Yucca Mountain is dead

iVillage Member
Registered: 02-19-2008
Yucca Mountain is dead
8
Tue, 05-19-2009 - 3:29pm

It looks like Yucca Mountain will not be used to store nuclear fuel.

Story at - http://www.newscientist.com/blogs/shortsharpscience/2009/05/goodbye-yucca-mountain-hello-d.html

Is it safe to store US nuclear waste above ground?

If leading US energy experts have their way, the US will be storing tens of thousands of tonnes of nuclear waste above ground for decades to come. But are dry casks, originally intended as a short-term fix for nuclear waste, a safe bet?

Researchers from MIT and Harvard University fielded questions from US Senator Tom Carper yesterday in Cambridge, Massachusetts on what the US should do with its nuclear waste now that plans for Yucca Mountain, a national underground repository, have been put on hold by the Obama administration.

Surprisingly, the assembled scientists unanimously told Carper not to worry, saying existing aboveground storage would be perfectly save for another 60 to 70 years. Instead, they pressed the senator to spend time and money developing better waste reprocessing technology, rather than rush to develop the same reprocessing technology now used by Japan and other countries.

Existing reprocessing technology is "costly, prone to sabotage, offers very little waste reduction, and very little additional energy," said Harvard's Matthew Bunn of a process that can yield weapon-grade plutonium.

So, which is better? Storing spent fuel for decades on end in less than ideal storage conditions while working on developing safer, more efficient reprocessing technology, or reprocessing the waste today into plutonium rich fuel?

The US Nuclear Regulatory Commission says that, based in part on an unblemished 20-year track record, dry cask storage is perfectly safe.

But similar casks in the UK have corroded in the past, exposing radioactive waste to the elements.
Whatever decision Carper and his fellow congressmen decide to pursue could have far reaching implications. Ernest Moniz of MIT closed the discussion saying that to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, building new nuclear plants as soon as possible should be our number-one priority.

iVillage Member
Registered: 04-11-2009
Tue, 05-19-2009 - 4:36pm
Huh?

 

iVillage Member
Registered: 02-19-2008
Tue, 05-19-2009 - 4:42pm
Maybe they are experiencing stimulus? FDR had brave WPA workers counting caterpillars at one point. Government can always keep people busy.
iVillage Member
Registered: 04-11-2009
Tue, 05-19-2009 - 4:49pm
Maybe....but the thought was that more rods will come in for reprocessing.

 

iVillage Member
Registered: 01-12-2004
Tue, 05-19-2009 - 6:48pm

If I'm not mistaken, Savannah River is going to be home to the U.S. MOX plant (Mixed oxide fuel).

iVillage Member
Registered: 04-11-2009
Tue, 05-19-2009 - 7:46pm
Thanks!

 

iVillage Member
Registered: 03-03-2009
Wed, 05-20-2009 - 9:39am

You can poo-poo Roosevelt's New Deal program all you want. The fact is some of the work done, particularly by the CCC, is still around, still in good shape and certainly returned well on the investment of money and time.

As far as Yucca Mountain, it behooves those who support nuclear energy to brush up on their high school chemistry. Half lives of some of the radioactive waste elements is measured in the TEN THOUSANDS of years. Pretty daft to think that safe sequestration would be possible for that period of time.

Jabberwocka

iVillage Member
Registered: 03-18-2000
Wed, 05-20-2009 - 12:35pm

Segment from..... Why the French Like Nuclear Energy
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/reaction/readings/french.html

>"Ironically, the French nuclear program is based on American technology. After experimenting with their own gas-cooled reactors in the 1960s, the French gave up and purchased American Pressurized Water Reactors designed by Westinghouse. Sticking to just one design meant the 56 plants were much cheaper to build than in the US. Moreover, management of safety issues was much easier: the lessons from any incident at one plant could be quickly learned by managers of the other 55 plants. The "return of experience" says Mandil is much greater in a standardized system than in a free for all, with many different designs managed by many different utilities as we have in America.

Things were going very well until the late 80s when another nuclear issue surfaced that threatened to derail their very successful program: nuclear waste.

French technocrats had never thought that the waste issue would be much of a problem. From the beginning the French had been recycling their nuclear waste, reclaiming the plutonium and unused
uranium and fabricating new fuel elements. This not only gave energy, it reduced the volume and longevity of French radioactive waste. The volume of the ultimate high-level waste was indeed very small: the contribution of a family of four using electricity for 20 years is a glass cylinder the size of a cigarette lighter. It was assumed that this high-level waste would be buried in underground geological storage and in the 80s French engineers began digging exploratory holes in France's rural regions."<

New

 


Photobucket&nbs

iVillage Member
Registered: 03-23-2003
Wed, 05-20-2009 - 3:09pm

http://hanfordwatch.org/


Just a little background on the dangers & issues of burial of nuclear waste...or even creating more nuclear waste.