If they built strong, safe 1000 year vaults on site, and put operations into Naval or Quasi-Naval hands I would be happy. I really want to see us stop burning oil & Coal. Without Fusion, Nuke is the best solution.
My concerns are waste & operations.
From fairly detailed replies in this thread, I now know fuel is not a problem.
I am happy to hear the Plutonium is not as dangerous as I have always believed. No one as changed my mind on shipping waste, lets keep it at the plant.
BTW this is definitely not NIMBY as I live 23 miles and work 7 from a plant and nowhere near the proposed storage sight.
Obviously I also think we need to continue developing Solar, Wind, Geo-Thermal, Fuel Cell, Bio-Mass, Solar Chimneys and most importantly Fusion.
:smack: Sorry most importantly reduce use with more efficient appliances. Diode lighting should start replacing a portion of current lighting within next 10 years.
Fluorescent already should replace most Incandescent. Etc.
In terms of high level waste (used fuel elements) don’t think there’s a simple answer to that (or at least, I don’t have the specific knowledge to make a credible claim); it depends upon the type of design, the rated output, how the fuel is initially packaged, et cetera. Depending on how it is packaged, it may be technically and economically feasible to reprocess it, and this should be a consideration when designing a reactor. High level waste is nasty to handle but is readily contained and stored indefinitely using existing methods.
This site makes this claim: “Whether reprocessed or not, the volume of high-level waste is modest, - about 3 cubic metres per year of vitrified waste or 25-30 tonnes of spent fuel for a typical large nuclear reactor. The relatively small amount involved allows it to be effectively and economically isolated.” It doesn’t provide a reference or bibliography, though.
The bulk of waste is actually low-level and intermediate-level wastes; contaminated coolant, handling materials, processing byproducts and mill tailings, et cetera. This stuff tends to come in more mutable and chemically reactive form; while solid pellets of [sup]238[/sup]U aren’t going to readily dissolve into the aquifer in large quantities, tailings and coolant can leak, seep, and contaiminate. Fabric, irradiated reactive metals, et cetera are prone to dissolve. I question the wisdom if placing this kind of stuff in deep underground reservoirs, actually. It seems like it would be better (though probably much more expensive) to maintain storage in fabricated bunkers that can be inspected for structural and environmental integrity. We learned the hard way with Love Canal and hundreds of other toxic waste dumps that stuff put underground doesn’t tend to stay put.
No, what I was doing was showing that there is an alternative to Sam’s scenario of 50,000 extra injured people a year, due to their having to clean solar panels.
Patty, I’m not making any arguments in favor of coal or oil based energy production.
SteveMB, your analogy is so far off base, I’m astounded that you think it accurately reflects the real subject. In order for your analogy to make any sense, you would need to believe that the windows served a purpose in place of a door, and then you hired the hooligan’s to clean the window, but they break it instead, with rocks with notes wrapped around them? What possible sense or bearing on the issue you are singling out do you think this has? Why don’t you just try addressing the issue directly, rather than through poor metapor?
No, I don’t think I could whole heartedly support the idea, as it still leaves us producing waste which will take hundreds of thousands of years to begin to breakdown. Storage doesn’t solve the problem; it just means we have more rugs covering things up. But would I rather see the people who produce the waste store it than see it shipped to here, where we don’t use nuclear power and don’t want other people’s trash? Yeah, absolutely.
Stranger, you asked for a cite about falsified & fabricated data? I thought I linked to a news story about that; I’m sorry if I did not. Here’s three:
lol I just noticed that my 2nd cite for Stranger was an article on the World Socialist Web Site. Definitely wouldn’t be my first choice for a cite, but there it is.
On April 5, 2005 the House Government Reform Subcommittee on Federal Workforce and Agency Organization met to discuss this very issue. This is the report from the American Geological Institute which contains the following excerpt:
The silica dust story broke in 2004. More than 1,200 workers were exposed to the toxic dust for a period of 4 years.
Which is sort of the problem with debating some subjects, like nuclear power. Much or most of the opposition to nuclear power is more or less faith-based - they begin with a conclusion (“Nuclear power is bad”) and then look for justifications for the conclusion. Storing waste on site is out of the question, and transporting it is bad because someone might shoot a missile at it and create a hole as big as your fist.
I suspect it is mostly based on the peculiar human preference for familiar risks over unfamiliar ones, even if the familiar ones kill more people.
