Volunteer Towns Sought For Nuclear Waste 279
Hugh Pickens writes "Brian Wingfield writes in Bloomberg that the Blue Ribbon Commission on America's Nuclear Future has sent a draft report to Energy Secretary Steven Chu recommending that US communities should be encouraged to vie for becoming a federal nuclear-waste site as a way to end a decades-long dilemma over disposing of spent radioactive fuel and says this 'consent-based' approach will help cut costs and end delays caused when the federal government picks a site over the objections of local residents, 'This means encouraging communities to volunteer (PDF) to be considered to host a new nuclear-waste management facility,' says the commission. Chu named the panelists after Obama canceled plans to build a permanent repository at Nevada's Yucca Mountain after the Yucca site was opposed by politicians from the state. 'The United States has traveled nearly 25 years down the current path only to come to a point where continuing to rely on the same approach seems destined to bring further controversy, litigation, and protracted delay,' says the report. The Blue Ribbon Commission cited as a 'success' the US Waste Isolation Pilot Plant near Carlsbad, New Mexico, which has accepted and disposed of some defense-related nuclear waste for more than a decade demonstrating that that 'nuclear wastes can be transported safely over long distances and placed securely in a deep, mined repository.' With the right incentives, 'there will be a great deal of support' for a waste site near the New Mexico facility, says former Senator Pete Domenici."
How About D.C.? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:How About D.C.? (Score:5, Funny)
I might suggest Marshall, Texas [techdirt.com]. No containment necessary.
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If the casks are shielded adequately, equip them with heat exchangers and use them to heat government buildings, maybe give the guys recreation areas with hot tubs.
Perhaps the WSJ (and other Muchdoch properties?) should be required to use them for heat regardless, as thanks for running the pseudo-science article "There is no such thing as nuclear waste". The author, also seen on the BBC, didn't even know what boric acid was, claiming it was sent to Japan to clean out pipes. Perhaps giving ignorance and l
Re:How About D.C.? (Score:5, Informative)
If the casks are shielded adequately, equip them with heat exchangers and use them to heat government buildings, maybe give the guys recreation areas with hot tubs
It's the decay heat that has been the serious problem
The 7.5% of heat is only immediately after shutdown. It decays rapidly after that. After discharge from the reactor the fuel spends some time (in the UK that means years) in cooling ponds until it is much safer and easier to transport. By then the heat being produced is trivial - with a spent fuel flask (containing several hundred fuel elements) being despatched from a UK power station you cannot even detect any warmth if you put your hand on it. I have done it, I worked in that industry.
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Glad I am not the only one who hates New York City. There are people who absolutely love NYC and I have to wonder why it would be. The place is just ugly to be in. And where I live now, many people "aspire" to be like New Yorkers as if they were all more sophisticated and intelligent somehow. I spent a week in New York and that was all I needed to know. It's simply the most frustrating and infuriating place I have ever been and is worse than the Washington DC area if that's even possible.
The place does
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Frustrating and infuriating? Were you standing in the way while people were trying to walk down the sidewalk or something? Or were you stupidly trying to drive in Manhattan?
I've been there for a couple of trips, and I didn't find it "frustrating and infuriating" at all. Busy, definitely. It's like visiting an ant colony; everyone's in a big hurry to get to where they're going, but they're all moving in unison. As long as you go with the flow, you're fine. But if you're some dolt who wants to block the
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It is not about the waste. Easy solution, you get the power station you get the waste. So only locate nuclear power station where you can deal with the nuclear wastes. One region should not get the economic benefits of a nuclear power station (based upon a new safer generation of power stations) whilst another region gets the economic burden of a nuclear dump.
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In DC, life expectancy drops by two years for every stop you take along the red line, IIRC. There is a lot of poverty.
As a city, there is also a high population density. It would be a very stupid place to put nuclear waste.
Don't we have a site near Yucca Mountain where we have test-exploded about a thousand nuclear bombs? What about doing it there?
