Could Granite Solve the Hard Problem of Nuclear Waste Storage? (theguardian.com) 152
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: A new study published in Scientific Reports reveals that crystalline rocks, such as granite, have a natural self-sealing mechanism, capable of keeping fluids locked away for millions of years. Careful analysis of the chemistry and structure of granites from Japan and the UK revealed that when fluid did enter the rock (via fractures), it travelled a few centimeters at most. The scientists believe that calcium in the rock reacted with carbonate in the fluid to create tiny crystals of calcite that plugged all the gaps and prevented further flow. "This amount of calcite would never be expected in a granite, and the distribution of it indicates it almost certainly formed from small quantities of fluid trying to move through the rock," says Roy Wogelius from the University of Manchester. Greater understanding is needed before we finalize our radioactive waste disposal strategies, but this is a promising step forward.
Be thankful (Score:2)
We've been taking nuclear power for granite.
Re:No. (Score:2)
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We've been taking nuclear power for granite.
Thanks Rick [adultswim.com].
Simplest way to get a law passed. (Score:5, Funny)
Is to store it in the basement of the US Capitol building until Congress chooses a better location.
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Congress already chose a location: Yucca Mountain in Nevada. The problem is the locals decided they were going to refuse to allow storage (after years of building the facility).
Bottom line: humans are selfish and stupid.
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So get the thing built in your backyard. Why not?
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Because my neighbour 100km away will complain. Just because a few people have brains doesn't stop the mass idiocy that surrounds how we handle nuclear waste.
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millions? try billions of dollars.
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Properly stored, I wouldn't mind having nuclear waste in my basement.
Spent fuel pools for instance would be perfectly safe to swim in it wasn't for the risk of getting shot ( https://what-if.xkcd.com/29/ [xkcd.com] )
The main risk with radioactive materials is if it enters your body, for example if you drink contaminated water or breathe radioactive dust. At a distance, only gamma and x-rays are a problem and they can be shielded with lead bricks down to levels not exceeding background. Keep in mind that high level was
Why? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Why? (Score:5, Informative)
I think the best way to get 'rid' of the short lived stuff is dry it out and package it into RTGs and dump the power into the grid.
It would be a better idea to use them off the grid.
RTGs were used to power very remote lighthouses and navigation beacons before GPS was a thing. RTGs are also how we sent people to the moon and probes to Mars and beyond. NASA is desperate for material for making RTGs but the legal and logistical problems of reprocessing spent nuclear fuel makes this impractical. What NASA ended up doing, as I recall, was build their own nuclear reactor to make Pu-238.
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NASA currently sources its plutonium from Oak Ridge National Laboratory, but I don't know how long that's been the case.
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It's not a NASA reactor. They are paying Oak Ridge to make it for them. Goal is for 1.5kg/year by 2025, at a cost of about $20M/year.
https://www.businessinsider.co... [businessinsider.com]
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I don't think it is possible to use radioactive waste or spent nuclear fuel as a source for an RTG, for the same reasons it is not useful in the nuclear plant. To be clear, there are two things we are talking about here: "radioactive waste" and "spent nuclear fuel." The "radioactive waste" is mostly junk that is not radioactive enough to produce heat for an RTG and not compatible with nuclear reactors. If it was, we would just put it back into the reactor. The "spent nuclear fuel" still has 96% of the u
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That's an interesting idea, but not without its drawbacks and I don't think it really solves the waste problem because the really good stuff (Pu-238 and stuff that can be transformed into it) is a small fraction of the waste.
The most abundant isotopes are Ce-137 and Sr-90. These could be used in RTGs, but they're not as handy for RTG design as Pu-238 for that purpose because they emit beta (and for Ce-137's daughter products, gamma) rays. Pu-238 RTGs are not only simpler, they're smaller and lighter for th
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If cancer is cured than low level radiation leakages don't have a health hazard.
Depends what the treatment is like and if it is available for all plants and animals that are affected too. Seems like a lot of effort compared to just properly storing it.
