Nuclear cleanup to cost (taxpayers $10) billions (defunct spent fuel reprocessing plant, NY)

[jpak]

http://www.timesunion.com/AspStories/story.asp?storyID=746108&category=REGION

While it will cost taxpayers billions to clean out dangerous radioactive waste from a defunct nuclear fuel reprocessing plant, storing it there would cost billions more over the centuries — and risk contamination of Lake Erie.

That was the conclusion of a state-funded report on the 3,300-acre West Valley nuclear site, closed since the early 1970s and once the nation's only commercial center for reprocessing spent nuclear fuel.

Released Tuesday, the report comes during a growing national debate about stepping up nuclear power as a way to cut the greenhouse gases that cause global warming. Critics continue to question the fate of spent fuel, which is dangerous for thousands of years.

The report by Cambridge-based Synapse Energy Economics claimed it will cost nearly $10 billion to clean radioactive waste from West Valley over the next 60 years and ship it to a federal dump that does not exist yet.

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[Greyskye]

1. Oh boy.

:popcorn:

[Javaman]

3. hey, share some will you?

:popcorn:

I love these posts in brings out the "best" in people. lol

I think I have some dr. pepper around here some where...

[kristopher]

2. But we should build 4-5000 more plants.

We can just recover the fuel from Lake Erie and we are set for eternity (so to speak).

*sarcasm*

[TheWraith]

4. If you had a grip on what you were talking about, your criticism would be more credible. nt

[jpak]

5. Commercial reprocessing = commercial failure = millstone around taxpayer's neck

The operators of this plant walked away scot-free...

[kristopher]

6. How many reactors would be required to address just 20% of global climate change?

"Nuclear power generates approximately 20 percent of all U.S. electricity. And because it is a low-carbon source of around-the-clock power, it has received renewed interest as concern grows over the effect of greenhouse gas emissions on our climate.

Yet nuclear power’s own myriad limitations will constrain its growth, especially in the near term. These include:

* Prohibitively high, and escalating, capital costs ƒ
* Production bottlenecks in key components needed to build plants ƒ
* Very long construction times ƒ
* Concerns about uranium supplies and importation issues ƒ
* Unresolved problems with the availability and security of waste storage ƒ
* Large-scale water use amid shortages ƒ
* High electricity prices from new plants ƒ

Nuclear power is therefore unlikely to play a dominant—greater than 10 percent—role in the national or global effort to prevent the global temperatures from rising by more than 2°C above preindustrial levels.

The carbon-free power technologies that the nation and the world should focus on deploying right now at large scale are efficiency, wind power, geothermal power, and solar power. They are the lower-cost carbon-free strategies with minimal societal effects and the fewest production bottlenecks. They could easily meet all of U.S. demand for the next quarter -century, while substituting for some existing fossil fuel plants. In the medium-term (post-2020), other technologies, such as coal with carbon capture and storage or advanced geothermal, could be significant players, but only with a far greater development effort over the next decade.

Progressives must also focus on the issue of nuclear subsidies, or nuclear pork. Conservative politicians such as Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) and other nuclear power advocates continue to insist that new climate legislation must include yet more large subsidies for nuclear power. Since nuclear power is a mature electricity generation technology with a large market share and is the beneficiary of some $100 billion in direct and indirect subsidies since 1948, it neither requires nor deserves significant subsidies in any future climate law.

Read the full report (pdf)"

The answer to the header question is found in the downloadable report at the link.

http://www.americanprogressaction.org/issues/2008/nuclear_power_report.html

[TheWraith]

15. About 200 plants would deal with 20% of global CO2 emissions. nt

[kristopher]

16. If you had a grip on what you were talking about, your remarks would be more credible

"Reducing emissions to the necessary levels will require some 14 (modified) “stabiliza-
tion wedges,” the term coined by Princeton’s Robert Socolow and Stephen Pacala for an
“activity that reduces emissions to the atmosphere that starts at zero today and increases
linearly until it accounts for 1 GtC/year of reduced carbon
emissions in 50 years.” Since the time for action is so short, the wedges probably need to
be modified so that they are squeezed into about four decades.22