And yes, we felt the need to test nuclear bombs quite frequently, it seems. Sometimes mankind seems quite primitive, even with the most advanced and destructi
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In DC, life expectancy drops by two years for every stop you take along the red line, IIRC. There is a lot of poverty.
Is this a joke? Because for anyone actually familiar with the DC area, this makes no sense. The red line actually serves some of the most affluent areas of the DMV. At one end, you have Rockville [wikipedia.org] and Bethesda [wikipedia.org]. In the middle, you have ultra-wealthy Dupont Circle [wikipedia.org], trendy Chinatown [wikipedia.org] and Union Station [wikipedia.org]. As you head out of the city in the other direction, yes, you have some less affluent neighborhoods, but East Montgomery County is hardly slums, and the only people who think so are people from Bethesda [justupthepike.com].
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I wasn't convinced that DC would be a good spot, but after what you wrote, I'm much more convinced now.
"trendy chinatown"? Really? There are more Chinese things outside of "chinatown' than in chinatown. I can scarcely tell why it is even called chinatown at all. I live here in the DC area at the moment and I have to say, I have never been among such petty, psychotic, paranoid and suspicious people in my life. The people here all make my skin crawl. I frequently do "nice things" for essentially no part
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Anything with "Verizon" in it is already associated with low morality. Poverty is reserved for Verizon's customers.
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Sure. Get out on the wrong stop on the Green line, though, and your life expectancy drops to zero.
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...and the only people who think so are people from Bethesda [justupthepike.com].
I clicked on your link thinking it had something to do with Fallout 3 and a nuclear waste dump in the DC area.
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How about we just put it in the basements of the senate, congress, and the supreme court? No poor person will ever be allowed close enough to any of those to be adversely affected, I assure you.
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Oh no please! imagine a successful mutation of these people!
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Oh no please! imagine a successful mutation of these people!
We will just make sure to keep the area free of spiders.
Re:How About D.C.? (Score:4, Funny)
"Senate smash puny civil rights!"
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I am afraid DC might go super critical already all on its own.
Comment removed (Score:4, Interesting)
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I'm pretty sure Tea Partiers aren't cheering Obama on in Libya.
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"Teabgger" is a word members of the Tea Party use to identify themselves. There is no hand tipping going on here.
We internet folks just think it's hilarious because old people apparently have no idea what their kids are talking about when they're playing Halo. Or, (my pet theory) a tea party marketer is intentionally trolling us.
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Good luck with that! (Score:2)
Why? (Score:5, Insightful)
Why not do the smart thing and REUSE all of that "waste"? It's actually decent fuel and if you reuse it it becomes significantly less hazardous...
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Why not do the smart thing and REUSE all of that "waste"? It's actually decent fuel and if you reuse it it becomes significantly less hazardous...
Because the terrorist. Why do you hate America?
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The process of re-refining that "waste" is the same that's used to create weapons grade material. Don't get me wrong, I believe they should be reusing it but I can see why people would be worried about allowing it.
Re:Why? (Score:5, Informative)
No it can't. [depletedcranium.com]
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Exactly. It's easier to start from natural uranium than to try to refine the mixed isotopes from reprocessing.
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The process of re-refining that "waste" is the same that's used to create weapons grade material. Don't get me wrong, I believe they should be reusing it but I can see why people would be worried about allowing it.
So what? There are enough sane people in the world to manage weapons grade material.
Re:Why? (Score:5, Funny)
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Well, yeah, they can be stopped. It would require less effort than our current policies, in fact. But sometimes asking people to not do something they really don't have to do is incredibly difficult.
All it would take is for the US to stop meddling in the affairs of sovereign nations. Particularly since they don't do this openly and honestly, but covertly and deceitfully via intelligence agencies. One example [wikipedia.org] is the 1953 overthrow of Iran's democratic
Re:Why? (Score:4, Interesting)
Holy fuck no. I mean, I realize you Americans are scared of shit of plutonium thanks to your rabid environmentalists, and carter. But hey, if you want to cut your nuclear fuel supplies in half. Please keep sending your waste to Canada, S.Korea and Japan so we can have cheap, inexpensive fuel. I mean we all really like it.
