Billy T, I would like to make my contribution to this subject (although it would be much more appropriate if we opened a new thread on the subject: Spent fuel storage, or Radioactive Waste Management. Back in 1983-84 I was in charge of assembling and translating into Spanish, French, and Italian the Operation Manual for the Nuclear Station “Embalse” in Córdoba, Argentina, built by the Canadian AECL (Atomic Energy of Canada Ltd). I had my background in mechanical, civil, aeronautical, and electronic engineering, but not a solid one on nuclear physics. So I had to take a crash course on the subject and I gained some insight on the nuclear problem. Up to now, Embalse Nuclear Station is working fine, no troubles along its 22 year of operation, no problems of leaks or nothing –it looks that I didn’t goofed in my work. Storage and management of spent fuel has not a single technical or scientific problem. Everything has been solved. The only problem that remains is the political one. Environmental NGOs have been exploiting quite successfully the Nuclear neurosis and paranoia (especially Greenpeace and the UCS). We have, at least, three way of dealing with nuclear residues: 1) Encapsulate them in borosilicate glass, then inside steal and lead cylinders with a stainless steel outside, and bury them underground (as in Yucca Mountain). This is the most expensive and least preferred way to get rid of radioactive waste. 2) You encapsulate the waste as for storing in Yucca mountain, but instead of that you take the cylinders and make bullets with them burying deep into de ocean floor. Even if after some hundred of thousand of years the metal caskets got corroded by salt water, the borosilicate glass cannot be attacked by salt water. Besides, the oceans floor contains several billion tons of radioactive material or natural origin. According to the former head of the US Atomic Energy Commission, and a marine biologist, Dr. Dixie Lee Ray, the sea already contains 400 billion curies (Ci) of Potassium-40, 100 million Ci of radium, and one billion Ci of Uranium-238. The top inch of the sea floor contains several million Ci or uranium; the Mississippi river alone add 363 Ci of this renewable resource every year. 190 in water, and 173 in sediment. The damage to marine life is nil. Many marine organisms themselves receive tens of REMS (not millirems) of radiation per year from Polonium-210, which, like Plutonium is an alpha emitter, and one type of shrimp gets an annual dose of 100 rems. Of course, you have heard Greenpeace saying that the disposal at sea of nuclear waste “will make a sea so radioactive that it could not support algae … wich produces up to half the world’s oxygen.” According to Dr. Dixie Lee Ray there is not enough radioactivity in the world to threaten the algae. 3. There is the chemical isolation and concentration of radioactivity as developed by the Argonne national laboratory many years ago –still waiting for the political decision to implement it: they have synthesized an entirely new substance called CMPO (for octyl [phenyl]-N,N-diisobutylcarbamoyl-methylphosphine-oxide) which is capable of selectively isolating transuranics from the rest of the nuclear waste. By removing transuranics and concentrating them in about 4% of the original volume, the remaining 94% of the residue fall into the category of Low Level Waste, that can be safely manipulated without special equipments or clothes. 4. The remaining 4% of High Level Waste is Plutonium reactor grade (not good for making H-Bombs) that fuels the 4th generation reactors (fast breeders) in Japan, France, South Africa, etc) These reactors completely burns the fuel leaving no radioactive waste. Again, the political decision is long overdue. 5. The best way of getting rid of radioactive waste, as with most waste and garbage, is RECYCLING. Exposing radioactive atoms to intense bombardment by neutrons can cause reversion to the stable state. In other words, radioactive wastes can be rendered non-radioactive by treating them in a neutron-producing reactor, as the new fast breeders. The Argonne’s NL Integral Fast Reactor can do it. The base of this NON-problem is the lack of a political decision to take the bull by the horns and dig the knife deep into his heart. “Green politics” is the real problem, not common sense politics.
