MAGunter - you’re claiming, prima facie, that I’m going to lie when I tell you that I’ve no problems with having a nuke plant built within 15 miles of my home. So why ask the question? It doesn’t matter that I lived about 35 meters from not one, but two, D2G plants for several years. I would far, far rather live near Yucca Mountain, or any operating or formerly operating US nuke plant than to live in the same proximity to any kind of oil processing facility. Not is the risk of a catastrophic failure causing harm to me less at the nuke plant - it smells better to be around.
Snowboarder Bo, the question I have for you is why do you believe that the temporary pools that are storing the waste, as it is, now, are safer than the ‘boondoggle’ that you’re calling Yucca Mountain? At the moment we already have a need for a long-term waste storage facility for nuclear waste, and making it one centralized collection, processing and storage facility makes more sense to me than trying to set up 50 or 104 seperate facilities with the ineevitable duplication that will occur in facilities for sites that will only need to be used for a relatively short period of time: 30-50 years. But will still need all the storage and long-term protections that Yucca Mountain needs.
At the moment, while you’re complaining about the potential risks of storing this waste near the growing metropolis of Las Vegas, there are smaller absolute quantities in storage closer to larger metropolitan areas, such as NYC, LA and other cities. It may not be PC to say this, but at this point - the good of the many outweighs the good of the few.
Oh, very much pro-nuke. And former US Navy Rad sponge. But would like to see the AEC given teeth like ORSE’s, to be honest. And would far prefer to see pebble-bed plants built, or even more HTGRs. PWR’s have a number of advantages, esp. for military applications - but they do have drawbacks as well.
A few other comments: One thing that I haven’t seen discussed here is that the ability of long-term radiological hazards to go into solution to actually poison aquifers. AIUI most of the isotopes of concern for the long term decay problems are all heavy metals - elements that do not go easily into solution, and can only be suspended in turbulent water flows. The regular inspections of the Thresher wreck site show that there is very little tendency for the fission product wastes to actually migrate. And the catastrophe that hit Thresher was such that the whole boat shattered like glass. (Well, okay, it imploded after exceeding test depth - little, itty-bitty pieces parts.) That includes the reactor core AIUI. So, in a worst case scenario - no imbedding of contolled amounts of fission products into glass, no storage in a historically dry location, and massive corrosive elements available to remove all fission products from any physical matrix they may be in after the accident - and the waste products are not moving outside the wreck site.
For those of you who’ve mentioned the idea of giving the Navy responsibility for all nuclear power I have some countervailing concerns. One of the things that makes Navy Nuclear operation so safe is the regular casualty training done on the operating plants. I can’t imagine that NAVSEA08 would want to cease this practice if given responsibility for civilian plants. It would be possible, too. But there are some effects that are not going to popular with neighbors nor customers.
[ul]
[li]Unlike a Naval plant, civilian plants are designed, and try to operate at, for 95-100% power generation all the time. Because of this, there’s little excess capacity for emergencies or equipment failure - which will also affect how involved and realistic casualty training can be.[/li][li]Because a civilian plant spends most of its time operating at full load - and was designed for that - its most wearing operations are the rare start ups and shut downs. Adding those, a standard part of casualty training, will increase the most damaging wear on the plant: similar to the effect of running your car for a series of ten 10 mile trips instead of one 100 mile trip. [/li][li]Whatever you, I, or most educated persons may feel about the safe operation of a nuclear plant, currently any time a casualty drill is going to affect the plant’s output, or even visible profile (Steam from the cooling towers stopping, for example worries some people.) there are a large number of regulatory and and public notification hoops to go through, which will have the effect of reducing casualty training effectiveness by eliminating the element of surprise. [/li][li]Finally, people get upset if their TV’s, stoves, A/C’s or stereo’s fluctuate because the power company felt they had to ‘play’ with their power plant. Casualty training, even the extremely limited amount done currently in civilian plants, is very unpopular with customers. [/li][/ul]
I’m not all that sure that the Navy could run civilian plants the way the run their own plants, now. Incorporating more of Adm. Rickover’s attitudes into the civilian industry would be good, in my opinion (and would have prevented TMI), but I don’t think that a straight switch to Rickover’s methods will work.
And, again, I’m not saying that I feel that fission power is ideal. I simply prefer it to coal. By a very large margin.