U.S. Nuclear Cleanup Carries Major Risks 522
Roland Piquepaille writes "New Scientist reports in this pretty alarming article that there is a 50-50 chance of a major radiation or chemical accident during the cleanup of the dirtiest nuclear site in the U.S. There are indeed lots of things to clean at the Hanford complex in Washington state: 67 tons of plutonium and 190 million liters of liquid radioactive waste stored in underground tanks. A third of them, dating from the Cold War, have already leaked 4 million liters in the environment, contaminating the groundwater and a river. Meanwhile, officials at the DOE, who'll spend $50 billion between now and 2035 on this cleanup, seem less worried than the different specialists interviewed by New Scientist. Please read this overview for selected quotes from the article and from the Hanford site. You'll also find a slide from the DOE showing the timeframe for the cleanup."
Russia? (Score:2, Interesting)
So what happens if this stuff does leak out? Would that be considered a Superfund site? Funding for ecological disaster recovery was slashed by the current administration.
Our world looks better and better ever day.
To the sun! (Score:1, Interesting)
Not an original idea, I grant you, but I always thought it'd be neat to be able to take this nasty stuff and launch it into the sun. That'd clean up pretty well then, I think.
But what would be the problem with doing so? Is it a matter of dangers of rocket failure (e.g. huge atmospheric dirty-bomb), or is it also quantity of waste to be disposed of and the cost?
you have to do something about them (Score:1, Interesting)
Decommisioning (Score:2, Interesting)
Tough job (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:To the sun! (Score:5, Interesting)
67 tons of plutonium and 190 million liters of liquid radioactive waste stored in underground tanks
So, at $1000 or so a pound... well, you do the math.
Nuclear waste leaks (Score:5, Interesting)
I'll admit, I only know a little about the storage of nuclear waste, but can someone PLEASE explain how it could possibly be so difficult to keep the stuff from leaking?
It's not like these containers are sitting outside exposed to the elements. They're, AFAIK, stored underground in secure facilities.
People make it sound like the government spends millions of dollars to develop these high-tech facilities and then just haphazardly sprays the stuff into old, rusty oil-drums. Surely this isn't the case.... right...?
-Grym
Re:To the sun! (Score:4, Interesting)
How about a Space Elevator? It would still need an engine of some sort to get out of orbit, but that could be shipped up seperately.
If the space elevator fails, it would be unlikely to explode. Add a "recovery system" to the capsule that carries the radioactive material (think parachute), and potential problems would be very small.
Price could also be greatly decreased using a Space Elevator.
Re:Why not compare it with coal-fired plants? (Score:4, Interesting)
Plutonium is far more toxic than radioactive (as far as hazards go). What I mean by that is that it takes fall less PU to kill you by poisioning than required to cook you with radiation.
-nB
Re:To the sun! (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:To the sun! (Score:3, Interesting)
Powdered plutonium is a serious carcinogen. There were major worries when Cassini was launched, with a few kilos of the stuff and you're suggesting sending TONS up?
So don't powder the stuff - armored radioisotope generators are a solved problem.
What about IRAN, etc. (Score:1, Interesting)
Will the Iran's or the North Korea's of the world do any better job of cleaning up the messes they are currently creating?
Certainly, enforcing economic sanctions cannot be an answer. Can anyone name a single time those have worked?
At some point in time we have to take those countries out of the nuclear mix, less San Francisco is the target of their wrath and becomes the next nuclear wasteland we have to clean up.
Re:Why not compare it with coal-fired plants? (Score:3, Interesting)
Let's see... filtered coal dust... water vapor... filtered coal dust... water vapor... which one would you rather inhale?
why so difficult to keep the stuff from leaking (Score:4, Interesting)
Radioactive materials are sometimes called "hot"; they can be warm to the touch; this comes from the fact that as decay occurs particles come shooting out of the nucleus. These particles can hit other nuclei and jostle molecules around.
IIRC, the most recent containment technology is based on storing the "waste" in crystals, eg Zircon. The upswing of crystal storage is that the "hot" material in the center of the crystal degrades the inner part of the crystal, which reacts by forming a "wall" instead of cracking or oozing. Kind of like when you crumple a piece of paper, and there's a limit to how much smaller you can make it by squeezing. Okay, maybe that's a poor analogy, since the "squeezing" comes from the inside, but you get the idea.
