How the Dems killed Yucca, and the incompetence of Jaczko

[Argo]

Should have thought of that when building the plants.

There is not a single nuclear plant in NV, so why should they be the nuclear dumpster of the US? Maybe the Nuclear plant operators should put some money on the table to make it worthwhile for NV.

I thought they got money from the gov for that already. Otherwise they (nv) are retarded for accepting that deal in the first place...

 

[rcpratt]

It should be at least mandated that the waste should be pulled out of the SNF pools when it has cooled sufficiently and put into dry cask then shipped to a secure installation(s) for centralized interim storage until the government pulls it's head out of it's ass.

Uhh...we can't do that until they pull their heads out of their asses...

 

[Moonbeam]

All nuclear waste should be stored in the homes of folk who want nuclear power. But they don't want that. They want to shove it up somebody else's back side, I mean back yard.

 

[William Gaatjes]

All nuclear waste should be stored in the homes of folk who want nuclear power. But they don't want that. They want to shove it up somebody else's back side, I mean back yard.

I rather store it in your vicinity and maybe feel a little bit of self hate for doing so.

 

[Moonbeam]

Waah, 3 incidents that have killed fewer people than coal or oil based energy production. Seriously, if all you have to bitch about are our nuclear reactor problems, then sweet build more because coal and oil are far more dangerous to human than a nuke reactor. and humans have been poisoning the earth for thousands and thousands of years. when we destroyed the fertile crescent with our ancient farming techniques or terraforming regions of the world to meet our demands. waah

Planet gave us life, think of her as our mother bird. We are in this nest being given all the resources to make ourselves strong enough to eventually leave it because mamma bird can't stay with us forever. So the more we can work towards using up the resources our wonderful planet has given us and get the fuck off of it to spread Earth life throughout the universe/galaxy/whatevs.

moonbeam are you sad because big bad people are making your life unpleasant due to doing things you don't like?

No, I'm just pointing out to others what a fool you are. This Earth may be the only home we ever have and assholes like you want it fucked up because you have an some moronic delusion in your head. If we can get off the planet and go anywhere we can do it without destroying the earth. Your thinking is profoundly stupid, sorry. And don't get upset with me. It's just a fact and all I did was say it.

 

[Moonbeam]

I rather store it in your vicinity and maybe feel a little bit of self hate for doing so.

Your self hate is massive, don't worry a bit. Putting nuclear waste in my vicinity or poisoning the vicinity of your children unborn, it's all the same disgusting self hate.

 

[jackstar7]

Explosion at French Waste Site

At least nothing appears to have leaked.

 

[K1052]

Uhh...we can't do that until they pull their heads out of their asses...

After Japan I think we are going to see at a minimum a move to more aggressively move to cask storage, even on the part of utilities without government influence. Hopefully the NRC will revise downward how much SNF can be stored in pools or flat out require it to be dry casked when sufficiently cool.

Ideally it would be shipped to one or two centralized depots for interim storage until a long term solution is decided. Maybe one for each half of the country divided by the Mississippi....the WIPP site in NM and Savannah River.

 

[zsdersw]

How long until the technology exists that makes it feasible to simply shoot the waste at the sun? 200 years? 500 years? Once we have an energy source other than a barely contained explosion to launch a payload into space, I don't think this idea is too far off the beaten path.

The principal problem with sending it to the sun is the fact that even with a better launch/propulsion system there's still the risk of failure/explosion/atmospheric reentry, resulting in the spread of nuclear waste over a very large area.

 

[QuantumPion]

I thought they got money from the gov for that already. Otherwise they (nv) are retarded for accepting that deal in the first place...

a) Yucca Mt. site was previously a nuclear weapons testing area.

b) if the government changed its mind about providing a repository they will have to refund the industry the ~$20 billion dollars they have funded the project with over the last 4 decades.

 

[QuantumPion]

The principal problem with sending it to the sun is the fact that even with a better launch/propulsion system there's still the risk of failure/explosion/atmospheric reentry, resulting in the spread of nuclear waste over a very large area.

No. The principle problem with sending waste into the sun is that the waste, by weight, is about 98% fuel. You have to extract the waste before you can launch it. And if you are going to reprocess the fuel to extract the waste, then there's no need to shoot anything into the sun since the extracted radionuclide have short half lives anyway.

 

[QuantumPion]

After Japan I think we are going to see at a minimum a move to more aggressively move to cask storage,

The fuel that is eligible to be stored in dry casks have low heat generation rates. Removing them from spent fuel pools does pretty much nothing to reduce the heat load in the pools, as far as time to boiling is concerned. What we are considering doing is providing a standalone backup cooling source for the pools (e.g. passively cooled outdoor heat exchanger).

 

[QuantumPion]

All nuclear waste should be stored in the homes of folk who want nuclear power. But they don't want that. They want to shove it up somebody else's back side, I mean back yard.

