Japan Nuclear Crisis Revives Long U.S. Fight on Spent Fuel

[jpak]

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/24/us/24yucca.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

WASHINGTON — The threat of the release of highly radioactive spent fuel at a Japanese nuclear plant has revived a debate in the United States about how to manage such waste and has led to new recriminations over a derailed plan for a national repository in Nevada.

Pools holding spent fuel at nuclear plants in the United States are even more heavily loaded than those at the Japanese reactors, experts say, and are more vulnerable to some threats than the ones in Japan. However, utility companies have taken steps since the 9/11 terrorist attacks to make them safer.

Adding to those concerns, no plan to move the waste has emerged to replace a proposed repository at Yucca Mountain in the Nevada desert. President Obama promised to cancel the project during his 2008 campaign, and last year he told the Department of Energy to withdraw an application that it had submitted to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission for a construction license.

Frustration in Congress is growing. “You have an unholy mess on your hands,” Representative John D. Dingell, Democrat of Michigan, told the chairman of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Gregory B. Jaczko, at a House subcommittee hearing last week. “The stuff keeps piling up, and you’ve doubled the amount that you can store in a single pool, but that’s running out. Is there a long-term plan anywhere in government?”
Congress selected Yucca Mountain as its first choice for a waste site in 1987, pending engineering studies. Many lawmakers said the Obama administration lacked the authority to stop the project and should revive it so that waste can be removed from their states.

<more>

[snagglepuss]

1. No one state should have to cope with everyone else's spent fuel. nt

[Ozymanithrax]

2. If we are gong to continue to use nuclear power...

then every state where a facility exists, or might be affected should an accident occur, requires a repository be available.

Nimby shield walls will not stop contaminated air or decaying particles.

Even if, as a nation, we decide to change to another form of energy, we need a place to store this stuff, a repository.

[Statistical]

3. Too bad we can't be a progressive thinking as Finland.

Finland's Deep Geological Repository at Onkala is already under construction. The primary shaft down 1700ft into solid granite has been completed. Research tunnels are being dug to determine best layout for the repository. The repository will be more than 600 reactors years worth of capacity. Finland has 4 reactors, with 1 more under construction, and 1 more planned). Even when accounting for rising population and rising energy demand Onkala will be able to contain all spent fuel used for past 30 year plus all projected spent fuel until 2120.

[jpak]

4. That repository will have remain intact for longer than modern humans have inhabited the planet

yup

[Statistical]

5. Much better to leave it in pools lying all around the country.

Even if nuclear power ends globally tomorrow forward thinking solutions like what Finland is doing will need to happen.

[jpak]

6. Much better not to produce it at all

yup

[Statistical]

7. It already has been produced.

Progressives look for solutions like they are doing in Finland.

IF nuclear power ended globally tomorrow we need a solution.
If nuclear power is phased out globally over next decade we need a solution.
If nuclear power continues to be used we need a solution.

Finland now has options. They can keep using nuclear energy, they can phase it out as plants reach end of life, they can phase it out earlier, or they can abandon it completely. Regardless of what option they eventually choose they are ready.

[PamW]

19. Too late.. that ship has already sailed.

Much better not to produce it at all
===============

Too late. That ship has already sailed.

The nuclear waste exists. It's here. It has to be dealt with.

Saying you didn't want it produced at all is no solution at all.

PamW

[madokie]

14. better is or was or should have been to not make the stuff in the first place

fact is

[PamW]

20. again.. that ship has already sailed.

Is that how you solve problems - wish them away?

The doctor tells you that you have cancer.
You wish you never got cancer. Problem solved.

PamW

[FBaggins]

8. Why?

What would happen if it collapsed or in some other way failed to "remain intact"?

[jpak]

9. Remain intact to sequester the inventroy of radionuclides so it doesn't poison Future Finns

and kill them

yup

[FBaggins]

10. How does it "poison future Finns" from under 1700 feet of granite?

You do know where uranium comes from, don't you?

[jpak]

11. Have you ever taken a geology class ot even looked at a granite outcrop?

Granite over time will develop joints and ground water will eventually infiltrate that repository.

and uranium comes from supernovae

and no one mines it from fucking granite

yup

[FBaggins]

12. Sure. Have you?

Dozens of mines each producing thousands of tons of uranium (tens of millions of tons in some cases). Are none of those geological formations prone to "develop(ing) joints" or seeping groundwater?

You do know where radon comes from, right?

[PamW]

21. one may not mine it from granite...

and no one mines it from fucking granite
=====================================

Evidently you don't know that uranium is quite a common constituent
of granite.

That's why many of the granite statues that one finds in the Halls
of Congress are so radioactive.