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I think your math is off here. 300 years with a half life of 30 years is 10 half lifes. Wouldn't this be 1/(2^10), or around 0.1%?
Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)
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I keep hearing this, is there any reason it isn't being done other than new plants in general aren't being built?
Re:Don't (Score:5, Informative)
Nuclear waste is 100% a political problem, not a scientific one. The total amount of waste generated by all of the US Nuclear reactors ever fits in about 16 Olympic size swimming pools. Storing it safely effectively forever is not difficult technically, but is basically impossible politically. If you think about it these reactors have been running for several decades without a waste solution and somehow have not run out of space on-site to store it, the total volume can't be too large. It's not like the fly ash from coal that would completely bury the average plant after only a few years if it wasn't trucked away constantly.
As for why new plants aren't being built, that's mostly political too. It's a shame too because pushback on nuclear has ironically increased the amount of radiation in the atmosphere. Coal plants release more radioactive material in the air every year than was released in the Chernobyl disaster in addition to releasing planet destroying levels of greenhouse gasses.
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I think that statement's missing a qualifier. It's probably right for "high-level" waste, but it's important to remember that there's also low-level waste, some produced on a regular basis during operation of a plant but also part of the plant itself when the time comes to mothball it. I suspect it's less of a political hot potato because no-one ever thinks about it: if they did, knee-jerk
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If they made people think they would never again be able to scream "Think of the children!".
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It's not a political problem, it's an economic one. The political issues would have been solved if nuclear had delivered on the promise of extremely cheap energy, but it turned out to be really expensive energy so the will to deal with the waste problem went away.
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My understanding is that they are not profitable. The idea would be to use the radioactive waste to generate electricity to sell to a grid. However if it costs more to use this type of reactor than electricity sales, then private companies would never build one and few government would operate one other than as a waste removal cost. Adding to this is that it’s is far cheaper to use wind or solar. Maybe in the future, there may be a greater need and will to use them.
Re:Don't (Score:5, Informative)
The total amount of waste generated by all of the US Nuclear reactors ever fits in about 16 Olympic size swimming pools.
I keep hearing this quote so I wanted to fact check it.
Facts:
US GAO says: 90,000 metric tons of high-level nuclear waste total [gao.gov]
Spent nuclear fuel is 96% uranium [wikipedia.org].
Ergo:
that is ~4700 cubic meters, or ~1.9 Olympic swimming pools. [wolframalpha.com] Close enough!
Next steps:
What about the low-level nuclear waste?
US generates 40,000 cubic meters per year [wikipedia.org]. So is this stuff the actual problem [wikipedia.org]?
Re:Don't (Score:4, Interesting)
I keep hearing this, is there any reason it isn't being done other than new plants in general aren't being built?
That's pretty much it, but not the whole story.
Because no new nuclear power plants are being built there's no market for reprocessing fuel, there's no money in it. The kind of reactors needed to consume this kind of fuel is not the same kind that dominate nuclear power today, the light water reactor. There are heavy water reactors that can consume "spent" fuel from light water reactors but many of them have a feature that's known as "positive void coefficient". This feature is shared with the old RBMK reactors at Chernobyl. This is, as I recall, what has made it difficult to build a new heavy water reactor. Which is perhaps understandable since this positive void coefficient was the "feature" that lead to the destruction of one of those RBMK reactors. I don't know if there is a way to remove this "feature" without also destroying the ability of the reactor to consume what is now considered "spent" fuel.
There's other reactor designs that claim to be able to consume what is currently considered "spent" fuel. Since many nations stopped building new reactors there's no incentive to develop the technology. Any reactor built in the last 30 years or so are considered "third generation", which are merely a cheaper and safer evolution of the second generation reactors like the RBMK (Chernobyl), BWR (like at Fukushima and in my backyard), or PWR (Three Mile Island). The kind of reactors that burn "spent" fuel are either fourth generation, which are currently in development, or experimental first generation reactors that would be considered far too primitive to be constructed today.