Free thermoelectric power for life? Sign me up!

 

[K1052]

The fuel that is eligible to be stored in dry casks have low heat generation rates. Removing them from spent fuel pools does pretty much nothing to reduce the heat load in the pools, as far as time to boiling is concerned. What we are considering doing is providing a standalone backup cooling source for the pools (e.g. passively cooled outdoor heat exchanger).

Yes, however in the infinitesimally small chance that there was a disaster in the pool you wouldn't have several decades worth of spent fuel involved.

A few million a year per plant is a pretty modest investment and should even probably be paid out of the funds the government has been collecting for disposal.

 

[zsdersw]

No.

Yes. Can you honestly tell me that the risk of failure... potentially spreading radiation over a huge area thanks to the atmosphere... isn't among the most principal of concerns about shooting it into the sun? I doubt you can.

 

[Paratus]

All nuclear waste should be stored in the homes of folk who want nuclear power. But they don't want that. They want to shove it up somebody else's back side, I mean back yard.

Moony,


I'll take you up on the deal.
The average person uses 2000KWH of electricity per year.

U238 provides 20,000,000,000 J/g of energy.
So for my family of five I'd need to store about 1.8 grams of uranium waste a year.

That's about 1/4 of a penny in volume.

The equivalent for coal would be about 1500kg or 2.7 million pennies per year.

I'l take the U238 and a nice lead lined tube.


@zsdersw
We've already blown up a Titan rocket with several pounds of the more dangerous plutonium in an RTG. They fished it out of the ocean and put it on the next flight - no damage.

Finally,

If anyone who uses fission to make poisons that last for millions or billions of years is an asshole, meet the first and biggest: Earth

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_nuclear_fission_reactor

Oklo is the only known location for this in the world and consists of 16 sites at which self-sustaining nuclear fission reactions took place approximately 1.7 billion years ago, and ran for a few hundred thousand years, averaging 100 kW of power output during that time.[2][3]

 

[zsdersw]

@zsdersw
We've already blown up a Titan rocket with several pounds of the more dangerous plutonium in an RTG. They fished it out of the ocean and put it on the next flight - no damage.

RTGs that use Plutonium use Pu-238... which is not anywhere near as dangerous as the waste from nuclear reactors. The radiation from Pu-238 is alpha... which can be stopped by as little as a piece of paper. It also doesn't travel very far.

 

[Paratus]

RTGs use Pu-238... which is not anywhere near as radioactive as the waste from nuclear reactors.

Fair enough,

However it doesn't change the fact that in an appropriate storage container an exploding rocket will not disperse solid nuclear material.

Of course that doesn't change the fact that launching any waste is a completely stupid idea.

 

[McWatt]

Moony,

I'm amused that you of all people don't believe in sharing risk for the greater good. Your suggestion is basically the same as the commonly presented P&N idea that the concept of health insurance is bad.

There's an amusing thought experiment in a lay article by an academic who demonstrates that switching the entire world to nuclear power and then simply dividing up the waste and feeding it to everyone using the power would actually result in far fewer cancer deaths than the coal power you suggest we use instead. In fact, coal power plants discharge several times more hazardous radioactive isotopes per joule than do nuclear plants. That's right, coal power is much more "radioactive" than nuclear.

The real beauty of nuclear power emerges when we look at real world scenarios, though, where we don't simply distribute and consume the waste. Unlike the exhaust of a coal plant, which is so voluminous that it's not remotely feasible to sequester it, all (or nearly all, given inevitable accidents) of the waste from nuclear power comes in a small, easily captured package.

If I came into your home with a jar of rat poison and gave you the choice of setting it on the floor or blowing it in a fine powder all over the house, which would you choose? This concentration of waste is exactly why the uneducated masses tend to fear nuclear power - it has a scary, dangerous, recognizable form. How are we supposed to fear coal power, when the associated hazards are nearly invisible and spread everywhere? Again, would you rather have poison in a container away from habitation or in your lungs? Coal power, when operating perfectly as intended, results in orders of magnitude more premature death than nuclear power operated haphazardly. If every single nuclear plant melted down after a 20 year operating life it would still result in fewer health problems than your precious coal.

My use of coal, by the way, isn't a straw man. When we look at the next 50 years of power, reductions in nuclear necessarily mean direct increases in coal. That's an unavoidable fact. I work in the renewable energy industry, by the way, and I'm a pretty hardcore environmentalist. That's why I get frustrated at things like anti-nuclear scaremongering. Even with the few nuclear accidents that have occurred, it's the most efficient energy source in terms of deaths per joule produced, including things like wind power. Search for "deaths per twh" if you'd like to see some staggering figures.

 

[werepossum]

No. The principle problem with sending waste into the sun is that the waste, by weight, is about 98% fuel. You have to extract the waste before you can launch it. And if you are going to reprocess the fuel to extract the waste, then there's no need to shoot anything into the sun since the extracted radionuclide have short half lives anyway.

