and brake their bones, make them bleed like warm red stones ... BURMASHAVE.

Re: Indeed

[Anonymous Coward]

Nope. Jimmy Carter signed the moratorium on reprocessing. Reprocessing is an avenue for plutonium extraction for weapon making, and the naive fool believed that would help prevent proliferation. It didn't, but since then the eco-terrorists have prevented all western efforts to reprocess fuel. Mining uranium isn't the cosy, enriching it is, and reprocessing will reduce the energy cost amazingly, like 70%, and reduce the volume of highly radioactive waste, but nuclear is bad, so we've dumped billions of tons of CO2 into the atmosphere instead of burning a few pounds of uranium.

Re: Indeed

[Anonymous Coward]

The unjustifiable cost is the judicial stonewalling and the CO2 emissions. Nuclear is the only power source that has a clean up reserve required, and more than 2/3 of the cosy of nuclear is malicious judicial and regulatory delays. Not oversight and good design requirements, just the malicious delays.

Re:Indeed

[Anonymous Coward]

So why isn't it used on a wide scale ?

Jimmy Carter outlawed it.

Re:Indeed

[plague911]

Still cheaper than Solar, Wind, Coal, and NG when all costs are accounted for. Yes, even disposal.

Re:Indeed

[sfcat]

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.

Re: Indeed

[sfcat]

The unjustifiable cost is the judicial stonewalling and the CO2 emissions. Nuclear is the only power source that has a clean up reserve required, and more than 2/3 of the cosy of nuclear is malicious judicial and regulatory delays. Not oversight and good design requirements, just the malicious delays.

Mod parent up. Nuclear is expensive because we are forced to use old inefficient designs and NIMBYists make licensing the plants insanely expensive. Its also the only energy technology that scales. So our choices our fossil fuels or nuclear. Unicorns don't exist...

Re:Indeed

[sfcat]

You need both: waste storage and reprocessing. Some contaminants are also highly radioactive (like Sr-90 and Cs-137), but aren't terribly useful in a reactor. Yeah, yeah, you can use Sr-90 in a radiothermal generator, but it isn't terribly safe or economical to do so.

You don't need reprocessing if you burn it all up during the first cycle like in a Thorium reactor. Also, neither Sr-90 or Cs-137 last longer than 300 years so storage is a realistic option for those medium lived fission products.

Re:Indeed

[dfm3]

Sr-90 is actually not "highly" radioactive; it has a half-life of 28 years. The true danger with this isotope is that it is chemically very similar to calcium, being directly below it on the periodic table, and is easily incorporated into bone tissue. Once there, it remains for years and undergoes beta particle decay, making it a known cause of bone cancers and leukemia.

Re:Indeed

[dfm3]

...neither Sr-90 or Cs-137 last longer than 300 years...

Um... that's not how half-life works. Both of those isotopes have half-lives around 28 and 30 years, respectively. A 30-year half-life means that every 30 years, half of the atoms decay. So if you start with 120 grams, you have 60 grams left once 30 years elapse, 30 grams at year 60, 15 grams at year 90, and so on. After 300 years you will only have a small fraction of the original isotope left, but some very small number of atoms will certainly last longer than that.

Re:Indeed

[Uberbah]

Still cheaper than Solar, Wind, Coal, and NG when all costs are accounted for. Yes, even disposal.

As much as a $2.5 million Bugatti with no brakes or seat belts is cheaper than a Honda Civic, sure.

Re: Indeed

[Uberbah]

Nuclear is expensive because we are forced to use old inefficient designs and NIMBYists make licensing the plants insanely expensive.

New designs are an old red herring. No design is ever going to make nuclear power completely safe or cost effective. You are always going to have issues with security and containment that simply do not exist with other power sources. As for plants being expensive to plan and build - there's a reason for that. Just ask the residents of Fukishima. Where all your supposed cost savings plus another hundred billion went up in radioactive fumes.

Its also the only energy technology that scales.

Well, you do have to build extra nuclear power plants, when one of them goes down for days, weeks, months or even years for maintenance. Which means you will have some missing gigawatts from your grid that will need to be replaced. Which means the baseload power FUD thrown at wind and solar applies just as much to nuclear power. And you can build a whole lot of extra wind and solar stations - and Tesla Powerpacks - for the $20 billion cost of a new nuclear power plant.

And all that isn't even touching the problem of nuclear waste, which will be a problem for tens of thousands of years.

Re:Indeed

[plague911]

You do know that solar and wind end up releasing more radiation into the environment than nuclear due to mining the materials needed? Sure you do lol.

Re:Indeed

[Uberbah]

Anything is possible with Fantasy Calculus. The same sort of wingnut math that is used to argue that a Prius pollutes more than a Hummer can easily be used to ignore uranium mines and the vast amounts of concrete needed for nuclear power to throw stones at wind and solar.

Totally disrepectful to the earth

[Anonymous Coward]

nt

Re:Totally disrepectful to the earth

[TheRealQuestor]

I really don't think the earth cares one way or the other as far as elements and radioactivity goes. Kinda of like thinking the oceans would care if you added a few teaspoons of salt back to them. It all came from the ground to begin with so why not put it back when we are done with it ;)

Re: Totally disrepectful to the earth

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, no actually. There aren't deposits of *this* radioactive materials.
And although agree that Earth doesn't really care, actually, that it doesn't really care for anything that a mass of organic matter on top of it does, I'd rather that this waste is safely deposited somewhere, where if anything goes south it will have no impact on us and the environment (on a regional scale).

Re: Totally disrepectful to the earth

[Applehu Akbar]

Well, no actually. There aren't deposits of *this* radioactive materials.

The isotopes that came from the ground contained a lot more energy than the radioactives in this dump, and had longer half lives than the important isotopes being dumped.

Re:Totally disrepectful to the earth

[idji]

That Plutonium did not come from the ground; it was manufactured by humans from uranium that came from somewhere else, probably far deeper and definitely far less densely arranged. There is no comparison to be made with dissolving the same salt back into the liquid from which it came, which can redisperse it.

Re:Totally disrepectful to the earth

[Anonymous Coward]

Arsenic and mercury are naturally occurring to.

But if you concentrate it, and then dump it into a river, it's not going to have the same effect as trace amounts in the environment.

Re: Totally disrepectful to the earth

[religionofpeas]

and had longer half lives than the important isotopes being dumped.

That's not necessarily an improvement. The longer the half life, the less radiation per second.

Re: Totally disrepectful to the earth

[Anonymous Coward]

You don't have a choice in that respect. You do, however get to spread out the pollution with the right strategy and execution. What's better a completely polluted river that won't take any more or a little harmless pollution all over the world? Totally impugning that idea

Re:Totally disrepectful to the earth

[TheRealQuestor]

Arsenic and mercury are naturally occurring to.