As currently operational nuclear power reactors reach the end of their operational life, which will come soon, there will be a renewed interest in building new reactors to replace them. The first of them will likely be third generation reactors much like those we've seen build since about 1990. Then will come the fourth generation reactors that can consume this "spent" fuel we've piled up over decades.
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That's not the whole story. Fact is that every reactor capable of consuming spent fuel has been an expensive fiasco. None of them worked properly, all had expensive problems and were eventually abandoned. Maybe someone will figure it out eventually but the desire to throw billions of dollars at them is dwindling fast.
4th gen has been the promised saviour for decades but no one has even successfully demonstrated a commercial scale one, and the small scale demos have not exactly gone well.
If you disagree then
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That's not the whole story.
Of course not. To tell the whole story would take volumes.
Fact is that every reactor capable of consuming spent fuel has been an expensive fiasco. None of them worked properly, all had expensive problems and were eventually abandoned. Maybe someone will figure it out eventually but the desire to throw billions of dollars at them is dwindling fast.
No, the desire is increasing rapidly. In the last 40+ years we've built only a handful of new nuclear reactors, and closed perhaps a dozen. The ones that remain will reach end of life soon. When they do reach end of life something will have to replace them, and given our reliance on so many nuclear reactors it will be nearly impossible to replace them with any other than new nuclear reactors. Such new construction opens an opportunity to build n
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GE/Hitachi claim that the spent fuel reactors cannot melt down.
Most proposed Gen V reactor types can't melt down despite what fuel you give them.
Comment removed (Score:4, Informative)
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Proliferation. Same plants can be used to enrich weapons grade material. Controls you'd need to apply to personnel and processes to "avoid any lost/misplaced material, ever" would need to be extreme.
Re:Don't (Score:5, Interesting)
Proliferation. Same plants can be used to enrich weapons grade material.
Isn't that like saying we could be using gasoline to make napalm, or diesel fuel to make ANFO?
What makes the processing of spent fuel from civilian power plants different than the processing of materials from weapons producing reactors is the mix of isotopes involved in the source material. To get weapon grade material means running the reactors in a way that is very much non-optimal for producing power. The process is similar but the source materials are very different.
Controls you'd need to apply to personnel and processes to "avoid any lost/misplaced material, ever" would need to be extreme.
The "controls" needed would be to make sure that no enrichment happens. The uranium and plutonium that comes from spent nuclear fuel is sufficiently tainted with isotopes to make it worthless for bombs. Since enrichment of spent fuel is only necessary to make weapons, not to make fuel, then it should be quite apparent on the intent if someone is operating an enrichment facility fed with spent fuel.
What keeps uranium from fuel worthless is the production of U-236, which is nearly nonexistent in natural uranium but builds up in the uranium isotope mix as fuel is reprocessed. This can only be removed with considerable effort by enrichment, so difficult that it would be far easier to use naturally occurring uranium instead. Natural uranium is available out of the dirt nearly everywhere on Earth, and will not be guarded by people armed with machine guns.
What keeps plutonium from spent fuel worthless is the buildup of Pu-240, something that is also difficult to remove even with access to enrichment facilities. It would be easier to build a new reactor to bombard uranium with neutrons than to try to extract it from spent fuel. Just build the reactor where there's no people with machine guns guarding it to stop you.
There is no need for "extreme" measures to protect the fuel. The fuel protects itself against weapon proliferation with the presence of isotopes that would destroy it's utility in any weapon. These isotopes will "steal" neutrons and make any weapon a dud. They will also bombard any person or electronics around them with enough gamma and neutron radiation to kill them over time. This radiation will also "scream" to any detectors giving away it's location if someone were to try to remove any quantity of significance.
These weapon proliferation risks are overblown by ignorant fear mongers.