According to your "theory", such as it is, an alpha emitter like
uranium or plutonium has the potential to kill future generations
if something happens to the granite.

In that case, we have that "problem" in many places, and not in just
one repository.

PamW

[Wilms]

13. How will 1700ft of granite be installed under all the other nuclear plants on the planet?

That would be impressive, if not progressive.

[madokie]

15. Thats the one I want to see also

[Statistical]

16. Why would it need to be underneath every reactor?

It makes little sense to have one repository per reactor. Finland has one repository for the entire country.

Do you think deep granite bedrock is a formation that only occurs in Finland?

[Wilms]

17. What do you see as an end-game for spent fuel?

Wasn't part of the reason Yucca was pooh-poohed was the transport issues? Are there other, and sufficient sites considered to handle this stuff? I'd be happy to see every plant shut down as soon as possible but recognize that disposal of spent fuel (and probably 'hot' hardware) remains an issue.

I imagine the waste will be of considerable concern loooong after you, and I, and TEPCO, and GE are forgotten remnants of a failed civilization.

[PamW]

22. The real end game for spent fuel.

Wasn't part of the reason Yucca was pooh-poohed was the transport issues?
============================

Have you ever seen the tests that the scientists and engineers at Sandia National
Lab do on the transport casks? They put rockets on locomotives and crash them into
the casks. The casks survive with only cosmetic damage while the locomotive is crushed.

Do you know why Sandia, which is a defense lab is the one that tests casks?
It is because they do the same type of tests for the casks that ship nuclear weapons
around the country. Nuclear weapons are regularly shipped back and forth between
military bases and the DOE complex for servicing.

What's the worst that could happen if a fuel cask were involved in an accident, in
comparison to if a nuclear weapon were involved in an accident.

The USA has been shipping nuclear weapons around the country for 2/3-rds of a century
without mishap.

The real end game for spent fuel is to build "actinide burner" reactors. Rather than
attempt to store plutonium for a long time, why not burn it as fuel in a reactor.

If you do put plutonium in a repository, and in time the radioactive fission products
have decayed to low level, then you have plutonium in the ground without the protection
afforded by the highly radioactive fission products.

You have just created a "plutonium mine"

PamW

[Wilms]

23. Are actinide burner reactors ready for deployment? Or still experimental?

Costs? Safety? An article posted somewhere here said claims of reusing spent fuel are nuke industry fantasy. Why are such claims wrong? And once the spent fuel is re-spent--if you will--what's left over?

[PamW]

27. One potential "actinide burner" is Argonne's Integral Fast Reactor (IFR)

Costs? Safety? An article posted somewhere here said claims of reusing spent fuel are nuke industry fantasy. Why are such claims wrong? And once the spent fuel is re-spent--if you will--what's left over?
===========================

One type of reactor that can be operated as an "actinide burner" is the
Integral Fast Reactor or IFR that was designed by Argonne National Laboratory.
You can read about it courtesy of PBS Frontline in an interview with Argonne's
Dr. Charles Till:

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/reaction/interviews/till.html

Argonne converted the EBR-II reactor in Idaho at Argonne-West to a prototype
IFR before it was shutdown. As detailed in Dr. Till's interview, the IFR is
an "inherently safe" or "passively safe" design. In case of an
accident, the operators can walk away and the laws of physics do the right thing
to insure proper shutdown and cooling of the reactor. ( Post shutdown, the IFR
can be cooled by natural convection - cooling pumps are not necessary. ) As described
by Dr. Till, Argonne caused the same type of accident initiation that caused Chernobyl
to do what it did. In the case of the IFR, the reactor simply shut itself down.

As for what is left after recycling - fission products. As detailed in the above
interview, you keep recycling actinides back to the reactor to be burned so that the
only thing in the waste stream are the fission products:

Q: So they go in, and then those are broken into fission products, or some of it is. Right?

A: Yes.

Q: And you repeat the process.

A: Eventually, what happens is that you wind up with only fission products, that the waste is only fission products that have, most have lives of hours, days, months, some a few tens of years. There are a few very long-lived ones that are not very radioactive.


As far as costs, the country would need only a handful of actinide burners, so you can
afford to have them be a little more expensive, and amortize that cost over the rest of
the reactor fleet.

PamW

[BeFree]

28. Too expensive?

That is the main reason such a thing is not available. Cost too much.

You build that and the cost for nukes as a whole go way high and then nuke true costs are known and whamo! nukes have another nail in the coffin.

Only nukes are really like vampires and what it is gonna take is a stake thru the heart.
Fukushima may just be that stake. Hope is doesn't take anything worse to finally kill this most massive anti-human thing we've ever done.