But if you concentrate it, and then dump it into a river, it's not going to have the same effect as trace amounts in the environment.

the river won't care nor will most of the fauna. The only ones that care and that it directly affects is us. We NEED to care because the earth doesn't give a ticks ass about us or anything we do, I would imagine it saying "here's a place to either thrive or die, up to you." and short of blowing the whole planet up or sending it into the sun nothing we do or can do will destroy the earth. We can/are able to effect how hospitable this rock is for us to live on it though. Few critters shit in the their beds like we do.

Re: Totally disrepectful to the earth

[Anonymous Coward]

The government couldn't use H1B slave labor for uranium mining but they used the next best thing: native Navajo Indians.

Fake news never talks about it though, like Ferguson and WTC7.

Re: Totally disrepectful to the earth

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re: Totally disrepectful to the earth

[phayes]

You cannot have it both ways. The shorter the half-life the less time it needs to be stored to become innocuous.

The nature of half-lives makes the materials rapidly less radioactive. Half is gone in the first period, a quarter in the second, etc. The longer half-lived isotopes draw out the period these materials should be isolated but all the shorter lived materials will have been long been degraded before the 200000 years some are claiming.

Re:Totally disrepectful to the earth

[GrumpySteen]

Being pedantic about terminology doesn't make you the winner of an argument. It just proves that you missed the point of the argument.

Re:Totally disrepectful to the earth

[phayes]

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.

Re:Totally disrepectful to the earth

[phayes]

I would imagine it saying

You imagining that the Earth is saying anything is the point where you lost contact with reality.

Re: Totally disrepectful to the earth

[religionofpeas]

You cannot have it both ways. The shorter the half-life the less time it needs to be stored to become innocuous.

Right, but there's a whole spectrum, not just two ways. Really short or really long half lives are easier to deal with. The worst are the ones in the middle, with half life of 100-1000 years. Short enough that they can produce strong radiation, and long enough that it will remain a problem for generations.

Re:Totally disrepectful to the earth

[b0s0z0ku]

We're not talking about Pu (which isn't all that dangerous unless you eat it or use it in a nuke) as much as other other more highly radioactive elements like Sr-90 and Cs-137. Half life about 30 years, but even after 10 half lives, there's likely enough to deliver a lethal dose to anyone near the waste. Plus even short-lived isotopes decay to other radioisotopes.

Re:Totally disrepectful to the earth

[b0s0z0ku]

The Earth is a symbiotic organism -- all life is interdependent. She doesn't speak the King's English, but it Mother Gaia does indeed speak.

Re:Totally disrepectful to the earth

[religionofpeas]

PU is not more dangerous than the U that it was produced from

These are different materials with totally different properties. You're drawing an over-simplistic conclusion by assuming that they are equally dangerous.

Re: Totally disrepectful to the earth

[Anonymous Coward]

I guess we are shit out of luck. Dump it all in the ravine down the road.

Re:Totally disrepectful to the earth

[angel'o'sphere]

400mg Uranium dissolved in your body in various forms of uranium oxygenes you likely survive.
Plutonium ... not so much. You are an idiot. Looking at the colour of your dot behind your /. ID, I pointed that out already often enough.

Re:Totally disrepectful to the earth

[angel'o'sphere]

Plutonium is the most poisonous - as in poison - element on the planet.
On top of that it has the super ugly tendency to wander into your bone marrow ... IIRC the deadly dose for a human over 3 years is 40mg.

Plus even short-lived isotopes decay to other radioisotopes.
Either Cs or Sr, or a similar one, decays into a isotope that has only a half life of a few minutes ...

Re: Totally disrepectful to the earth

[angel'o'sphere]

Half life is a completely overrated argument on /. (or in america?)
The questions are:
* does it get into the body?
* where does it accumulate?
* what particles are emitted?
* what energy do those particles have?
* is it harmful already if the emissions come from the outside (alpha/beta versus gamma) or only from inside the body
* is it an element that body is hungry for, like Cs?
* and in case it is released into the environment are there biologic path's by which they get accumulated, e.g. Cs again, you simply do not want to eat mushrooms around Chernobyl, regardless that the accident was 30 years go, it is still _forbidden_ to gather mushrooms in _south Germany_ because they are to contaminated with unhealthy levels of Cs

Re: Totally disrepectful to the earth

[Terwin]

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.

Re:Totally disrepectful to the earth

[b0s0z0ku]

You're actually correct about the decay chain of Cs and Sr ending in short-lived then stable isotopes.

As far as plutonium, yes, it's toxic. Don't eat it, breathe it in, or place a neutron reflector over a sphere of it (see also: the Louis Slotin incident). It's still not bad compared to isotopes that can give you radiation burns or kill you just because you're across a room from them.

Re: Totally disrepectful to the earth

[Anonymous Coward]

For storing nuclear waste, half life is important for determining how long waste needs to be contained, which is why it came up (particularly in this story) and why it is discussed.

Your questions relate to contamination of large areas with radiation, but is not really relevant to storage of high level waste. You even say "in case it is released into the environment". We are trying to prevent that. It matters how long we need to keep that from happening.

Re:Totally disrepectful to the earth

[Anonymous Coward]

Respect earth ?? Bitch Gaia, the viperous mediatrix of HIV & Ebola, rabies & ectopic pregnacy, black-mambas & tornadoes. This is the bitch-goddess snowflake gaffots want to protect ... use as an emblem of all worth protecting. One as pestilent as the other . Slap their face ... bust their neez ... make them bleed each time they pea. BURMASHAVE

Re:Totally disrepectful to the earth

[LordAba]

You shouldn't personify the Earth, she hates that.

Re:Totally disrepectful to the earth

[sfcat]

We're not talking about Pu (which isn't all that dangerous unless you eat it or use it in a nuke) as much as other other more highly radioactive elements like Sr-90 and Cs-137. Half life about 30 years, but even after 10 half lives, there's likely enough to deliver a lethal dose to anyone near the waste. Plus even short-lived isotopes decay to other radioisotopes.

False, 10 half-lives is usually the standard for when sometime is "safe" again. At 10 half-lives the radiation is 1/1024th of the original amount. Cs-137 produces a lot of radiation but it isn't particularly penetrating type of radiation. It can be safely stored in a normal 55-gallon drum as it is a beta emitter and not a gamma emitter. Its nasty stuff but "lethal" doses of its radiation don't last forever. Also, "lethal" isn't a standard is ionizating radiation, radiation just isn't that simple.

Re:Totally disrepectful to the earth

[kellymcdonald78]

Polonium-210 is more poisonous than Plutonium

Re: Totally disrepectful to the earth

[sfcat]

Wow, I agree with you, that's a first. Just one nit. Its Iodine, not Cesium that the body is hungry for. That's why foods with Iodine are always recommended for nuclear war style bunkers. Its also why during Chernobyl, mothers were giving Iodine to their children. Cesium also can bio-accumulate but the body doesn't use Cesium normally so it doesn't tend to accumulate in human (or animal) tissues without constant exposure. Its the accumulation in plants and especially fungi that we worry about, hence the mushroom ban. Fortunately, not many organisms can tolerate much Cesium (its a nasty heavy metal in the first place) anyway so its the rare living thing that bio-accumulates Cs-137.

