Nuclear Waste and "Spent Nuclear Fuel" : The Largest Concentration of Radioactivity in the US

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US stores spent nuclear fuel rods at 4 times pool capacity

In a recent interview with The Real News Network, Robert Alvarez, a nuclear policy specialist since 1975, reports that spent nuclear fuel in the United States comprises the largest concentration of radioactivity on the planet: 71,000 metric tons. Worse, since the Yucca Mountain waste repository has been scrapped due to its proximity to active faults (see last image), the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission has allowed reactor operators to store four times more waste in the spent fuel pools than they're designed to handle.

Each Fukushima spent fuel pool holds about 100 metric tons, he says, while each US pool holds from 500-700 metric tons. A single pool fire would release catastrophic amounts of radioactivity, rendering 17-22,000 square miles of area uninhabitable. That's about the size of New Hampshire and Vermont - from one pool fire.

In a March 25th interview, physician and nuclear activist Dr Helen Caldicott explains that "there's far more radiation in each of the cooling pools than there is in each reactor itself.... Now the very short-lived isotopes have decayed away to nothing. But the long-lived ones, the very dangerous ones, Cesium, Strontium, Uranium, Plutonium, Americium, Curium, Neptunium, I mean really dangerous ones, the long-lived ones - that's what the fuel pools hold."

Well just when you thought it was okay to sleep through the night...

Good to know the situation in Japan could be repeated here with the spent fuel pools. The US has 5 times more per spent fuel pool? WOW...

Just thought I would share this as every country should be thinking this nuclear energy idea and whether it is worth it, Germany are shutting down theirs, should North America follow suit?

I think we should, I think we should be the trailblazers and make everything fully renewable, as that would be one of the best things for our economies...

Pred...

What about sending the Nuclear waste to outer space? Not low earth orbit, But say further out? From what I have read its a cost and risk issue, But again the benefits outway the cost and risk. If the worlds top scientist's came together now they could try and get a handle on this whole nucler power and waste problem. We have the alternative's now more than ever we dont even need nuclear power anymore its just too unsafe as we are seeing here.



I Agree 100% we should all follow suit while we still can......


Next thing you know we will have our own EQ and if our reactors fail thats when panic sets in next martial law and I guess its all downhill from there...... Next stop fema camps

reply to post by predator0187
Nuclear reactors have always been a calculated risk regarding an accident like three mile island or Fukushima. But the spent fuel has been the Achilles heel of the industry. All that talk about disposal in Yucca mountain which never materialized and of course nobody want it in their back yard.

It's like suggesting they close the barn doors after the horses already left, but regulators should have required a method of disposing of the spent fuel to be approved before granting an operating license to a nuclear facility. It's a legacy we'll have to deal with for a long time to come.

Originally posted by Mandelbrot2012
What about sending the Nuclear waste to outer space? Not low earth orbit, But say further out? From what I have read its a cost and risk issue, But again the benefits outway the cost and risk.

The risk can probably be minimized, but there's no clear path to reducing the cost to practical levels in the immediate future.

Sending it into the sun would get rid of it for sure. Maybe someday, it could happen, if they ever build a giant space cannon or the space elevator. But it won't happen anytime soon.

Highly exaggerated estimates.

While it is true we are storing far more spent fuel at reactors than they were -originally- designed to handle - modifications and enhancements to the original implementations have made this mostly a non-issue.

The environmental impact in the case of a fire is also highly exaggerated. Far greater volumes of radioactive elements are released from coal combustion every year, to little noticeable effect:

www.ornl.gov...'

Using these data, the releases of radioactive materials per typical plant can be calculated for any year. For the year 1982, assuming coal contains uranium and thorium concentrations of 1.3 ppm and 3.2 ppm, respectively, each typical plant released 5.2 tons of uranium (containing 74 pounds of uranium-235) and 12.8 tons of thorium that year. Total U.S. releases in 1982 (from 154 typical plants) amounted to 801 tons of uranium (containing 11,371 pounds of uranium-235) and 1971 tons of thorium. These figures account for only 74% of releases from combustion of coal from all sources. Releases in 1982 from worldwide combustion of 2800 million tons of coal totaled 3640 tons of uranium (containing 51,700 pounds of uranium-235) and 8960 tons of thorium.

Based on the predicted combustion of 2516 million tons of coal in the United States and 12,580 million tons worldwide during the year 2040, cumulative releases for the 100 years of coal combustion following 1937 are predicted to be:

U.S. release (from combustion of 111,716 million tons):

Uranium: 145,230 tons (containing 1031 tons of uranium-235)

Thorium: 357,491 tons

Worldwide release (from combustion of 637,409 million tons):

Uranium: 828,632 tons (containing 5883 tons of uranium-235)

Thorium: 2,039,709 tons

How does the amount of nuclear material released by coal combustion compare to the amount consumed as fuel by the U.S. nuclear power industry? According to 1982 figures, 111 American nuclear plants consumed about 540 tons of nuclear fuel, generating almost 1.1 x 10E12 kWh of electricity. During the same year, about 801 tons of uranium alone were released from American coal-fired plants. Add 1971 tons of thorium, and the release of nuclear components from coal combustion far exceeds the entire U.S. consumption of nuclear fuels. The same conclusion applies for worldwide nuclear fuel and coal combustion.

If a reactor fire could render 22,000 square miles uninhabitable - we'd have already died of radiation sickness from the various nasties released from coal combustion.

reply to post by Aim64C

If you keep posting facts like that, the people that want to ban nuclear plants are going to want to ban coal plants too!
:bnghd:

We need to build Subcritical reactors to use up all this spent fuel and cut the amount of spent fuel we are storing.

en.wikipedia.org...
www.cea.fr...

These reactors burn up fuel and leave a lot less waste to store.

Plus as they do not need new fuel we can get power without mining new uranium.

Using our spent fuel plus our old weapons pits, depleted uranium and thorium we would have fuel for 2000 years and since this fuel does not need to be a critical mass to work and stops working as soon as the neutron source shutsdown they are a lot safer then the reactor today.

reply to post by Mandelbrot2012

We have the alternative's now more than ever we dont even need nuclear power anymore its just too unsafe as we are seeing here.

The only viable long term alternative to nuclear power is nuclear power - Thorium reactors.

This link is to small scale Thorium reactors for power generation. The data here is linked to a nuclear reactor in every home.

Wikipedia: Thorium

As to not needing it perhaps you could define the long term alternative, and don't even bother to mention wind unless you would like me to fill the page with links to reasons why that is not viable?

With regard to the current spent nuclear fuel there will no doubt be an eventual solution, but is Thorium potentially an even greater problem? Thorium decays with a half-life of 14.05 Gyr. It all needs some serious investigation but the news that China is investing in Thorium reactors means that things are going ahead and hopefully answers will be provided before lessons need to be learned.