Purely political? Again, horseshit. Oh, politics played a part, but to say it was a completely political decision is complete horseshit. Again, from Wiki:
From the DOE site I linked to earlier that you obviously didn’t bother clicking on:
:rolleyes:
Whatever. It’s a dead horse at this point. Obama and Congress have killed it (again), so no point in trying to flog sense into anyone about it. It’s dead. So…we will get an even less optimal solution. Or no solution at all, which is kind of what the anti-nuke types really want. After all, if we have to simply store waste on site it’s one more reason not to build any more nuclear power plants in the US. C’est la vie. I hope the anti-nuke types will like the warmer climate…
There is a distinction between the initial selection of sites, which was largely non-political, and the ultimate short-cutting of the selection system and congressionally fiated selection of Yucca, which was mostly political. If you read any of the secondary literature on this (i.e. not the DOE’s opinion), it is pretty universal in agreeing that the ultimate selection of Yucca was political. See, e.g., Richard Stewart, US Nuclear Waste Law and Policy: Fixing a Bankrupt System, 17 NYU Enviro. L.J. 786 (2008).
It sounds as though three sites made the final cut for evaluation, right? So even if Yucca was chosen for political reasons, it would at least be among the 3 most suitable places based on non-political research up to that point.
No, not entirely. The most you can probably say is that the initial 10 or so were non-political. The chairman of the energy subcommittee was crucially involved in taking Louisiana off that list, and there were other interventions before the final three. The whole process was very political, and got more political as it went along.
Given that WATER is the biggest long term concern involving nuclear waste, that ANYWHERE in the swamp state was even considered is pretty amazing in the first place.
Of course there are the salt domes, but still…
That was the whole theory behind the salt domes (in this case, the Vacherie Dome), that they were self-sealing, so it didn’t matter where the water table was. The initial siting scheme was actually pretty good. It was geographically balanced and geologically diverse, so that we would simultaneously research and develop multiple kinds of sites (salt, volcanic, basalt) and ultimately choose the one that turned out to be the best. The political short-circuiting of that is really unfortunate.
That’s actually the site I used to verify my assertion that the water table wasn’t isolated to the mountain in post 62.
The decision was 99% political and 1% scientific. Look at the political delegations the other states had at the time. Washington had Tom Foley, who was Majority Leader. Texas had GHW Bush as VP and Jim Wright, the Speaker of the House. From Nevada, Reid was in his first year as Senator, Chic Hecht was in his first (and only) Senate term, and James Bilbray was in his first term as Representative. The most senior representation, Barbara Vucanovich, only had 4 years of seniority. Nevada’s representation at the time had no power.
They clearly didn’t do enough research into Yucca Mountain before choosing it. They relocated the closest fault as recently as 2007. It turns out the fault was actually located directly under the facility they planned at the time.
Again, I’m moderately pro-nuke. I’m okay with additional nuclear plants without a long term storage facility. The systems the industry has developed over the past 20 years will be adequate for mid-term solutions while a real comparison is done.
The Germans store their nuclearwaste in old salt mines-they don’t seem to have any trouble.
What’s wrong with storing the stuff in sealed glass bottles? Glass is one of the most stable materils known to man-3000 year old glass has been recovered from shipwrecks in the Mediterranean-and there is no evidence of it deteriorating.
The West Valley project seems to have been a successful experiment with vitrifying high level rad waste into glass bricks.
So, I believe the technology is available.
There are some drawbacks, however.
First off - one of the reasons that the decision has been made not to reprocess spent fuel is because of the risks of contamination from those processes, the absolutely vile nature of some of the solvents involved, and the difficulties in control of dangerous isotopes which might be of use for terrorists. That I don’t agree with the conclusions that have been made with regards to these issues doesn’t mean that I disagree with any of the concerns brought up. They are all real, and serious concerns.
And from what I understand of the vitrification process, much of the same sort of things have to be done to process the fuel for vitrification as would have be done for reprocessing.
The other concern I’ve heard is that, while I happen to think that anyone counting on high level rad waste becoming an economic resource is being overly optimistic, the vitrification process makes reclaiming any of the material so treated effectively impossible. That I don’t want to count on rad waste becoming the next gasoline, doesn’t mean that I can’t see arguments for keeping in a more usable form, in case it does.
Other concerns include: glass is very durable, over time, provided it’s not hit. But it will erode. Just look at any sea glass you see on the beach the next time you’re there. I know you’re going to say that ground water doesn’t have the wave action that beaches to, but I believe there are currents within some ground water reserves that can be erosive.
A lot of high-level nuclear waste (HLW) undergoes a more sophisticated version of what you’re talking about. It’s called vitrification, a process of bonding it with glass into a more stable, solid structure. But while this slows the potential leeching process, on the time scales we’re talking about, it isn’t a full solution. Similarly, citing other countries disposal experience isn’t very useful, since pretty much everyone agrees we can do this safely for decades–the uncertainty is what happens hundreds or thousands of years from now.
Additionally, it is only really cost feasible for HLW, which makes up only a fraction of the total nuclear waste. Spent nuclear fuel (SNF) is the other major component, and I’m pretty sure no one has found a cost-effective way to vitrify it. Moreover, we might want to recover SNF at a later time because it still contains useful materials for energy production.
Chernobyl and Three Mile Island were hoaxes and conspiracies designed by big coal to end nuclear power. Nothing happened at either incident. Same with Windscale. All fake. And there is no waste that is at all hazardous. Heck, they can and do keep nuclear waste in a big swimming pool! It doesn’t get all wrinkley in the water and can stay in the pool forever without pruning up! How cool is that! Nukes!
