Next Generation Energy is managed and written entirely by Seed editors and expert guest bloggers. Read more about them Before we realistically delve into nuclear technology, we must first tackle some practical considerations. Straight to the point, how about a serious dialog toward figuring out what the heck to do with excess radioactive waste nuclear technology would produce?
You see, high-level radioactive waste is too irradiated for normal industrial disposal because exposure would pose a general health hazard to human and animal populations. Going nuclear means producing substances that can never be released back into the normally recycling industrial environment. Ever.
The Department of Energy says we've made progress in addressing waste problems including successful remediation of some contaminated sites. Still, that's not enough assurance in my opinion given there have also been major complications and setbacks. Call me conservative, but when it comes to nuclear waste, we just shouldn't hedge our bets with lots of uncertainty.
Sure there's Yucca Mountain in Nevada, a supposed disposal site on it's way toward approval to stash our nuclear waste. But there's this inconvenient extra complication that the project is widely opposed in the state. And as it happens, Nevada's Senator Harry Reid, (Senate Majority Leader by the way--with the ability to determine future of the project) aims to continue to work to block completion. Take a look at his website for details...
Now in Congress, I had the pleasure of being lobbied on Yucca, and some staffers even got to fly out to Vegas stopping along the the way to see the place. But despite some eloquent briefings, I remain unconvinced. The U.S. is not far enough along to take nuclear seriously until we address safety and health regarding waste storage.
Oh and don't forget that pesky concern over how to transport radioactive waste from different parts of the country into Nevada. Talk about an open invite to terrorists... given the handy Homeland Security color scheme has us at a constant state of 'high risk' orange already, I somehow suspect the mapped truck routes may just spike us off the charts into hypercolor. But seriously, in terms of nuclear energy, my take is not yet. Until someone addresses the practical issue of radioactive waste disposal, it's not a viable alternative to explore.
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Comments
I recall hearing that much of our nuclear waste could simply be reprocessed into more nuclear fuel, leaving significantly fewer waste products to store. Additionally, I remember watching some folks test the durability of train cars that would carry nuclear waste. They used enough explosive to blow the car itself off the track, but the container's paint was barely scratched and the seal was still intact.
Posted by: Alex M | July 30, 2008 10:42 AM
Screw the terrorists - you simply can't ship significant quantities of anything around without losing some of it along the way. Accidents happen, and containment is never absolutely perfect.
Posted by: Dunc | July 30, 2008 10:43 AM
My family and I have been having this discussion recently as well. One question that popped up was: If one were to wait to use nuclear power until storage solutions are found, is there research being done and concepts developed to tackle this task?
Me, I am opposed to nuclear power precisely on the account of the two critiques you leveld.
Posted by: Paula Schramm | July 30, 2008 10:43 AM
Did they use enough explosive to simulate the derailment of an entire freight train at full speed? The amount of kinetic energy in a train derailment is massive - simply blowing a car off the track is nothing by comparison. Blowing a car off the track and having it land over a hundred meters away would be more like it.
Posted by: Dunc | July 30, 2008 10:49 AM
Stop producing excess waste. Start recycling spent nuclear fuel.
France can do it. Russia can do it.
Oh, and there's also a prospect of IFRs (Integral Fast Reactors) which produce almost exclusively very long-lived (and thus safe) or short-lived isotopes.
Please, can you write an article about prospects of nuclear power if it is done _RIGHT_?
Posted by: Alex Besogonov | July 30, 2008 10:56 AM
Burying nuclear material (I hesitate to use the word 'waste') has never been a good idea.
Uranium, Plutionium and other actinides should be recycled and burnt. Medium life fission products should be used to generate electricity via nuclear batteries; the tiny quantities of longer lived products can be buried as it does represent waste; but you are going to take a very long time indeed to accumulate much.
But if you want a shallow reason for knee-jerk anti-nuclear pontificating... go for it. We can keep on burning coal and releasing far more radiation into the biosphere. Plus CO2 and Mercury, amongst others.
Posted by: Andrew Dodds | July 30, 2008 11:04 AM
But the recycling of nuclear waste still leaves radioactive waste that needs to be stored. Also recycling turns up materials for nuclear bombs, something I do not want to risk.
There was on research facility in Germany (Asse II)but research wasn't done properly so no one knows what problems turn up during permanent storge.
In the least there has not been enough research and once landscapes are radioactively contaminated, there is no turning back. The gain is not worth the risk in my eyes.
