Slashdot Mirror
First-of-Its-Kind US Nuclear Waste Dump Marks 20 Years (apnews.com)
"In a remote stretch of New Mexico desert, the U.S. government put in motion an experiment aimed at proving to the world that radioactive waste could be safely disposed of deep underground..." reports the Associated Press:
Twenty years and more than 12,380 shipments later, tons of Cold War-era waste from decades of bomb-making and nuclear research across the U.S. have been stashed in the salt caverns that make up the underground facility. Each week, several shipments of special boxes and barrels packed with lab coats, rubber gloves, tools and debris contaminated with plutonium and other radioactive elements are trucked to the site.
But the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant has not been without issues. A 2014 radiation leak forced an expensive, nearly three-year closure, delayed the federal government's cleanup program and prompted policy changes at national laboratories and defense-related sites across the U.S. More recently, the U.S. Department of Energy said it would investigate reports that workers may have been exposed last year to hazardous chemicals. Still, supporters consider the repository a success, saying it provides a viable option for dealing with a multibillion-dollar mess that stretches from a decommissioned nuclear weapons production site in Washington state to one of the nation's top nuclear research labs, in Idaho, and locations as far east as South Carolina. If it weren't for the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant, many containers of plutonium-contaminated waste would be outside, exposed to the weather and susceptible to natural disasters, said J.R. Stroble, head of business operations at the Department of Energy's Carlsbad Field Office, which oversees the contractor that operates the repository.
"The whole purpose of WIPP is to isolate this long-lived radioactive, hazardous waste from the accessible environment, from people and the things people need in order to live life on Earth," he told The Associated Press.
But the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant has not been without issues. A 2014 radiation leak forced an expensive, nearly three-year closure, delayed the federal government's cleanup program and prompted policy changes at national laboratories and defense-related sites across the U.S. More recently, the U.S. Department of Energy said it would investigate reports that workers may have been exposed last year to hazardous chemicals. Still, supporters consider the repository a success, saying it provides a viable option for dealing with a multibillion-dollar mess that stretches from a decommissioned nuclear weapons production site in Washington state to one of the nation's top nuclear research labs, in Idaho, and locations as far east as South Carolina. If it weren't for the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant, many containers of plutonium-contaminated waste would be outside, exposed to the weather and susceptible to natural disasters, said J.R. Stroble, head of business operations at the Department of Energy's Carlsbad Field Office, which oversees the contractor that operates the repository.
"The whole purpose of WIPP is to isolate this long-lived radioactive, hazardous waste from the accessible environment, from people and the things people need in order to live life on Earth," he told The Associated Press.
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.
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.
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.
Being pedantic about terminology doesn't make you the winner of an argument. It just proves that you missed the point of the argument.
> 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=
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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....
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
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.
Still cheaper than Solar, Wind, Coal, and NG when all costs are accounted for. Yes, even disposal.
A nuclear reactor "Burns" radiation to run a steam engine. Dumping radioactive waste in the ground is dumping fuel in the ground. Use fuel reprossessing to remove the contaminants that prevent it working in a normal reactor and re-use it as new fuel. We have the technology to permanenly and safely dispose of all radioactive isotopes, it just costs more than dumping.
That's not accurate. The 93% of the heat in a reactor is from fission and not from radioactive decay as you state. And the issues raised about fuel reprocessing aren't about cost either. Its about nuclear proliferation risks.
The worry is that during the reprocessing, someone will steal pure fissionable produce from the reprocessing station. Now, often that requires a nation-state level of industrial facilities to process the fissionable material from the unused fuel and fission products. The problem is that the same purification systems used in reprocessing can be repurposed and used to enrich fissionable material which is a step in making bombs. The other problem is that nuclear fuel in our current civilian reactors is only 4% used up so there are lots of fissionable isotopes left in the "waste". However, this isn't true for the Th-U fuel cycle and Thorium reactors wouldn't have this issue as they burn up 96% of their fissionable material and their waste stream doesn't have enough fissionable material left to make weapons. It would be easier to start with natural Uranium ore than the waste from a Thorium reactor.
When a reactor operates, it fissions the fuel and creates fission products. Based upon the fuel cycle and energy of the neutrons in the reactor (and other factors), you can calculate what fission products are created. The fission products are the waste and will decay on a specific period. Reactors with lots of Pu will make waste that takes as long as 10,000 to decay to natural levels of radiation (at which point its "safe"). Reactors with lots of U-233 (Thorium breeders) make waste that lasts *only* 300 years. Thorium reactors burn up 96% of their nuclear fuel leaving very little fissionable material in the waste stream making reprocessing of this material safe in comparison with the reprocessing that happens with a current generation U-Pu reactor.
"Those that start by burning books, will end by burning men."
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.
"Those that start by burning books, will end by burning men."
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.
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.