Nuclear waste disposal

POSTED BY: Bytemite
UPDATED: Sunday, December 25, 2022 22:43
VIEWED: 1954
PAGE 1 of 1

BYTEMITE

Thursday, September 24, 2009 3:40 PM

Sorry, more news from Utah. Nuclear power is a good thing, but disposal is a problem that most people who want new reactors won't ever see.

Fact is, if we want to use nuclear power, we have to think of a better method. Reactors that reuse the waste are a good start, though no one's building them, or updating the current reactors. But we also need to be concerned about storage.

http://www.sltrib.com/news/ci_13403650

"Whereas Nevada has gambling and Wyoming has fossil fuels to prop up state government, Utah could have radioactive waste, argued Oren Nelson, a founder of Nelson Brothers Construction."

Yaaaaaay.

NIKI2

Thursday, September 24, 2009 6:37 PM

Brrrr...yeah, I always cringe when I see the cute advertisements and remarks about nuclear power. If it's built/maintained by humans, don't trust it--and the last thing we need to trust is a form of power that creates poisons which last centuries!

Then there's China, etc., which is planning to build how many of the damned things? We well may not have to wait for global warming to get us...

________________________
Together we are greater than the sum of our parts

OUT2THEBLACK

Thursday, September 24, 2009 7:08 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by Niki2:
If it's built/maintained by humans, don't trust it--and the last thing we need to trust is a form of power that creates poisons which last centuries!

Especially if the thing built by humans is 'government'...

DREAMTROVE

Thursday, September 24, 2009 7:08 PM

"The economic logic behind dumping a load of toxic waste in the lowest wage country is impeccable ... Under-populated countries in Africa are vastly underpolluted." - Larry Summers, Chief economic advisor to President Obama.

BYTEMITE

Thursday, September 24, 2009 7:32 PM

Plus, people seem to view Africa as a desert, which for some reason, hey, makes it okay, even if people live there.

We can't have some place being "underpolluted," heaven forbid.

WULFENSTAR

Thursday, September 24, 2009 7:33 PM

I think I've said this before... but the one thing that the American government should be allowed to do is regulate the pollution of the environment, within our own borders of course.....

NIKI2

Thursday, September 24, 2009 7:38 PM

No, Black, your comparison doesn't hold up. I was speaking of "things". Government isn't a "thing". Things need building materials, builders, maintenance, etc. Government changes who is building, maintaining, etc., constantly. And it has to be screwed up REAL bad to harm vast numbers of people for centuries to come.

A nuclear plant depends on the materials being strong and trustworthy, which means trusting the builders and those providing the materials and plans. It has to be maintained...and if even something SMALL goes wrong, the results can be disasterous.

I will grant you that there are similiarities, but what can happen when humans fail to build/maintain government takes a long time to do anything LIKE the kind of harm something wrong with a nuclear plant can do in a very short time.

DT, yes, that's one REAL big black mark against Obama, I wish we could do something about Summers!

Quote:
the one thing that the American government should be allowed to do is regulate the pollution of the environment

Uhh, Wulf, it does--or it's supposed to anyway!

________________________
Together we are greater than the sum of our parts

RUE

Thursday, September 24, 2009 7:40 PM

I've always thought the best thing to do was to concentrate it and lift it off the face of the earth - send it off to space.

Of course, we COULD accidentally be sending it to someone's back yard. Man, what a NIMBY mess THAT would make.

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Silence is consent.

WULFENSTAR

Thursday, September 24, 2009 7:43 PM

We COULD figure out a way to produce energy WITHOUT destroying the environment...

Solar energy? Why not?

BYTEMITE

Thursday, September 24, 2009 7:45 PM

The main problem is, there's not much that can be done at this point except to watch the fireworks. Energy Solutions, the name of the company importing all this nuclear waste, who paid off the Nuclear Regulatory Commission redefine low level nuclear waste... The deal's already been made, despite the Northwest compact against such an importation of nuclear waste, we're already accepting it at their storage site. Now ES is trying to get a deal to import FOREIGN waste as well.

So all this talk about making rules and restrictions now is just a little too late, the waste is already here, it's not going to be moved. Let's just hope we don't have the big earthquake we've been waiting for in the next million years, because that's going to trash their storage facilities.

BYTEMITE

Thursday, September 24, 2009 7:48 PM

Heck yeah, Wulf, solar energy is really something I can get behind. I also think that every building really ought to be built to be self-sufficient and generate their own power.

RUE

Thursday, September 24, 2009 7:48 PM

I'm not for nuclear power BTW - the biggest reason has to do with nuclear waste. We still haven't fixed up Love Canal, and those are just common, burn-able chemicals. How does anyone expect we'll be able to manage our nuclear mess for the next 24,100^7 years ?

