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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 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.
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.
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 ;)
Gee, i didn't know Germany has a border with Siria/Afganistan/Arabia. Yeah, keep hating western civilization...
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.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Democracy is a sheep and two wolves deciding what to have for lunch. Freedom is a well armed sheep contesting the issue
Being pedantic about terminology doesn't make you the winner of an argument. It just proves that you missed the point of the argument.
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
I would imagine it saying
You imagining that the Earth is saying anything is the point where you lost contact with reality.
Democracy is a sheep and two wolves deciding what to have for lunch. Freedom is a well armed sheep contesting the issue
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
400mg Uranium dissolved in your body in various forms of uranium oxygenes you likely survive. ... not so much. You are an idiot. Looking at the colour of your dot behind your /. ID, I pointed that out already often enough.
Plutonium
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
Plutonium is the most poisonous - as in poison - element on the planet. ... IIRC the deadly dose for a human over 3 years is 40mg.
On top of that it has the super ugly tendency to wander into your bone marrow
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
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
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
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
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.
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.
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.
You shouldn't personify the Earth, she hates that.
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.
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.
Have gnu, will travel.
That they are putting nuke waste in what will be prime real estate soon due to global warming!
Rick B.
Just put the spent fuel on the moon. Then we can have a live remake of Moon Base alpha
Anonymous comments are as pathetic as the anonymous "sources" that contaminate gutless journalism from the New York Time
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.
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.
"Those that start by burning books, will end by burning men."
Polonium-210 is more poisonous than Plutonium
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.
"Those that start by burning books, will end by burning men."
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.
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.
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.
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.