Or you can grow a fucking pair and jump all over the environmentalists and nimby's for being fucking idiots.
Re:Why? (Score:5, Insightful)
Holy fuck no. I mean, I realize you Americans are scared of shit of plutonium thanks to your rabid environmentalists, and carter. But hey, if you want to cut your nuclear fuel supplies in half. Please keep sending your waste to Canada, S.Korea and Japan so we can have cheap, inexpensive fuel. I mean we all really like it.
Or you can grow a fucking pair and jump all over the environmentalists and nimby's for being fucking idiots.
The purpose of the environmentalism is to enforce a kind of soft tyranny. Cheap, abundant, easily accessible energy means fewer people crying out for government to do something about energy, something that everyone uses and everyone needs. The general concept is that government is never going to voluntarily endorse and encourage something that gives people one less thing to worry about. They enjoy appearing to do so because that appeals to the masses, but they do not wish to actually do it. The larger and less local the government, the more true this is. Thus, the local and state governments are not nearly so bad as the federal government with respect to this tendency.
This is from Niccolo Machiavelli's "The Prince":
Therefore a wise prince will seek means by which his subjects will always and in every possible condition of things have need of his government, and then they will always be faithful to him.
Unlike 1984, The Prince actually was intended to be something like a manual.
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It's funny, that core bits of wisdom can be found in works that are over 400 years old. But you're right. There's probably a good reason why modern environmentalists are called watermelons.
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Cheap, abundant, easily accessible energy means fewer people crying out for government to do something about energy, something that everyone uses and everyone needs.
You mean like wind and solar?
Most environmental arguments I've seen against nuclear power and for renewables make the same point: that renewable energy sources - compared to big expensive and dangerous fission or fusion plants, or even slightly less expensive and dangerous oil and gas plants - are cheap and safe to implement, which means they can be distributed widely around the nation and world, which means big government and big business get out of the energy game, the grid is more resilient, people are m
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Re:Why? (Score:5, Interesting)
Give the communities the mineral rights to the spent fuel.
It's more than a source of nuclear fuel (and I don't necessarily mean plutonium: only a small fraction of the U-235 gets used up in a thermal reactor, and the other transuranics are burnable in a fast-flux reactor). There are billions of dollars worth of rhodium, which is in a stable isotope. Rhodium is more valuable than gold even at today's gold price.
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=115&topic_id=46164&mesg_id=46304 [democratic...ground.com]
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+1
Except there's a small problem, our esteemed President Jimmy Carter made fuel reprocessing illegal, citing non-proliferation concerns. Or maybe fears of giant killer rabbits, idunno. So, whoever got the contract would need to get a waiver. Or secede. And with nukes, they could get away with it. All even sentences of this paragraph are spoken in jest. Or are they?
Why not just turn it off? (Score:4, Interesting)
How about a day, announced a month or so in advance, where all nuclear power plants in the US are simply turned off? For 24 hours.
How about delivering a 50lb sack of coal ash to every single household in the US the day after, so they can see what the result of coal-fired power plants really is? It would need to include a full-color brochure listing all of the toxic substances that come out of the chimney from a coal plant as well.
If we did these things there might be less opposition to dealing with nuclear waste. Oh, and how about some PSAs showing a huge mountain of materials saying that nobody could go near this for 10,000 years and then show the small trash can that shows what is left after reprocessing.
Instead of doing any of these things we are allowing the pseudo-environmental movement to control the discussion to the point where we will be shutting down nuclear plants in the US, we will be shutting down coal plants in the US and we will have a new electrical system whereby there is power during the day and nothing at night. If you are rich and can afford 100KWh of batteries, you might have lights and TV at night. Maybe, until someone passes some regulations saying that it is discriminatory and unfair.
The US is clearly headed down the path of unreliable electric power with limited capacity. How will this affect future generations? Well, you can bet that computers in the home will not be a big deal in the future - unless they run on batteries that are charged up during the day.