I had a very sharp chemistry professor in college who said if you want a safe way to dispose of radioactive waste from power plants, place it in steel drums with small leaks and drop it, widely dispersed, into deep ocean trenches. With a very few exceptions, we don't manufacture radioactivity, we merely concentrate it to make it useful. So a safe disposal scheme is to reintegrate it into the environment and undo that concentration.

He also said we'd be stupid to do so because radioactive waste still has an enormous amount of energy remaining. And even if it's not economically feasible to extract that remaining energy today, it almost certainly will be in the future as energy costs rise and we have ever-improving technology. Therefore the smartest thing to do is store it safely until such time as it becomes economically feasible to extract that remaining energy. Thirty-plus years later we're closing Yucca rather than expanding it. Go figure.

 

[QuantumPion]

Yes, however in the infinitesimally small chance that there was a disaster in the pool you wouldn't have several decades worth of spent fuel involved.

That's not how it works, if the pool water is lost, only the recently discharged and still hot fuel would be in danger of cladding failure and fission product release. The fuel that is cool enough to put in dry storage is cool enough to not be damaged by loss of pool water. Expediting moving fuel to dry storage doesn't help you in fuel pool boiling accident scenarios at all.

 

[QuantumPion]

Yes. Can you honestly tell me that the risk of failure... potentially spreading radiation over a huge area thanks to the atmosphere... isn't among the most principal of concerns about shooting it into the sun? I doubt you can.

Um...you've spectacularly missed the point. Maybe you should re-read my post.

 

[Moonbeam]

McWatt: Moony,

I'm amused that you of all people don't believe in sharing risk for the greater good.

M: It's not sharing when you include your unborn kids, it's being a presumpuous asshole.

MW: Your suggestion is basically the same as the commonly presented P&N idea that the concept of health insurance is bad.

M: Stupid analogy.

MW: There's an amusing thought experiment in a lay article by an academic who demonstrates that switching the entire world to nuclear power and then simply dividing up the waste and feeding it to everyone using the power would actually result in far fewer cancer deaths than the coal power you suggest we use instead.

M: Don't believe it and don't recommend coal, Solar please.

MW: In fact, coal power plants discharge several times more hazardous radioactive isotopes per joule than do nuclear plants. That's right, coal power is much more "radioactive" than nuclear.

M: I know all that shit. Don't want coal.

MW: The real beauty of nuclear power emerges when we look at real world scenarios, though, where we don't simply distribute and consume the waste. Unlike the exhaust of a coal plant, which is so voluminous that it's not remotely feasible to sequester it, all (or nearly all, given inevitable accidents) of the waste from nuclear power comes in a small, easily captured package.

M: When you look at the real world you see an industry nobody will fund because nobody will insure its safety, a total business failure were it not for government subsidies. And mothers don't want it period.

MW: If I came into your home with a jar of rat poison and gave you the choice of setting it on the floor or blowing it in a fine powder all over the house, which would you choose? This concentration of waste is exactly why the uneducated masses tend to fear nuclear power - it has a scary, dangerous, recognizable form. How are we supposed to fear coal power, when the associated hazards are nearly invisible and spread everywhere? Again, would you rather have poison in a container away from habitation or in your lungs? Coal power, when operating perfectly as intended, results in orders of magnitude more premature death than nuclear power operated haphazardly. If every single nuclear plant melted down after a 20 year operating life it would still result in fewer health problems than your precious coal.

M: Don't want rat poison, don't want coal.

MW: My use of coal, by the way, isn't a straw man. When we look at the next 50 years of power, reductions in nuclear necessarily mean direct increases in coal. That's an unavoidable fact. I work in the renewable energy industry, by the way, and I'm a pretty hardcore environmentalist. That's why I get frustrated at things like anti-nuclear scaremongering. Even with the few nuclear accidents that have occurred, it's the most efficient energy source in terms of deaths per joule produced, including things like wind power. Search for "deaths per twh" if you'd like to see some staggering figures.

M: Deaths up to this point mean nothing when you produce a killer that kills for thousands of years. It's just plain stupid and solar is what we need.

 

[Paratus]

Aw well no answer from Moonbeam.

Moonbeam you don't want nuclear and you don't want coal, what do you want?

 

[K1052]

That's not how it works, if the pool water is lost, only the recently discharged and still hot fuel would be in danger of cladding failure and fission product release. The fuel that is cool enough to put in dry storage is cool enough to not be damaged by loss of pool water. Expediting moving fuel to dry storage doesn't help you in fuel pool boiling accident scenarios at all.

I was thinking along the lines of a total failure that involves the pool going dry and a cladding fire from the fresh spent fuel spreading to the older assemblies (which has been a known concern for quite some time).

Plus as the number of allowed assemblies is increased in the pools the overall water volume is decreased, narrowing the safety margins.