Edufer, as you and many other people know nuclear power nowadays isn't all that dangerous or "unclean", so because you were/are in the field maybe you know - why do those Greenpeace and other organisations oppose nuclear power technologies when in reality an oil power station (imo) produces much more harm to the environment? p.s. I'm quite excited about the ITER project! Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!
to edufer 7 and Avatar: I agree green peace has had a net negative effect upon the enviroment etc. but they are not all ignorant crazies. I have a lot of respect for Amory loving types, but he may also dislike green peace. Dufer you know more than I do abut nuclear waste "problem" and your No. 2 solution sounds a lot like my idea, but a little more expensive. Is there anything wrong with just glassifying the high level/ long lasting iosptopes and dumping them in a deep ocean trench that will carry them on towards the Earth's core for more than a million years? I think we agree that my "glasify and dump in deep ocean trench" will work and is cheap. I do not know but have doubts that you can "burn up" (transmute) waste in a reactor economically - probably requires one of special design and not too attractive as a power source, but I am just guessing. How sure are you that net reduction is even achievable?
Well Avatar, I think you are starting with the wrong foot when thinking about Greenpeace and other anti-nuke organizations. It seems that you believe that Greenpeace cares about the global warming, cares about the environment, the whales, butterflies and other lovely critters. When you go to the roots, to the start of the history, follow the loose leads, then you’ll see that Greenpeace is like a train where many different people have jumped aboard –each one following their own interests, and willing to get down at their desired stations. The original founding fathers (all of them have deserted the organization) started it as trying to stop nuclear test in the Aleutian islands by the US, and later in the Pacific (Mururoa island) by the French back in 1969 and early 7os. Although everybody, including me, found these goals just fine, they soon turned into another issues as whaling, nuclear energy, global warming, ozone hole, etc, that is, any conceivable unscientific scandal that could make a good base for a campaign for raising funds. Presently, Greenpeace is composed by the lower ranks, sincere but highly neurotic (almost psychotic people) that suffer from what Viktor Frankl defined as “the noogen neurosis”, or the “quest for identity” in modern youngsters. As he puts it: “…without knowing what he has to do, nor what he should do; he doesn’t even know what he would like to do…”. Many people mistake that with depression, and escapes from this state lead most of the time to conformism. Complicated questions are rejected. According to Frankl, it is the "daily man that has given up the search for a sense to life." But most other people seek and find a refuge in violence: they fall into totalitarian thinking and are easy prey for fundamentalistic ideologies. Another other way out to this mental situation is alcoholism, drug addictions, excessive work (workaholics), the search for power, fame, wealth –or adhesion to some “sacred cause”. It is a disease of modern societies. There are societies that, although their members are not neurotic by themselves conform a neurotic society. Frank said, “every epoch has its own neurosis, and every time needs its own therapy.” And the most notorius neurosis of the postwar epoch was the "Atomic Neurosis", that although it has been pending above our heads as a Damocles sword, never had materialized so the people has stopped believing in future nuclear wars. The lower ranks of Greenpeacers are formed by this kind of neurotic people. The higher rank are in the business just for the money and power. The story of David McTaggart (died on 2001 in a car accident) the man who took Greenpeace from the hand of their old and sincere founders and converted it into a money-making machine is a chilly and disgusting one. It has been told by the magazine Forbes back in 1991, in an article titled, “The Not So Peaceful World of Greenpeace,” (with a caption under McTaggart picture saying: “McTaggart: leaving again the scene on time?” It seems that McTaggart had the habit, before joining Greenpeace, of embezzling people in real estate deals and “disappearing” from the scene just in time. McTaggart saw the “environmental light” after the French planted a mine on the side of his ketch in Auckland and sunk it, while killing Fernando Pereira, a Portuguese photographer that was filed in German and Dutch secret services as a KGB agent that was usually involved in organizing anti-US missile demonstrations in Europe. The rest you can imagine or have read in some papers. The French paid $20 million indemnity to Greenpeace and McTaggart saw the unlimited possibilities of the Green (dollar green) Spirit. Don’t look for Greenpeace in Wikipedia, as the story was written there by Greenpeacers. So nuclear energy was a logical target for scaring people and making them contribute to the “salvation of the planet” by sending $5 dollars (or more) every month through VISA, or any other credit card. But some time around the early 90s the organization was organized and managed from England by the MI-6 that used it along the rest of environmental organizations and institutions there (there are many Royal institutions dedicated to saving flora, fauna, and the planet –why not?) and you will see some Lords leading Greenpeace --Lord Melchett's family is the owner of ICI -Imperial Chemical Industries. A conflict of interest you may ask? The reason behind those “saving efforts” are geopolitical, of course. Lastly: Greenpeace really love all those coal firing plants polluting the air, all those nuclear stations all over the world, all those fires and logging in the Amazon, all those GM experiments and crops expanding in South America, etc, because they are the reason for cashing more and more money and at the same time fulfilling their “Master’s Desires: limits to growth –especially in developing countries. Sometime we should start a thread about all this crazy people on the bottom, and those not so crazy at the top. And I have not mentioned Greenpeace's ties and collaboration with eco-terrorists from Earth First!, Lynx, Animal Liberation Front, etc., that gives material for writing an encyclopedia.