So what's the price tag for this, eh, PW?

[PamW]

29. You only need a handful.

That is the main reason such a thing is not available. Cost too much.
================================

If the USA were totally powered by nuclear power, then it would need
about 4 or 5 of these plants.

Right now we have 100 reactors supplying 20% of our power. So we could
supply 100% with 500 reactors. Suppose the cost of the actinide burner
were double the cost of a regular reactor < Argonne didn't go bankrupt [br />building the prototype - it doesn't cost that much more ]. But what if
it did cost twice. That would mean that we would have the cost of an
additional 4 or 5 reactors.

We need to build 400 more. Then 4 of those would cost twice as much - so
that's a cost like building 404 reactors.

Evidently you didn't understand when I said you could amortize the extra
cost over the rest of the fleet. For about an additional 1% in reactor cost,
you get a system that destroys the long-lived waste forever.

I think that is worth the extra 1% in cost.

PamW

[BeFree]

36. Amortize?

You do know there are no private investors for your big "if"?

So, you want the government to go ever deeper in debt for something which private people make a guaranteed profit from as they lie all the way to the bank?

We can easily supply 50% of the needed power with solar panels on every roof.
The choice we face is solar on every roof or more radiation raining down on every roof.

The dream of 500 nuke plants is just that. Well, actually, it is a nightmare kinda dream.

[PamW]

38. Government has a surplus - not a debt.( the common lie )

So, you want the government to go ever deeper in debt for something which private people make a guaranteed profit from as they lie all the way to the bank?

We can easily supply 50% of the needed power with solar panels on every roof.
The choice we face is solar on every roof or more radiation raining down on every roof.
==============================================

The nuclear utilities pay a tax on nuclear generated electricity that goes to the
Government for the purpose of waste disposal; until recently Yucca Mountain. The
Government has actually collected MORE than it has spent. The "Nuclear Waste Fund"
as it is called now has about $24 Billion in it. See Reuters:

http://af.reuters.com/article/energyOilNews/idAFN0928322320110309

The lawsuit seeks to suspend collection of the fee, levied at a rate of 0.1 penny for every kilowatt-hour consumers pay on electric bills.

The fee brings in $750 million a year for the Nuclear Waste Fund held at the U.S. Treasury, which now has a balance of more than $24 billion.


Perhaps the US Government should take that $24 Billion and build an Integral Fast Reactor.
The nuclear utilities and their customers have paid $24 Billion PLUS the costs expended
at Yucca Mountain ( that's why the balance is $24 B). After paying out so much money,
the nuclear utilities and their customers should at least get something for that money.

Evidently you bought the anti-nuke propaganda ( lies ) that this is costing the Government.

The USA's best scientists at the National Academy of Science and Engineering have said
that we can get at most about 15% to 20% of our electric power from renewables.

The 50% from solar is not "easy"; it's a pipe dream.

First understand that we need power 24/7. One of the biggest components of your electric
bill is to run your refrigerator. Our whole food supply chain relies on refrigeration, and
that has been one of the biggest boons to public health. However, you don't turn your fridge
off at night do you? Of course not, and no one else does either.

How is solar power going to provide electricity for all that refrigeration at night? Please
don't give me the answer from the people that say that we just need to network all the solar
power plants together for "redundancy". They don't understand redundancy only works to mitigate
random failures. Solar power has a systematic or common failure mode - they don't work at night
for the whole nation.

Perhaps you want us to "store" our solar power. Look what it takes to replace just one big
coal or nuclear power plant with a solar facility. A solar facility has a maximum capacity
factor of about 25%. That is solar power gives you zilch for the 50% of the day that is night,
and very little in the early morning and late afternoon. The bulk of the energy from solar is
harvested in a 6 hour period centered around the local noon. Since the maximum capacity factor
of the solar plant is 25%, it needs to store 75% of its daily energy harvest.

A typical size for a coal or nuclear power plant is 1 Gw(e), that is 1 Gigawatt. Therefore,
in a single day, the amount of electrical energy produced is 1 Gigawatt-day. (The product of
a power and a time is a unit of energy) As such, a Gigawatt-day can be converted to any other
unit of energy just as any length in inches can be converted to feet or yards.

If you do the conversion, 1 Gigawatt-day is about 20.6 kilotons or about the energy of the
atomic bomb dropped on Nagasaki. Leaving aside where a solar power plant is going to get
an atomic bomb's worth of energy, the solar plant needs to store 75% of its daily harvest,
which to supplant a 1 Gw(e) plant would be 15 kilotons, or the energy of the atomic bomb
dropped on Hiroshima.

Tell me how one safely stores a Hiroshima bomb's worth of energy, when not all locales are
suitable for pumped hydro.