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ETA: But seeing as we ALREADY have nuclear waste and it might be good to fix the problem ...

WULFENSTAR

Thursday, September 24, 2009 7:50 PM

So why hasnt anyone been able to harness the power of the sun?

Seriously.

We have an unlimited source of energy above our heads... but noone has tapped it.

NIKI2

Thursday, September 24, 2009 7:58 PM

I'm all for solar, wind and geothermal. Dunno if I'll live long enough for America to HAVE to move away from fossil fuels, and until it does, I doubt much will happen. Hydroelectric has played havoc with our rivers and deltas, and don't even TALK to me about "clean coal"!

Wulf, one word: Money. It's expensive to install, tho' hopefully that will come down in time. We've got a lot of solar around here, but this is CA, of course...places where it's overcast a lot, like North of us, or where you get heavy Winters, I dunno if it's as viable.

America HAS got one of the biggest--can't remember the term, "wind areas" if you will, in the world which could be exploited...again: money. And NIMBY, as they found out on the East Coast.

I'd love to see some real movement in my lifetime, but I'm not holding my breath.

________________________
Together we are greater than the sum of our parts

WULFENSTAR

Thursday, September 24, 2009 8:01 PM

See?

Thats part of my mulit-directional *point*.

Why arn't we demanding this? Solar energy would free us from a lot of bills.

Your house would just need solar power to run, and you could also power your car too...

See Tesla Motors...

www.teslamotors.com

BYTEMITE

Thursday, September 24, 2009 9:00 PM

Quote:
ETA: But seeing as we ALREADY have nuclear waste and it might be good to fix the problem ...

I'd prefer if we recycled the waste. There are fission reactors that can reuse waste produced by the current power plants and generate MORE electricity. My understand of this process is that the by-products decay faster and don't produce Radon gas, so are less dangerous to store over time.

CHRISISALL

Thursday, September 24, 2009 9:23 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by rue:
I've always thought the best thing to do was to concentrate it and lift it off the face of the earth - send it off to space.

In atomic-powered vehicles, of course.

The laughing Chrisisall

DREAMTROVE

Thursday, September 24, 2009 10:14 PM

Kathy,

Chris is right. The fuel cost of doing that would be likely higher than the energy gained in the first place, better to just skip the whole thing.

Niki,

That's a good idea, but only up to certain levels of power consumption. It's hard to run a submarine or spaceship on it.

Byte,

Yeah, I think the breed reactor works for most high-energy needs, there's also a nuclear thermonic generator the soviets designed, a few other options. Rather than target "nuclear" which is a very 50s term, we should target the overall output of any energy system in terms of by products.

PIRATENEWS

Thursday, September 24, 2009 11:11 PM

Here in Knoxville Tennessee, the federal government just BURNS millions of pounds of nuclear waste every year. The leftover nuke waste is converted into kitchen utinsels.

Because, you know, burning or washing with dishsoap deactivates the radiation. And your government loves you...

And our local nuke power plants require an adjacent hydroelectric power plant or coal power plant before the nuke plant can turn on or operate, but they're great for make nuke bomb ingredients. When the hydro plant burned down and could not be extinguished (!), Watts Bar nuke power plant was shut down for a year.

Knoxville is world HQ for the mafia/mafiya cartel for garbage, scrap metal, medical waste, nuke waste, stolen cars (also used for car bombs in Iraq), "depleted" uranium recycling (in bullets, bombs and tanks to kill US troops), the local "Green" Party, and the $3-billion "demolition" contract at World Trade Center "after" the terror bombings on 9/11/2001.

Even SMG and BTVS held their Hellmouth reunion in Knoxville...

Quote:
"At the end of April, the Department of Energy will stop receiving waste at its Oak Ridge incinerator and proceed with plans to shut down the one-of-a-kind facility. The incinerator has burned more than 33 million pounds of waste over the past two decades, specializing in the treatment of so-called mixed wastes that contain radioactive elements, polychlorinated biphenyls and other hazardous chemicals. DOE plans to operate the facility through Sept. 30 to burn the remaining waste, agency spokesman Walter Perry said. "At this time, approximately 1.7 million pounds of waste on the burn plan remain to be incinerated," Perry said. The incinerator was built and tested during the 1980s at a cost of $26 million. Full-scale operations began in 1991. Bechtel Jacobs Co., DOE's environmental manager in Oak Ridge, currently operates the incinerator and will conduct the closure operations."
-Knoxville News Sentinel, "DOE closing Oak Ridge incinerator, Remaining waste to be burned at unique OR facility before closure," April 20, 2009