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What keeps plutonium from spent fuel worthless is the buildup of Pu-240, something that is also difficult to remove even with access to enrichment facilities. It would be easier to build a new reactor to bombard uranium with neutrons than to try to extract it from spent fuel. Just build the reactor where there's no people with machine guns guarding it to stop you.
There are many subtleties of nuclear chemistry that are lost on nearly everyone. A nuclear reactor that is not designed specifically for plutonium production makes for absurdly expensive plutonium. Using a normal reactor designed for production of electricity is so impractical as to be throwing money away. There are easier ways.
The concern around the Iranian reactors was there were a specific one that could be altered to be good enough neutron source for practical plutonium production.
That one reactor re
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>Isn't that like saying we could be using gasoline to make napalm, or diesel fuel to make ANFO?
Sure. But high explosive weapons do not command the same MAD value that nuclear weapons do. MAD triad is NBC only.
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I keep hearing this, is there any reason it isn't being done other than new plants in general aren't being built?
Yes, the oil and coal industry lobbied to have the functioning prototype shutdown and destroyed. You can verify that in SEC. 628. of the U.S Energy Policy Act [congress.gov].
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Yes, the oil and coal industry lobbied to have the functioning prototype shutdown and destroyed.
Not sure what you're smoking but we have reprocessed uranium for many years. There's no need to blame the oil and coal industry when governments themselves are shit scared of the proliferation aspect of it. There's not much technical difference between a reactor that can use spent uranium as fuel and a reactor purpose built for the production of plutonium.
The issue is 100% political and several such plants exist around the world.
Re:Don't (Score:5, Interesting)
There's no need to blame the oil and coal industry when governments themselves are shit scared of the proliferation aspect of it. There's not much technical difference between a reactor that can use spent uranium as fuel and a reactor purpose built for the production of plutonium.
The reactor they're talking about is the IFR prototype which was a *burner* reactor. It's waste product was fissile ash, so it was configured to be an *anti*-proliferation reactor.
The oil and coal industry didn't want it developed because it produced hydrogen AND electricity. With the existing stocks of plutonium and DU it would have solved the waste problems and provided enough fuel for the next 5000 years without the need for mining whilst keeping existing vehicle fleets.
I've pointed out before that there were good people working in the nuclear industry that *listened* to the concerns of the anti-nuclear folk and used it as the impetus to design a better kind of nuclear reactor that addresses their concerns. That's the problem with the discussion about nuclear power, it's become so polarised no one listens anymore. Just blah blah nuculaar.
The issue is 100% political and several such plants exist around the world.
Please point out operational reactors with burn-up rates approaching 20% of the fuel.
The whole idea behind them was to export the design and make nuclear armament too expensive compared to the value of fuel and electricity. That's the America the world admired, but the oil and coal industry soon put a stop to that so their worldwide profits would be maintained.
Now people exist in this fantasy that one day some special new reactor technology will be invented that solves all these problems, when the reality is that it was invented, tested and reactor experience was gained. Sure there were materials technology issues to solve, but it was a start.
The funding I'm referring to is to completely *destroy* a technology that most nuclear advocates aren't even aware of so that it is never developed and can never be studied. No one else is going to lobby the government to repeal SEC 628. of the US Energy Act to save the technology taxpayers funded so I'd like to see how it's the greenies fault this time.
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I keep hearing this, is there any reason it isn't being done other than new plants in general aren't being built?
Yes, politics. Reprocessing of Uranium into fuel generates about 1% plutonium as a bi-product. There are several plants that do this and they are under a very careful and watchful eye as they then recycle plutonium in the MOX process, and that is one nasty process as well.
That's fundamentally it. It's not the uranium that is the problem. No one wants to deal with the headache of managing the plutonium side product.
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I'm pro nuclear power. I find it ironic that oil companies are behind much of the propaganda against nuclear power, which most people blindly parrot.
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Re:Don't (Score:4, Informative)
Because they got the environmentalists to also join the anti-nuclear movement making them indirect promoters of fossil fuel.