Before one says it is "easy", one should at least run the numbers.

PamW

[BeFree]

39. Yeah

Solar on every roof will supply 50% of our energy needs. Did you miss that?

As for that 24B we have stashed. I say we give it to Japan. The cost for cleaning up Fukushima so that we here are never hurt, is gonna cost trillions. They need it.

Of course, then we are left holding the bag when one of ours goes boom, which it will and the trillion$ needed to clean it up will come from.....

Damn, we're screwed, eh?

[PamW]

41. Simple question - what happens at night?

Solar on every roof will supply 50% of our energy needs. Did you miss that?
=====================

The National Academy of Science says that is wrong! Your credentials in science are....?

But it is easy to see that solar only works for about 6 hours or so a day.

How do you get 50% of your energy needs from 6 hours unless you have storage.

Additionally, solar doesn't work on cloudy days. If 50% of our power capacity
went down on cloudy days, we'd have to shutter the factories and businesses...
for the day.

How are you going to run an energy intensive economy like ours on such an undependable
power supply such as solar.

Former Greenpeace founder Patrick Moore says he spent years attempting to get the
country to go the renewable route with solar power. To do so would take a massive
change in our economy, and we'd have to give up a lot of high paying industry, and
a lot of changes in lifestyle. Moore was in favor of that.

He now is a staunch supporter of nuclear because he found people just didn't want to
live the way they would have to if we were to rely on solar.

You "could" do it - but I and not many of my fellow citizens want to live like that.

PamW

[BeFree]

43. Make the meter run backwards

Really. It's simple.

What you are suggesting is 400 nukes at 10 billion each = $4,000,000,000,000

That's a lot of solar panels.

What I am most concerned with is sustainability.
Not how much you or your fellow citizens want to live wastefully.

[PamW]

45. how much do you think....

What you are suggesting is 400 nukes at 10 billion each = $4,000,000,000,000

That's a lot of solar panels.

What I am most concerned with is sustainability.
Not how much you or your fellow citizens want to live wastefully.
================================

OK - answer this one. Suppose you do buy that
$4 Trillion dollars worth of solar panels.
How much energy will all those panels provide at night?

Answer: ZERO

That's one thing the solar proponents never seem to learn.
No matter how much you spend on solar panels, or how much research we do,
or how many solar panels one can afford to buy - they don't work at night!!

The output of a solar panel at night is ZERO

ANY number of solar panels multiplied by ZERO kilowatts per panel
at night, is going to give you ZERO output.

It's been a long time for me since first grade; do they still teach that zero times
any finite number is always ZERO?

PamW

[kristopher]

56. All of your nuclear propaganda points are identified and placed in context by Lovins and others

in these two documents.

http://www.rmi.org/rmi/Library/E08-01_NuclearIllusion

http://www.rmi.org/rmi/Library/E09-01_NuclearPowerClimateFixOrFolly

Or here: www.ieer.org/reports/NC-Wind-Solar.pdf.

The important conclusion is that intermittent solar and wind energy, especially when generated at dispersed sites and coupled with storage and demand-shifting capacities of a system like North Carolina’s, can generate very large portions of total electricity output with rather minimal auxiliary backup.


Or here:

http://news.stanford.edu/news/2009/october19/jacobson-energy-study-102009.html
"the technologies being promoted by the dominant energy industries are not renewable and even the cleanest of them emit significantly more carbon and air pollution than wind, water and sun resources"

[kristopher]

57. NAS said no such thing - no reputable scientist would misrepresent their work like that

Provide a quote to support that claim. i know the paper you are referring to and you are falsifying what it states.

[Wilms]

58. Just like below where PamW complains that the nuke industries hands were tied by Carter.

I pointed out that Raygun untied them in the early eighties, and the nuke industry failed to respond. Now PamW fails to respond. Perhaps she's tied up in a nuclear industry PR crisis management meeting, or something.

[PamW]

42. You are certainly free with money that doesn't belong to you...

As for that 24B we have stashed. I say we give it to Japan.
===========================

That money was collected for a stated purpose - to deal with nuclear waste
generated in the USA.

Now you want to "repurpose" that money for the Japanese?

Under what principal of honesty and morals allows you to make a promise
in order to collect money, and then when it fits your whims, you abrogate
the promise and give the money to someone else.

I would call that theft.

PamW

[BeFree]

44. Yeah well

The cleanup of Fukushima will help all of us.

I notice that you mention a lawsuit to end collecting the fee. Hmmmm.
The industry wants to get out of paying the fee they collect from me that is meant to clean up their waste?

