Most of this sounds like progress. Though I don't know how they can landfill the high level waste after extracting the "valuable" stuff. Maybe if they include Cesium 137 and strontium 90 as "valuable." The rest decays to levels near natural ores in a few years.
Section 907(b) says "There shall be no federal support of deep geologic repositories." I think this is a mistake, as it would rule out use of facilities like WIPP, already in use for weapons waste. I understand the goal, however, is to stop the hysteria about needing perfect storage for millions of years.
WIPP seems like the ideal solution - permanent safe storage, recoverable if future generations decide there is still something valuable to be recovered.
The cost would be negligible, if all that is needed is one room, separate from all the other rooms containing weapons waste.
The difficulty I see with WIPP (and please correct me if you see a way around this) has to do with recoverability (and, of course, cost). And it WILL be recovered eventually. The high concentration of valuable energy dense fuel is too good to be ignored indefinitely.
You mentioned this, but I don't see how it won't be incredibly dangerous if the "waste" is unreprocessed fuel and probably weapons waste also. The presence of the high heat producing, long lived fission daughter products, along with the actinides, all of which make it necessary to employ remote handling, multiplies the difficulty exponentially.
Time will become an enemy to safe recoverability, because no deep underground geologic facility is indefinitely stable. Tectonic movement and underground hydrology are facts of nature.
You are right, the whole point of WIPP, BWIP, SALT, and any other deep underground waste programs was to address the public hysteria whipped up about perfect eternal storage. And the cost is not negligible when we add in the outrageous cost of supporting any of the NWTS type of repositories.
Cheap storage, which is what we want, is not any of those. When someone comes up with a cheaper, safer, more recoverable for future generations method than above ground storage, I really want to hear about it.
These are great discussions that have been needed since the Manhattan District project days.
CZ is always looking for improvements to our articles, so your suggestions will be welcome.
Figure 6 shows a proposed Consolidated Interim Storage Facility. These should take the place of the dry cask storage currently at power plants. Cost is a small fraction of what the Feds were requiring nuclear plants to set aside for disposal.
After extracting everything of value, that which is truly waste could be kept in a separate section of the same facility, perhaps with a warning sign - do not eat the radioactive glass.
Decay heat is not a problem in the desert.
If deep disposal is necessary to satisfy the remnants of the anti-nuclear industry, the power companies could make a deal with WIPP. NPP waste should be kept separate from weapons waste, to avoid sharing any of the blame when there are screw ups on the weapons side. If the NPP operators can't get a reasonable cost from WIPP, they can dig their own hole next door.
The salt formation in SE New Mexico has been stable for 250 million years. After a few centuries, the salt will flow in and close the excavated chambers. Until then, recovery is still possible, in case anyone changes their mind about permanent disposal.
WIPP's orginal life cycle budget was 11 billion 199? dollars. We can be sure we will end up paying several times that. The 2014 non-event when a barrel of kitty litter burned cost 574 million that I know of. As long as places like WIPP are deemed necessary, nuclear will never be anywhere near its should-cost. Congress need to make a strong statement here.
You are right about the ridiculous cost of WIPP. I could have done the kitty litter cleanup for one million, and kept $900K in profit. I could also have avoided the problem entirely, by having detectors that slam the door shut on any chamber where there is a release. Why in hell did they continue running the ventilation system?
Because of the heat build up. Once you put radioactive material deep underground, you've created a cooling problm for yourself.
The system detected the tiny bit of americium released and switched the exhaust to HEPA filters. The release was measured in micro-becquerels per cubic meter, million times less that the EPA action levels which are ridiculously conservative.
One of the lasting effects of the kitty litter fire is WIPP is now required to operate in full filtration mode all the time, hampering operations depsite the fact the unfiltered air would put out the same amount of Am-241 per year as in a single household smoke detector.
This is what happens when you go down the won't-cost-us-that-much-so-why-pushback Rabbit Hole.
We so need these discussions and enlightenment. I do not like the option of living in a cave, or having my grandchildren do so.
For me, the most exciting part of pursuing this path is the new technology that will emerge as we progress. And the rapid progression comes by DOING IT.
All the rabid anti-nuclear emotion out there comes directly out of the ignorance on the subjects. People are not necessarily stupid, the information just has not been fairly and clearly presented.
I agree, stupidity of the people is not the problem. I have a PhD in physics, and two years experience in nuclear power (laser fusion). In spite of that, I did not know about fission, decay heat, any of the designs safer than pressurized water, the problem of intermittency in solar and wind, the falsity of LNT (one zoomie can kill you), etc. etc.
I stumbled on a video of Kirk Sorensen talking about MSRs, and had an epiphany. That is what motivated me to learn everything I could about the new designs. I was never against nuclear power, just not paying attention, and absorbing the myths that were floating all around me. Those myths are still floating in our media, and I think most journalists are now like I was two years ago, just accepting what they have heard.