"Oak Ridge currently stores more low-level nuclear waste than any other DOE site in the nation. Oak Ridge facilities have more than 47,000 cubic yards of low-level waste in storage - roughly a third of DOE's total inventory nationwide. 26,937 cubic yards at East Tennessee Technology Park (formerly known as the K-25 site). 11,435 cubic yards at Oak Ridge National Laboratory. 8,907 cubic yards at the Y-12 nuclear weapons plant. Many of the containers are stored outdoors, exposed to the elements."
—Frank Munger, editor, Knoxville News-Sentinel, "DOE on mission to cut costs, clean up low-level nuclear waste", March 4, 2002

"The Oak Ridge plant remains an integral cog in the U.S. nuclear defense, producing new parts for existing weapons and recycling old warheads from retired systems. Y-12, of course, is a symbolic location for protests because the plant produced the enriched uranium used in the A-bomb dropped on Hiroshima, Japan, Aug. 6, 1945. Y-12 also serves as the nation's principal repository for bomb-grade uranium."
—Frank Munger, editor, Knoxville News-Sentinel, "Y-12 a cool place for protesters on a budget ", February 6, 2002

"Oak Ridge National Laboratory is a world campus, and the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11 and security-related fallout from those tragedies will not change that. ORNL confirmed that about 1,500 foreign nationals from 69 countries - Argentina to Zaire - currently are visiting the Oak Ridge lab. Thom Mason, the director of the Spallation Neutron Source, the biggest U.S. science project under construction, is not an American citizen. "I only got my green card in July,'' Mason said. More than 100 foreign nationals are full-time members of the scientific staff, and those numbers, of course, do not reflect the number of foreign-born scientists and engineers who have become naturalized U.S. citizens over the years. Recent statistics compiled by the Oak Ridge Institute for Science and Education show that 40

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ANTHONYT

Friday, September 25, 2009 2:27 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by Wulfenstar:
So why hasnt anyone been able to harness the power of the sun?

Seriously.

We have an unlimited source of energy above our heads... but noone has tapped it.

Hello Wulf,

You may be interested in a book by Heinlein called "Friday." The book is about a courier and her misadventures, but like all Heinlein novels, it touches on technology and society.

In the book, it is quite aptly pointed out by the author that there is no shortage of energy on the Earth (or outside of it.) The problem is storage. We still don't have a way to efficiently store energy. Else we could capture a few bolts of lightning and be good as gold.

The technology of energy storage is the primary one that needs to be pursued in order to make a cleaner world.

I am not exactly a fan of nuclear waste myself, but of all the polluting forms of energy generation, nuclear power is the least damaging to the environment.

Finally, I'd like to say (in response to a comment above) that a government is a thing just like anything humans have built or invented. I think it's healthy to view all human inventions with a skeptical eye. That doesn't mean we should abandon our inventions, but we should certainly monitor them closely and make improvements and deletions as needed.

--Anthony

"Liberty must not be purchased at the cost of Humanity." --Captain Robert Henner

BYTEMITE

Friday, September 25, 2009 3:01 AM

Hmm, I really think solar panels for everyone would be more than sufficient to meet most people's energy needs. We do have storage for this kind of thing, and we're always developing better capacitors.

Granted, there's always going to be problems with entropy, and you can never fully recover 100% of what you store, but you CAN design a house and a building to not only produce it's own energy, but annually tend to produce an excess. People then sell the extra energy back to the national grid.

BYTEMITE

Friday, September 25, 2009 3:04 AM

Holy crap, PN.

I hear horror stories about plenty of stuff, like gold mine smelting disperses tons of mercury into the air, pretty much gets everywhere. The percentages don't really mean much to me, not without the comparison, but the POUNDAGE being pumped into the air... I really don't have much room to complain, do I?

DREAMTROVE

Friday, September 25, 2009 3:12 AM

Nuclear power is capable of delivering very high potency over a short period of time in kinetic motion, something which I don't want to see an international ban on. Nuclear weapons are useless and destructive. Nuclear waste is toxic, esp. from "powder reactors" and fall out.

But the term "Nuclear" applies to a whole field of science, and we should be careful before banning fields of technology.

Here's some things that would be a good idea to agree to dismantle and keep out of circulation:

1. Nuclear material with the A-bomb level of critical mass.

2. Powder reactors, or any industrial process that produces high level toxic byproducts. (a lot of things produce technically toxic byproducts that are less toxic than clorox, good for propaganda, but not that dangerous.)

3. Newer technologies of mass destruction, such as the implosion device. Not a lot of light has been shed for reasons I don't understand on this recent russian invention, but it supposedly is so destructive that it makes atomic weapons obsolete.

I think the ways to do this are the same as international agreements are usually done, by mutual consent and pressure, not by some overarching authority. That authority would be corrupted and would give such weapons only to itself and ban them for everyone else.

JAYNEZTOWN

Sunday, December 25, 2022 10:43 PM

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