The most comprehensive report ever done on what one wedge of nuclear power
would require is the 2007 Keystone Center Report, “Nuclear Power Joint Fact-Find-
ing,” which was supported by the utility and nuclear industries.23 The report notes that
achieving a wedge of nuclear power by mid-century would require building approxi-
mately 1,000 1-GW nuclear plants, which requires adding globally:
An average of 14 new plants each year for the next 50 years, as well as approximately
7.4 plants a year to replace those that will be retired.
11-to-22 additional large enrichment plants to supplement the 17 existing plants.
18 additional fuel fabrication plants to supplement the 24 existing plants.
10 nuclear waste repositories the size of the statutory capacity of Yucca Mountain,
each of which would store approximately 700,000 tons of spent fuel."

THE SELF-LIMITING FUTURE OF NUCLEAR POWER (page 8)
Joe Romm, Center for American Progress Action Fund
June 2008

[TheWraith]

20. It seems that I can do basic math, and the Center for American Progress can't.

The US accounts for 22% of global CO2 emissions, most of that from two sources: our oil burning cars and our coal burning power plants. To generate enough energy to replace all of our coal-burning plants, we'd need about 150 new nuclear reactors, each in a fairly standard 2 GW configuration. An additional 50 beyond that would give us 2400 gigawatt-hours per day of generating capacity for charging electric vehicles. At a rate of 200 watt-hours per mile--the going rate for full size, high speed electric cars--that would be 1.5 times the current daily driving of everyone in the United States.

So yeah, their math is bad--probably because their piece is written in order to promote a conclusion, rather than to obtain facts.

[kristopher]

21. Your definition of the goal is far to slipshod to be accepted.

Your assumption that replacing coal and oil in the US is the same as replacing 20% of global carbon emissions is far too slipshod. And you'd have to bring up stronger supporting evidence to make your case. I could go on and on because you haven't given enough information to enable verification of your claims. Are you claiming the average reactor produces 2GWe? If so it is false. The typical plants now under construction are all around 1GW capacity? Are you claiming 150 reactors in 75 plants? Your production figure of 2400GWh/day indicates you are saying again 2GW capacity. So right off the bat your numbers are off by 100%. You also don't reactors reactors that will be decommissioned as new building is going on. How many will we be required to replace?


What specifically are you displacing regarding EVs? What about heavy transport? What about concrete and all the other sources of greenhouse emissions in the US? What percentage of global carbon emission reductions are you claiming these 400 reactors are actually going to produce? Do you expect eliminating coal and personal transport will eliminate 95% of US carbon emissions?

Finally - the numbers Romm used are from The Keystone report:
"The NJFF participants agree that to build enough nuclear capacity to achieve the carbon reductions of a Pacala/Socolow wedge (1 GtC/year or 700 net GWe nuclear power; 1,070 total GWe) would require the industry to return immediately to the most rapid period of growth experienced in the past (1981-90) and sustain this rate of growth for 50 years." (pg 11)

Added on edit:
The Keystone Center would like to thank the following organizations for their generous financial support of this project:
American Electric Power
Constellation Energy
Duke Energy
Entergy
Exelon
Florida Power & Light
General Electric
National Commission on Energy Policy
Nuclear Energy Institute
Pew Charitable Trusts
Southern Company



That is as unambiguous as it gets. If anyone is guilty of pulling numbers out of their ass to support a false predetermined objective, it is you. Either that or you simply aren't very bright.

[bananas]

25. A few comments.

First, you're using the terms "reactor" and "plant" interchangeably.
"Plant" refers to the physical property and structures on it,
a nuclear power plant will have one or more reactors on it.
So your 200 new plants are really 400 new 1GW reactors,
each plant having 2 1GW reactors on it.
We currently have about 100 reactors generating 100GW,
so the total number of reactors you're talking about is 500 1GW reactors in the US.

Second, you're using average energy use and ignoring peak load.
You'd have to either build a lot more reactors to handle peak load,
or you'd have to add energy storage systems.
So you're not just talking about 400 new 1GW reactors,
you're talking about new reactors plus storage plus electric cars.