Citizendium aims to reach these journalists, who will be skeptical of any one-sided publication. It is the only source I know of that gives equal opportunity for both sides to debate an issue in a forum (unlike FaceBook) that has archival value. CZ is what Wikipedia should have been.
Every "new" technology that I'm aware of was considered in the 1950's and 1960's and many of them were tried. Light water won that battle easily. If any of these technologies are actually cheaper than light water, the difference will be marginal. ORNL was the developer and promoter of MSR's. In 196?, they did a detailed study of the economics of LWR versus MSR and claimed that MSR's should be 30% cheaper than LWR, a claim that has yet to be proven.
I say again. Nuclear's problem is not we don't have the right technology. Nuclear's problemis we don't have the right regualtory system. You don't solve that problem with wishful thinking about new technologies that are not new.
The plan is to keep the stuff in dry cask or vault for several hundred years, perhaps as long as 600 years at which point the material can be "contact handled" (with no shielding) per DOT rules. The cesium is effectively gone and the "High Level Waste" is just another poison. It would have to be swallowed to do you any harm.
I agree, dry casks (or underground silos) should be used for spent fuel that has ANY possible use by future generations. WIPP (or a deep hole with a different name) should be used only for permanent waste. Silos don't require expensive shielding on each and every bundle.
All unusable waste is permanent. Even after we go to breeding, most of the long-lived, unusable stuff will be alpha emitting heavy metals. Roughly about as dangerous as lead.
We don't put lead deep underground. We just try to keep people from eating it. Why do we put this stuff deep underground?
Don't try the it-will-make-people-feel-better argument again. If this stuff has to be treated specially, then all innocuous radioactive material has to be treated specially. You've lost the argument.
Put postively, this is a great opportunity to make the point that bacon is more dangerous than aged spent fuel. You are much more likely to swallow that carcinogen than a rock.
Most of this sounds like progress. Though I don't know how they can landfill the high level waste after extracting the "valuable" stuff. Maybe if they include Cesium 137 and strontium 90 as "valuable." The rest decays to levels near natural ores in a few years.
Section 907(b) says "There shall be no federal support of deep geologic repositories." I think this is a mistake, as it would rule out use of facilities like WIPP, already in use for weapons waste. I understand the goal, however, is to stop the hysteria about needing perfect storage for millions of years.
WIPP seems like the ideal solution - permanent safe storage, recoverable if future generations decide there is still something valuable to be recovered.
The cost would be negligible, if all that is needed is one room, separate from all the other rooms containing weapons waste.
The difficulty I see with WIPP (and please correct me if you see a way around this) has to do with recoverability (and, of course, cost). And it WILL be recovered eventually. The high concentration of valuable energy dense fuel is too good to be ignored indefinitely.
You mentioned this, but I don't see how it won't be incredibly dangerous if the "waste" is unreprocessed fuel and probably weapons waste also. The presence of the high heat producing, long lived fission daughter products, along with the actinides, all of which make it necessary to employ remote handling, multiplies the difficulty exponentially.
Time will become an enemy to safe recoverability, because no deep underground geologic facility is indefinitely stable. Tectonic movement and underground hydrology are facts of nature.
You are right, the whole point of WIPP, BWIP, SALT, and any other deep underground waste programs was to address the public hysteria whipped up about perfect eternal storage. And the cost is not negligible when we add in the outrageous cost of supporting any of the NWTS type of repositories.
Cheap storage, which is what we want, is not any of those. When someone comes up with a cheaper, safer, more recoverable for future generations method than above ground storage, I really want to hear about it.
These are great discussions that have been needed since the Manhattan District project days.
See the Waste Management section of my article in Citizendium, and the linked articles to dig deeper.
https://citizendium.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_reconsidered#Waste_Management
CZ is always looking for improvements to our articles, so your suggestions will be welcome.
Figure 6 shows a proposed Consolidated Interim Storage Facility. These should take the place of the dry cask storage currently at power plants. Cost is a small fraction of what the Feds were requiring nuclear plants to set aside for disposal.
After extracting everything of value, that which is truly waste could be kept in a separate section of the same facility, perhaps with a warning sign - do not eat the radioactive glass.
Decay heat is not a problem in the desert.
If deep disposal is necessary to satisfy the remnants of the anti-nuclear industry, the power companies could make a deal with WIPP. NPP waste should be kept separate from weapons waste, to avoid sharing any of the blame when there are screw ups on the weapons side. If the NPP operators can't get a reasonable cost from WIPP, they can dig their own hole next door.
The salt formation in SE New Mexico has been stable for 250 million years. After a few centuries, the salt will flow in and close the excavated chambers. Until then, recovery is still possible, in case anyone changes their mind about permanent disposal.
