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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.
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 by any sane standards of safety-engineering, we will start to have data of actual worth for the task at hand.
The D.O.E had a specification for achieving this called "Defense in Depth". Essentially the goal was to have a facility whose geology would act in such a way as to slow the flow of groundwater through the facility. From my understanding the specification called for building such a facility in Granite, and then to use bentonite clays to deal with the fractured nature of the granite.
It's not perfect, however it's a lot better than the pumice facility built at Yucca mountain after politics got in the way of the science.
The political story went something like this. From my understanding Nevada only got the facility because one of the states representatives was ill and missed objecting to the matter. To seal Nevada's fate in 1987 Idaho moved for amendments to the 1982 Nuclear Waste Policy Act to:
So there were a lot of sane people who understood how to engineer such a facility. The political will to build it does not exist.
Nuclear could be made safe, but not by these people. It cannot, at this time, be made both cost-efficient and safe. That will require more research.
As you can see, such research was de-funded and thus will not occur.
So far the only non-porus way to store the spent fuel is in crystalline structures which in the 00's, somewhat ironically, the CSIRO discovered form in granite. So politics not only got in the way of the engineering, it also got in the way of the potential benefits of the scientific discoveries that may have been made a decade or two earlier.
Forming these crystals artificially is the obvious goal to complete the uranium fuel cycle as these would be benign and may have industrial applications. Consequently U.S law is the obstacle to making any progress in this area and is unlikely to change until people understand these complex issues enough to lobby politicians appropriately.
This is the unfortunate consequence of the polarization of this debate.
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
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.
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.