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Molten salt reactors, which are basically theoretical exercises in materials science. Turns out that building pipes that can contain corrosive, radioactive, hot materials under high pressure for decades safely is not easy. Also the building of a traditional design would cost billions, why would anyone spend billions in pursuit of a new design with serious design challenges for a plant that wouldn't come online for decades?
Um, to get rid of the radioactive waste? To produce energy? To make a lot of money? You brought up MSRs so you seem to know something about their ability to consume radioactive waste as fuel. If this is such a fantasy then why bring it up?
That's a great way for a senior vice president at GE to lose his job.
Or get promoted to president if it works.
There were molten salt reactors run in government labs decades ago. Part of what makes them so attractive is that they do not operate under high pressure like you claimed above. They figured out a lot of the chemistry and mate
Re:Don't (Score:4, Informative)
Molten salt reactors, which are basically theoretical exercises in materials science.
India is working on a thorium MSR. They plan to have it operational by 2025.
China is building a pilot project which may be completed this year. If it is successful they intend to have full-scale thorium MSRs operating by 2030.
There are many design challenges, but if successful, MSRs could be the silver bullet we have been looking for.
Ocean (Score:2)
What about slowly dripping it from a ship so it dilutes it into the ocean .. whats the math on that ? How much would it add to the background? Or remix and return it back to the mine? Can't be more long term radioactive that the ground it came from.
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I've thought of ocean dispersal too. It certainly seems like it would be perfectly feasible from a technical standpoint. Encase it in small (granite?) pellets of some sort and disperse it a bit at a time throughout the oceans.
But holy hell, the environmentalists would have a field day with that one. Can you imagine the outcry about how we just decided to "dump all our nuclear waste in the ocean". Do you remember the breathless headlines about detecting radiation in the ocean from Japan's Fukushima react
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What about slowly dripping it from a ship so it dilutes it into the ocean
Yeh, sure. Go find some politicians who want at least a snowball's chance in hell of getting re-elected, and ask them to vote for your proposal. Good luck.
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I dont think it should be encassed in pellets because someone may say that some fish may swallow and accumulate the pellets wherein the radioactivity would be concentrated. I think remixing it in large volumes of molten ore or water such that the radioactivity is hardly perceptible from background may be better (maybe 1,000,000,000:1 or higher).
Nuclear waste storage isn't an engineering problem (Score:5, Insightful)
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Never has been. *Any* solution will be politically wrong to a small but very vocal minority.
Which is irrelevant because small but very vocal minority have no input to siting nuclear facilities as they have very specific requirements to place them.
Subduction. (Score:5, Interesting)
Can we just throw this crap into a subduction zone? Along with all our garbage? And the Republican Party? And Rush Limbaugh? And all Slashdotters? Please?
k.
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I was just going to suggest the same thing (well, about the waste anyway). It was actually one of the plans in the '60s, but was never implemented.
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Oh look, it's another one of Putin's trolls
Being sick of waste, worthless Slashdot comments, and nuclear politics does not make one a Russian troll, rather it would seem ktakki has demonstrated that he is a highly functioning emphatic human being who is fundamentally sick of the shit going on in the world. Many of us are. I'm sorry he insulted your orange dictator and you got triggered as you always do, but you better come up with some new defenses because calling most of the world who hate him "Russian trolls" doesn't fly.
Just one thing... (Score:3)
You don't have to lock away nuclear waste for millions of years or even thousands of years. Isotope decay is exponential so after 200 years it's no longer a major hazard. Additionally, most can be reprocessed and we have projects in the works that can consume the stuff.
Nuclear waste is not an engineering problem, it's a political problem because people are uninformed.
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That depends on the isotope, the exact conditions and even the fact that our assumptions are correct (nobody has been around for long enough to actually confirm those numbers).
No, it doesn't depend on anything. Fission products are well know and we have in fact been around long enough to confirm these numbers.
But even by assuming that 200 years is really the absolute limit, are you OK with that?
Sure. There's lots of human made structures around that have survived more than 200 years so this is a relatively trivial problem.