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10 million dead babies? Caused by nuclear power?
Source please.
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Trolol.
Sorry, there are no dead babies as a result of nuclear power. None misformed either. There are several million misinformed babies (such as yourself) as a result of the dogmatic opponents of nuclear power, but that's not really what we're talking about.
Re:i like drinking pseudo clean water (Score:4, Insightful)
Anti-nuclear environmentalists always worry me: how is it you can be concerned about all the right things and still get such a wrong answer?
ask Kerr McGee (Score:2)
they took raffinate from the processing of Uranium Hexfluoride and sprayed it on the local cattle fields.
that way, they could call it fertilizer instead of toxic waste. saved them a bunch of money.
of course the cows kept dying, but they solved that by mass burial. some "environmental activists", i guess the people you are denigrating, took photos of this and exposed it.
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http://www.zianet.com/web/mcgee.htm [zianet.com]
Gimme a link. I couldn't find the photos of which you speak, but I did find an article from "In these times, 1987", in which, in accusatory tones, they describe the denitrating of actinide nitrates, with ammonia and spraying the resultant ammonium nitrate (i.e., sans actinides) on their own farmland. Seems reasonable enough to me, but then, I know some chemistry. To convert your waste from a stream of undisposable nitrates into a solid you can dispose of within the re
Encourage me... (Score:2, Funny)
So, Harry Reid, how much "encouragement" will you need to use Yucca Mountain? Another trillion or two do it for you?
Re:Encourage me... (Score:5, Interesting)
I lived in Las Vegas for 12 years. There was absolutely no way we wanted that stuff stored at Yucca Mountain; it is a geologically active area and every proposed transport route for the waste went through the city. All that would be mere hypocrisy if not for the fact that Nevada has no nuclear power plants and derives virtually none of its electricity from nuclear sources outside the state. This is completely orthogonal to whether nuclear power is a good idea, whether it can be made safe, whether fast reactors are better, whether waste should instead be reprocessed or turned into glass or shot into space, and just how bad coal or hydro or other sources are for us and the rest of earth's inhabitants. It's nothing more complicated than the fact that Yucca Mountain is at best a mediocre site, the local residents don't want it, and the waste is generated elsewhere for the primary benefit of people who do not live in Nevada. That should have been sufficient to make the feds look elsewhere 15 years ago, but for some reason it wasn't. That the state won the fight is cheering; that a fight was even necessary is an appalling violation of states' rights. Finding a geologically suitable site in a state with nuclear power plants and residents who trust the government to transport and store the waste safely in their vicinity is an excellent idea. If they'd done that in the first place, we'd all have billions of dollars back -- and we'd probably have a nuke dump, too. But it certainly wouldn't be at Yucca Mountain; the federal government has abused and betrayed Nevadans from the day the state was admitted to the union, and there is absolutely no way its residents will ever trust it with their lives and property. That they gain little or nothing from nuclear power serves only to reinforce their already compelling case. Let those who like the federal government and think it's full of good, kind, well-meaning and competent public servants take the waste from their own power plants instead. It's the right thing for everyone.
Re:Encourage me... (Score:4, Insightful)
Let's face it, nobody wants the stuff near them. That's what NIMBY means.
Nevadans don't trust the government? Welcome to the club.
Find another site? Why? The BANANAS will act all butt-hurt no matter where. Let's face it, even if Yucca Mountain isn't the perfect site, it's still a hell of a lot safer than leaving all that crap in pools at reactor sites.
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I guess my point was that there are particular reasons Nevada was and remains a highly inappropriate choice. NIMBY sounds a lot less compelling when you're living next to a reactor and running your gear on its juice.
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1) "and every proposed transport route for the waste went through the city"
I don't see how that's even an issue. The containers themselves have been proven to withstand the impact of a TRAIN. And likely much more at this stage. If you're worried about some sort of traffic congestion by a hypothetical influx of waste being transported in - then I'm fairly certain the city can pass an ordinance to allow such materials in the town and force them to take alternate routes.