Re: Totally disrepectful to the earth

[Applehu Akbar]

Really short or really long half lives are easier to deal with. The worst are the ones in the middle, with half life of 100-1000 years. Short enough that they can produce strong radiation, and long enough that it will remain a problem for generations.

Those intermediate half-life isotopes are the ones we should be recycling. Nuclear plants produce a lot of highly radioactive iodine, but that isotope decays to insignificance in three to six months. Thallium, on the other hand, has an extremely long half-life but there is very little of it, and because of the long half-life it does not emit much radiation.

Re:/if-trump-obstructed-justice-he-cant-be-exonera

[Anonymous Coward]

If you judge things by the sensations they cause your ass to feel, you're going to really enjoy prison, Trumptards.

Leaving artifacts for future generations

[Anonymous Coward]

What a legacy. I can see it now, two thousand years from now, the grand empire that was the United States collapsed centuries ago, left in a dark age, and civilization finally built itself back up from the ashes. Archaeology becomes a viable career again, and where else to dig in search of prior civilizations than out in a desert, which potentially was once an oasis.

Inspired by tales of mystery and traps, the archeologists set out to find signs of intelligent life, but it turns out they find a booby trap of monumental proportions, a curse from the prior civilization, that leaves them dead, as well as any who come near.

Re: Leaving artifacts for future generations

[Anonymous Coward]

Hopefully they will reinvent the Geiger counter before they all die. Or atleast learn to figure out the hazard signs.

Re:Leaving artifacts for future generations

[IwantaWaffleIron]

kind of like the rolling stone from Indiana Jones - but you cant see it, it's delayed in time and it will kill everything that you come into contact with as well. When was the last time we did not open a tomb which had warning signs with curses on it? Oh yeah, never.

Re:Leaving artifacts for future generations

[Anonymous Coward]

What a legacy. I can see it now, two thousand years from now, the grand empire that was the United States collapsed centuries ago, left in a dark age, and civilization finally built itself back up from the ashes. Archaeology becomes a viable career again, and where else to dig in search of prior civilizations than out in a desert, which potentially was once an oasis.

Inspired by tales of mystery and traps, the archeologists set out to find signs of intelligent life, but it turns out they find a booby trap of monumental proportions, a curse from the prior civilization, that leaves them dead, as well as any who come near.

First off, if they end up exploring and dying, it will only prove that not learning about history can and will come back to haunt you.

And speaking of history, let's remember we once trekked thousands of miles across a desert and found massive pyramids had been built by an ancient civilization...in order to warehouse a few humans.

Re: Leaving artifacts for future generations

[BcNexus]

I’m not sure what your overall point is. But regarding people blithely digging it up without understanding the warnings, they’ve thought of that. That said, they unfortunately haven’t implemented it.

In 1981, the US Department of Energy tasked a group of experts to design a warning message that would last millennia; a warning for the repository that would be intelligible to future generations of humans who might happen across it hundreds of thousands of years from now.

However, as of 2017, none of the markers or warning messages have actually been implemented. There’s a chance that no final message will ever be designed for US repositories; that the reports were simply commissioned to assuage public fears about the facilities.

"A lot of us had been around the block a few times and knew this was going to be a report that the government only did because they needed it to show compliance," one of the experts—named Lomberg—from the group said. "They didn't really care what we said, I think."

In Lomberg's opinion, creating a (standard) message for the future is necessary. He considers the lack of one a lapse of judgment, insofar as a standardized warning message at each site around the world could help curtail widespread disaster, should our descendants decide to open one of the many nuclear vaults that are predicted to be established worldwide.

https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/9aey95/radioactive-cats-and-nuclear-priests-how-to-warn-the-future-about-toxic-waste

Re:Leaving artifacts for future generations

[PPH]

the grand empire that was the United States collapsed centuries ago

The Chinese will still be around. And they'll mine the dump site and extract the valuable metals for industrial use. Which should have been done before this crap was planted in the ground.

Re:Leaving artifacts for future generations

[Miamicanes]

"thousands of miles across a desert" is kind of an exaggeration. The Great Pyramid is about 4 miles from downtown Cairo, itself adjacent to the Nile. Modern-day Cairo literally sprawls to the base of the pyramids. Back in ancient times, you could have probably seen the pyramids from just about anywhere along the Nile within 10-20 miles of Giza.

This 360-degree photo vividly illustrates just how close the pyramids are to Cairo:

https://www.google.com/maps/@2...

Another pic that really makes it shockingly clear just how adjacent they are to Cairo:

https://www.google.com/maps/@2...

> in order to warehouse a few humans

On one hand, the pyramids were an extravagant waste of money if you consider only their official intended purpose. On the other hand, considering how much money they generate for Egypt's tourist industry year after year, they were arguably one of the most robustly-profitable long-term capital investments in the history of human civilization.

Re:Leaving artifacts for future generations

[_Sharp'r_]

Funny, but radioactive materials which keep their radiation levels up for thousands of years aren't very energetic emitters.

So really, they just find some more radioactive than usual dirt.

As long as it's dry, of course.

[Anonymous Coward]

Here in Germany, they tried the same thing. Except our water table is usually pretty high. So imagine the "surprise" when the salt got cracks and water leaked in and out again.

But thanks to help from ouf fellow US environmental experts, we'll soon have a desert here too.
Which is nice, sice all the refugees they caused will feel right at home.

Re:As long as it's dry, of course.

[Anonymous Coward]

"help from ouf fellow US environmental experts, we'll soon have a desert here too." - Pardon, you're saying "US environmental experts" are causing Germany to become a desert? Are you referring to fracking, or... ?

Those aren't environmental experts. You might be drunk on spoiled cabbage.

Whaddaya mean NO COLLUSION!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

CNN told me there was!!!

What the fuck?

Sarcasm isn't your strong side, is it?

[Anonymous Coward]

I pondered whether putting it in quotes or adding a sarcasm tag was necessary, but thought: People are smart enough. They can do it.

My experience, sadly, tells me that you must have missed taking you Asperger meds.
Then again maybe you've just seen too many morons too, who could actually think like this. ;)
In that case, excuse my experience-based prejudice.

"all the refugees they causes"

[gDLL]

Gee, i didn't know Germany has a border with Siria/Afganistan/Arabia. Yeah, keep hating western civilization...

Re:"all the refugees they causes"

[Anonymous Coward]

Western civilisation is fine, it’s just the US that isn’t civillised.

Re: "all the refugees they causes"

[Anonymous Coward]

Syria and Germany may hate each other's guts but both agree on that fact because that stands in the way of other more valuable and plentiful territory. A veritable rogues gallery. Nice and simple.

MAGA KAG TRUMP 2020

[Anonymous Coward]

Leftist tears taste so sweet.

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KEEP AMERICA GREAT - TRUMP 2020.