I understand your frustration. The industry is a bunch of lying, cheating, "screw the future" bunch of big business people who couldn't give a shit about sustainability.

[PamW]

46. the industry is doing the cleanup itself.

I notice that you mention a lawsuit to end collecting the fee. Hmmmm.
The industry wants to get out of paying the fee they collect from me that is meant to clean up their waste?
=======================================

There's a contract between the Government and the nuclear utilities. The utilities
paid into the Nuclear Waste Fund, and the Government disposed of the waste. It was
modeled on the air traffic control system. We didn't trust the industry to do a good
job with a very important task - air traffic control or nuclear waste disposal. So we
said the Government would do it and charge the industry for the service. Airlines have
to pay "landing fees" and the nuclear industry paid a tax to the Nuclear Waste Fund.

The money the nuclear utilities paid had been going into bringing the Yucca Mountain
repository online. Now that has been canceled with nothing to replace it. So the
industry is paying this fee to the Government for doing nothing.

Since the Government was supposed to have a storage scheme online by 1998, and missed
that mark, the industry has had to do their own waste disposal using dry casks.

The industry is doing the job the Government is supposed to be doing in disposing of wastes.
The industry is paying the Government a fee to do a task that the Government is no longer doing.

The industry is paying double - they have to pay to store waste in dry casks, and they have
to pay the Government to do nothing for their fee.

PamW

[PamW]

47. Who said I was frustrated????

I understand your frustration. The industry is a bunch of lying, cheating, "screw the future" bunch of big business people who couldn't give a shit about sustainability.
============================

Where did you get the idea that I'm frustrated.

I've got no investment or financial stake in the nuclear industry.

I'm calling it as I see it; in the eyes of a scientist.

I'm also laughing at all the so-called environmentalists who think that we can run a
modern industrial economy with "sustainable" energy by having everyone join hands in a
circle and sing "Kumbaya". Can you feel the power?

I don't get frustrated over other people's folly.

PamW

[BeFree]

52. Scientist?

What kind of science? All I see from you is one narrow side of this issue.

Do you recognize that nukes have serious and heretofore insurmountable problems?

And what kind of science discipline is this that has you making up stuff on the fly, just to win (supposedly) an internet debate?

Frankly, you make me laugh. Like the last time we had intercourse.

[kristopher]

59. What does it say about your ethics when you falsify the evidence?

You wrote, "The USA's best scientists at the National Academy of Science and Engineering have said that we can get at most about 15% to 20% of our electric power from renewables."

You repeat that false assertion with no shame. Incredibly excellent example of the ethics of those who support nuclear power.

The NAS study places no upper limit on renewable energy's contribution it says only that we need to get to it, a statement that applies with even more force when nuclear is being examined. They conditions they set for greater than 50% penetration are in practice the evolutionary outcome of building more renewables, changing our transportation fleet to battery electric, and upgrading to a smart grid - all of which are already well underway.

This report from the National Academy of Sciences and the National Academy of Engineering explores the potential for and barriers to developing wind, solar, geothermal, and biopower technologies for electric power generation. It concludes that with an accelerated deployment effort, non-hydropower renewable sources could provide 10 percent or more of the nation’s electricity by 2020 and 20 percent or more by 2035. However, for these sources to supply more than 50 percent of America’s electricity, new scientific advances and dramatic changes in how we generate, transmit, and use electricity are needed.
-Electricity from Renewable Resources: Status, Prospects, and Impediments - NAS

People who are so apt to ignore facts creep me out.

[Kolesar]

51. No country has an operational "actinide burner"

Considering that your industry has been creating the waste product for fifty years, I think it is damn irresponsible of them to push this problem off on another generation.

Other nuclear-tasked countries have this same problem. It is certainly not MY fault that "actinide burners" don't exist.

[kristopher]

55. MIT rejected IFR technology - it can't compete with renewables

The only technology with a chance of competing is once through uranium and that has gone from a projected $1500/kw installed to $8000/kw in less than 8 years.

Now you suggest they use an even more expensive approach with worse proliferation problems.

Great idea.

[kristopher]

54. A minor contribution from nuclear woud require a new Yucca Mtn every 2 years.

From a presentation by John Holdren.

The nuclear option: size of the challenges

• If world electricity demand grows 2% /year until 2050 and nuclear share of electricity supply is to rise from 1/6 to 1/3...
–nuclear capacity would have to grow from 350 GWe in 2000 to 1700 GWe in 2050;
– this means 1,700 reactors of 1,000 MWe each.

• If these were light-water reactors on the once-through fuel cycle...
---–enrichment of their fuel will require ~250 million Separative Work Units (SWU);
---–diversion of 0.1% of this enrichment to production of HEU from natural uranium would make ~20 gun-type or ~80 implosion-type bombs.