2) While wikipedia isn't the best source
ground water contamination? (Score:4, Insightful)
if there is one thing deep mines do, it is flood. where does all the water go? oh, "somewhere else"? Great, now its laced with plutonium, one of the most toxic substances known to mankind.
im sure that nuclear waste can be stored safely, somewhere, some how. but the current nuclear industry is so obsessed with lying, disinformation, and corruption, that i wouldn't trust it to clean the dishes at a restaurant let alone run something like the Fukushima plant.
(which, of course, we were told was 100% safe and not a shitty old design like Chernobyl, and that thered never be another meltdown).
these folks do not seem to understand the basic difference between right and wrong. if you want people to support you, stop lying to them. this plan seems to be exactly the opposite: a PR stunt to make people accept something they dont want to accept.
i.e. instead of reorganizing the entire industry to be based on honesty, and education, and transparency, they are instead reorganizing a gigantic PR campaign to make their opponents 'shut the fuck up', some kind of bizarre Rahm Emanuel strategy.
when the next US disaster happens, it will cause yet another backlash, and we will be back where we were after three mile island. the problem is not about 'nuclear power', it is about incompetent managers and politicians who cannot seem to grasp the concept that they exist to serve the people and to do it honestly, responsibly, and transparently.
Re:ground water contamination? (Score:4, Insightful)
If a consensus of scientists is good enough to declare AGW to be a problem, then why can't a consensus of geologists declare that a mine won't leak?
BTW: It should have been obvious from that start that Yucca Mountain was Too Close to California to succeed.
Re:ground water contamination? (Score:5, Interesting)
>plutonium, one of the most toxic substances known to mankind.
It has to be absorbed by the body first. Wikipedia has a reference that claims that only .04% of ingested plutonium oxide stays in the organism.
Multiply the LD50 for injected plutonium by 2500 to get an LD50 from water contamination, and you get some non-alarming numbers for toxicity. The cliche is to compare it to caffeine.
http://russp.org/BLC-3.html [russp.org]
yes. you are right. (Score:2)
they will chuck a bunch of fuel rods down in a cave.
they will be covered in layers of concrete and metal casings and so forth and so on. there will be monitoring systems. and etc.
and then some day, someone will want to save some money. they will take short cuts. things will leak. employees will be too afraid of retaliation to say anything about it. PR companies will be hired to lie about it.
it has happened over, and over, and over, and over again in the nuclear industry, and every other industry.
the problem
Ugh (Score:5, Insightful)
We're not allowed to make safer, more efficient reactors.
We're not allowed to recycling spent fuel rods.
We're not allowed to build a secure site to house the waste material.
My fellow humans don't realize that with their unreasonableness, spent fuel rods are being kept in over sized swimming pools on site.
Now you might be wondering what the problem is with this set up. Well our outdated nuclear power plants are conveniently right next to rivers that some people get drinking water from.
I'm not saying something will go wrong, all I'm saying is that if something does go wrong it'll be a lot worse than it would be if we just recycled the fuel rods or had them at a secure holding facility.
This is the major reason why Japan was such a disaster. Outdated reactor design and spent fuel rods kept on site. It could have all been avoided if we just had the guts to decapitate the BANANA's heads and place them on pikes as a warning to potential BANANAs.
But let's say we decommission all of our nuclear power plants tomorrow. The rods need to be kept somewhere. The irradiated reactor housing needs to be put in storage. We can't magically make them disappear.
I know they want us all to go back to living in mud huts but damn it I want electricity in my mud hut [earthbagbuilding.com].
Re:Ugh (Score:4, Informative)
I'm gonna answer your questions in order.
First, it's not weaponizable. Problem solved.
Greenpeace isn't the most reliable organization. Problem solved.
Guaranteeing security for the next five-ten years is trivial. That part of the problem solved. Heck, the transports can handle being abandoned.
They should have full insurance up to Chernobyl style accidents? Nevermind the fact that a Chernobyl style accident is physically impossible with any US reactor? You're just giving them impossible requirements.
