Yucca Mountain:

reply to post by Pervius


Now you know,,,it is an old game.

I am passing the torch to you.

Illuminate the darkness in the caves of Yucca Mountain.

Hard Cask Storage is a lot of money.

I presume you mean dry-casks?

While dry-casks are 'temporary' they can last for several decades, hence there is not a huge rush to get spent nuclear fuel out of dry-casks and into something permanent. Each dry cask can hold 10 to 15 metric tons of spent nuclear fuel. 15 metric tons of nuclear fuel can generate about 4 billion kilowatt-hours of electricity and the cost of each cask is about $1.2 million dollars each hence the cost of putting spent fuel into dry-casks is rather low, the cost of the dry-casks themselves is about $0.0003 per kilowatt hour.

Dry-storage is already taking place. Transferring the spent fuel from the pools does not necessarily mean that we have to empty the pools, but we could reduce the amount of fuel in them to reduce the heat load so that water doesn't boil off as quickly as it otherwise would.

Salt Mines are extremely stable(except for corrosion).(Polymer encasement would be required). By creating "Hubs" and thus fewer storage sites, it would be more efficient economically to guard and maintain. Again, to address my topic, we have already built such facilities.

With a properly designed waste repository then guarding an maintenance should be not necessary.

The truth is, in the long run(considering maintenance and management) Nuclear is Not Cost
Effective. It is Front loaded bang for the buck with a 30,000 year more or less half life,depending on the isotope.

In the US waste disposal is paid for by a a 0.1 cent per kilowatt hour tax on nuclear energy which is barely anything, but since such a large amount of electricity is created it adds up to almost 1 billion dollars per year. The waste may not even need any maintenance once disposed of, but that depends on how it is disposed of. The only part of nuclear waste that is actually intrinsic to nuclear power are fission products, which are dangerous for between 300 years and 600 years depending on numerous factors. Current reactors just don't have the ability to utilize the fuel properly hence we get actinides like Plutonium and Americium-241 in the waste which last a long time.

Advanced recycling could separate mostly harmless uranium from the rest of the actinides and the fission products. The fission products can be turned into glass logs and buried. The depleted uranium is stockpiled for future use or buried. The actinides are then loaded into fast reactors, burned up to generate electricity and turned into fission products. In other words, this approach decreases the quantity of high-level waste by 95% by separating out the uranium, and then decreases the life-time of the waste from over ten thousand years to a few hundred years by burning actinides which also generates electricity in a reactor with full passive safety. When all of the dangerous actinides are burned up, depleted uranium can be burned. The US has enough DU just sitting there to power the entire country for around 1000 years, we just need fast reactors with advanced recycling to use it.

The most suitable salt mines were in Texas. Texas has political power, Nevada doesn't, hence it was decided to put the dump in Nevada. It was a purely political decision, not science based.

Nevada has no nuclear electric plants and thus has not generated any of this waste. Nevada already took more than it's share of nuclear fallout, as did Utah. Utah and Colorado have uranium tailings up the wazoo. Let Texas have the dump.

Regarding reprocessing nuclear fuel, it is really messy. Helen Caldecot's "Nuclear Power Is Not The Answer" goes into the process.

They could simply build hardened areas at the nuclear plants to store the waste. Hey, it's only money. ;-)

Regarding reprocessing nuclear fuel, it is really messy. Helen Caldecot's "Nuclear Power Is Not The Answer" goes into the process.

Wrong.

PUREX is messy. I am not referring to PUREX but electrometallurgical pyroprocessing, fast reactors and vitrification. There's a difference.

Also that entire book has been obliterated. Helen Caldecot is a moron.

Also, dry-casks are hardened.

reply to post by C0bzz


You are welcome to your opinion, as wrong as it might be. But I think I will leave the nuclear analysis to the good doctor rather than some random person on Abovetopsecret.com. Nor will I booking a flight to Dulce based on ATS posts.

Originally posted by gariac
reply to post by C0bzz

 

You are welcome to your opinion, as wrong as it might be. But I think I will leave the nuclear analysis to the good doctor rather than some random person on Abovetopsecret.com. Nor will I booking a flight to Dulce based on ATS posts.

In other words, you would rather be told what to believe from someone who supports your existing opinion on something, rather than do an iota of research yourself or actually show that anything I said was incorrect. I already provided a link to a thread of mine which cites retired nuclear physicists, but I guess you would rather listen to a physician who makes a living from selling anti-nuclear books which as far as I know did not address pyro but rather PUREX, even though my sources compared the two.

reply to post by C0bzz


I went to the link and laughed it off. You can get any so-called expert to say anything. Science requires peer review. Getting a panel of your peers to agree with your statements is substantially more difficult. [I've done this peer review work for journals. You would be amazed what doesn't get published.] Further, I haven't seen the nuclear industry sue Dr. Caldicot into bankruptcy. If she made claims without scientific evidence, she would be easy pickings for a first year law student.