Anyone who is against Lord GEOTUS Trump is a traitor. These traitors are libelous slanderous seditious treasonous fuckers that want to make AMERICA into Venezuela. Fuck that shit.

Lord GEOTUS TRUMP is an emissary from God himself to restore AMERICA's sovereignty!

Fuck you marxist. Fuck you leftist. Fuck you bolshevik. Fuck you leftist-racists - all leftists are racists due to identity politics. Fuck you bolivarian cunt! Fuck you chicom! Fuck you soviet piece of shit!

To All TRUMP Haters - yo are all sad people with a small shriveled penises and live a life of being a slimy sexless cuck. If any of you ever did land some pussy a bigger stronger man is reaming that roastie while you all can hope to watch cuck!

Now give it another 200'000 years or so

[gweihir]

And by any sane standards of safety-engineering, we will start to have data of actual worth for the task at hand.

I am not opposed to nuclear energy. I am opposed to the greedy and insane people that operate and build the respective installations and that continuously lie to the public about their safety. 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.

Re: Now give it another 200'000 years or so

[Anonymous Coward]

Everybody wants it both ways. Only a very very few want that problem to go away. People like you who rant on and on and don't come to the right conclusion here are the only ones preventing the mass hallucination

Re: Now give it another 200'000 years or so

[Anonymous Coward]

Burying waste? That's how you solve the problem? This is what I think: the little people may be a little bit irritated but had a chance to complain a long time ago. The big corporate special interests want to scale up and don't want that kind of frivolity, especially if it prevents pollution and lining their wallets.

Re:Now give it another 200'000 years or so

[MrKaos]

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:

Sec. 161 (c) Termination of granite research. Not later than 6 months after the date of the enactment of the Nuclear Waste Policy Amendments Act of 1987 [enacted Dec. 22,1987], the Secretary shall phase out in an orderly manner funding for all research programs in existence on such date of enactment [enacted Dec. 22,1987] designed to evaluate the suitability of crystalline rock as a potential repository host medium.

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.

Re: Now give it another 200'000 years or so

[Anonymous Coward]

If politics is in the way then it will always be in the way. Enjoy your useless democracy

Re:Now give it another 200'000 years or so

[Ol Olsoc]

And by any sane standards of safety-engineering, we will start to have data of actual worth for the task at hand.

I am not opposed to nuclear energy. I am opposed to the greedy and insane people that operate and build the respective installations and that continuously lie to the public about their safety. 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.

You are exactly correct.

When reduced to it's basics, we have an energy dense material which is poisonous, and when mostly used up in the process to extract the energy, is still poisonous.

It is an engineering process. It can be made safe. But it is expensive and painstaking.

So we have politics involved. Shit, nothing like allowing the most corrupt baksheesh and bribe loving humans on the planet enriching themselves. Always trying to alter the laws of physics with money.

So we have accountants involved. Let's make this as cheaply as possible. What can we eliminate to save a few bucks.

We have management, trying to work with the pols and bean counters.

The engineers and engineering are at the bottom of a list, yet they should have been at the top

Re:Now give it another 200'000 years or so

[gweihir]

Indeed. Tech problems need to be solved by engineers. Anything else is pure insanity.

Re:Now give it another 200'000 years or so

[AmiMoJo]

It can never be made cost efficient and safe, because there will always be unknown unknowns. That translates to risk and extremely high potential losses. No matter what you do, that will never change.

Meanwhile the alternatives are getting cheaper every day. The chances of nuclear ever catching up, even with free government-backed insurance to mitigate that risk, is zero.

Re:Now give it another 200'000 years or so

[gweihir]

Possibly. At the very least we know that the nuclear industry has screwed up badly in the last half century and still is neither cost-effective nor safe and has extreme follow-up costs that nobody has yet paid for. And the alternatives are getting better every day or are already significantly superior with much lower risks.

Re:Now give it another 200'000 years or so

[Anonymous Coward]

It can never be made cost efficient and safe, because there will always be unknown unknowns.

By that logic nothing can ever be made cost efficient and safe, because everything has unknown unknowns.

What's that? You want me to prove that, say, solar has an unknown unknown? Ok, but first you prove that nuclear has an unknown unknown. You made the claim first that there will always be unknown unknowns, so you get to back it up first.

However, allow me to save you the trouble of trying and prove that you can't. If you can name it, it isn't an unknown unknown, it's a known unknown. Ergo, you cannot prove that there are unknown unknowns. Ergo, "there will always be unknown unknowns" is a nonsense statement that can neither be proved nor disproved.

Re:Now give it another 200'000 years or so

[AmiMoJo]

The key difference is that the maximum damage that a solar panel can do is known. It can fall on people, it can get blown around and smash stuff up, same as lots of other solar panel sized things we deal with all the time.

Nuclear power could, if the failure was catastrophic enough, causing trillions of Euros/Dollars of damage. Even a relatively contained accident like Fukushima is costing hundreds of billions to deal with, and the compensation claims are still coming.

So while it's possible there are failure modes for solar PV we have not thought of or consider extremely unlikely, the cost of that failure is manageable and doesn't stop solar PV being affordable or practical. The same cannot be said of nuclear.

Re:Now give it another 200'000 years or so

[Loki_1929]

Nuclear is already the safest form of electrical power generation ever implemented by mankind. And that's with all the greed, shortcuts, extreme risk taking, etc. factored into it. Nearly every nuclear plant ever built simply operated day after day, providing safe, clean power from the moment it achieved criticality to the final day of service. The few examples of problems you can think of either didn't kill anyone or caused so few deaths that it doesn't begin to compare to any other source. People die setting up wind turbines and solar installations (particularly rooftop). People die building hydro dams and many more die when those dams fail. Every source has risk and every source has a cost. Thus far, with decades of experience, nuclear has the lowest risk to human life - as implemented - compared to any other option. And its designs have only become far safer.

Refusing to back nuclear due to safety concerns is based purely on a provably inaccurate assessment of risk. Provably with 65 years of real-world data. It works and it's safe. Is it perfect? Of course not. It's just closer to perfect than any other option we've got.

Re:Now give it another 200'000 years or so

[Loki_1929]

If it's not cost efficient, why do 450 nuclear power plants exist worldwide with another 60 under construction? (https://www.euronuclear.org/info/encyclopedia/n/nuclear-power-plant-world-wide.htm)

If it's not safe, why is its mortality rate the lowest of every kind of power plant ever constructed? (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_accidents)

Re:Now give it another 200'000 years or so

[drinkypoo]

Nuclear is already the safest form of electrical power generation ever implemented by mankind.

You can't make that claim until all of the waste has cooled. Until then, it can still kill people.

Refusing to back nuclear due to safety concerns is based purely on a provably inaccurate assessment of risk. Provably with 65 years of real-world data

65 years out of thousands? Whoopee.

Re:Now give it another 200'000 years or so

[drinkypoo]

If it's not cost efficient, why do 450 nuclear power plants exist worldwide with another 60 under construction?

The same reason we still have military conflict — the broken window fallacy. Someone is making money, and they don't give a shit about the rest of us so long as they get theirs.