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Well we have nuclear weapons in the hands of a doomsday cult (the Christian-based United States of America), I don't think it'll get any worse if others are allowed to join the club.
Talking to Greenpeace about nuclear power is like talking to a diehard creationist about evolution. They don't want nuclear power at all.
We could always use the "for the children" and "omfg terrorists" effects to make the funding and security for the storage site untouchable. "Soandso wants terrorists to make dirty bombs to kill
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while not taking care of their trash
The agreement was that fees would be paid to the government which would (in theory) be used to build a central repository at which location the US government could choose to store or reprocess the waste. The fees have been (and are being) paid. The repo has not come to pass, however.
they should be required to have full insurance up to chernobyl style accidents
Power companies are liable for up to $2B/GW, which is significantly more than was spent cleaning up TMI. The cost of Fukushima, by the way, despite being a natural disaster that's going to cost Japan orders of magnitude more
The answer is simple (Score:2)
Afghanistan. We control it. It's remote. A great place to dump nuclear waste.
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even simpler - vote harry reid out of office and then Yucca can be opened.
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I'd say (Score:2)
Put them near the backyard of the CEO/Owners of the Power Station.
If Nuclear Energy is safe and all that, they won't mind having glow-in-the-dark flowers.
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Glow in the dark flowers? They wouldn't. Radioactivity wouldn't leak from the containers; and even in the case you intentionally made the containers leak, it'd still not make the flowers glow. That would require exponentially more radioactivity - nevermind the fact that that much radioactivity would not only kill anyone in that house, but likely everyone on a very large radius.
It'd just be an ugly, huge steel container. Reprocessed waste still lasts for 1000 years, so assuming their homes aren't in groundwa
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Meh. If it were legal, I'd let the industry bury a dry cask in my back yard. Those things are solid ultra-dense concrete and steel. Put it about 20m down below, and the spent fuel is really just not getting out. Hell, they're dens enough and thickly shielded enough that there's nearly no gamma flux, and gamma's damn near impossible to stop fully.
I'd do it because I'd have no fear whatsoever of any harm as a result. I know what's in there; I know what's protecting the world from it; I know it's sufficie
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That's where it's currently stored. Because there's no permanent disposal site, each reactor keeps its waste in cooling pools at the power station. The only reason they're able to keep 30, 40, or 50+ years worth of waste on-site is because so little of it is generated. The total amount of high-level nuclear waste generated by the 104 reactors in the U.S. is about 2000 tons annually. By volume, that would just about fit into a single trac
Breeder reactor? (Score:3)
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What's wrong is that the US is scared shitless and nuclear isn't "cool" anymore. Laws blockade breeders from working efficiently, government would rather help their friends in the coal industry get another premium, and eco-nuts are doing their best to discredit any and all source of power, with nuclear getting a spectacular amount of flak for some reason.
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If you're curious about the working of nuclear energy - specifically breeder reactors, Wikipedia's actually surprisingly accurate for a topic that can be sometimes controversial.
There's also a relatively new American project working on MSRs, called LFTR, run by FLiBe energy. Google for tha
Send it to Hanford Washington U.S.A. (Score:5, Interesting)
Hanford Washington U.S.A. would love the waste sent
their way. That would be listed as the State of Washington
in the article.
Hanford lost out to Yuca mountain many years ago, lost a lot of jobs
over night. They were planning on storing nuclear waste at Hanford.
Even create a religion "OMMMMM do not dig for 100,000 years."
(Yes it was actually put forth as a plan)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanford_Site [wikipedia.org] claims
two-thirds of the nation's high-level radioactive waste by volume
are located here, so it makes a lot of sense.
Some place has to be found and fast as reactor storage pools
are becoming full and a danger in themselves.
I used to operate a nuclear reactor producing Plutonium for DoD at
Hanford, so know well of the desire of becoming a nuclear burial site.
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Hanford's near a river. There was significant local opposition to storing high-level waste there. Site management has a large hurdle to overcome in earning public confidence.
