Posted on 03/22/2011 3:36:06 PM PDT by EBH
71,862 tons, with more created every year, and no permanent disposal solution
The nuclear crisis in Japan has laid bare an ever-growing problem for the United States — the enormous amounts of still-hot radioactive waste accumulating at commercial nuclear reactors in more than 30 states.
The U.S. has 71,862 tons of the waste, according to state-by-state numbers obtained by The Associated Press. But the nation has no place to permanently store the material, which stays dangerous for tens of thousands of years.
Plans to store nuclear waste at Nevada's Yucca Mountain have been abandoned, but even if a facility had been built there, America already has more waste than it could have handled.
Three-quarters of the waste sits in water-filled cooling pools like those at the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear complex in Japan, outside the thick concrete-and-steel barriers meant to guard against a radioactive release from a nuclear reactor.
Spent fuel at Dai-ichi overheated, possibly melting fuel-rod casings and spewing radiation into the air, after Japan's tsunami knocked out power to cooling systems at the plant.
The rest of the spent fuel from commercial U.S. reactors has been put into dry cask storage, but regulators only envision those as a solution for about a century and the waste would eventually have to be deposited into a Yucca-like facility.
The U.S. nuclear industry says the waste is being stored safely at power-plant sites, though it has long pushed for a long-term storage facility. Meanwhile, the industry's collective pile of waste is growing by about 2,200 tons a year; experts say some of the pools in the United States contain four times the amount of spent fuel that they were designed to handle.
(Excerpt) Read more at msnbc.msn.com ...
1992. President G. H. W. Bush disapproved Long Island Power Authority's attempt to enter into a contract with the French firm Cogema to reprocess the slightly irradiated initial core from the decommissioned Shoreham reactor.
1992. President G. H. W. Bush halted weapons reprocessing in a policy statement on nuclear nonproliferation declaring: "I have set forth today a set of principles to guide our nonproliferation efforts in the years ahead and directed a number of steps to supplement our existing efforts. These steps include a decision not to produce plutonium and highly enriched uranium for nuclear explosive purposes...."
1992. Energy Secretary Watkins announced the permanent closure of the Hanford, WA, PUREX reprocessing plant in December.
2001. President Bush's National Energy Policy included the recommendation that "[t]he United States should also consider technologies (in collaboration with international partners with highly developed fuel cycles and a record of close cooperation) to develop reprocessing and fuel treatment technologies that are cleaner, more efficient, less waste intensive, and more proliferation-resistant."
Reprocessing is the way. Works for the Japanese and the French.
Abdo-lutely! Reprocess now! It is stoopid to not do this.
New Jersey Challenges Rule Allowing 60 Year Storage of Spent Fuel Rods at Power Plants
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/2692893/posts
One guess what group stands in the way.
No to Yucca
No to reprocessing
No to continued storage...
Maybe we should eliminate the EPA and build some Coal Power Plants.
There are reactors that will neutralize that spent fuel,But we do not use these reactors as they do not make weapon grade material.
Yes, but can we build them? And even if we can build them...will we be able to transport the fuel...?
We used to reprocess our nuclear fuel. We had a company called NUMEC in Apollo, PA that did it.
Thank Jimmy Carter for ending that option!!
Then why were there over 11,500 spent fuel rods at the Fukushima plant? Is the cost prohibitive?
“Yes, but can we build them? And even if we can build them...will we be able to transport the fuel...?”
The Chinese are and the same in India,We have to break this half wit, minority driven thinking.
Chris Christie’s Rangers?
Japan does have fuel reprocessing; I’m vaguely remembering that the Fukushima plant used mixed oxide fuel; maybe that isn’t what their reprocessing plant is made for? I dunno. I do know that fuel reprocessing reclaims something that was going to be thrown away that still has a great deal of energy in it.
BLAME Harry Reid democratic senator for spent nuclear rods filling pools at the nuclear plants instead of being stored in Nevada!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
BLAME Harry Reid democratic senator for spent nuclear rods filling pools at the nuclear plants instead of being stored in Nevada!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
BLAME Harry Reid democratic senator for spent nuclear rods filling pools at the nuclear plants instead of being stored in Nevada!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
BLAME Harry Reid democratic senator for spent nuclear rods filling pools at the nuclear plants instead of being stored in Nevada!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Stack it along the Mexican border. Any problem impeding the human tide of illegal Democrats swarming across will be handled quickly.
Japan has recently built a facility to remove the byproducts and reprocess the plutonium and uranium into a substance called MOX for reuse in its reactors.
This was done in part to reduce the amount of spent fuel that is kept onsite at nuclear plants.
Japan’s reprocessing plant, in Rokkasho, a village 300 miles (500 kilometers) north of Fukushima, is only starting up, and hasn’t yet begun full operation.
Japan started to use MOX in some of its reactors to learn how it affects plant operations. In general, MOX fuel runs hotter than uranium oxide while inside the reactor.
The United States does not reprocess fuel and encourages other countries not to do so because of fears that plutonium recovered in the process could be used to make nuclear weapons.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/as_japan_earthquake_plutonium
the plant is still new...
it is not even in full operation yet.
The boiling water reactors are old... you’re saying their reprocessing plant isn’t up yet? Good to know.
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