• If half the reactors were recycling their plutonium...
---–the associated flow of separated, directly weapon - usable plutonium would be 170,000 kg per year;
---–diversion of 0.1% of this quantity would make ~30 implosion-type bombs.

• Spent-fuel production in the once-through case would be...
---–34,000 tonnes/yr, a Yucca Mountain every two years.

Expanding nuclear enough to take a modest bite out of the climate problem is conceivable, *but* doing so will depend on greatly increased seriousness in addressing the waste-management & proliferation challenges.


Mitigation of Human-Caused Climate Change
John P. Holdren

Repeating that conclusion: Expanding nuclear enough to take a modest bite out of the climate problem is conceivable, *but* doing so will depend on greatly increased seriousness in addressing the waste-management & proliferation challenges.

What does he say about renewables?

The renewable option: Is it real?

SUNLIGHT: 100,000 TW reaches Earth’s surface (100,000 TWy/year = 3.15 million EJ/yr), 30% on land.
Thus 1% of the land area receives 300 TWy/yr, so converting this to usable forms at 10% efficiency would yield 30 TWy/yr, about twice civilization’s rate of energy use in 2004.

WIND: Solar energy flowing into the wind is ~2,000 TW.
Wind power estimated to be harvestable from windy sites covering 2% of Earth’s land surface is about twice world electricity generation in 2004.

BIOMASS: Solar energy is stored by photosynthesis on land at a rate of about 60 TW.
Energy crops at twice the average terrestrial photosynthetic yield would give 12 TW from 10% of land area (equal to what’s now used for agriculture).
Converted to liquid biofuels at 50% efficiency, this would be 6 TWy/yr, more than world oil use in 2004.

Renewable energy potential is immense. Questions are what it will cost & how much society wants to pay for environmental & security advantages.

Mitigation of Human-Caused Climate Change
John P. Holdren

John P. Holdren is advisor to President Barack Obama for Science and Technology,
Director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, and
Co-Chair of the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology...

Holdren was previously the Teresa and John Heinz Professor of Environmental Policy at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University,
director of the Science, Technology, and Public Policy Program at the School's Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, and
Director of the Woods Hole Research Center.<2>

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

[PamW]

18. The Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1987

Congress selected Yucca Mountain as its first choice for a waste site in 1987, pending engineering studies. Many lawmakers said the Obama administration lacked the authority to stop the project and should revive it so that waste can be removed from their states.
------------------------------

The Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1987 is the law that created Yucca Mountain. It was
created by an Act of Congress, i.e a law, and it takes another Act of Congress, i.e.
a repeal, to undo that. I think the Courts are going to rule that the Obama Administration
lacks the authority to unilaterally cancel Yucca Mountain without another Act of Congress.

We only need one nuclear waste site. The volume of waste from 50+ years of operating
nuclear reactors will fit in the volume of a high school gym.

As far as it being unfair to Nevada, there are States that have unique facilities that
the country only needs one.

There's no way that spent fuel can explode like a nuclear weapon, but there are States
that host nuclear weapons. North Dakota is home to many of the USA's nuclear weapons,
and Texas has the single facility, Pantex, that refurbishes them.

Should we say that each State has to have 1/50-th of the USA's nuclear weapons?

I don't think many here would want to have nuclear weapons actually in their State and
so close to where you live. North Dakota and Texas provide a service that most here
certainly wouldn't want to host.

The least Nevada can do is to do their part.

PamW

[Wilms]

24. Wait. You said we could reuse the spent fuel?

And a HS gym sized building will house all the spent fuel we have in the nation?

IF this image represents 50 years worth of spent fuel of one plant, I'm having a hard time reconciling it with your post. Please explain.

[Confusious]

25. Looks like shipping containers to me

Packaging always takes up more space then the actual item. Damn peanuts.

[PamW]

26. two issues - one scientific, and one legal

Wait. You said we could reuse the spent fuel?
===============================================

Two issues - one scientific and one legal.

Scientifically, we can reuse the spent fuel. Read the following from
a nuclear physicist at Argonne courtesy of PBS Frontline:

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/reaction/interviews/till.html

Q: So they go in, and then those are broken into fission products, or some of it is. Right?

A: Yes.

Q: And you repeat the process.

A: Eventually, what happens is that you wind up with only fission products, that the waste is only fission products that have, most have lives of hours, days, months, some a few tens of years. There are a few very long-lived ones that are not very radioactive.


Recycling the spent fuel solves the nuclear waste "problem". The anti-nukes
couldn't have that! So in 1978, the anti-nukes got Congress to pass the
"Nuclear Non-Proliferation Act of 1978".