I agree that nuclear power is a difficult subject to debate, but I take exception to how you single out the “con” side for being intractable. I’ve presented quite a bit of factual information about one particular facet of the debate, and have yet to see any acknowledgement that the “pro” side may be basing their opinion on incorrect data.
In fact, you make a blanket statement that “storing waste on site is out of the question”, but you I see no reasoning behind the statement. It’s been there for 40 years, why does it have to leave now?
And attempting to simplify the reasons that Yucca is a bad idea with the phrase “transporting it is bad because someone might shoot a missile at it and create a hole as big as your fist” is disingenuous as it ignores all of the other things that I’ve mentioned, including the accidents which even the DOE admits are inevitable.
To date, no one has been killed by nuclear waste stored on-site. Why trade a perfect track record for a risky, unknown course of action?
smiling bandit, Yucca is the general policy. 18 years and billions of dollars have gone into a flawed study of a site that the DOE is determined to use. Once the site was known to not fit the bill for a geological repository, new sites should have been brought to mention. None have. Instead the requirements were changed (they attempted to change them, anyway) to fit the site.
The DOE is, by law, supposed to begin waste shipments to Yucca by 2008. A deadline for shipping to begin was made by law before the suitability study had even been completed.
The truth is, there is a “need be”, but no “did it”.
[QUOTE=jrfranchi]
I thought there were alot of liberals on these boards. [A]
What happened to the diehard anti-nukes? ******
Do they just not bother to post?[/QUOTE
Does A |= B?
Policy decisions regarding science and technology should be based on an understanding of science and technology, not “diehard” advocacy of some philosophical position. Failure to do so leads to the kind of ignorance that currently plagues many areas of research and education.
[QUOTE=jrfranchi]
I thought there were alot of liberals on these boards. [A]
What happened to the diehard anti-nukes? ******
Do they just not bother to post?
[/QUOTE
Does A |= B?
Policy decisions regarding science and technology should be based on an understanding of science and technology, not “diehard” advocacy of some philosophical position. Failure to do so leads to the kind of ignorance that currently plagues many areas of research and education.
Stranger[/QUOTE]
No they don’t but I am in a local Environmental group and I am on the right of the average. There are still a lot of old school no-nukes lefties in the group. I was expecting to find some like them on these boards.
Your statement is correct, I was just expecting some of the “US is evil” people to also be “Nukes are Evil” people. I appear to be misguided.
I was stating what one side in the debate was arguing. NIMBY and all that.
Again, it was an example of the way the debate was trending. The nuclear industry takes precautions, almost to the point of ridiculousness, to guard against various hazards. Every time they do, the objections of the anti-nukes became more and more far-fetched.
No one has been killed by radiation exposure at any US civilian nuclear power plant, whereas some fifty or more iron miners die every year digging up ore to make into (among other things) frames for solar panels. So?
I mention it primarily because, as I mentioned, most anti-nuke types are not arguing against nuclear power because of this or that risk that they deem unacceptable. They deem any risk unacceptable, even if it is lower than risks currently incurred.
As you more or less did in your previous post. You won’t accept the risk either of transporting the waste, nor of keeping it on site. And I rather suspect that, if the nuclear industry found some third alternative, that would be too risky as well.
Incidentally, your earlier cite does not exactly prove that any data was falsified. An attorney hired (presumably) for the State of Nevada to argue against Yucca Mountain alleged so, but
Shodan thanks for clarifying some of your statements.
However, I must protest your conclusion here:
(bold added)
Please don’t misrepresent what I have said. I never said on-site storage of nuclear waste was unacceptable. In fact, I have been arguing for a continuation of on-site storage policy. What I said was
of expanded use of nuclear energy, which is a far cry from the intractable position you ascribe to me. I don’t whole-heartedly support the death penalty, the electoral college, or many other things. But I can recognize when an option is the best solution amongst several alternatives.
Even if nuclear power is the best alternative, the problem of waste doesn’t go away. It only gets worse as more is created.
As to the false data, read the articles. Read the emails. The email states he made things up, and will do so again if need be. How could it be any clearer?
1.) There may be nobody left to care, and signs won’t matter.
2.) We’ll have the technology to easily detect and clean it up.
3.) Even if society has blown itself back to the stone age by that time, it’s not like it’s going to be a vacation spot in any case. People don’t like to hang around areas where people get sick with just a few hours of exposure. Even without the signs, it won’t take long for people(no matter how far we may have regressed) to realize there is something forbidden about the place.