Third, you haven't completely accounted for all US CO2 emissions.
You've ignored the heating, industrial, and agriculture sectors.
Instead of 20% of global emissions, for the sake of argument let's say you've stopped somewhere in the range of 10% to 20% of global emissions.

Fourth, it's going to take time to build these reactors plus storage plus electric cars.
That's why Center for American Progress and every other serious analysis looks at projections of future energy use, how to avoid emissions if we continue "business as usual".
Energy use is projected to double by 2050.
So your 500 new reactors might stop only 5% to 10% of global emissions in 2050.
But the 100 old reactors won't last that long, you'd be down to 400 reactors, only 4% to 8% of global emissions.

And again, you're not just talking about reactors, you're talking about reactors plus storage plus electric cars.

[madokie]

7. Don't forget the ocean is full of the stuff

And its really feasible to get it too :rofl:

[Sirveri]

8. Or they could get rid of the ban on reprocessing and start up.

Reprocess all that spent fuel and make Pu239 MOX fuel. Take the really nasty Cesium-135 and Strontium-90 and use it in decay heat generators which could be developed in about a year if we actually pushed it. France does it, and as a result they only have to store 4% of the waste generated, as the rest is usable by the medical industry and for reuse as fuel.

I like Carter, but his stupid presidential directive banning reprocessing is naive and needs to go away.

[jpak]

9. Sorry - France's spent fuel problems are the same as ours - no solution yet.

They have huge inventories of fission products (137Cs and 90Sr - among others) and unusable contaminated uranium that have to be disposed of - somewhere.

Furthermore, using 137Cs and 90Sr for "decay heaters" is just plain stupid - potential dirty bombs just waiting to "happen".

[Sirveri]

11. So instead of reducing the waste we should store ALL of it?

Reprocessing is good enviromentally freindly sanity. If we recycle the waste we end up with less waste overall to store, suddenly Yucca becomes a viable storage facility again, and we put to rest a large ammount of uranium depletion issues we have.

As for decay heater reactors being dirty bombs, the same arguements are made about the current US operating fleet of nuke reactors. I won't buy into fear based reasoning. I'd much rather use that 5MeV gamma to generate electricity or for some other usefull purpose than to just toss it into the trash. It's all about design. Design design design. The Chernobyl RBMK design was stupid and run by people who didn't know what they were doing. Just design a decay heater that has sufficient safety features and you're fine.

[jpak]

12. Sorry - MOX fuel still contains lots of unfisssioned 239Pu that still needs disposal

The volume of high level waste produced from reprocessing is enormous and expensive to dispose.

Ex. Hanford Reservation and Savannah River Site.

Hence US taxpayers will shell out $10 billion to deal with the waste generated from the production of 1926 kg of plutonium at NFS that had a value of $20 million.

The best way to deal with nuclear waste is to not produce it in the first place.

[Sirveri]

13. You miss the point of reprocessing.

It doesn't produce any high level waste, it instead reduces the ammount of high level waste you have by filtering out the useable materials from the waste leading to lower HLW production levels while yielding increased fuel levels. So you operate a reprocessing facility, then any products that can't be reused is considered HLW (which is about 4% of the material), and you store that. Can we store 4% of all the waste produced over the last 50 years at Yucca (assuming it ever gets finished), yes we can.

Nuclear Breeder reactors (ex. Hanford and Savannah) do make high level waste, however those reactors are designed to make missle grade materials, and they're a totally differant subject from spent fuel rods and reclamation.

Nuclear reclamation closes the nuclear fuel cycle and dramatically increases efficiency as well as being an environmentally freindly thing to do. Nuclear plants all over the country are literally sitting on a gold mine of fuel they can NOT use until the reprocess it.

[jpak]

14. You do not understand reprocessing at all

It uses the PUREX process developed during the Manhattan Project to produce Pu for the Fat Man bomb.

Spent fuel rods are disassembled and the tubes containing the fuel pellets crushed

The fuel pellets are dissolved in concentrated nitric acid - the spent cladding is now solid radioactive waste.