Bear in mind that we aren't talking about naturally-occurring radioactivity which isn't too dangerous unless you are very close to the source for long periods. We are talking about the radioactivity provoked as a by-product of nuclear fission processes, which is very dangerous and needs to be carefully treated for as long as required.
No, the radiation is no different from natural processes than that from fission. Why would it be?
To not mention the small detail of the future costs associated with all that containment which will have to be paid by the future generations. And that wouldn't be the result of an accident, a negligent behaviour or a short-sighted approach, but costs which are certain and which you are knowledgeably giving to your grand-(grand-grand-, etc.)children as a nice present.
The radiation from fission products will be lower than that from naturally occurring materials after 200 years or so. We know this because we have
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So, nuclear fission generates a specific type of element, "the fission product", whose characteristics are constant everywhere? Wow!
That's oversimplifying it quite a bit but, yes, that's about right.
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Isotope decay is exponential so after 200 years it's no longer a major hazard.
Inverse Euler expresses radioactive decay, IIRC.
Nuclear waste is not an engineering problem, it's a political problem because people are uninformed.
Usually uninformed about how bio-accumulation works and why it's a difficult engineering problem.
We already have that (Score:2)
The scientists believe that calcium in the rock reacted with carbonate in the fluid to create tiny crystals of calcite that plugged all the gaps and prevented further flow
Products such as Krystol https://www.kryton.com/product... [kryton.com] or Xypex https://www.xypex.com/ [xypex.com] or other concrete waterproofing also act as Self-Repair when it cracks very useful in watertanks addionally strengthen the concrete.
Discussed last year (Score:3)
The DOE's original specification for a waste storage facility was granite and bentonite clays.
Re:Discussed last year (Score:4, Insightful)
Also here is a link to the Swedish facility [geoprac.net] that was recently complete and now operational [skb.com] built in granite.
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Short summary: They will encapsulate the radioactive material into copper and then bentonite clay and then stored 500 meters down in granite. The method has been criticized by scientists that there is a big risk that the copper will rust and start leaking.
Too lazy to write a full translations..
Thanks for the additional information. You're right to point out that it is an imperfect solution, it's an extremely difficult problem to solve.
Too lazy to write a full translations..
No need, I thank you Mr AC for this information, you've expanded my point and shown how the mindset at play here works to improve the best solution even further. I hope this translate link works so people here can see what you're saying. [googleusercontent.com]
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Also discussed here in relation to the EROEI [slashdot.org] and the amount of peta joules of energy used to construct conventional facilities and how using granite may reduce the energetic input of the nuclear industry.
Synroc (Score:2)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Fixing the symptom, not the problem (Score:2)
Why not reprocess it? (Score:3)
Why not reprocess it?
Why is the US still following the anti-proliferation policies of the Jimmy Carter Administration?
Granite solve a *hard* problem (Score:2)
Gen IV Nuclear can solve that problem... (Score:3)
This could very well devastate... (Score:3)
Dump it in Oklo, Gabon (Score:2)
Oklo, Gabon has a natural nuclear reactor running, and it's apparently perfectly safe...except for the mutants in the area, of course.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Re: No, retard (Score:5, Insightful)
Agreed. The Hard Problem of Nuclear Waste Storage isn't physical; it's political. You're not going to fix politics with rocks, despite what a lot of people seem to think these days ...
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We could always drop a rock from orbit on Washington DC . . .
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We could always drop a rock from orbit on Washington DC . . .
It was actually politics in Nevada that killed the Yucca Mountain plan.
So maybe drop the 2nd rock on Las Vegas.
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Viva, Rock Vegas!
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Agreed. The Hard Problem of Nuclear Waste Storage isn't physical; it's political.
The Atomic Energy Act of 1954 prohibits construction of nuclear facilities in crystalline rock structures such as granite.
Re: No, retard (Score:4, Informative)
Agreed. The Hard Problem of Nuclear Waste Storage isn't physical; it's political.