Billy T, the cheapest solution in the short range is vitrifying the residues, just as they are out of the “oven” (Calandria, or Core would be the right word). But recycling spent fuel to get plutonium is better in the long run, economically speaking. Transmuting or recycling has been done, there were experiments at Sandia Nat Lab, Argonne Nat Lab, Oak Ridge Nat Lab, that have been successful some 15 - 20 years ago. But politicians always seem to be looking in different directions when it comes to solve people’s real problems. It is the old same story. My opinion is that there is no better way of dealing with toxic material or radioactive waste that rendering it harmless and innocuous by “recycling”, that is, converting them into another less toxic or radioactive material. There are different ways to achieve this, but there seems politicians don’t react and say, “OK, let’s choose this method and do it.” But DO IT NOW! And lastly: the present energetic needs of mankind can be satisfied by nuclear power stations. And we won’t be running the risk of running out of uranium as it might be the case with oil. Dr. Bernard Cohen has calculated the uranium reserves to provide energy (in the less efficient method of nuclear fission) for something as 500 K years. Time enough for mankind to find a better source of energy. Anyhow, I have not plans to be around by then –I don’t believe in reincarnation.
I do not know (think no one does) to what extent man's activities are causing ice caps to melt. As far as I can tell, they are. I do not believe that discussion of how to avoid the growing release of fossil sequestered carbon (as CO2) into the air is off thread as even if this activity of man may later be found to have been only a minor contribution, I am sure is does contribute to "global warming" - CO2 is transparent in the visible but a good absorber in the IR that Earth must radiate back into space for a steady temperature with steady solar imput (which may or may not be the case). I agree with Edufer that recycling spent fuel is the best solution economically, but am a little nervous with a lot of Plutonium being recovered in a lot of countries as it is relative low cost route to nuclear weapons and reactors designed to make it (like Chernoble was) I think are not as safe as some other designs or as efficient in converting latent nuclear energy in to electric power, but I admit to not being an expert in this. Edufer did not give me a clear answer to my question about how sure he was that transmutation of hazardous isotopes to at least short lifetime ones, if not stable ones, is possible. I ask it again, assuming it is as follows: If the rate of current decay from spent fuel (no longer economic in the reactor) is X and the spent fuel is placed in a reactor designed for transmuting it produces new radioactive material with total activity rate of decay of Y, assuming X > Y, but all of the old X is now safe, how many passes thru the transmuting reactor are required before the net reduction is X instead of X-Y or some such question like that as I have not clearly stated what I mean by activity rates X etc. Is it really more economically and safer to treat radioactive waste by transmuting it (do not forget the transmuting reactor itself has a finite life time and then must be disposed of)? Or is simple making of my vitrified disks and tossing them in a deep ocean trench for a billion plus year trip into the core of the Earth not safer and cheaper? In any case, this waste of potentially useful nuclear energy in the "waste" / spent fuel will neither be serious nor unaffordable in view ot the great availability of new Uranium.