Re:Now give it another 200'000 years or so

[Anonymous Coward]

Everything you just said, while true, doesn't actually disprove anything I said. Because you just shifted the goalpost from unknown unknowns to known knowns and known unknowns.

Next time, start with that goalpost. It'll make you look like less of a fool when the next person realizes that unknown unknowns cannot, by definition, be known and you are forced to move the goalposts once again.

Re:Now give it another 200'000 years or so

[gweihir]

Indeed. And since a lot of people mindlessly cheered for nuclear and saw it as a sign of prosperity and power (via the bomb), there was a lot of money to be made. The best part is that the follow-up costs of nuclear is extreme (in a non-catastrophe scenario), but nobody that profited is going to pay.

Re:Now give it another 200'000 years or so

[gweihir]

Fuckushima with the wind blowing differently. Fuckushima with the cooling pool catching fire (which was a very close thing). No more Tokyo. That is unacceptable, even if it was narrowly avoided by pure dumb luck.

You were saying?

Re:Now give it another 200'000 years or so

[thegarbz]

Nuclear could be made safe, but not by these people.

It's not those people who prevent nuclear from being made safe, but rather people like you who oppose continuous development. You would sooner see the car banned than have Volvo invent and standardise the seatbelt.

Re:Now give it another 200'000 years or so

[sfcat]

The key difference is that the maximum damage that a solar panel can do is known. It can fall on people, it can get blown around and smash stuff up, same as lots of other solar panel sized things we deal with all the time.

Even with as poor a job as we do with nuclear currently (according to you), solar and wind still kill far more people than nuclear per amount of power produced. But don't let facts get in your way. Also, I'm sure one of your unicorn technologies will come by eventually to save us all before climate change does us in. We don't need to use a technology we already understand and can scale to replace fossil fuels. Also, nuclear from 70 years ago is the best we can ever do and we should never do research into newer reactors. Have I understood your position?

Re:Now give it another 200'000 years or so

[AmiMoJo]

Have I understood your position?

No. Try again without all the strawman arguments.

Re:Now give it another 200'000 years or so

[Anonymous Coward]

As they say at the library: "We preserve it forever, ten years at a time."

A twenty-year anniversary should signal that it's time for a fresh evaluation, and new planning to handle unforeseen problems. Then implement solutions for the next twenty years. You can't plan for 200,000 years. The concept is plainly silly.

If there's no one here twenty years from now to handle the next iteration, then I guess it won't much matter anyway.

It may sound a little nihilistic, but it's really not.

Re:Now give it another 200'000 years or so

[Anonymous Coward]

You have no idea what the waste load of panels will eventually be once we hit the knee on the curve of old ones being retired. You have no idea what the consequences will be for having a large amount of power production that's easily affected by the weather. Maybe the best power storage method we come up with ends up being awful in the long run. You don't know. These are unknown unknowns because we can't really speculate on them.
We do actually know the maximum damage nuclear can do, and it's basically Chernobyl. That was the absolute worst case scenario happening to the worst design anyone could come up with that actually worked for any amount of time. aaand, it's not a big deal. Things got irradiated, big whoop. We also blasted craploads of nuclear weapons all over the world testing them, and there isn't much (literal) fallout from that nonsense either. Some nuclear submarines got sunk and have exposed reactors. Oh well, the ocean is enormous so whatever. Nuclear is really not all that dangerous, despite what the chicken littles keep saying. We have TWh of perfectly safe, clean energy from the technology. If idiots would let us actually research new technology instead of screaming that the world is over tomorrow because the Japanese are spending lots of money learning that cutting corners on your reactor safety is a bad plan, well maybe we'd have better reactors (we would!)

Re:Now give it another 200'000 years or so

[Loki_1929]

We have nuclear power plants for the same reason we have military conflict? That doesn't make any sense at all. You're just throwing random words out there as if it's some sort of deeply insightful commentary. The reasons behind military conflicts are extremely varied; from ancient tribal disputes to religious strife to resource scarcity and dozens of others. None of those are why we have constructed and continued to construct nuclear power plants. We have them because there is a market/need for electrical power and nuclear power plants offer a safe, efficient, relatively inexpensive (once constructed) source. And the broken window fallacy? Complete non-sequitur. You're saying we build nuclear power plants because of a belief that destroying something and rebuilding it spurs economic growth? Do you have any idea what you're even saying? Because it's complete nonsense.

Here's what the Congressional Budget Office says about the cost-effectiveness in the United States (where nuclear regulation is very high and where fuel reprocessing is barred; both of which work against nuclear power):

"[T]he longer-term competitiveness of nuclear technology as a source of electricity is likely to depend on policymakers' decisions regarding carbon dioxide constraints. If such constraints are implemented, nuclear power will probably enjoy a cost advantage over conventional fossil-fuel alternatives as a source of electricity-generating capacity. Today, even the anticipation that carbon dioxide emissions will be priced is a factor being weighed in investors' decisions about new base-load capacity."

So the CBO puts the cost of nuclear - even under the less than ideal conditions present in the US - as cheaper than fossil fuels once even limited cost externalities relating to climate change are accounted for. Yes, the CBO knows how much it costs to build a nuclear power plant. Yes, the CBO knows how much it costs to operate a nuclear power plant throughout its lifetime. And yes, the CBO knows how much it costs to decommission a nuclear power plant. That's their job. And if nuclear power plants are competitive with fossil fuel plants in the United States, they're even better positioned in the rest of the world where fuel reprocessing is allowed which reduces waste product storage requirements and overall fuel consumption and cost.

So in addition to being the safest form of electrical power generation in the history of mankind, nuclear is also cost-effective. Still waiting for a reasoned argument against it.

Re: Now give it another 200'000 years or so

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh boo fucking hoo. You can what-if all you want over Fukushima. It didnâ(TM)t happen.

It goes the other way too. What if chernobyl had a containment building like all other reasonably built reactors?

One day the oil is going to run out and weâ(TM)ll all be sitting cold in the dark starving. Nuclear isnâ(TM)t an option. It is a requirement.

Re:Now give it another 200'000 years or so

[Loki_1929]

>You can't make that claim until all of the waste has cooled. Until then, it can still kill people.

I can relate the fact that after decades of real-world use, nuclear power plants have resulted in fewer human deaths per TWh than any other source. All you have is fear, uncertainty, and doubt about things you're afraid of because you don't understand them. You are incorrectly calculating risk based on flawed emotional responses.

Re:Now give it another 200'000 years or so

[Loki_1929]

And if wind turbines stop the jet stream, the whole Earth will freeze over.

See? I can come up with absurd sci-fi scenarios too. Again, you're simply playing up fear, uncertainty, and doubt with nightmare fantasies which do not reflect reality. It's a transparent appeal to emotion which doesn't match any real world data. It's anti-science, in precisely the same way the anti-vaxxer movement is anti-science. What if vaccines cause autism? But all the chemicals? Brain swelling! Someone somewhere could possibly get hurt!

