Is the nuclear renaissance dead yet?

[jsbiff]

Just a quick note that I have updated my original post with new information I found while searching around the webz. I editted the original post because I think the link I found might be the definitive answer to the original linked article for which this thread is named.

[Tom Ligon]

Modular is not new. North Anna in Virginia has four reactors.

Let the engineering economists work that part out.

As for leaky containers at Yucca Mountain, the last detailed Real Plan (as opposed to some temporary measure) was to vitrify the waste for long-term storage. Fuse it into a glass. It might leach a trace out of the surface, and I would not want to sit on one of these chunks, but the waste ain't goin' anywhere once vitrified ... faults, floods or whatever.

This must be compared to the do-nothing approach, which is to maintain the leaky disasters of above-ground tanks full of liquid death at Hanford and Savannah River, plus a stash of spent rods stored at all the nuclear plants ever since Carter decided transmuting elements was a work of the Devil and stopped having the US accept the waste for reprocessing. Trust me, Yucca Mountain is a far better idea.

In principle, the big hazard is the first few decades, after which you have greatly reduced activity and long-lived isotopes.

[GIThruster]

Modular is not new. North Anna in Virginia has four reactors.

Let the engineering economists work that part out.

As for leaky containers at Yucca Mountain, the last detailed Real Plan (as opposed to some temporary measure) was to vitrify the waste for long-term storage. Fuse it into a glass. It might leach a trace out of the surface, and I would not want to sit on one of these chunks, but the waste ain't goin' anywhere once vitrified ... faults, floods or whatever.

This must be compared to the do-nothing approach, which is to maintain the leaky disasters of above-ground tanks full of liquid death at Hanford and Savannah River, plus a stash of spent rods stored at all the nuclear plants ever since Carter decided transmuting elements was a work of the Devil and stopped having the US accept the waste for reprocessing. Trust me, Yucca Mountain is a far better idea.

In principle, the big hazard is the first few decades, after which you have greatly reduced activity and long-lived isotopes.

I'm all for a vitrification answer when we get one. They tried making cement out of water waste 20 years ago but the cement wouldn't cure. What we have now is more than 20 years of research in how to stabilize waste. Once we have an answer to this, I'm all for opening Yucca. What else to do with a big hole in the ground?

But. . .

we need to have these answers FIRST. Until we do, we have many thousands of waste repositories around the country that form an every increasing security risk.

[GIThruster]

Funny (almost) aside, I once spent a few hours with one of the engineers working on the waste issue at Hanford. His excitement was over glorified kitty litter. Kitty litter is in many ways able to stabilize water waste.

Still, the troubles with this were significant and enough that in the 15 years since our conversation, we're not stabilizing nuke water waste with kitty litter.

We need real answers, not hand waving over the troubles we've walked into.

[Enginerd]

I'm all for a vitrification answer when we get one. They tried making cement out of water waste 20 years ago but the cement wouldn't cure. What we have now is more than 20 years of research in how to stabilize waste. Once we have an answer to this, I'm all for opening Yucca. What else to do with a big hole in the ground?

http://www.smartplanet.com/business/blo ... lass/1025/

[GIThruster]

Cool note, but where are the details?

[chrismb]

The article you should be really interested in reading is, I suggest, this one by the IEEE a few years ago;

http://spectrum.ieee.org/energy/nuclear ... asteland/0

which includes this cool graphic to show how the French do it;

http://spectrum.ieee.org/images/feb07/images/nucf2.pdf

Reprocessing, as practiced at La Hague, reduces the quantity of highly radioactive wastes needing permanent disposal to about 137 metric tons per year. If spent MOX fuel were some day burned in fast breeders, then high-level wastes would amount to just 37 metric tons.

...Read and learn...

• ...summary essays by the morning please, gentlemen.

[icarus]

BNFL have vitrification plants that have processed upwards of 1 thousand tonnes of highly radioactive at Sellafield. The control problems have not all been solved yet though.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sellafield ... sing_plant

"In 1991 the Windscale Vitrification Plant (WVP), which seals high-level radioactive waste in glass, was opened."

[jsbiff]

Err, if waste is vitrified, could it later be un-vitrified to have the actinides and useable uranium burned in a reactor? I'm guessing it'd be possible, but perhaps difficult, as not only would you have to melt the glass, but then seperate the waste from the glass (although, I suppose some sort of centrifuge system (similar to how they enrich uranium today, could probably be used to seperate elements by weight)? Or perhaps if you just get the glass melted hot enough, the elements will sort themselves by weight just due to gravity?

[icarus]

useable uranium burned in a reactor?

Ahh, the waste they vitrify really is just the waste. 96% of the 'waste' stream is recoverable uranium, 1% plutonium and 3% 'vitrifiable'.

THORP was designed to have most of recoverable waste going into the MOX plant for new fuel and the rest to vitrification. Kind of got going but hasn't quite worked out as planned, it never does ... govt. sponsored nuclear reprocessing is a quagmire of contractor vested interests, incompetent bureaucracy, paranoid officialdom and bleeding-edge engineering.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermal_Ox ... sing_Plant

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MOX_fuel

[KitemanSA]

I'm all for a vitrification answer when we get one.

There is no need for vitrifaction if you BURN THE ACTINIDES!! The fission products will decay to under background in a couple centuries and a decent barrel is good enough for that! You only need vitrifaction for the LONG lived actinides.

[GIThruster]

KiteMan, cool if what you say is true! I'm not a nuke engineer or physicist. I have to deal with the bottom line as do all policy decision makers.

If the nuke waste trouble is easily dealt with, why haven't we dealt with it?

I'm a fly on the wall for all the very educated fission advocates here.

Tell me (and others with like skill deficiencies) what I need to hear.

[icarus]

tongue bite ... lord help us is all I can say.

[WizWom]

Most of the fuel used so far in the US has been a once-through use; only about 3-5% of the available fissionable fuel has been used, let alone reprocessing for actinide recovery. Part of the reason for this has been the inability of first and second generation designs to deal with the neutron loss to fission products.Fast Breeder designs like CANDU and PBRs are set up for reprocessing from the start, but using solid fuel means it's expensive. Various liquid fluoride designs have been proposed to make reprocessing cheap and even in-line.

[StevePoling]

As you may be aware, there was a reactor in Gabon at a place called Oklo which was decommissioned some years back. The radioactive waste was left in situ exposed to ground water. Most significantly, transport of radioactive isotopes did not render the surrounding countryside a sterile wasteland. The reaction products were rendered harmless by mere passage of time. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oklo

One of my daughter's profs at Michigan has been studying Oklo to see what it can teach us about rad waste disposal. If I knew what "adsorption" meant, I might be able to follow what she tells me about it.