The Atomic Energy Act of 1954 prohibits construction of nuclear facilities in crystalline rock structures such as granite.
This seemed a pretty wild claim, so I decided to look at the current but the current (amended) act [nrc.gov] has no such provision- It mentions stopping granite research, but does not prohibit it:
[...] In the event that the Secretary at any time after such date of enactment considers any sites in crystalline rock for characterization or selection as a repository, the Secretary shall consider [...]
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ou're not going to fix politics with rocks, despite what a lot of people seem to think these days ...
Most insightful comment I've seen on Slashdot in a while. The problem is also military, though. We store fuel in order to have a reserve that can be reprocessed in the future, keeping the option open for a future nuclear arms race. Reprocessing now would be safer, but might provoke that same arms race (and we don't want to encourage others either).
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Why do we wait? Apart from the mess it makes...
Isn't China, Russia and more already reprocessing?
I agree. It was a Carter-era decision that hasn't been revisited. Carter may have been our smartest president, but he was also the biggest idiot. Go figure.
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Re: No (Score:5, Informative)
Just say no to Nuclear on earth.
You know that the heat generated within is from nuclear reactions.. It's what keeps the earth's core molten... :)
Nuclear power is not bad by itself, like many people seems to believe. It's all about the application..
If you are for the environment and to reduce co2 emission i would recommend you to support nuclear power but require them to work towards safer applications.
- There are reactor-designs capable of using our old waste as fuel and lowering the required safe-storage from 10000 years to 300 years of our existing waste.
- There are reactor-designs incapable of melting down. Physically impossible due to the reactive material expanding when it heats up, and as it expands it lowers it's reactivity. Ie self-modulating.
- There are reactor-designs capable of full "walk away" safety. Ie you turn off all passive and active control systems and just walk away without it releasing anything into the environment and then be able to go in and start it back up.
If you want to fight for the environment you should really care about nuclear power, but also fight for safer and cleaner nuclear reactors.
Today we are using pressurized water reactors (PWR) mostly, and the history behind that is that you can produce plutonium from those so loads of research was put into these. This also resulted in that PWR's became the go-to technology because they where proven and no new research needed to be done to build one.
Trying to use some other type of reactor became too expensive because it would require quite a bit of research before it could be built. It would probably also result in years of red-tape before that could be approved.
For more information about some of the different types:
https://www.nuclear-power.net/... [nuclear-power.net]
Re: No (Score:4, Insightful)
Hand warmers aren't that scary (Score:5, Insightful)
It sounds like you've read some (perfectly true) statements that the anti-nuclear crowd like to repeat over and over:
Nuclear waste can be very dangerous. Nuclear waste can last a long time.
Those statements are true. But ...
Gun powder is dangerous because it can release its energy very quickly. If you're holding it when it releases the energy, you'll be injured because that hear energy will go into your hand and burn you. Gun powder needs to be carefully stored for safety.
Hand warmers contain some of the same chemicals as black powder, and last a long time. They last a long time because they release their energy slowly. Same with a candle. You shouldn't hold burning black powder, you can hold a candle or a handwarmer *because* they release their energy slowly.
The *different types* of radioactive materials are the same. Some release energy quickly, so that in just a few days they release enough to damage, and then in a few years they are completely burned out. The other kind releases energy very, very slowly so it lasts a long time. And you'd need to carry in your pocket for 800 years to get enough energy to give your thigh a "sunburn".
The honest version of the statements we started with is:
One kind of nuclear waste can be very dangerous because it releases a lot of energy quickly. A totally different kind of waste takes a thousand years to release significant radiation, so it lasts a long time.
It also just so happens that the long-term kind is what's called alpha radiation, alpha particles. Alpha particles are blocked by paper, three centimeters of air, or skin. So you if you plan to carry some of it your entire life, wrap it in a piece of paper instead of pressing it against your body.
