So, it looks like Yucca Mountain is out

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CLite

Golden Member
Dec 6, 2005
1,726
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Originally posted by: QuantumPion
Originally posted by: CLite
Originally posted by: BrownTown
Originally posted by: CLite
Carter (i.e. worst president in history, betrayer of engineers) instituted legislation to prevent recycling because he thought it would set an example to stop proliferation. His plan sucked donkey balls and now France is technologically superior to us in this field.
Just as point of fact, reprocessing IS legal in this country, all Carter did was cut off government funding for reprocessing, private businesses could still do it if they were able to get through the red tape (which they can't). Really, reprocessing does NOT make sense given how cheap uranium is right now (uranium costs 1/3 of what copper does for example which might surprise some here), but it may make sense in the future which is why this spent fuel is so valuable. People act like its a terrible waste product, but in reality some day it will likely be very valuable.
*edit: actual correct information on the ban"

I really dislike Carter because he was a nuclear engineer who spread dis-information to the common public. His true legacy is the death of future investment in the building of nuclear power plants after TMI. He was truly ignorant about the risks of proliferation due to the reprocessing cycle. Also I already posted in this thread about how reprocessing is not cost effective given the cost of mined uranium, however I don't think this should of precluded us from maintaining our technical superiority in the field.
FYI Carter was not actually a nuclear engineer, although he was interested. He served on board a Diesel submarine (but left the service before the Nautilus was launched). He took one intro course on nuclear engineering but never finished a degree or program.

You're right. I remember meeting someone at a nuclear conference who said Jimmy Carter spent time at his nuclear facility in Canada. After some time spent googling I realize now he was just part of the cleanup effort. The point is though he was an engineer who betrayed the profession of engineering by giving into hysteria after TMI instead of been a calming voice of reason.



 

QuantumPion

Diamond Member
Jun 27, 2005
6,010
1
76
Originally posted by: Modelworks
Originally posted by: frostedflakes
Old news, but I guess I missed it (and I'm assuming most of P&N as well, since there wasn't any discussion about it, even in the budget threads). The FY 2010 budget basically cuts off funding for Yucca Mountain, stopping the project dead in its tracks. In a Senate hearing, Energy Secretary Steven Chu confirmed that Yucca Mountain is off the table. Of course no alternative has been offered yet.

http://www.rgj.com/article/20090306/NEWS/903060430/1321

So, what now? Maybe New Mexico? It's already home to WIPP, I guess another dump site couldn't hurt.

Yucca was too small from the beginning. We had enough waste to fill Yucca to 130% . Still it would have stored a good portion. There is a lot of research going on with fusion reactors that would take that waste and burn it as fuel. The main problem with the waste is all the cost associated with handling it. I don't think people realize that a nuclear power plant have to store waste for 10-20 years on site before it is even safe enough to transport. Then it has to be stored another 5-10K years before it would be safe to expose to people again.

We also need to keep working on the efficiency of the material we use. Reactors only use about 10% of the material used for fuel before it has to be removed due to losing its effectiveness. That is 90% waste.

Hopefully fusion will be the answer.

I live about 50 miles from a plant that provides power to me. I'm not concerned about waste at all right now. It is still one of the cheapest forms of power.

You are a bit off on your numbers.

It's true the initial storage capacity of Yucca was already reserved for storage of DoD waste, but it had plenty of room for expansion to store commercial waste as well.

Fusion power doesn't really have anything to do with transmuting waste, you are probably thinking of fast reactors, a technology which is viable but never really took off politically or economically.

Current commercial power plants can store their own waste pretty much indefinitely. In an area about the size of a football field, 20 years worth of spent fuel can be stored in dry casks. This is a small amount of land, occupied by the power plant anyway, for the amount of power generated over the course of the plant's lifetime.

The dry casks are licensed to store the fuel for several decades and can probably be re-licensed to store it for 100 years or more if necessary. If the fuel is not reprocessed it would have to be stored like this or somewhere else indefinitely. However with reprocessing, the high-level waste is reduced in volume by 90% and the half life of that waste would only be dangerous for a couple hundred years, not tens of thousands as is commonly spouted.



Nuclear fission is not 90% waste, that is not the right word. A better analogy would be if you had to buy a new car every 3000 miles, because the government made it illegal to change your oil. Of course if this was the case, driving would seem hugely wasteful, with slightly used cars piling up all over the place :)