Posted by: Paula Schramm | July 30, 2008 11:08 AM
This is like trying to talk to GW skeptics....
Paula, the idea that reprocessing/recycling gives quantities of weapopns grade material is false - plutonium from reactor fuel rods is far too contaminated with Pu-240 and 241 to be useful in bombs.
Dunc - Let me guess, you'll take the denialist tactic of demanding completely unreasonable levels of proof - or evidence of absolutely zero risk..
Every available option - including doing nothing - carries risks. Counting one set of risks - and pretending that a radioactive release means the end of the planet - whilst ignoring all others is not a good method for deciding policy.
Posted by: Andrew Dodds | July 30, 2008 11:20 AM
Here you can see some test on nuclear wastes container.
http://youtube.com/results?search_query=nuclear+flask
It seems to me not realistic that transportation of those wastes can bring any major risk.
I'm more concerned about things like:
http://youtube.com/watch?v=OA1WPYFEsWU
http://youtube.com/watch?v=sOG3_XkM40g
http://youtube.com/watch?v=JwDyI86LfYQ
etc
Raffaele C.
Posted by: Raffaele C. | July 30, 2008 11:27 AM
Plutonium isn't a problem, OK. So no threat of building bombs after generating power. But that still leaves the objection that nuclear power plants can themselves be transformed into radioactive bombs, either by neglect or by intent.
Maybe that would be different if there were an independet global policeforce to regulate NPPs, but how would such a force be legitimized?
The subject is so much fraught with political and scientific pitfalls. It is very hard for a layperson to actually know what is right and truthful. I am glad that the discussion is happening here.
Posted by: Paula Schramm | July 30, 2008 11:39 AM
No, I'll settle for acknowledgement and reasonable assessments of actual risks. The only people I regularly see talking about "absolutely zero risk" are on the pro side - as in "new reactor designs / disposal techniques involve absolutely zero risk". When I hear stuff like that, I get suspicious.
So, lets talk about what the actual levels of risk are, and what the impacts would be. Perhaps we could do it by looking at the safety record of the nuclear industry so far, or by looking at the safety records of other industries (say, aviation - they know a lot about risk management).
Of course everything carries risk. The question lies in the level of risk, and the impact of the risks.
I am not ardently anti-nuclear. I'm just not entirely convinced that its risks are properly understood and managed. If you believe that is incorrect, please educate me.
Posted by: Dunc | July 30, 2008 11:40 AM
A quantitative approach would help here, instead just a qualitative, "I'm not convinced," and "I don't think we're there, yet."
Even a rough thumbnail as to the dangers and consequences, and some rough swag at what level of risk mitigation is necessary would be helpful. Otherwise, you're putting up a mystery target and telling people to shoot blindly until you say they've hit it.
That's grossly unfair, and certainly unhelpful.
Posted by: John Novak | July 30, 2008 12:05 PM
Well, I suppose we could keep burning fossil fuels til we've screwed things up completely or freeze in the dark, instead.
Really, status quo or nuclear seems like a no-brainer to me...
Posted by: Patrick | July 30, 2008 12:09 PM
John, so is "the risk isn't so high"
My original question was: Is there research being done on storage facilities and what are the results from that research?
So far that question has not been answered, nobody, including you has yet even remotely touched on an answer to that question. But, hey, I will give you an answer anyway: I want a storage/treatment solution for waste that is viable, like only one incident every 100 years. I want a viable global concept for regulating use and misuse of nuclear power facilities. Then I also want a calculation on the economic viability calculating all these precautions. What would also be nice is a calculation of how much material there actually is, how much power can be generated form that and a rough estimate of what that means for how long nuclear power is viable. In the end nuclear power is also a non-regenerative power source and if we treat it as wastefully as we treat oil then it won't last long.
Posted by: Paula Schramm | July 30, 2008 12:19 PM
Patrick,
A little reading and you'll note Ms. Kirshenbaum by no means advocates the status quo.
Posted by: SP | July 30, 2008 12:19 PM
OK - how about less than 1 INES Level 3 (or greater) incident per annum, and no incidents at INES Level 6 or greater? Reasonable? Achievable?
Posted by: Dunc | July 30, 2008 12:23 PM
Well, Patrick, that comment says more about you than about the debate.
Obviously it isn't obvious that nuclear power is the only alternative to the status quo. Here we are only discussing energy sources. What we haven't touched on is energy conservation. That is a topic that wide parts of the world aren't too keen on discussing.