Contrary to its name, it didn't outlaw nuclear proliferation in other countries as that
is beyond the power of Congress. It also didn't forbid the USA from making nuclear weapons.
What it did do was to outlaw the recycling of spent nuclear fuel.

As for those containers; if you were to look down on the top of them, you would find that
there is actually very little volume in those containers that contains the waste. Most of
the volume of each container is devoted to shielding and to cooling systems.

My comment about the volume of waste applies to the waste itself - and not to the shielding,
cooling, .....

PamW

[Wilms]

30. "Nuclear Non-Proliferation Act of 1978"

I'm not seeing what you said the "Nuclear Non-Proliferation Act of 1978" was about.

Sure, Congress can't control what other countries do, but it can control exports. And that's what the law seems intent on doing.

Nuclear Non-Proliferation Act of 1978

This Act seeks to limit the spread of nuclear weapons by, among other things, establishing criteria governing U.S. nuclear exports licensed by the NRC and taking steps to strengthen the international safeguards system.

http://www.nrc.gov/about-nrc/governing-laws.html#nnpa-1978

Can you point me to the part of the law that outlaws recycling?

-on edit-

I think it was pretty easy to misunderstand your comment that "The volume of waste from 50+ years of operating nuclear reactors will fit in the volume of a high school gym". What is the size requirement of a facility that stores the waste WITH all the necessary 'packaging', if you will?

[PamW]

31. It depends...

I think it was pretty easy to misunderstand your comment that "The volume of waste from 50+ years of operating nuclear reactors will fit in the volume of a high school gym". What is the size requirement of a facility that stores the waste WITH all the necessary 'packaging', if you will?
============================

It depends on how much of the material you want to lump together. Suppose you need
2 feet thickness of shielding. You could pack it all together in the gym, and put
2 feet of shielding around it.

Or you can divide it up in small chunks and put 2 feet of shielding around each of the
chunks. This latter way will mean that you have a lot more shielding volume than if
you did it the former way.

When utilities put waste into dry cask storage, they are using this latter method in
which the waste is in smaller "chunks", with each chunk having its own thickness of
shielding.

PamW

[Wilms]

33. And what about your comments on the "Nuclear Non-Proliferation Act of 1978"?

Have I misunderstand your comment there?

I already posted that I'm having a hard time understanding the assertion that it outlaws recycling spent fuel for the purpose of rendering it less dangerous.

[PamW]

40. If memory serves...

I already posted that I'm having a hard time understanding the assertion that it outlaws recycling spent fuel for the purpose of rendering it less dangerous.
===================

If memory serves, it is the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Act of 1978 that outlaws reprocessing.
At present, I don't remember the actual section. I also stipulate that it is possible that
the ban is contained in another Act.

However, the Government runs the nuclear waste disposal enterprise, not the nuclear industry.
The Government taxes the nuclear industry and performs the vital service, just as the
Government charges "landing fees" to airlines, and runs the air traffic control system with
the proceeds.

The waste problem has legally been taken out of the hands of the industry and is totally in
the control of the Government, with the industry paying the tab.

In spite of Presidents like Reagan, and two Bushes, who supported reprocessing / recycling,
it is not being done. It's would take more than just an Executive Order of the President.
It would take an Act of Congress to counter all the Legislation including a few "Nuclear Waste
Policy Act of 19nn"

As it presently stands, the nuclear industry has paid tens of billions and has nothing to
show for it; no reprocessing and no repository. The US Government has a $24 Billion credit
on the books, and is collecting more every year for doing nothing.

PamW

[Confusious]

48. Article

http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/11054/1127166-109.stm

Though the technology for recycling was developed in the United States, President Jimmy Carter banned it in the mid-1970s on grounds that it could lead to nuclear weapons proliferation.

[Wilms]

49. Fail.

"In early 1982, President Reagan rescinded the Carter policy, allowed programmatic (as opposed to case-by-case) approvals for reprocessing of U.S. origin fuel by the Euratom nations and Japan, and even said that reprocessing could again be considered in the U. S."

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/reaction/readings/rossin1.html

Next.

[PamW]

32. The first of several laws...

Can you point me to the part of the law that outlaws recycling?
======================

Sec 105 says that there should be a reevaluation of the nuclear fuel
cycle with emphasis on alternatives to separating plutonium.

There were several laws that addressed this issue, and perhaps I don't
have the one that contains the explicit ban.

However, in the late '70s the USA was all set to reprocess and recycle
apent fuel. The forerunner of DOE, the ERDA, had filed the GESMO - the
Generic Environmetal Statement on Mixed Oxide. That was the required
environmental impact statement for the use of Mixed Oxide or MOX fuel.