WIPP's orginal life cycle budget was 11 billion 199? dollars. We can be sure we will end up paying several times that. The 2014 non-event when a barrel of kitty litter burned cost 574 million that I know of. As long as places like WIPP are deemed necessary, nuclear will never be anywhere near its should-cost. Congress need to make a strong statement here.
That's the reason for 907(b).
You are right about the ridiculous cost of WIPP. I could have done the kitty litter cleanup for one million, and kept $900K in profit. I could also have avoided the problem entirely, by having detectors that slam the door shut on any chamber where there is a release. Why in hell did they continue running the ventilation system?
Because of the heat build up. Once you put radioactive material deep underground, you've created a cooling problm for yourself.
The system detected the tiny bit of americium released and switched the exhaust to HEPA filters. The release was measured in micro-becquerels per cubic meter, million times less that the EPA action levels which are ridiculously conservative.
One of the lasting effects of the kitty litter fire is WIPP is now required to operate in full filtration mode all the time, hampering operations depsite the fact the unfiltered air would put out the same amount of Am-241 per year as in a single household smoke detector.
This is what happens when you go down the won't-cost-us-that-much-so-why-pushback Rabbit Hole.
David, that is a great article.
We so need these discussions and enlightenment. I do not like the option of living in a cave, or having my grandchildren do so.
For me, the most exciting part of pursuing this path is the new technology that will emerge as we progress. And the rapid progression comes by DOING IT.
All the rabid anti-nuclear emotion out there comes directly out of the ignorance on the subjects. People are not necessarily stupid, the information just has not been fairly and clearly presented.
I agree, stupidity of the people is not the problem. I have a PhD in physics, and two years experience in nuclear power (laser fusion). In spite of that, I did not know about fission, decay heat, any of the designs safer than pressurized water, the problem of intermittency in solar and wind, the falsity of LNT (one zoomie can kill you), etc. etc.
I stumbled on a video of Kirk Sorensen talking about MSRs, and had an epiphany. That is what motivated me to learn everything I could about the new designs. I was never against nuclear power, just not paying attention, and absorbing the myths that were floating all around me. Those myths are still floating in our media, and I think most journalists are now like I was two years ago, just accepting what they have heard.
Citizendium aims to reach these journalists, who will be skeptical of any one-sided publication. It is the only source I know of that gives equal opportunity for both sides to debate an issue in a forum (unlike FaceBook) that has archival value. CZ is what Wikipedia should have been.
Davids,
The problem with the present reactors is that they are too safe.
https://jackdevanney.substack.com/p/nuclear-power-is-too-safe
Every "new" technology that I'm aware of was considered in the 1950's and 1960's and many of them were tried. Light water won that battle easily. If any of these technologies are actually cheaper than light water, the difference will be marginal. ORNL was the developer and promoter of MSR's. In 196?, they did a detailed study of the economics of LWR versus MSR and claimed that MSR's should be 30% cheaper than LWR, a claim that has yet to be proven.
I say again. Nuclear's problem is not we don't have the right technology. Nuclear's problemis we don't have the right regualtory system. You don't solve that problem with wishful thinking about new technologies that are not new.
Please forgive me in advance, but isn't Citizendium next to Unobtanium in the Periodic Table of Elements?
Dave,,
Pls read
https://gordianknotbook.com/download/nuclear-waste-a-tale-of-two-particles/
The plan is to keep the stuff in dry cask or vault for several hundred years, perhaps as long as 600 years at which point the material can be "contact handled" (with no shielding) per DOT rules. The cesium is effectively gone and the "High Level Waste" is just another poison. It would have to be swallowed to do you any harm.
I agree, dry casks (or underground silos) should be used for spent fuel that has ANY possible use by future generations. WIPP (or a deep hole with a different name) should be used only for permanent waste. Silos don't require expensive shielding on each and every bundle.
You still don't get it.
All unusable waste is permanent. Even after we go to breeding, most of the long-lived, unusable stuff will be alpha emitting heavy metals. Roughly about as dangerous as lead.
We don't put lead deep underground. We just try to keep people from eating it. Why do we put this stuff deep underground?
Don't try the it-will-make-people-feel-better argument again. If this stuff has to be treated specially, then all innocuous radioactive material has to be treated specially. You've lost the argument.
Put postively, this is a great opportunity to make the point that bacon is more dangerous than aged spent fuel. You are much more likely to swallow that carcinogen than a rock.
Point well taken. We should start with the position that WIPP is unnecessary, and allow further funding only if we get something in compromise.
GS-15’s, don’t you mean SES’ers? :)
Yeah, but it doesn't have the same ring.
When did the bureaucrats decide we cant count above 15?