The consensus in the scientific community is that the extent of man's activity to causing global warming and the melting of ice caps, and the natural warming trend that we are curently undergoing since the last ice age, is about 50:50. In other words: 50% due to man, 50% due to the natural trend. However, if we are to survive and sustain an environment most conducive to human habitation, the global warming trend has to be stopped or reversed irregardless of how it is being caused. Beyond a doubt the depletion of the ozone layer and the consequent entrance of more cancer-causing UV radiation is due to man's release of CFCs into the atmosphere. Kyoto Protocal has imposed restrictions on this and we are now seing a reduction in the Antarctica ozone hole. Likewise, hopefully, restrictions of greenhouse gas emissions (CO2, methane, nitrous oxide, HFCs, SF6) will result in decreases in the acceleration of Global Warming.
There is nothing politically, technically or environmentally wrong with wrapping spent fuel in glass and sinking them deep into the seabed. The problem is that you’d be throwing away a very valuable material that can be seen as a commodity. Great Britain and France are the only countries that recycle spent fuel (note I didn’t say the only ones than can recycle, but the ones that are doing it nowadays). They recycle spent fuel for the Japanese: they receive Japanese material coming from their early generation reactors, recycle it separating high level waste (HLW) from the cargo, then returning the processed fuel in the form of plutonium reactor grade (for Japanese fourth generation reactors, or fast breeders) and low level waste (LLW) that can be safely managed and stored in Japan. All this is done under Greenpeace’s nose that sees the procedure and transport from and back to Japan as an excellent base for their collection money campaigns. They chase the Akatsuki Maru and the Pacific Pintail, (ships especially conditioned for this very special job) all along their route, but they do it mostly near the tip of South America (near the city of Ushuaia), where they have flown TV crews and the whole circus. They must get the action shots, zodiacs crossing in font of the ship, or their ships trying to cross the line of the nuclear cargo ships. As you can see, it is insane, as they might cause a terrible accident. Some countries see this as a special kind of “piracy in national seas” You needn’t be afraid of plutonium coming from reactors as it is simply “reactor grade” plutonium, that is, it is not good for making bombs. It needs further refining that increases its costs and difficulties (in small countries) because such installations are hard to hide from inspections by the international regulatory authorities. Our Embalse Nuclear reactor is back in operation after its 16th two months maintenance stop. This time we extracted 17 bars of spent fuel from the Calandria, and stored them in the water pools nearby that have kept spent fuel (HLW) bars since 1983. We also extracted some Cobalt-60 bars. Embalse is one of the few reactors that produce Cobalt-60 and we provide all our nuclear medicine market with it and export to many countries in the world. But Greenpeace doesn’t go chasing 747s carrying that highly radioactive material. But in high seas the things are easier, and they play the “matador” game (Toro!!) crossing hundred of meters away in front of the other ships. But trying to stop airplanes with radioactive cargo, risking a terrible accident, doesn’t sound a too politically correct thing to do. What would be a good synonym for “hypocrisy”? Greenpeace, perhaps?
Does this have anything to do with "World's Ice Caps Are Melting"? Maybe another thread called "What to do with global waste"?
Yes. CO2, as I am sure you know, may be a part of the cause of "Ice Caps Melting" and nuclear power produces little CO2 compared to fossil sources generating the same energy. The false "waste problem" is perhaps the main reason why US has not built a new nuclear power plant in more than 30 years, and probably will not have a new one on line before most of the ice cap is gone. Thus Edufer's and my discussion of nuclear waste disposal is very much on thread. Your suggested new thread would break this connection. But I agree that the general problem of non nuclear waste disposal does belong in a different thread, and it is a more serious problem than nuclear waste disposal in my view. There I switch to Edufer's POV - Recycling is the answer.