Throw it away? Far, far away? (Score:2)
I've actually wondered if there was any practical downside, other than problems before getting it up, to the Futurama solution: just stick it in a rocket and blast it off in a random direction. Preferably without a return address.
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Rockets have something like a 1-2% failure rate, and you'd need quite a lot of them.
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I've actually wondered if there was any practical downside, other than problems before getting it up, to the Futurama solution: just stick it in a rocket and blast it off in a random direction. Preferably without a return address.
I suppose you could use Viagra for your first issue, the problem with lofting highly radioactive material into space is two fold:
1. It's expensive. Very expensive.
2. Although modern rockets are fairly reliable, they occasionally go screwy and get blown to little tiny bits in order for it not to land on people as large, uncomfortable bits. Doing this with a ton or so of highly radioactive material is frowned upon (see "dirty bomb" for more information).
Lets build a LFTR in Norway! (Score:2)
Then we export the energy as electricity and in just a few years we build up another fund bigger than the oil fund!
Hmm, does nuclear fund or electricity fund sound best? Or maby just e-fund.
Sure it will cost a tad to build the plant, but we'd ofcource charge for receiving the nuclear waste we'll partially use as fuel to offset that...
What's good for the goose is good for the gander (Score:2)
If the volunteering originates with the constituents: then good.
But if from the politicians: then only as long as the politician suggesting such an arrangement lives just as close to the dump site -- along with their family -- as any other resident in their electorate.
Does American electoral law require that politicians largely reside in the electorate they repr
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The carlsbad site (Score:2)
The Moon (Score:2)
Carpetbaggers shall descend: (Score:3)
The problem is not finding a community that wants the site.
It's that as soon as they say they want it, no matter how well informed they are, interest groups will descend saying "We must save these poor ignorant people who are being used by the nuclear lobby". Or, "We must save these people from being deceived by the anti-nukes"
I'm sure they'd say that about Los Alamos where large numbers of the people work for a nuclear weapons lab and know more about rad hazards than almost any other community save for perhaps Arzamas-16 (Now called Sarov again.) .
I've seen this happen before in New Mexico when I lived there. The chief of the Mescalero tribe started making a deal to have a rad waste site on some of their land. Parts of it are some of the most inhospitable you can find in the US.
All of a sudden, groups showed up saying that the Mescaleros were just too uninformed to understand what they were doing and had to be protected. (It was amazingly patronizing.)
Now, the problem was taken care of by the tribe itself. They put it to a vote and voted it down. That's fine. That's how democracy works.
But you can bet that the carpetbaggers on both sides of the issue will turn up like flies around roadkill.
I'd already suspected something like that would happen with the Mescaleros. My company processed credit cards and such for Ski Apache and Inn of the Mountain Gods, two of the tribal businesses, So, I'd dealt with them a good bit and knew they were no fools regardless of how they decided it.
Onkalo (Score:2, Interesting)
The Finns store their waste in a rock 500m deep below and fill it with concrete aftereards.
The facility will be finished in 2100 and should last 100.000 years.
They even have plans to communicate with the future beings using symbols in carved rock.
All can be seen in the documentary "Into eternity".
The Springfield where the Simpones live MR burns (Score:2)
Will take it
Our town, ... (Score:3)
Carlsbad Caverns will glow in the dark now? (Score:2)
Just kidding. (I hope.)
The caverns [national-park.com].
Hmm. Nukewatch has a map. Working Google Maps a little, I located WIPP road [google.co.jp].
That locates it well away from the caverns, but within ten miles of Lindsey Lake.
Perfectly good solution going to waste. (Score:3)
So the location was selected based on "data collected for nearly ten years" (Wikipedia). YM was picked since it was already located within a former nuclear test site (i.e. development potential for other types of structures or settlements was limited at best).
The facility was under construction, and proceeding well.
And then the shit hit the fan, in the form of Harry "Screw You All" Reid.
