Reuters:
The Obama administration said Thursday it wanted to officially terminate the Yucca Mountain nuclear storage waste site and instead spend $197 million to phase out the project and "explore alternatives" for nuclear waste disposal.
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Yucca Mountain is an old underground river on a fault line.
It will be full in ten years.
I say we just store all our nuclear and toxic waste in the nearest Red State.
As an engineer working on the Hanford vitrification plant, I can say with pretty decent background info that most of the fears of Yucca are unfounded. The fears of waste leaks or spills can be put to rest, as Yucca is meant to store solid waste. In the vitrification process, liquid waste is fed into a glass furnace. This traps the waste inside solid glass, so a spill or leak is impossible. The glass is then stored inside thick stainless steel canisters, which are welded shut. This protects the glass, and shields a large amount of the radiation.
Under foreseeable circumstances, the stored waste will be safe for about 10,000 years, which is long enough for radioactive decay to make the waste reasonably safe. I suppose looking at alternative options doesn't hurt, but a decision needs to be made quickly. The storage of liquid waste around the country is a disaster waiting to happen.
Yes, we are listening to you!
Please consider submitting an article to the HuffPost Investigative Journalist fund....
The misuse of funds by the present contractor? Any thoughts on that? Funding for alternative measures, like the "Mycelium Running" book posted below?
I don't think I can legally get into too much detail on funding, and I don't have a huge amount of info to go on anyway (I'm an engineer thats been on the project about 18 months). The contracts have changed hands several times though, and the DOE and eventual operators continually change requirements which forces us to redo a lot of work. A lot of management has been changed and new schedules have been created to put us on track to meet current contractual and budgetary requirements (supposedly).
To clarify my earlier post, I meant spills and leaks of liquid waste. A lot of people against the Yucca site seem to think the DOE would be shipping big containers of liquid waste from all over the country to Nevada, and this is simply not the case. The "store it in your own backyard" offensive doesn't really hold, because none of us will be around to have backyards when the real potential problems may arise, however many years in the future that may be. But radioactive waste is not going to spill across your streets, although a 1-ton steel canister could make quite a pothole.
unreprocessed fuel rods radioactive isotope half life is 100,000 + years. Reprocessed is 3000+ years but then you have plutonium. Safe for 10,000 years leaves you 90,000 years short.
Here's a link for you , Handord vitrification plant employed engineer. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radioactive_waste which says : "The radioactivity of all nuclear waste diminishes with time. All radioisotopes contained in the waste have a half-life - the time it takes for any radionuclide to lose half of its radioactivity and eventually all radioactive waste decays into non-radioactive elements. Certain radioactive elements (such as plutonium-239) in “spent” fuel will remain hazardous to humans and other living beings for hundreds of thousands of years. Other radioisotopes will remain hazardous for millions of years. Thus, these wastes must be shielded for centuries and isolated from the living environment for hundreds of millennia."
So if you can guarantee Yucca's purported geological stability for 10,000 years , which I doubt since there is an underground river below Yucca then you still have to have a stabilized place for "hundreds of thousands of years" you are blowing smoke
Duh, how many geological events have disrupted the Yucca Mountain region in the last, ohhhh, sayyyy, 500,000 years?
More distinguished scientists, like those on the U.S. Nuclear Waste Technical Review Board, disagree with you. They are not so certain that "fears of waste leaks or spills can be put to rest."
I've read their reports, and it is accurate to say that their concerns on this issue and many more have caused most of the delays on the project.
Hmm... fair enough. I am not a nuclear scientist or geological engineer, and am basing this on reading in-company information. I could be wrong.
Seriously, HAL/Brown & Root; the days are numbered for the dysfunctional corporation.
THE HANFORD CHALLENGE
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jg_zw38G7Ms
10,000 workers.
"...Paul Stammets has discovered mushrooms that can sequester nuclear toxins into its fruiting mushrooms. Check it out in his book "Mycelium Running"
Gomphidius glutinosus is one..."
Then where does it go?
Nancy Pelosi's back yard.... we can only hope!