That all came to a crashing halt when Congress outlawed reprocessing and
recycling, although I may have cited the wrong law with regard to the
explicit ban.

I absolutely hate attempting to parse all the legalese. The prohibition
may still be buried in there somewhere, it's just I can't stand to dig for
it. ( They always "hide" the true agenda in some obscure clause ).

Congress wrote other laws, like the Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1984(?) and
the Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1987. The latter, 1987 Act, is the one that
says the stated policy of the USA would be a "once through" nuclear fuel cycle
with the waste then going to the Yucca Mountain repository. Prior to this Act,
DOE had been considering multiple sites, and the 1987 Act is the one that says
Yucca would be the one and only repository.

PamW

[Wilms]

34. Perhaps you can cite the not "wrong law" to back up your claim. n/t

[Wilms]

35. Or did you cite a non-existant law, perhaps because of YOUR "true agenda"?

You commented that you ...absolutely hate attempting to parse all the legalese. The prohibition
may still be buried in there somewhere, it's just I can't stand to dig for
it. ( They always "hide" the true agenda in some obscure clause ).

Few enjoy "attempting to parse all the legalese". But you made a serious claim regarding alleged restrictions on re-processing spent fuels. You made another serious claim along with it which included a slap in the face to anti-nuclear activists. If it was "buried in there somewhere" as you claim, it's still there unless another law removed it. These things don't grow legs and walk off.

You wrote: "Recycling the spent fuel solves the nuclear waste "problem". The anti-nukes
couldn't have that! So in 1978, the anti-nukes got Congress to pass the
"Nuclear Non-Proliferation Act of 1978".

What you wrote suggests that at least one of the reasons anti-nuclear activists pushed for a non-proliferation treaty was to choke the nuclear energy industry's sewer pipe.

You are in SERIOUS need of backing your statement up.

Show me, and everyone else here, the law.

[PamW]

37. Isn't that obvious???

What you wrote suggests that at least one of the reasons anti-nuclear activists pushed for a non-proliferation treaty was to choke the nuclear energy industry's sewer pipe.
==================

Isn't it obvious, even from their own declarations, that the anti-nukes have wanted
to "constipate" the nuclear fuel cycle.

They opposed reprocessing and recycling. They want a once-through fuel cycle.

Then they oppose the Yucca Mountain repository, and say that the reactor operators
should keep the waste "on site".

If someone canceled your garbage service, and turned off the connection from your
house to the sanitary sewer, and told you to deal with all the waste yourself,
what would you think?

I checked it once, and if memory serves, then the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Act
of 1978 is the proper cite. However, I don't remember the precise section, and
really don't care to wade through all that nonsense looking for it.

The nuclear industry was all set to reprocess and recycle back in the late '70s with
reprocessing plants; one by Nuclear Fuel Services, Inc in New York state, and another
reprocessing plant in Barnwell, SC. Those projects were abandoned after Congressional
action.

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/reaction/readings/rossin1.html

Carter's statement was totally different in tone. It said that reprocessing should not proceed, not only in the U. S. but worldwide, because it was not essential for foreseeable economic or uranium resource purposes. Therefore, his advisors reasoned, since it added to proliferation risks, "it just didn't make any sense to allow reprocessing to proceed." The U. S. position was stated as firm and final, and it expressly included a plan to explain it to the other nuclear nations in order to convince them to adopt it as well.


Although one might think from the above that reprocessing / recycling aided proliferation,
even though the USA gave up on reprocessing, and hence begat a nuclear waste "problem", the
French, the British, and the Japanese have been reprocessing / recycling spent fuel. Contrary
to Carter's hopes, they didn't follow the USA like a bunch of lemmings.

In the 3+ decades since, has there been any new proliferation attributable to reprocessing and
recycling by France, the UK, and Japan? NO. None. Zilch. Nada...

The nations that proliferated did so by employing their scientists and engineers to do what
the first "proliferator", the USA did. There's this naivety that all nuclear knowledge is
sourced from some nation that already has the knowledge.

Mother Nature will tell you the secrets to proliferation. A nation just needs people who are
smart enough to ask the right questions. They just need scientists, and no nation has a lock
on the cadre of scientists. So attempting to stop proliferation in that manner is a "fools errand".

PamW

[Wilms]

50. Try again, Pam.

"In early 1982, President Reagan rescinded the Carter policy, allowed programmatic (as opposed to case-by-case) approvals for reprocessing of U.S. origin fuel by the Euratom nations and Japan, and even said that reprocessing could again be considered in the U. S."

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/reaction/readings/rossin1.html

:eyes:

[Wilms]

53. Kicking for a response. n/t