Posted by: Paula Schramm | July 30, 2008 12:23 PM
It's certainly true that radioactive waste is nasty stuff. However, this is hardly unique -- lots and lots of industrial chemicals are plenty nasty, and at least the total quantity of radwaste is fairly small -- frankly, if Yucca Mountain was built, started leaking, and made everything within a hundred miles uninhabitable, it would still be pretty minor on the scale of pollutants.
Any nuclear-based solution _must_ include waste reprocessing, however, for a simple reason: total world reserves of U235 are just not that large. If you want to get enough energy to make a big difference, you need to burn U238 or Th232.
Posted by: Anthony | July 30, 2008 12:58 PM
One of the problems with opening Yucca Mountain is that it's already full (meaning that there is more nuclear waste available than YM has as ultimate capacity.) We need yet more storage.
The US does have a reprocessing plant, the ICPP located in the INEL in SE Idaho, but it was shut down when I was there in the early 90s (I dunno if they restarted ops there since). Reprocessing doesn't reduce the amount of radioactive waste but merely extracts useful products from the fuel assemblies. The process is wet-chem, so when they're done extracting the goodies they dehydrate and calcine the waste and store it in half-buried silos on the site. Those silos have machinery to capture any radioactive off-gases. So there's storage sites at ICPP too (they also have underground tanks holding liquid rad waste.) So reprocessing isn't all that wonderful (think tar-baby cleanup) but it does conserve any fuel left in 'worn-out' fuel assemblies. Waste not, want not it is said.
The ICPP storage experience should inform how RW is stored in YM. Form what I've seen (and it's been a few years so correct me if I'm wrong) the proposed method of storing these wastes will be vitrification and sealing in metal tubes. Well, how will off-gases be handled? Will the seal on the containers be sufficient to withstand the pressure?
Better method (IMHO) is to bury them in mud at subduction zones off our west coast. Leakage would be sealed with the clay-like mud of the ocean floor (where migration rates are around 10000y/cm.
The transportation issue for YM shouldn't be all that problematic because how did the fuel assemblies get to the plants? Oh, by roads/trains? Why would used fuel be more at risk of release vs. new fuel?
The biggest problem is the fact that while we argue about whether YM will open or if it will in fact hold waste safely for over 10Ky, each power plant has become a de facto waste storage site since their used fuel assemblies must be stored on-site in holding pools (see all the dots on the top map, above). So now instead of one big site we have many, many sites, most of them located near major metropolitan areas where a release would endanger millions of people.
wrt nuclear being low-emission: yes, when they operate they have a low carbon footprint. However, the carbon footprint associated with the construction of the plant (namely all that concrete but also the steel) and the mining, milling, extraction, and production of the fuel rods is not inconsequential. When factored in this makes nuclear not a really great alternative energy source.
Posted by: Willy | July 30, 2008 1:07 PM
Paula:
Actually, I believe conservation is the very first strategy we should be pursuing.
But second to that, there is nothing on the horizon that can even remotely begin to satisfy our appetite for energy besides nuclear. And I am not saying it doesn't present challenges; I'm just saying it beats the heck out of continuing to combust hydrocarbons...
I'm pro-nuclear because I'm pro-wild things and pro-domesticated primates.
Posted by: Patrick | July 30, 2008 1:29 PM
Now in Congress, I had the pleasure of being lobbied on Yucca,
... lobbied to use Yucca, or to not use?
... But despite some eloquent briefings, I remain unconvinced.
... unconvinced that Yucca should be used, or unconvinced that there's real reason not to use Yucca?
Posted by: Ken | July 30, 2008 3:25 PM
One aspect of nuclear waste disposal that often gets ignored is its scale. The amount of nuclear waste material is paltry relative to the wastes of other industries. All nuclear waste generated to date in the US would fill a single football field ten feet deep (an ENTIRE country's industry). A typical commercial nuclear reactor's waste from one year of operation would fit in the bed of a pickup truck. Just the volume of solid wastes produced from fossil fuels is thousands of times larger per kilowatt-hour and most of it we let go into the environment in spite of its impact on public health and the environment.
Regarding transportation of nuclear waste, I think everyone agrees that when the waste is being moved is when it is most vulnearable. But we have years of experience of moving waste, mainly defense waste, without any major incidents. Of course, this does not mean an accident will never happen (impossible to prove) but this does suggest we know how to manage transportation of nuclear waste.