An organic solvent is used to separate the Pu and U from the aqueous phase that contains the highly radioactive fission products.

The volume of high level liquid wastes is enormous - 600,000 gallons at this one small reprocessing plant.

At Hanford and SRP, plutonium production reactors - not breeders - were used to produce Pu. Reprocessing at Hanford alone produced 53 million gallons of HL liquid waste.

It is NOT the "environmentally friendly" thing to do.

[Sirveri]

18. Reprocessing means less waste overall and longer fuel life.

http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/inf29.html

"When uranium prices were low, reprocessing to separate plutonium for recycle as MOX was not itself economic, but with the rise in uranium prices coupled with reducing the volume of spent fuel to be managed, it is becoming so. Seven UO2 fuel assemblies give rise to one MOX assembly plus some vitrified high-level waste, resulting in only about 35% of the volume, mass and cost of disposal."

Funny how the EU and in particular France seems to get by just fine using nuclear power. 96% of a fuel cell is U and Pu, the rest is garbage. However even the garbage could be used in decay heat reactors. Heck decay heat accounts for around 7% of the heat generated while a reactor is at power.

[jpak]

23. Horsehit that flies in the face of reality

Reprocessing is highly subsidized in the EU, Russia and Japan.

Reprocessed Pu for MOX fuel is orders of magnitude more expensive than uranium.

Japan has spent $20 billion on its reprocessing plant - it is years behind schedule, way over budget and will produce the most expensive reactor fuel ever made.

Russia's Mayak reprocessing site is a true environmental disaster.

Reprocessing spent reactor fuel is the nastiest least environmentally friendly industrial enterprise ever devised my humans.

[Sirveri]

24. I didn't say it was cheap, only that it resulted in less waste.

I also said nothing of reprocessing Pu. I was speaking of single reprocess Uranium.

If you really want to get into some awesome heavy physics stuff you should take a look at the 4th gen reactors being designed in the USA today. Liquid salt with on site reprocessing. More efficient neutron profile as well if you can strip out the poisons.

If you want LESS WASTE, you reprocess and get less waste. Also you are better able to segregate waste and store HLW more efficiently since it won't be bundled with low level and non-radioactives.

There isn't a true 'clean' 'green' energy source. You pick your poison and jump in bed with it. Considering I used to sleep less than 100 feet from an operating nuclear reactor while surrounded by high explosives while next to an open sewer, well that was my bed and I slept in it. If only I could have gotten the stupid TMOW to shut the hell up.

[jpak]

26. No it doesn't

Reprocessing IS the extraction of Pu from spent fuel and it DOES increase the volume of high level waste relative to intact spent fuel assemblies.

You are also confusing pyroprocessing with reprocessing - apples and oranges.

The US National Academy of Sciences studied all these schemes and concluded that the safest cheapest spent fuel disposal cycle was a one-way fuel cycle without reprocessing or pyroprocessing.

[Sirveri]

27. The cheapest WAS one way cycle, however uranium prices are increasing

Once Uranium prices hit a certain level reprocessing becomes economically viable, better to get started now, reduce the over all waste levels, and have experience doing it than to start the second we need it.

And when I said reprocessing Pu, I meant MOX fuel assemblies.
The majority of fuel assemblies being LEU would be reproccessable.
The Navy fuel cells are all super HEU at near 100% U235, they definately should be reprocessed.

[bananas]

29. Nope - for the next several decades, once-through will be cheapest

[Sirveri]

30. Unless there is a wide spread concerted push for nuclear.

Which will in turn drive up Uranium prices and cause the exploration of other fuel cycles. India is already on the cutting edge researching the Thorium fuel cycle, Their prototype reactor is either operating or due to start up soon. A concerted effort to adopt nuclear power will push uranium demand up and make reprocessing an economically viable solution. In addition it will help solve the waste problems by cutting the amount by 65% while solving fuel supply issues. So you can't say that for the next several decades the trend will continue, it all depends on the energy policy Obama choses to adopt.