56 people died at Chernobyl and another 4,000 are estimated to ultimately get cancer from the radiation. Let’s assume, despite the fact that nothing on the scale of Chernobyl has ever been seen again, that Chernobyl is the norm rather than the exception. In fact, let’s assume that increased use of nuclear power will result in a Chernobyl-style accident every year.
The number of people who will die from cancer each year will still be–using the most conservative estimates for air pollution–a factor of ten smaller than the number that die from particulate emissions right now. Indeed, some studies put the number of annual deaths attributable to coal emissions in the hundreds of thousands instead of the more conservative 40-50,000 range. And that doesn’t even begin to include the global warming, the costs of transporting coal, etc.
There is no reasonable argument that nuclear power is more dangerous than the existing technologies. The only reasonable debate is over whether there are technologies on the horizon that we should be pouring money into instead of spending money figuring out how to dispose of nuclear waste.
shrug As I said, it’s moot. Anytime someone says something like ‘The decision was 99% political and 1% scientific’ I’m more than a bit skeptical…even if I don’t know anything about it. In this case I do, and while I have a natural distrust (if not distaste) for anything related to the government, I’ve seen enough to accept that the DOE, while perhaps not 100% on the level, is not completely off the wall as you claim, nor that the decision was based solely or even mostly on pure politics and the ability to bully Nevada as opposed to better but less politically acceptable sites. I think Yucca Mountain was certainly a compromise…but it was one that had a basis in reality.
However, it’s moot…it’s dead and so we’ll have to get by with other solutions.
I will check it out, time permitting, but I’ve read both sides of the argument in the past. I actually happen to know some of the scientists and engineers who have worked or were working recently on the project (my mother for one), and while, as I said above, I don’t accept the DOE’s version completely, I have to say that by and large I think that’s the best source for information on this subject.
I find it hard to credit that decades of effort and billions of dollars have been spent on a site that is completely un-viable. I would accept that it might not be THE most optimal site…but that this was shoved down Nevada’s collective throat while having no basis in reality as a viable site? No…I’m sorry, but I beg to disagree. However, I’m in the unenviable position of having to rely on DOE based sites…and if they are dismissed then what’s a po’, lazy boy to do?
Besides, as I said, it’s moot…we’ll have to figure something else out. It will probably take another couple of decades and a couple billion more, and maybe by then the magic ponies will be ready to run…or we’ll be so deep up shits creek that it won’t matter so much anymore.
You know, last week as one of my PR functions, I met a person who:
Was anti-all-fossil fuels (coal, oil, gas).
Was anti-nuclear.
Was anti-wind (dead birds and bats).
Was anti-hydro (dead fish and loss of Indian lands) and who wanted all current dams torn down.
Was anti-biomass (kills the poor by stealing cropland).
Was anti-wave power (kills the whales).
Was mostly anti solar (produces heavy metal pollution and takes up too much land). Passive solar was OK.
I asked them how they intended that we generate electricity, have transportation, or industry of any sort, with 99% of our options gone, and their response? “There are always other ways if you just open your eyes and stop thinking like an Engineer.”
Since when is “thinking like an Engineer” a negative?
See, this is the kind of conspiracy that is against nuclear power. Chernobyl never happened. You can go to the supposed “site” and see that it is just a mock construction, a Potemkin village, if you will. You couldn’t possibly have a a real city abandoned just to shut down a valuable nuclear power plant to make it all look deserted and freaky, no, the whole thing was a communist plot designed to lure the west into thinking that nuclear power would destroy real estate, the most valuable thing to us capitalists. But it is really all fake in the middle of nowhere and they won’t let people near to examine that it is fake.
Wasn’t there some account of a NASA management type telling the engineers prior to the Challenger disaster to ‘take off his engineering hat, and put on his management hat’ when design limits for the Shuttle were being brought up?
Sounds familiar, but I don’t know. Wouldn’t be a surprise - Engineers are the ugly sister that never gets invited to the prom in the professional world. Plus when the term “Engineer” can be degraded by “sanitation engineers” (trashmen), “sheet metal engineers” (auto body shop guys), or even, I shit you not, “PowerPoint engineers” (admin assistant who took a 4-hour Microsoft course)…I mean, why bother?
Said a science teacher once who introduced me to her class: “Engineers are like scientists except they aren’t as smart.” Words fail. There’s several reasons I stopped doing my community outreach things and classes at junior high schools and high schools, and it wasn’t just because of the metal detectors, near strip-searches, and huge scary kids.
Anyhow, what’s most alarming is that I believe that the loon I met probably represents, in a way, a large amount of the vast lumbering herds of the scientifically illiterate Americans. Asking an average American to discuss the pro’s and con’s of different energy strategies is like asking a highly trained macaque to operate a microwave oven: they might get something right, but only by accident, and they’re likely to get someone killed in the process.
I think you are under rating the macaque by at least an order of magnitude…and I really think we should leave gonzomax out of the discussion. Granted, gonzo can, in theory at least, operate a microwave…if he’s given detailed instructions complete with pictures and helpful diagrams…
I’m not going to touch network or Software engineering with a 10-foot pole. The last time I did I picked up a new stalker who started posting sexual slurs and death threats towards me on the snarkboards. She started to key off of things like whether or not I used capital letters, parentheses, or single or double quotes, each one being an implicit sneer directed at software engineers and community college and votech teachers. My explanations that I do a lot of things by habit and don’t think that hard about some of the spelling/sentence construction because I’m a scientist, not a copy editor, were dismissed as “backpedaling” and “lies”. So no, I’m not going to mention at all how the term “engineer” applies or does not apply to IT fields.
There’s a Ralph Wiggum quote here, I just know it.