There IS no need to store dangerous material for "tens of thousands of years". That's a fiction created in people's mind when the anti-nuke people (originally peace activists) intentionally confused people by combining statements abkut two totally different kinds of material.
I mentioned a piece of paper will block alpha radiation, the long-term kind of radiation. Please note you should not drink bleach, drain cleaner, plutonium, or motor oil. Keep these materials in their jugs, not in your mouth.
Re:Hand warmers aren't that scary (Score:4, Interesting)
One correction: some alpha emitters are incredibly poisonous, and can kill in amazingly small amounts if ingested. That poisonous quality is what remains for thousands of years. So, it's particularly nasty industrial waste. Good thing the volume of it is so tiny compared to most industries and their waste.
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And some of the waste is poisonous forever because, radioactive or not, it's a toxic heavy metal.
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Yes, heavy metals such as as cadmium, mercury, lead, etc should be recycled and disposed of properly. One of the biggest sources of a toxic heavy metal is their car battery. Recycle those properly. Car batteries are heavy because they are full of a heavy metal, and it is toxic. Same with your chrome bumper - recycle that stuff.
Which is not to be confused with "OMG radiation".
I'm getting a lot of radiation right now, so I might move into the shade.
Poop (Score:4, Informative)
Well yes, as I said, don't ingest it.
Poop
Drain cleaner
LSD
Nuclear waste
-- things you shouldn't eat
Eating even a very small amount of poop could be very bad for you, even kill you. So I don't eat poop. I'm not overly freaked out about it's existence, I just don't eat it.
I do carry a vial of radioactive stuff on my waistband, I just don't eat it.
Well maybe I shouldn't imply that I don't eat radioactive stuff. That's not quite true. I should have written comment this AFTER my snack. I'm having banana, which is more radioactive than a lot of the old nuclear waste that some people are scared about.
Speaking of things we shouldn't ingest, here are the things that actually kill a lot of Americans after Americans ingest these substances:
Soda
Cheeseburgers
Milkshakes
That's what actually does kill a lot people, kills people every day. *IF* we want to be safe, those are the things we should be paying attention to since they are the real threats that are likely to actually kill us.
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Sure, but we are talking about storing nasty industrial waste, is my point. It's not magically deadly or anything, but you don't want it leaking into the water supply in 1000 years either. There were some real problems with stupidity and corruption (both kinds) in nuclear waste handling in the 70s. I don't think the problem is really all that hard, it's just really bad if the guy you hire to haul it instead dumps it in the swamp to save a few bucks. I think we can solve that sort of problem.
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Some of the energy that is released slowly is in the form of ionizing radiation or particles that can cause mutations in cells, leading to cancer and other problems. Some of the material is highly toxic as well.
So let's say an ammunition dump is on fire, and bullets are firing everywhere madly; this is very dangerous, stay away. But slow it down, one bullet shoots off randomly once during each hour. A very slow release of energy but it is still highly dangerous and you would want to stay away from it.
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> Some of the energy that is released slowly is in the form of ionizing radiation or particles
Specifically, alpha particles. Which are blocked by a piece of paper. So keep a piece of paper, or a few centimeters of air, between you and the plutonium.
Don't eat poop, antifreeze, or plutonium.
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Physics begs to Differ (Score:2)
It also just so happens that the long-term kind is what's called alpha radiation, alpha particles.
It also happens that because alpha particles are heavily ionizing because they are non-relativistic and thus have a high dE/dx on the usual ionization bathtub curve. This is what makes them easy to stop but also makes them by far the most dangerous type of radiation because they can are very damaging to DNA (or any complex molecule).
This is the primary long term concern: when you store these things in the environment if they ever leak out over the next several millennia then they can contaminate groundw
Re:Dump the waste (Score:5, Insightful)
An active one? So it can blow it high into the atmosphere for us?
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I know you meant to be funny, it was. But if we can afford to put a sports-car into space, why can't we pack out our waste?
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You can't just make radioactive waste really hot and expect it to stop being, you know, radioactive.