All energy technologies have wastes, even renewables. Cadmium telluride (used in current commercial photovoltaics) is not exactly nice stuff either.
Posted by: Erik D Johnson | July 30, 2008 4:56 PM
Andrew, re: weapons plutonium from reprocessing,
It IS in principle possible to produce a weapon from reprocessed plutonium; it is just very difficult to handle and to produce a weapon with a reliable yield because of spontaneous fission and heating due to the higher abundance of Pu-240 and Pu-241. It may be the case that this difficulty serves as a deterrent itself i.e. would a terrorist group take the risk?
Incidentally, the reactor-grade plutonium test was declassified the same year as Carter announced the moratorium on reprocessing in the US. Coincidence...?
Posted by: Erik D Johnson | July 30, 2008 5:09 PM
I'm kind of surprised that the possibility of transmutation has yet to enter this discussion. Nuclear waste is not indestructible; upon neutron bombardment, almost all actinides can be rendered into isotopes that will decay to background levels within a historical timeframe. There are a variety of means by which this aim could be accomplished. That which was proposed as part of the GNEP program--the construction of dozens of sodium-cooled fast-neutron transmutation reactors--was in my view not an attractive option. Historical experience with sodium-cooled reactors has not been happy; except for the Russian BN-600, I am not aware of any large sodium-cooled reactor I would call a success. Instead I advocate the development of molten-salt reactors, which have the potential to breed U-233 in a thermal neutron spectrum while accomplishing some burnup of spent LWR fuel. Fast-spectrum molten-salt reactors could, in turn, be used to accomplish the remainder of this task, reducing the nuclear waste problem to negligible levels--and producing useful power in the process. These reactors also have tremendous safety and anti-proliferation advantages, while producing a tiny fraction of the waste an LWR does themselves. Learn more about the potential of this technology (which was demonstrated experimentally at Oak Ridge National Laboratory in the 1960s and 1970s) here.
Posted by: Sovietologist | July 31, 2008 1:02 AM
No, Ms Kirschenbaum doesn't embrace the status quo, she just criticizes and offers no workable solutions. Cellulosic biofuels and solar/wind power cannot possibly supply the energy needs for a world with >6 billion people on it. And the projected extra mortality rate today due to climate change translates to 150,000 deaths/year relative to the 1960s, according to the WHO. The carbon footprint of nuclear powerplants is >2 orders of magnitude less than fossil fuel-based ones and is on par with solar power's footprint (www.parliament.uk/documents/upload/postpn268.pdf)- yes, this does take into construction, ore isolation,etc. Given all this, the risks of accidents would have to be serious for nuclear not to be a workable solution. I'm not being glib here, but from a utilitarian perspective, there would have to be a Chernobyl every 5-10 years (~10,000 deaths) to justify continuing the status quo. And these other "green" solutions are simply unworkable.
Given that it will take at least 20 years to even start switching over to nuclear power, hearing Sheril's types of arguments rings hollow. None of these problems are solvable within 20 years? We need to have all the kinks worked out before we take any positive action?
Posted by: Brian | July 31, 2008 2:13 AM
Oops. I should not try to use HTML scripts (codes?). I did not mean to be quite as emphatic in my arguments as the formatting implies.
I actually didn't mean to be that emphatic in general - I think I remember you, Sheril, from the REU program at AMNH, and you were a very nice, intelligent person. I just think that this is a serious problem that requires contemplation not only of the risks of action, but the risks of inaction.
Posted by: Brian | July 31, 2008 2:20 AM
I think the arguments above illustrate an important point. While nuclear power (4th generation reactors - not a series of Chernobyls with Homer as safety officer) provide a rational option to deal with energy production in a future of rising carbon dioxide levels and falling oil reserves, it is clearly politically incorrect to seriously suggest this as a way forward. At least for the US. In other parts of the world, where paranoia over terrorism isn't so rampant there is little worry about such risks. Perhaps there is a lesson to be learned that will be seen as a critical turning point in years to come. If Europe and Japan embrace the new generation of nuclear power plants where exactly will that leave the US? The public's love affair with the car is clearly not going to end so what means are proposed to lower greenhouse gas production that matches up to anything like that provided by nuclear power. I have nothing against solar energy or wind power but they simply won't produce enough power to compete with the likes of modern nuclear plants - for instance the
Kashiwazaki plant in Japan's annual energy output is equivalent to 16,000 wind turbines (admittedly its probably the biggest of its kind but perhaps its the model for what we should be doing in the future).