As if the vaccines aren't demonstrably saving tens of millions of lives. But hey, if we can get just a little doubt to creep in about something scary...

Re:Now give it another 200'000 years or so

[drinkypoo]

We have nuclear power plants for the same reason we have military conflict? That doesn't make any sense at all.

It only makes sense if you know how to read, and pay attention. Which part of the comparison did you find unclear?

The reasons behind military conflicts are extremely varied; from ancient tribal disputes to religious strife to resource scarcity and dozens of others.

They all boil down to profit. Who gets the money, who gets the land (and all wealth is derived from the land), etc.

Re:Now give it another 200'000 years or so

[drinkypoo]

I can relate the fact that after decades of real-world use, nuclear power plants have resulted in fewer human deaths per TWh than any other source. All you have is fear, uncertainty, and doubt about things you're afraid of because you don't understand them.

I understand full well what the issues are. For example, the issue that the storage system we planned to use in the facility we built (dry cask) often fails. And I understand that once aquifers are contaminated, there's no way to clean them. I understand that your fact is irrelevant on the time scales that we're talking about. I fear these things specifically because I do understand them, and I know you're being a disingenuous douchebag for the same reason.

Re: /if-trump-obstructed-justice-he-cant-be-exoner

[Anonymous Coward]

Too much for you? Think Barr can't deal with it? You have much to learn inside your little steel-making bubble trumptard. But OK I guess wait and see is all. Avoidance = playing directly into the hands of the bad guys

Re: /if-trump-obstructed-justice-he-cant-be-exone

[Anonymous Coward]

Bad guys don't give that a second thought. This is what they want: world domination. You can't appease the bad guys

Dry Cask handling

[MrKaos]

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?

Re: Dry Cask handling

[Anonymous Coward]

Nobody wants that so do the math or we all keep suffering

Re:Dry Cask handling

[Anonymous Coward]

For 7 Billion Dollars, why not just build a wall of plutonium waste on the border? That's killing a lot of birds with one stone.

Re: Dry Cask handling

[Anonymous Coward]

Waiting will help no one. Who makes the call?

Re:Dry Cask handling

[Smidge204]

> radically decrease the severity of other types of potential nuclear accidents, is to start moving spent fuel rods from pools to dry cask storage.

They do.

When the spent fuel rods are removed from the reactor, they are still highly radioactive and still produce a significant amount of heat. They will continue to output significant amounts of heat for years (About 5 years IIRC). To keep them cool, they are stored in water. The water has the additional benefit of shielding much of the radiation

After the most radioactive elements in the spent fuel have decayed away, and they rate of heat generation is low enough that air cooling is sufficient to keep them from melting, they are removed from the pool and put into dry concrete casks.

It's not feasible to go directly to dry storage. There's too much heat, too much radioactivity, to store or transport the material in any significant quantity.

It's worth noting that the potential for accident is extremely low for the storage pools. The pools are large enough (at least in the US) that they do not need to be actively cooled. This is by design. The biggest threat is keeping the reactor core cool, which will always require active pumping of coolant and is thus vulnerable to prolonged power loss.
=Smidge=

Re:Dry Cask handling

[Anonymous Coward]

What they attado is mix some of the less dangerous radioisotopes into cement and asphault to pave the nations roads in Oregon. If the roads in oregon all generated enough heat they would never freeze up. Less people would die on i 84. Oregon does not believe in salting roads because it harms the fish. However radio active roads would be the best of all worlds. The fish would be happy. The roads would be safe, and the long lived radio isotopes would be moved out of the dangerous radioactive cooling ponds.

I expect the union of concerned scientists to get on board with my idea post hasty.

FUCK SCIENCE.

Re:Dry Cask handling

[MrKaos]

They will continue to output significant amounts of heat for years (About 5 years IIRC). To keep them cool, they are stored in water. The water has the additional benefit of shielding much of the radiation

After the most radioactive elements in the spent fuel have decayed away, and they rate of heat generation is low enough that air cooling is sufficient to keep them from melting, they are removed from the pool and put into dry concrete casks.

Yes, this is indeed correct. I neglected to mention that it is for spent fuel rods that have been stored in a pool for at least 5 years. Thanks for pointing that out.

It's worth noting that the potential for accident is extremely low for the storage pools.

However the impact of such an event is extremely high considering they contain much more than a single core of a nuclear reactor after years of refueling activity. What Fukushima is teaching us that the accident doesn't necessarily have to be in the spent fuel pool to affect it. Power loss or loss of coolant in the pools are a greater threat as the pools don't have the same containment that the reactor itself has.

The pools are large enough (at least in the US) that they do not need to be actively cooled. This is by design.

Which is why I pointed out the fuel packing density, it is beginning to become a serious concern at some facilities. This was the problem at Fukushima when its design basis was exceeded and their fuel packing density is much less that the U.S. They had average 450 tons of water above their spent fuel which should have given them at least a week to sort the situation out. When the gate pair seals failed the reserve disappeared.

It is also worth noting that simply changing how the spent fuel pools are packed, so these elements that are still cooling are more physically separated. I do not believe there is an NRC policy that dictates this at this time. Again, a great way to improve nuclear safety that is a very effective insurance policy for very little cost.

It would be great to see nuclear supporters lobbying for this.

Re:Dry Cask handling

[b0s0z0ku]

Zhirinovsky thought about this -- giant fans to blow radwaste across Poland. Do you want to be like a drunken Russian demagogue?

Re:Dry Cask handling

[ghoul]

So insensitive. Part of where the wall is proposed is a bird sanctuary. You will kill a lot more birds than 2.

Re: Dry Cask handling

[Anonymous Coward]

You cant move the fuel from the pools to dry storage until it cools. Thats why it is in the pools to begin with.

Re:/if-trump-obstructed-justice-he-cant-be-exonera

[Anonymous Coward]

GO FUCK YOURSELF

Up the ass.

With an old, splintered telephone pole. Covering in flaming tar.

Again:

GO FUCK YOURSELF

We've been hearing SHIT from your worthless, election-overturning ilk for over two fucking years.

Ever since Saint HilLIARy! LOST TO TRUMP .

Now, all your LIES have been laid bare.

SO GO FUCK YOURSELF

This article doesn't feel quite right

[Pollux]

I mean, think about it. We are trying to find a permanent solution to the indefinite storage of nuclear material. So, why are we celebrating a 20-year anniversary? Twenty years going on infinity is still 0% of its supposed lifespan. The fact that we're saying, "Hey, look, guys, we made it twenty years!" doesn't exactly exude confidence about all the years remaining.

Re:This article doesn't feel quite right

[Anonymous Coward]

Quite right. The problem with this kind of storage is it has to last 10,000 years without being destroyed, finding groundwater, or forgotten. That's already a pretty big ask geologically. But it also must endure the rise and fall of nations. Civilization as we know it is barely 10,000 years old. All modern nations are less than 10,000 years old by a lot. The written word is only about 5,000 years old. This is an unbelievably big ask anthropologically speaking. 20 years is absolutely nothing in this context!