As an engineer, I know that if it can happen, it will happen. You try to make systems as safe as possible, but you need to determine if the risk is acceptable. Planes will crash, somebody will get electrocuted, maybe that lithium ion battery will catch fire (Apple dopes!), blah blah blah. Is double redundancy enough, or do I need triple? [I've done designs with five safety schemes.] You keep the numbers small and do your best to never need the lawyers to save your arse. The deal with nuclear power is the worse case scenario is simply beyond what society can call an acceptable risk.

If all these nuclear power technologies were so promising, Wall Street couldn't shovel money at them fast enough. But what is the reality? The nuclear industry needs government loan guarantees via Price Anderson. It needs a research arm called the DOE. [Not all DOE money is spent on nuclear power, to be fair.] Basically, you can't get any more socialist than nuclear power. In France, the government runs the nukes.

These plants in Japan had backup systems. Hey, the backups failed. Note that even with power restored, the pumps are not running yet since the controls are damaged. Nobody is even talking about the control systems failing once they are fixed. Not only do people have trouble working in a radioactive environment, so does electronics. Satellite grade electronics is damn expensive due to the need for it to be radhard. If these pump controls have any embedded controllers using flash, they will fail in a radioactive environment unless they are radhard.

Basically this crisis is two weeks old and is a long long way from being contained.

reply to post by C0bzz


Understood, and thanks for your addition to the conversation. This is the dilemma, as far as the U.S., many spent
fuel rod TEMPORARY Storage tanks exceed The Original Nuclear Engineer Design Capacity. Due to reasons
I would not like to go into here, many of the pools are at near or beyond original capacity. In my State, the pools will
reach full capacity in 2015. Mind you, this is way beyond Original Specifications.The rods are crammed together
in Critical Mass. The Only thing that prevents such, is Boron Lining/Infusion and cool water circulation.
Basically it is a dirty bomb waiting to happen. The ideas you discuss pertain to New Reactor Management,
Design, and Operational Technology. Your Ideas are Valid my intelligent friend. Yet I believe you have overshot
the "elephant in the room" that I am trying to expose. If I was a "Homeland Security Operative", this is what I
would be fighting for Pronto. Like you said....Dry Cask Storage is Obligatory. This will have to be done on a massive
scale now. The danger is that this Increases the odds for human error and shall we say "mismanagement".
At any rate, on site dry cask storage is certainly preferable to Liquid Pool Storage directly Above or Below
an antiquated reactor system. Ultimately , these casks should be stored in Guarded Hub Locations.
Rather than multiple and therefore vulnerable "onsite" locations Nationwide. This whole situation has been
neglected due to cost of dry cask encasement,transport,monitoring, and maintainance. The outrage, is that
the last sentenced above has already been paid for. Instead of providing the Responsible Storage that U.S.
Taxpayers have already paid for, the Nuclear Site Owners are spending the dough on themselves.
S a v v y ? Don't say I didn't have the Steel to stand up and tell you the truth.

P.S. You Should Create a Thread About The New Wonderful Nuclear Methods That You Mentioned, It would be
fascinating. Please understand that I am trying to address the mess that has been pushed aside for decades.
Thanks For Your Reply

reply to post by gariac


Ground Water/oil/and gas table levels in much of Texas, as well as coastal sea levels, render it less than
ideal for Nuclear Waste Storage. Nevada is much more conducive to such criteria. Again, it has already been paid for as well. BILLIONS HAVE BEEN SPENT ON YUCCA MT. , and other less known facilities.
I am talking National Homeland Security here. Not local, state, or even federal politics.
I think what I am trying to convey is that the current state of these reactors is much more troublesome
than we would like to admit. Hence, the status quo of turning a blind eye to it.
I don't think I need to reiterate the fact that "Mainstream Media" (until lately) hasn't been exactly forthcoming
with the true status of the situation concerning this topic.

reply to post by gariac


This fellow is correct as far as "New" reactor technology is concerned. At least somewhat.
However, the angles presented do not directly address the current status of old technology and cost cutting
storage methods that this thread is about.

reply to post by C0bzz


He is not wrong. Reprocessing old material is completely different than newer fuel types.
In fact, some of the older material cannot be reprocessed without first returning to original elemental state.
This requires additional steps, and thus time and cost. Not to mention the inherent dangers involved in
such activity. Please create a new thread concerning your ideas. I know certain viewers would find it quite
interesting and educational. Again, thanks for contribution to this discussion. S added