Posted by: Sigmund | July 31, 2008 9:29 AM
One pound of fissile actinides produces less than a pound of radioactive fission products, and the equivalent of the energy of somewhere between four and seven million pounds of coal or petroleum products. Twelve pounds of carbon produces forty four pounds of carbon dioxide waste. Six million pounds of coal produces lots of carcinogenic and environmentally destructive gaseous oxides besides the carbon dioxide. It also leaves, in its ash and its fly ash particulates, a few pounds of uranium and thorium, both radioactive!
Customary licensing of coal burning power plants is remarkably lenient even about the disease-producing gaseous effluents.
The IFR is the way to go, and it should be run by timid civil servants, not by "risk-taking entrepreneurs".
A huge US government enterprise, the U.S. Navy, is saving millions of gallons a year of petroleum with its nuclear powered submarines and aircraft carriers. I think that the submarines have a better safety record than their oil-powered predecessors.
Posted by: Albert Rogers | August 30, 2008 2:29 PM
About biofuels. I travelled to work, seven miles away, for about fourteen years, in a biofuelled fashion. I rode a bicycle. It was probably faster than the other traditional option, horseback, and certainly cost less in feed. It was time-competitive with rush-hour automobile, and I only resorted to Metrorail on the very worst days.
But I quit when a motorist ran a red light and hit my front wheel.
Until we stop worshiping the automobile, we have to accommodate energy profligacy. Nuclear's the only way to go. Wind turbines probably damage flying wildlife as much as hydroelectric dams damage migratory fish. I think I just dealt with biofuels.
Posted by: Albert Rogers | August 30, 2008 2:42 PM
Subject:
"The carbon footprint of all that concrete and all that steel" by willy.
One gigawatt's worth of nuclear power plant uses a lot less of these things than a gigawatt's worth of wind turbine, solar reflectors, hydro dams, or coal. Vis-a-vis coal, the big difference is in the storage and transportation that you need for a hundred pounds of fuel versus three thousand tons of coal.
I don't know what the carbon footprint is for acres of photovoltaics, which would be a good way to meet peak air-conditioning demand, but I'll bet it's worse than nukes also.
Posted by: Albert Rogers | August 30, 2008 2:52 PM
To Paula:
The "nuclear waste" problem has no solution if you don't reprocess.
The idea that reprocessing significantly increases the risk of bad guys getting plutonium is nonsense - there's far too much of it lying around in the former Soviet Union, and if you want bomb-grade plutonium, you build a custom reactor for it.
The worst part of the nuclear waste problem, after you take out the actinides (uranium, plutonium, etc) is radioactive species with half-lives of about 30 years. In three centuries, 1/1024 of the original is left.
As I noted above, a pound of fissile uranium or plutonium can give you as much energy as millions of pounds of carbon, hydrocarbons, and carbohydrates and their derivatives.
The fission products from a pound of fissionable material necessarily weigh less than the fuel. Divide the energy produced, by the square of the speed of light, and you get the mass difference.
Turning a power plant into a bomb
You can do it, if you hit it with a big enough nuclear weapon. The spent fuel ponds are full of very radioactive, short-lived stuff (the shorter the half life, the more intense the radiation). Hit that with enough megatons, and you can desolate a large area downwind. But an ordinary reactor accident, even one as badly managed as Chernobyl, kills fewer people than a bad tornado. Please visit the Frontline interview
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/reaction/interviews/till.html
which tells of what should have been our very best hope.
The IFR could be enclosed in a dome more than adequately resistant to fanatics in airliners, and proof against any chemical bomb attack. The deadly nature of spent fuel rods is more than a deterrent to thieves. It'll kill them before they leave the premises with their spoils. Presumably, the actual offices connected to the reactor dome need not be inside it.
Electronics is now a very robust science, and we'd not have the control electronics connected to the Internet.
Oh yes, the conditions for the Three Mile Island and the Chernobyl incidents were actually designed for in the IFR, before they happened, and tests proved that they worked.
Posted by: Albert Rogers | August 30, 2008 3:23 PM
Hey, I just thought of something. Breeder reactors are a renewable energy option. The world has a fairly limited supply of fissile actinides. Breeder reactors replenish that supply.
Also, note that although nuclear fissionable species might be classed as fossil fuel, it isn't fossilized solar. Its origin is either supernova or the Big Bang itself.
Posted by: Albert Rogers | August 30, 2008 3:32 PM