Re:This article doesn't feel quite right

[Livius]

Maybe not a win exactly but if it didn't make it 20 years then we could say right away we needed a new idea, so either way we learned something.

Re:This article doesn't feel quite right

[crow]

Well, there are two challenges. One is storing the stuff permanently, but the other is transporting the waste and putting it into the permanent storage. Much of the opposition to facilities like Yucca Mountain have been around the transportation issue. That's what they can celebrate having demonstrated success with now.

Re:This article doesn't feel quite right

[Anonymous Coward]

I mean, think about it. We are trying to find a permanent solution to the indefinite storage of nuclear material. So, why are we celebrating a 20-year anniversary? Twenty years going on infinity is still 0% of its supposed lifespan. The fact that we're saying, "Hey, look, guys, we made it twenty years!" doesn't exactly exude confidence about all the years remaining.

What?? No we aren't.

The planet won't even exist for infinity, so why try to math with that?
Those same numbers also show 20/20 = 1 = 100% which is an equally silly way to word it.

But more importantly is the fact we don't need to store it indefinitely, we only need to store it longer than the material will remain radioactive at dangerous levels, and deep enough that it can't have any effect on humanity.

Seeing that unprocessed material came from underground in the first place, it is perfectly sound reasoning that putting it back would keep it safe.
The biggest difference is the fact most of the waste is processed material, purified and concentrated. It emits radiation at a far higher level and much stronger than naturally occurring material, so we need to put it even deeper to be equally as safe.

Strictly speaking, and I only mention this because of your use of "infinity" and not because it matters, but processed nuclear waste will actually live less time than naturally occurring material.
The radioactive decay is just that, decay, converting the elements down to lighter and safer ones.
More radiation means a faster decay process.
OFC this doesn't matter as we're talking tens to hundreds of thousands of years for our waste versus many hundreds of millions of years for naturally occurring material... But no where in either range of those numbers does infinity fall :P

One can certainly argue half a kilometer can be improved upon, and I wouldn't disagree.
But the actual plan of putting it back under the earths surface where it came from or deeper, is arguably a proven idea.
After all, life has existed for billions of years on earth with radioactive material being there in the first place.
We just need to assure "deep" is actually deep enough for the axiom to stay true.

Re:This article doesn't feel quite right

[avandesande]

This waste is being buried in potash/salt mines that are geological features that have been literally unchanged for 100s of millions of years. Maybe someone has actually given some though to the issue? And yes, this is close to being in my back yard....

Re:This article doesn't feel quite right

[Thelasko]

Even worse, this is a "pilot plant". It's basically in beta testing. The production version was never completed.

We're celebrating 20 years of perpetual beta.

Re:This article doesn't feel quite right

[Anonymous Coward]

I mean, think about it. We are trying to find a permanent solution to the indefinite storage of nuclear material.

Look on the plus side - at least it is well monitored for now.

On the other hand, we basically require a thick layer of plastic between most trash in landfills and the ground water underneath. A lot of the stuff we dump out is toxic as hell and it'll never decompose - heavy metals, for example. Yet the monitoring of non-nuclear waste is pathetic.

Re:This article doesn't feel quite right

[GungaDan]

"literally unchanged for 100s of millions of years"

Gondwana and Pangaea would probably quibble over your time scale.

Besides, if that's in your back yard, the Yellowstone super-hyper-megavolcano will probably kill you long before it hurls much of this petty nuclear waste into the atmosphere.

Re:This article doesn't feel quite right

[Anonymous Coward]

Wankers like you will be at the 10,000 year anniversary saying "Pffftt! 10,000 years down, infinity to go!"

You, Sir, are a troll.

Re:This article doesn't feel quite right

[sfcat]

Well, there are two challenges. One is storing the stuff permanently, but the other is transporting the waste and putting it into the permanent storage. Much of the opposition to facilities like Yucca Mountain have been around the transportation issue. That's what they can celebrate having demonstrated success with now.

There are nuclear flasks (which we've had for decades) which can withstand any abuse. "For a second test the same flask was fitted with a new lid, filled again with steel bars and water before a train was driven into it at high speed. The flask survived with only cosmetic damage while the train was destroyed." Read that again, we parked this thing on a railroad crossing and drove a train at full speed into it and the flask only has cosmetic damage, while the train was destroyed. Is that safe enough for you? We have solved these engineering problems to any reasonable degree of certainty. This is about obstructionism, not reasonable objections.

20 years down, 5.8 million to go!

[Anonymous Coward]

WOHOO! 20 years and we haven't all died!

I'm sure those plastic barrels will last another 5.8 million years for their contents to reach a safe level. 100% confidence. Those are some really great barrels made by great American people. They're the best barrels ever made in the history of man.

Re:20 years down, 5.8 million to go!

[PPH]

5.8 million years isn't a problem. Stuff that decays over such long time spans is emitting radiation at such a low level its not much of a danger. The bad stuff has half lives of a few years. It's spewing radiation like mad. But it won't be around for very long. Maybe a few hundred years.

They could do the same thing cheaper

[Anonymous Coward]

by putting it in the washington state buildings. At the very least politicians would be VERY careful of failures in containment and the lobbyists for nuke power will be likewise either EXTREMELY careful or refuse to do their bribery in the capitol buildings where their products are stored "safely".

And a coal fire burns solids....

[Anonymous Coward]

But the thing is it only burns carbon solids in a coal-similar form, not any old atomic number. Similarly such "burning" as anuclear power plant does is only for U235 and a similar range of non-natural or EXTREMELY rare atoms, not just any old nuclear waste. It's not the fucking delorean from Back To The Future, moron.

Pu is toxic. So why is that "not dangerous"?

[Anonymous Coward]

Do you leave ratpoison around willy nilly because it too is not dangerous unless you eat it? Or are you not a fucking moron, just play one to fluff the nuke industry and pretend it's all safe happyness and anyone disagreeing is just nuts?

And you made no claim

[Anonymous Coward]

But your phrasing still asserts that the GPP made a mistake, dispite you never having shown any such thing, nor even tried to.

They're not the same? Then maybe its WORSE, not better.
They're not the same? Well strychnine and cyanide are different, both terribly bad for you.
We can't tell what the fuck you're talking about BECAUSE YOU SAY NOTHING.
And in your attempt to not be wrong yet still insinuate that someone else WAS, you just got to be wronger than anyone else could be in your flailing about.

get it off earth?

[Anonymous Coward]

Why havnt we sent nuclear waste garbage shuttles into the sun? Or off into infinite space?

Is it that much more expensive than doing all these weird experiments?

Re:get it off earth?

[Anonymous Coward]

Why havnt we sent nuclear waste garbage shuttles into the sun? Or off into infinite space?

Is it that much more expensive than doing all these weird experiments?

In a way, yes. A single rocket full of radioactive waste exploding in the atmosphere due to an accident would be more damaging and expensive than all of the leaks and containment facilities we've already built combined.

