Doubts grow about plan to dispose of Hanford's radioactive waste

[Chiefcrowe]

http://www.latimes.com/nation/la-na-hanford-nuclear-risks-20131130,0,999275,full.story

Scary!!

 

[DucatiMonster696]

They might want to talk to these people.

"China blazes trail for 'clean' nuclear power from thorium

The Chinese are running away with thorium energy, sharpening a global race for the prize of clean, cheap, and safe nuclear power. Good luck to them. They may do us all a favour."

Cambridge scientists published a tantalising study in the Annals of Nuclear Energy in February showing that it is possible to "achieve near complete transuranic waste incineration" by throwing the old residue into the reactor with thorium.

In other words, it can help clean up the mess left by a half a century of nuclear weapons and uranium reactors, instead of transporting it at great cost to be encased in concrete and buried for millennia. It is why some `greens' such as Baroness Worthington -- a former Friends of the Earth activist -- are embracing thorium. Though there are other reasons.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/...ail-for-clean-nuclear-power-from-thorium.html

 

[Agent11]

I can't believe they are screwing the pooch on something so important. . . You would have thought 20 years ago they would have at least built new tanks and pumped the waste out of the old leaky ones. Idiots.

 

[Chiefcrowe]

Seriously!! really hope their plan is a damned good one otherwise it's possible the entire water supply could become contaminated!!!!

Ducati - thanks for posting that article, very interesting stuff and potentially great!

 

[Agent11]

More info about thorium reactors.
http://www.bing.com/videos/search?q...&mid=A7A6B479A11B8155EEC2A7A6B479A11B8155EEC2

Google tech talks, very worth watching.

http://phys.org/news/2013-10-hans-blix-scientists-thorium-nuclear.html

Hans Blix is onboard.

 

[Darwin333]

More info about thorium reactors.
http://www.bing.com/videos/search?q...&mid=A7A6B479A11B8155EEC2A7A6B479A11B8155EEC2

Google tech talks, very worth watching.

http://phys.org/news/2013-10-hans-blix-scientists-thorium-nuclear.html

Hans Blix is onboard.

I, and others here, have been harping on Thorium for damn near a decade. Its not like it is some new never before done purely theoretical science, we actually built and ran a thorium reactor in the 50s or 60s. The reason that it got defunded and we stopped all research on it was because it was useless for .mil purposes. We, and every other nation pursuing nuclear power, wants the bomb along with the power.

 

[Subyman]

DOE waste has long been a major problem. Nothing new. Interesting that they are using vitrification to store it. The French have had great results with that.

 

[Agent11]

I, and others here, have been harping on Thorium for damn near a decade. Its not like it is some new never before done purely theoretical science, we actually built and ran a thorium reactor in the 50s or 60s. The reason that it got defunded and we stopped all research on it was because it was useless for .mil purposes. We, and every other nation pursuing nuclear power, wants the bomb along with the power.

If enough people were aware, and called their representatives, I think there could be hope of LFTR gaining traction. Being as it is a solution to our waste problems and many people are very conscious of the dangers of nuclear waste these days there is hope.

 

[Subyman]

Funding is the biggest issue. No lending company will front billions for a pay off in 10 years. Thorium hits the same barrier.

 

[irishScott]

We have the technology.
We have the people.

We utterly lack the basic organization and institutional integrity to make it work.

 

[DisgruntledVirus]

Funding is the biggest issue. No lending company will front billions for a pay off in 10 years. Thorium hits the same barrier.

And then it spends the next 30 years paid off and operating. With potentially a 20 year extension beyond that. At least with current regs.

But, regardless of that part of it, how do you propose we provide baseline power? Especially to replace the 104 nuclear plants in operation today throughout the US when they go offline in ~15-20 years. Coal is worse than nuclear as far as contamination byproducts are concerned. LNG is possible, but has other issues (although it's the best non-nuclear baseline power option out there at present). Hydro is tapped out. Wind/Solar don't provide baseline power at present, are still expensive, and take up a lot of land mass. So if you remove nuclear, how do you propose we power the nation with present technology?

People talk about how bad nuclear is. About various releases from different reactors throughout the country. Think about it this way, when some of these reactors were built we hadn't even landed on the moon yet. Two of the entire Space Shuttle programs could have happened during the time that some of these plants have been active. These are mainly gen 2 plants, they are old, and old things break. Replace them with Gen 4 reactors at minimum, or better yet use LFTR's. In either case you get passive safe systems that can self regulate down to safe levels so you don't get meltdowns (or the risk is mostly eliminated anyways). Allow for reprocessing spent fuel which can help to reduce our current crap ton of high level waste. Hell with LFTR's you can even burn that in the reactor. Oh and LFTR's don't provide weapons grade material so you can reduce/remove proliferation concerns.

 

[1prophet]

Nuclear power is scary and not cost effective, better to bomb brown people in the middle east while spending trillions of dollars securing our energy needs with troops over there and helping maintain misogynistic, homophobic theocracies.:hmm:

Blow back is just another cost of doing business over there for safer cheaper fossil fuels.