Definitely! Man-made carbon dioxide, water vapor, methane, nitrous oxide, sulfur hexafluoride, and chlorofluorocarbons are all Greenhouse Gases causing Global Warming. I was suggesting that arguments involving the disposal of waste materials from alternate sources of fuel is drifting away from the forum, but I'm very glad to hear that we all seem to agree that the production of Greenhouse Gases are causes of Global Warming and Ice Caps melting, and equally glad to hear that we are searching for alternative sources of fuel. This is imperative: but leads to these other major problems. It's a great point. Sorry to interrupt the debate. Nuclear Reaction Contaminants: 1) Uranium mill tailings: byproducts of processing of uranium-bearing ore. They are sometimes referred to as 11(e)2 wastes. Uranium mill tailings typically also contain chemically-hazardous heavy metals such as lead and arsenic. Vast mounds of uranium mill tailings are left at many old mining sites, in Colorado, New Mexico, and Utah. 2) Low level Waste: generated from hospitals and industry, comprising paper, rags, tools, clothing, filters etc which contain small amounts of mostly short-lived radioactivity. Suitable for shallow land burial: often compacted or incinerated. 3) Intermediate level Waste: requires shielding - comprised of resins, sludges and metal fuel cladding, as well as contaminated materials from reactor decommissioning. May be solidified in concrete or bitumen for disposal. Generally short lived waste (mainly from reactors) is buried in a shallow repository, while long lived waste (from fuel reprocessing) will be disposed of deep underground. U.S. regulations don't recognize this category of waste; the term is used in Europe and elsewhere. 4)High Level Wastes (HLW): arises from the use of uranium fuel in a nuclear reactor and nuclear weapons processing. It contains the fission products and transuranic elements generated in the reactor core. It is highly radioactive and hot. It can be considered the "ash" from "burning" uranium. HLW accounts for over 95% of the total radioactivity produced in the process of nuclear electricity generation. Transuranic Waste as defined by U.S. regulations, is waste that is contaminated with alpha-emitting transuranium radionuclides with half-lives greater than 20 years, and concentrations greater than 100nCi/g but not including High Level Waste. In the U.S. it arises mainly from weapons production, and consists of clothing, tools, rags, residues, debris and other such items contaminated with small amounts of radioactive elements - mostly plutonium. These elements have an atomic number greater than uranium, thus transuranic (beyond uranium). Because of the long half-lives of these elements, this waste is not disposed of as either low level or intermediate level waste. It does not have the very high radioactivity of high level waste, nor its high heat generation." However, also, with processing uranium and plutonium, there is always the potential that HLW may be used to build nuclear weapons. HLW from nuclear reactors contains plutonium. Normally "plutonium is reactor-grade plutonium, containing a mixture of 239Pu (highly suitable for building nuclear weapons) and 240Pu (an undesirable contaminant and highly radioactive); and the two isotopes are difficult to separate. Moreover, high-level waste is full of highly radioactive fission products. One solution is to recycle the plutonium and use it as a fuel e.g. in fast reactors. But the very existence of a nuclear fuel reprocessing plant needed to separate the plutonium from the other elements represents, in the minds of some, a nuclear proliferation concern. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_waste Spent fuel rods are typically first stored 40 or more feet deep and often in surrounding lake or ocean waters because they need to be cooled off first. Then, "About 8 feet of water is needed to keep radiation levels below acceptable levels: extra depth provides a safety margin and allows fuel assemblies to be manipulated without special shielding to protect the operators....It is estimated that by 2014, all of the nuclear power plants in the United States will be out of room in their spent fuel pools, most likely requiring the use of temporary storage of some kind. Yucca Mountain is expected to open in 2010 at the earliest." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spent_fuel_pool