Here's a link. [bbc.co.uk]
FWIW, if we had a space elevator, would anyone object to putting nuclear plants on it? It's not in anyone's backyard, and it's well placed to sling the crud into space... if we can find a target. I say Mercury.
Nuclear is one option we should pursue. We should also keep working on bio-fuelcells and wind/wave. It all comes from the sun (well, A sun...) anyway. This is all going to be moot once we bootstrap a stellar economy.. there's more methane and natural gas to be had than well, even humans could waste (okay, maybe not, but there's a lot).
Re:FUD (Score:4, Interesting)
Ouch-Nuclear terror. (Score:1, Interesting)
It may have improved, but it still generates nuclear waste. That's something that can't be changed. The residents of Nevada are protesting the inturment of the nations nuclear waste in their backyard. And there's tons of this stuff which is going to be criss-crossing the nation via rail, and truck, terrorist opportunities abound. Nuclear may be safe? But with a loose definition of safe. And it will never be as safe as the green alternatives. When was the last time people got thyroid cancer from hydroelectricity?
Re:DO the submitters actually read the articles? (Score:4, Interesting)
His blog posts are usually quite uninformative and rather poorly written too. An overview with selected quotes from the article? So now he's summarizing for
Green Run (Score:2, Interesting)
Check out this URL regarding releases of gasses from Hanford in the 1945-1972 timeframe. http://www.doh.wa.gov/hanford/publications/history /release.html [wa.gov]
Most of my family lived 50 miles away in Yakima at the time. They did the same experiment in Oak Ridge in Tennessee, at about the same time.Re:Why not compare it with coal-fired plants? (Score:3, Interesting)
It's the old ones (especially in places like China) that are the problem.
Er, no. Especially if you think global warming is an issue. From the article you cite:
Also: It should be pointed out that's infinitely more carbon dioxide, nitrogen oxide, and sulfur than nuclear power plants emit.Re:DO the submitters actually read the articles? (Score:3, Interesting)
Lying bastards are not unique to the nuclear power industry.
Besides, TANSTAAFL.
Nuclear power should be measured against the alternatives.
-- less is better.
Facts about the Hanford clean-up: (Score:5, Interesting)
It is important to realize some facts about the Hanford clean-up:
First, the problems they are talking about happened very early in nuclear power plant research, in the 50s and earlier. They are not so sloppy now in the storage of nuclear waste. Back then, they made extremely severe problems for themselves, which are very difficult to correct.
Second, there is a huge amount of government fraud, apparently. My uncle was the head of one of the groups at Battelle studying the problems. The way they talk now about the cleanup is exactly the way they were talking in the 70s. Apparently nothing has been done, but they continue to milk the issue for money.
There are tanks at the Hanford site that constantly boil, and have boiled for more than 40 years, because of the heat from radioactivity. They have made devices to examine the boiling. Back in the late 60s they decided they would try to stabilize the tanks by "glassifying" them. The wanted to turn the entire radioactive mass inside a tank into a solid mass of glass.
They are talking about this now, too, and they are giving the same completion date, "15 to 30 years from now". That's why I say that apparently nothing has been done, even though they have spent many, many billions.
What is apparently happening in this story is that they are trying to scare the public so that they can get even more money.
Here's more about U.S. government corruption: Unprecedented Corruption: A guide to conflict of interest in the U.S. government [futurepower.org].
Re:Ouch-Nuclear terror. (Score:3, Interesting)
Besides, most of our power isn't hydroelectric. It's coal. How often do people die of coal pollution? On average, once every 22 minutes (24k/yr).
Re:Nuclear waste leaks (Score:3, Interesting)
We didn't listen to him, of course, and kept swimming in it because like all teenagers we had a stupid streak and are all right for now, but I suspect that there may be much higher than usual cancer rates for kids who grew up in the Tri-Cities and were constantly swimming downstream of Hanford in the Columbia - especially those swimming in the Columbia before the Yakima and Snake's waters are dumped in it - like me. While we will have to wait a decade or two (and maybe longer) to find out for sure, I think that caution is really key.
