Nuclear Waste

[liberal hypnotist]

For the past few years, the problem of containing nuclear waste has dropped from public discussion. We can build them but we can't dispose of them. Some even suggested putting nuclear waste on the moon. I hope the dems can provide some balance for our "warrior prince" George and his evil knight Dick.

[RC]

1. Nuclear waste can be recycled.

Why are we not doing it? Much less to material to store.

[MadHound]

2. Nuclear recycling only works up to a point,

And at the end of this very expensive process(especially expensive if you use the recycling method that doesn't produce weapons grade plutonium), you are always going to still be left with a certain amount of radioactive waste. And then what do you do about the waste that you can't recycle, hot equipment, hot metal, etc. etc. Lots of nuclear waste isn't fuel rods, it is the byproducts of a functioning reactor. Hard to recycle paper impregnated with radioactive dust.

Radioactive waste is one of the two huge reasons that nuclear power is unworkable. While you can reduce it, there is still no safe way of disposing of it. Until we find a way to do so, and also to eliminate that other big nuclear problem, human error, we should forego all nuclear power. All we're doing is courting a catastrophe, in either the short or long term if we continue.

[spoony]

3. Human error is only important

in the design, not so much the operation. With modern designs there are redundant systems that prevent catastrophe. The worst these designs can produce is Three Mile Island, which killed no one. Just a mess. This anti-nuclear nonsense in this country has led to people being merrily poisoned by coal plant emissions. Thousands upon thousands have died because of NIMBY anti-nuke fears, which is incidentally also a large part of why we don't have a fuel refurbishing infrastructure in place.

Why so many things are done out of fear here is disasterous and confusing. Terrorism, nukes, whatever.

[MadHound]

4. I worked in the nuclear industry for years, and frankly human error come into play

All the damn time, in ways large and small. Redundant systems count for little when a tagged line is switched on. Redundant systems count for little when the human operator, and computer, both make the same mistaken reading(all due to a valve being manually opened and left open). Redundant systems do not make up for decades old infrastructure that fails under the massive demands imposed by reactor conditions.

And the reason that we don't have a nuclear recycling program is two fold, as I said earlier. First because up to now, the byproduct of recycling nuclear fuel is weapons grade plutonium. Yet if you wish to recycle in such a way as to eliminate this drawback, it is going to cost you dearly, current estimates are running at 20-40 billion dollars to implement such a program.

And yet even if you recycle all of the nuclear fuel, there is still going to be much material that you can't recycle. Contaminated paper waste, activated metals of various half lives, filters, junk, the detrius of an active nuclear plant. None of this can be recycled, and thus will have to be disposed of. Aluminum cans, a common tool used in a nuclear reactor, have a half live of 100,000 plus years. The same is true of other metals that are activated in the process of running a reactor.

Then there is the fact that a reactor is a huge piece of waste in and of itself when it's life cycle is at an end. You really can't recycle or dispose of a reactor, the containment vessel is much to hot to be broken up, or destroyed. Therefore a reactor has to be decommissioned, stripped of all of it's non-radioactive parts, and the hot material that is left has to be babysitted for the next tens of thousands of years. And remember, the life cycle of a nuclear plant is fifty years, max. Many don't last beyond thirty five.

I agree with your stance on coal plants, they are way to polluting. But it isn't an either-or proposition. There is a third way out, wind and solar. According to a 1991 DOE survey, there is enough harvestable wind energy in Kansas, North Dakota and Texas to supply all of our electrical needs, including the growth factor, through the year 2030. I'm not proposing that we make those three states over into wind farms, but this just shows that the US has a huge wind energy potential that we should be putting to good use rather than building either nuclear or coal. Clean, renewable and increasingly cheaper. A much better alternative than either nuclear or coal.