You have forgotten to mention one of the most abundant radioactive waste in the world, especially in USA and Europe: Back in 1988, Walter Marshall, Lord Marshall of Goring and chairman of Britain’s Central Electricity Generating Board (CEGB) said once in the House of Commons: “Earlier this year, British Nuclear Fuels released into the Irish Sea some 400 kg of uranium, with the full knowledge of the regulators. This attracted considerable media attention and, I believe, some 14 parliamentary questions.” “I have to inform you that yesterday the CEGB released about 300 kg of radioactive uranium, together with all of its radioactive decay products, into the environment. Furthermore, we released some 300 kg of uranium the day before that. We shall be releasing the same amount of uranium today, and we plan to do the same tomorrow. In fact, we do it every day of every year so long as we burn coal in our power stations. And we do not call that “radioactive waste”. We call it coal ash.”The same thing happens in the USA and the rest of the world. As Dr. Dixie Lee Ray said once: “Of all industries, the nuclear industry alone has taken responsibility for its wastes from the beginning. Yet, ironically, it is the one industry most often criticized for its waste management practices.” Regulations are mostly absurd, as the ones related with nuclear medicine. All medical “radioactive” material must be properly (and quite expensively) managed and treated by specialized teams and equipments. But all material in medicine including injection needles, tubing, plastic and glass containers, swabs, gloves, even medical gowns that might come into contact with some isotope, is considered “radioactive waste”. When a patient is treated for a thyroid problem, 99% of the radioactive iodine-131 goes into the patient’s body; the remaining 1% remains trapped inside de needle or tubing and becomes “low level waste”. Iodine 131 has a half-life of 8 days; it does not stay inside the patient, but it is excreted in the normal manner. The patient is not required to void himself into a special container until all the radioactivity can be accounted for. It goes into the public sewage system, where it becomes greatly diluted and does not harm at all. But that 1% in tubing and needles must be taken care of, wasting scarce resources that hospitals could give them a better use. As I stated before, radioactive waste management is not a technical or scientific problem: it is purely political. The nuclear neurosis and paranoia is hype-ocritical.
Well I did mention this: "Low level Waste: generated from hospitals and industry." But as you state: "Iodine 131 has a half-life of 8 days....It goes into the public sewage system, where it becomes greatly diluted and does not harm at all." So minute compared to the other sources of toxic waste.
You are right. I was merely giving an example of how stupid many radiation regulations are stupid and useless. I didn't mentioned how Colman mantles have thorium, smoke detetocrs contain americium, luminous dials in watches and airplanes instruments, etc, don't deserve a special attention from regulators. It is a hypocritical attidue.
I have long known that a kilowatt-hour generated by typical coal releases much more radioactivity into the environment than if it were generated by a fission reactor. Also that in US, at least, the dirking one beer per day places more radioactivity into the body than standing 24 hours per day at the gate of a nuclear power plant. (The hops in beer tends to concentrate K40 from the soil.) Some of the reasons why I am sure it is true that green peace has been very destructive of our radiological health and the environment, by delaying nuclear power plants so long that the capital tied up has made them economically too risky to construct in US for more than 30 years. We certainly have ridiculous laws. Years ago, an artificial sweetener, cyclamate, was taken off the market as if one force-feeds approximately half the rat's body weight to the rat per day, it does produce a few cancers. US law prohibits the sale on any food additive that can be shown to produce cancer. At the time this happened, I suggested to the maker, that they add a small quantity of arsenic to their product so the rats would die of arsenic poisoning before they could develop any cancer. The nuclear power industry could do the same. - Co-locate a small coal-fired generation facility and add the nuclear waste, mixed with a little low radioactivity sand if available in the area, to the coal ash, prior to dumping it in the sea or old coalmine etc. Be sure to advertise that they had reduced the radioactivity of the wasted produced in their new hybrid coal/nuclear plant when measured either by "per kilowatt hour generated" or "per ton of waste discarded." Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! Let green peace chew on that for a while. Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!
This is a crazy whacko idea. Would you like to explain it more thoroughly, including the global implications? Or do you just dream these crackpot suggestions out of your "virtual" world? Radiation in a beer (K-40) would have to depend on where that beer is fermented and produced? If there is any at all?