I believe that Mr. Obama is making a mistake. Yucca mountain is the safest place to store nuke waise. When you see pictures inside Yucca it is soo large and so deep that and well made that even leakage will not penatrate the water suppley. Yucca was made that well. I think he is closing it because of the people's fear. What a waist of money, and time of all those years.
"explore alternatives" for nuclear waste disposal.
Like what? Moon or volcano?
No mention of letting HAL write the check for Hanford Nuclear Waste Reservation? Let's see HAL stock go to .25 cents....
Just when I thought it wasn't possible to love our president any more than I already do...he goes and does this. Sigh.
Duh? Stupid is as stupid does. Do you use electricity? From ecologically harmless sources?
Do you know what type of wastes are created to build hydro, windmill, photovoltaic, based systems.
Gee, you're using a computer to post on HuffPost...got any idea the dangerous materials involved in building your computer, shipping it to you??
Final question: Why are people like you so smugly self-righteous about matters they know so little about?
Proposals have been solicited for readily identifiable warning markers that would stand the test of time for the Yucca Mountain Nuclear Waste Depository:
2005
'Current concepts include both monuments and markers, but the designs will not be final for some time because they will not be approved by the NRC until shortly before the repository is to be permanently sealed and closed. Closure of the repository would be at least 50 years, and possibly up to 300 years, after the first waste is emplaced deep underground.'
'The monumental challenge is to address how warnings can be coherently conveyed for thousands of years into the future when human society and languages could change radically.'
http://www.ocrwm.doe.gov/factsheets/doeymp0115.shtml
Yeah, cuz, like, who can read Egyptian hieroglyphs or Sumerian. And everyone knows civilization is gonna collapse, everyone will become illiterate and all reading skills irrevocably lost forever.
But...I'll tell ya, bozo, with folks like you deciding policy.....civilization will collapse.
And so how is it I led you to believe I have anything to do with the NRC for the past 30 years?
Sounds like a step in the right direction to me. Thanks Obama!
Isn't it great to have a leader that can actually get things done; instead of playing the fear card, about every issue coming to his desk?
Here's why it would not cost too much to start building this wind turbines. We have plants that are closed all around the Midwest. All we need to do is get them retooled and workers trained to build this parts. The money from TARP refunds by banks or monies given to GM and Chrysler will easily take care of getting this plants going.
I think BO is looking towards the future and knows that there several great technologies at defense labs and NASA that could easily be commercialized. We are bombarded by electromagnetic waves from the sun all night and day. If we can tap this resource, not just the UV but the infrared frequencies, we can do away with coal totally. and just have coal and gas fired plants as backup but the utility companies are fight to prevent decentralization of energy.
Decentralized power production production is good for national security too.
clothing leads to waste.
So, the only thing we ever managed to bury there in large amounts was MONEY.
Good one!
Good. I've nothing against using Yucca for nuclear waste storage (I take the long view that 200 years is enough time to come up with a permanent solution), but the bureaucratic delays and foul-ups have made the project a money pit.
Thats a major issue. The main problem with our national energy policy is the lack of leadership and special interests. Jimmy Carter had solar panels on the white house roofs more than 30 years ago. If the research funding and foresight had continued we could have had the same revolution we had in microprocessors. Intel has increased chip speed in just a short time.
If the same focus was made for solar cells we could achieve solar potential that has infrared band frequency properties. We are talking of solar panels that would efficiently work day or night. Lets get the science going and with research in batteries and ultracapacitors we will have an energy revolution.
200 years is a long time... please calculate the cost of ownership of such a facility for two centuries plus the NPV of the money sunk into it.. and then calculate the true cost of the energy generated by the nuclear plants.
Here is the dirty secret: if we can't solve this now, we can't solve it cost efficiently, at all.
Yes, but a long-term storage facility isn't just about where to put our future nuclear waste; it's about where to put the waste we have now. Storage costs are already being incurred at locations not meant for long-term storage. It's a little late to be calculating the cost of ownership for nuclear waste we currently own.
Wow... unless they have a credible backup plan, that puts the stake through the heart of the nuclear industry.
'zactly what i was thinking.
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| 05/ 7/09 02:48 PM