"Following the 2006 mid-term Congressional elections, Democratic Nevada Senator Harry Reid, a long time opponent of the repository, became the Senate Majority Leader, putting him in a position to greatly affect the future of the project. Reid has said that he would continue to work to block completion of the project, and is quoted as having said: "Yucca Mountain is dead. It'll never happen."
Perhaps the most telling phrase in the entire Wiki article is this: "The US GAO stating that the closure was for policy not technical or safety reasons."
So, to summarize: we have a perfectly good facility that is DESIGNED for the purpose of nuclear waste storage. It's in an area that is a former nuclear test site, so there's not much we can build there anyway. It's almost complete, after CBO only knows how many millions of dollars spent. Yet because HARRY REID SAID SO, we're just going to throw it the hell out and continue storing nuclear waste "all over the place".
The political machinations of Reid and Obama vs logic.
The safety factor of storing nuclear waste in a designated, secure, safe, technologically advanced facility vs storing it in small batches in a multitude of sites.
The counter-terrorism factor of having one site to protect and monitor vs the need to protect & monitor hundreds of them.
The cost factor (not that Obama or Reid actually give a shit about taxpayer dollars, but still...)
P.S. No, I didn't just get this info from Wikipedia. This issue has been "on the radar" on several blogs over the course of the last few years. Of course, the mainstream media will never, ever report it, but that doesn't mean that anyone who cares to find out more info can't Google "Yucca Mountain controversy" and go on from there.
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The problem is that nobody in their right mind would agree to this as the Federal Government is already being sued for failure to clean currently used sites. They're way behind schedule on work at the Hanford Nuclear Reservation and I have no particular faith that this would change in the future.
OTOH if we can get a site in a red state perhaps we can at least get some social justice out of this.
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That's the real problem. There is a track record. People who might otherwise be open to this idea can see how poorly it has been handled in the past. Now they're not so open to this idea. If you want cooperatio
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>>It seems like the "red state = Republicans" is therefore misnamed, or some kind of intentional newspeak
Yeah, that has always bugged me, too. According to Wikipedia, it was Tim Russert who coined it, arbitrarily, but it always seems very counterintuitive to me.
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"Consent-based" approach (Score:2)
I bet lucrative incentives are more cost effective than fighting legal and political opposition.
Indeed. It's a wonder the federal government isn't using the usual "consent-based" approach to usurp powers that fall to the states, such as setting drinking age and speed limits: threaten to withhold a significant portion of the state's federal funding, which most states are quite reliant on for one service or another.
Or maybe this is a new strategy meant to avoid offending honorable Senator Leghorn when that old trick is used against his state.
Just make sure the wealth keeps rising to the top and there'll
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This idea first came from an episode of Not ^Necessarily The News in the 1980s. It's amazing how they are now taking it seriously.
Comedy Central was co-owned by HBO. If only The Daily Show could dip into the N^NTN archives at HBO for this segment and run it. Or someone could get it up on YouTube? (It is still not released on DVD, reaired on HBO Comedy, nor streaming AFAICT; only available as a Best Of VHS tape, and I don't know if this segment (at least two parts) is on that tape.)
Re:Ridiculous idea (Score:5, Insightful)
NIMBY shouldn't even be an issue at Yucca Mountain. It is located on one of the biggest military sites in the nation, right next to the place we tested some 900 nuclear weapons. It is as far from anyone's back yard as can be and right next to a radioactive wasteland.
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What if the rocket blows up?
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We don't do that with chemical poisons like mercury and arsenic that will be toxic forever. Why have a double standard for the hazardous materials from nuclear operations?
Re:Uh... The Sun (Score:4, Insightful)
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And where do YOU live, sir? In a state with nuclear power plants? Far away from Nevada? Right. It's just as meaningful for me to say that your basement is the best choice.
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So send it out to Canada instead. Or France. Or Japan.
Economic boom (Score:2)
Economic boom gets a completely new meaning.
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It has to be a town so Senators can bring home the bacon. And then after a few billion are spent on studies and preliminary construction, the same Senators can pull a Happy Harry Reid and insist that their site is no good, it's got to be put somewhere else. Rinse and repeat.