BTW, Kelso is really far from Hanford along the riverbank. I suspect that your nonchalance (and your uncle's) about the subject might have to do with the fact that the residents of the Kelso/Longview area are far enough away that the radiation really might be a non-issue for them.
Re:rocky flats cleanup somewhat working (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Why not compare it with coal-fired plants? (Score:4, Interesting)
People near Hanford are already on borrowed time (Score:2, Interesting)
People living near Hanford are already living on borrowed time.
An environmental engineer friend of mine, Larry Cornett [aol.com] noticed back in 1994 during a routine survey that the temperatures and radiation levels from the nuclear waste containers at Hanford were unusually high and getting higher due to what he later discovered was the unforseen effect of the precipitation of radioactive waste in the containers (as the radioactive clumps grow bigger, they generate more heat and radiation). In his urgent report to the Department of Energy, he projected that there would be a 95+% chance of heat explosion and catastrophic release of radiation within 10 years due to the precipitation of the waste in the containers, unless action was taken.
Larry's report (which I believe he links to on his website) contains the details, but the steam jets from such a "conventional" heat/pressure explosion (which could cause many other containers already under stress to explode) would kill just about all life for miles around Hanford, and spread dangerous levels of radiation into the ecosystem for at least tens of miles around (and once radioactive waste was loose in the ecosystem, nobody knows for certain how far it would spread or how many millions of people it would affect). As you might guess, Larry was fired for his trouble and his report suppressed. According to Larry, as recently as 5 years ago the instictive reaction of the DOE was to bury a problem instead of deal with it, which I think you all should find terrifying, especially those of you in Washington State!
After a multi-year legal battle depicted on his link and in the newspaper articles he links to, Larry got his back pay and pension on whistle-blower protections and the DOE temporarily fixed the problem by diluting the waste further across more containers and installing automated stirrers in the new containers to keep the waste from precipitating, but when I talked to him a few years ago Larry thought that would only buy Hanford another 20 years or so before an explosion was 95+% likely, apparently not enough time for the DOE to evacuate the waste to Nevada...
Re:Why not compare it with coal-fired plants? (Score:1, Interesting)
The DOE has to regularly collect the tumbleweeds from Hanford, lest they roll off the site carrying the radionuclides they picked up from the soil.
That said, the New Scientist blurbs were bunk. Hanford is already a disaster. Who cares if the cleanup has a 50% chance of a serious leak. Doing nothing has a 100% chance of a serious leak.
Re:Ouch-Nuclear terror. (Score:3, Interesting)
Calculating the Real Cost of Energy (Score:2, Interesting)
Take Canada for example...
Nuclear energy subsidies from 1953 to 2001 were approximately 16.6 billion. Total loans written off to the fossil fuel industry were another $2.8 billion since 1970. Cleaning up old radioactive waste and decommissioning uranium tailings added another $850 million. This totals$20.25 billion just on nuclear subsidies and clean up costs and fossil fuel forgiven loans. If this $20.25 had been poured into wind energy programs, and R&D to new technologies, it might be powering 4.5 million homes today. And keep in mind that fossil fuel plants would still have the cost of fuel.
Re:Ouch-Nuclear terror. (Score:3, Interesting)
Another thing that most people do not realise is that large scale solar power generation is not about a whole lot of silicon cells in a paddock, it's about doing things with heat.
Oil crises and droughts show us that it is best that there is not one single method of power generation. Control systems have improved, which makes options like wind more attractive, especially for things like peak load power. In some parts of the world it could probaly be considered for base load power, but most places don't have reliable enough wind. They are made of silicon, copper and sometimes aluminium - how can anyone sanely compare this to nuclear waste? Is this what happens when the "all chemicals are bad" philosophy hits the "nuclear is warm fuzzy and cuddly" philosopy? Go beyond the advertisments and sound bites, there are a lot of information out there starting with basic chemistry and physics texts. Our current level of technology is built on a huge number of things that you would not want an infant putting in their mouth, which is fine, but the nuclear power industry alone portrays their dangerous goods as "clean".