We don't have rocketry foolproof enough for this idea to be workable at this point.

Re:get it off earth?

[Moochman]

I've often thought the same. Would be interested in hearing from anyone who might have some insight here. My guess, though, is that yes, it's pretty expensive. Still seems like the best option to me, though.

Re:get it off earth?

[Anonymous Coward]

Because launch systems fail, and when they fail they cargo can wind up dispersed into the environment.

Nuclear waste

[Anonymous Coward]

Why not store it in subduction zones at plates? That way it's going under further naturally through geological processes?

Nuclear waste?

[Anonymous Coward]

It's so fing easy

Vitrify it.
Dump it in an active subduction zone.
Problem solved.

Go find something else to do.

I find it ironic

[Grand Facade]

That they are putting nuke waste in what will be prime real estate soon due to global warming!

Re:I find it ironic

[Anonymous Coward]

It's just a teensy bit heavy...

Re:/if-trump-obstructed-justice-he-cant-be-exonera

[Anonymous Coward]

You still die in prison, you realize right? Lol, dumb traitors think they're already back in Moscow...

Moon base alpha

[pgmrdlm]

Just put the spent fuel on the moon. Then we can have a live remake of Moon Base alpha

Rocket Science

[duke_cheetah2003]

Why are we wasting our efforts storing this crap on this planet? Get it out of here.

Put it on the moon, shoot it into interstellar space. Surely the low risk of a rocket explosion is worth just getting that crap out of here forever, since it's going to be hazardous effectively forever.

Re:Rocket Science

[CanadianMacFan]

You would need thousands of rocket launches to get rid of all of the waste. It's not just spent fuel and material for warheads. It's everything that those things have been closely exposed to. Research material, containers, reactor vessels, and a whole lot more.

The consider that between 0.1% and 1% (closer to the 1%) of launches end up in failure. Even in the best case you are looking at multiple explosions with highly radioactive material but most likely in the 10's.

Re:Rocket Science

[kaatochacha]

There is roughly a 5% failure rate on rocket launches.
Willing to bet 5% against spreading hazardous radioactive waste across vast swathes of the planet?

Clean up is not the same as cover up

[Anonymous Coward]

Is needed to fund research on this subject, leaders in the 80s and 90s really thought that the world would end the next day anyways... But we're going to stay around here for some long time.

South Austrlian Nuclear Dump

[aberglas]

South Australa is a relatively poor state, one of whose major industries is a Uranium mine.

But one thing that it does have is a lot of nothing. Lots and lots of it. And much of it is not over the Great Artisan Basin aquifer, and on stable rocks.

There was a proposal to build a waste dump there to initially store the waste that is now stored in suburban Sydney. And then maybe import it.

Can you imagine the money that the USA, Japan etc. would pay? Suddenly that nothing would be extremely valuable.

But any argument with the word "Waste" or "Nuclear" is tough to make. Put them together, "Nuclear Waste" and it is dead. Everybody knows that it would destroy the state, if not the entire planet.

Re:South Austrlian Nuclear Dump

[MrKaos]

South Australa is a relatively poor state, one of whose major industries is a Uranium mine.

They also have a lot of geothermal energy they *could* export to other states and it's also ideally suited to refining aluminum considering how close they are to some of the largest bauxite deposits in the world. Carbon free aluminum would be very valuable to many industries. So that is an alternative to...

There was a proposal to build a waste dump there to initially store the waste that is now stored in suburban Sydney. And then maybe import it.

Can you imagine the money that the USA, Japan etc. would pay?

I doubt there would be any amount of money a country could pay that would be enough. Australia happens to be the last continent free of human made radio-isotopes and the sheer volume of nuclear waste would change that very quickly.

Re:South Austrlian Nuclear Dump

[Anonymous Coward]

That geothermal energy is actually nuclear based. Unlike most geothermal which happens because the crust is thin, the SA one is because it is on top of a large amount of Uranium that is naturally decaying (with some natural water to slow down the neutrons).

Australia refines a lot of Aluminium, which is known as solid electricity, almost all generated from coal.

Australia actually has more radio-isotopes than most other places. I am not sure whether being man made actually makes a difference.

Re:South Austrlian Nuclear Dump

[MrKaos]

So what. We're only going to be using the thermal energy.

You Start At The Beginning

[Anonymous Coward]

I hadn't even heard of this waste disposal site; I'd only heard of the endless trials and tribulations of the Yucca Mountain site.

Failing to find a permanent nuclear waste disposal site is part of the reason I believe that nuclear power languished in America. If you don't have a serious, long-term answer for the most dangerous waste products, how is anyone going to trust you to build more of these plants?

No, I really don't believe that on-site storage of nuclear waste is the answer. Proponents have tried to make this case but let's be real: They are trying to make a positive out of negative on that score. They are gilding the lily, to use the phrase.

Nor does it have to be a dump-type facility. You want to reprocess, use fast-breeder reactors, all that stuff? That's fine too. But you'd better have a strong answer to the entire fuel cycle and nuclear still doesn't have that.

Want to build Thorium reactors? OK, fine, build them then. It's just that there's not one single Thorium reactor operating on Earth, not commercially.

Want to build fusion reactors? That's crap; fusion is 50 years away (and 50 years from now it will still be 50 years away). Yeah, yeah, I know all about the tokomaks, and the stellarators, and the laser fusion thingies, and the impact fusion whatsits, and the cold fusion ain't going nowhere stuff. At this stage fusion is just a gleam in some mad scientist's eye. We are at the kiddie phase of controlling fusion.

Back on topic. A viable long-term nuclear waste storage site, capable of handling high level waste? It's good and it builds confidence. We've not had enough of that from the nuclear industry.

Meanwhile in France...

[TheSync]

In France, spent nuclear fuel is reprocessed at the La Hague site, where the remnants are temporarily stored into the permanent underground repository. La Hague reprocessed 1700 tonnes of fuel per year.

France has a project to permanently store long-life nuclear waste 500 metres below ground in impermeable clay in Bure, eastern France, but the plan has not yet received government approval and is strongly opposed by local groups and environmentalists.

Re:Meanwhile in France...

[Anonymous Coward]

Thank you for this, very interesting information on French nuclear procedures.

One question, what does it mean that "...the remnants are temporarily stored into the permanent underground repository." Why would you temporarily store in a permanent location? Is this some kind of dedicated holding site? A defined stop-over in waste processing?

No One Read the Article or Summary?

[RemoJones]

WIPP does not store waste from nuclear reactors. As the article and summary state, WIPP stores materials, such as gloves from glove boxes, that have been contaminated with plutonium. There are no chunks of radioactive fuel, nothing to reprocess, nothing you can make a bomb from. It's all just discarded items that were used in research labs or in weapons plants that also happen to have been in contact with plutonium and are thus contaminated and dangerous to humans. Though having been a long-time reader of Slashdot, I know it's not unusual for most of the posts to be off-topic.