The biggest problem is that they loved pushing the words 'clean coal' on their stump speaches.

I think everyone on this thread dislikes THAT option. I'll go nuclear long before I go with clean coal. Though I definately support a clean coal retrofit of the existing fleet of coal generators.

[bananas]

31. That's why there won't be a wide spread concerted push for nuclear.

It would require even more expensive fuel cycles.
Efficiency and renewables get less expensive with improved technology and economy of scale.

http://www.earthpolicy.org/Indicators/Wind/2008.htm
"In Europe, the 8,660 megawatts of wind power capacity added in 2007 accounted for 40 percent of all new power installations. This marks the first year in history that wind power additions in Europe exceeded the additions of any other power source, including natural gas."
"If the present 27-percent annual growth rate of installed wind power capacity is maintained, total capacity in 2020 will hit 2 million megawatts. With aggressive economic incentives, it could reach 3 million megawatts by that date"


http://www.earthpolicy.org/Indicators/Solar/2007.htm
"PV production has been doubling every two years, making it the world’s fastest-growing energy source."

[kristopher]

32. "it all depends on the energy policy Obama choses to adopt."

His energy policy has been extremely consistent and deploying more nuclear isn't in the mix.

You can download detailed position papers here:
http://my.barackobama.com/page/content/newenergy

[Sirveri]

34. 'Develop and Deploy Clean Coal Technology'

I will always take nuclear before coal. But it's all right to have minor disagreements with their platform.

[kristopher]

36. The difference between coal and nuclear

Besides the obvious ones most often talked about - and more relevant to drafting a policy statement - is that coal represents a vast amount of wealth that people currently own and stand to lose. Giving them some degree of hope via limited funded research into the impossible seems a small price to pay for what they stand to lose.

[jpak]

33. Reprocessed Pu currently costs $2000 per kg

Uranium prices have a long way to go....

[Sirveri]

35. Unless you refine the reprocessing tech and create economy of scale.

Reprocessing has numerous affects, waste management being one of them, reusing nuclear weapon fissile material, storage cost changes, lowered Uranium demand due to MOX supply, etc etc etc... For the long term solution, nuclear is the most viable baseload source if you want to combat CO2 emissions. I'm not oppossed to things like solar thermal and wind, I'm also not convinced about their EROEI levels.

[kristopher]

37. Not convinced?

For wind and solar it is about as cut and dried a calculation as can be found; what is to be "convinced" about?

[jpak]

38. Reprocessing tech was refined in the Manhattan Project and employed at large scales

Japan spent $20 billion on its reprocessing plant and it still produces Pu at $2000 a kilo.

[bananas]

10. It is a reprocessing plant. nt

[NNadir]

17. The cost is proportional to the irrational standards that no other form of energy can meet.

It's not like the anti-nuke "solar will save us" cults give a flying fuck who cleans up the alkyl chlorides that they dump indiscriminately.

The nuclear standards raised by dumb yuppie brats are "no one dies ever."

In fact, hundreds of millions of people die each year from the dumping standards ignored by these same cults when it comes to the dangerous fossil fuel industry and its bastard daughter, the biofuels industry, and oh yes, the weeny but toxic solar industry.

The number of people who will die if West Valley is never cleaned up is ZERO.

The number of people who die each week because the electronic waste industry can never be clean is NOT zero.

I note with due contempt, that the same people who couldn't care less about cleaning up dangerous fossil fuel waste of the car culture, which easily destroys more than 10 billion dollars per day, are the same fucking yuppie brats suggesting that people eat cellphones.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=115x177324

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2008/11/27/85734/823/145/667001

I note, with due contempt, that the "electronic waste" industry doesn't give a fuck about how many billions of dollars of environmental damage the coltan industry has caused. Instead, they'd rather wax romantic about super capacitor cars that somehow never actually are built, won't be built and can't be built, sort of like the solar and wind industry.

[Name removed]

19. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[jpak]

22. LOL!!1111

:rofl:

[joshcryer]

28. The electronics wasge industry can never be clean?

I'd be quite interested to understand where you get that idea from.