Posted on 09/08/2008 12:15:20 PM PDT by bruinbirdman
But the tons of real waste blowing in the wind outside are ignored.
I hear that the French recycle their nuclear waste by reprocessing it in breeder reactors.
Why can’t we do that?
Perfect government program. Spend decades and billions and then get ready for a fight so it is all a waste of time and money. FREE YUCCA!!!
A gift from Jimmy Carter.
The democrats said we could not. Said they were worried about Iran (or somebody) getting their hands on Plutonium, and maybe making nuclear weapons.
Can’t have that now, can we?
By the way, if we recycle nuclear wastes, we can get MORE fuel back after recycling than we started with.
How so?
Idiotic actions by a previous POTUS should be reversed as a matter of course.
All the land swiped during Bubba's reign should be released; stupid restrictions like that against breeder reactors should be turned to ashes.
Holding onto assinine decisions of the past simply because "it's always been done that way" is the height of foolishness, IMO.
270 tons of nuclear waste down the gullet of a dormant volcano.
Maybe that is the best answer available yet fraught with risk.
> A gift from Jimmy Carter.
I figured it had to be something like that.
> By the way, if we recycle nuclear wastes, we can get MORE
> fuel back after recycling than we started with.
Imagine that!
No wonder the Left hates the idea so much. It might accelerate our independence on foreign energy.
Build (nukes) here, build now!
Carter didn't want us to use Plutonium for fuel in nuke plants, so we have to store it
Oh, so it’s a different but usable fuel? From the original post, it kind of sounded like BS at first because it sounded like matter was being created...I’m a new EE, but even I know that that’s impossible.
The current regulations concerning "waste" from atomic reactor fuel rods PROHIBIT the recycling of "spent" rods, which still contain some 97% of the energy they had when first put into use. We are told, that such recycling will concentrate the plutonium, one of the reaction products of the radioactive decay of U-235, and there is great superstition surrounding plutonium - it can be used to make atomic bombs!
It may also be used as a fuel in a very high-energy atomic reactor. Risky? Well, yeah, but so is sending men down into the ground to excavate coal from seams underground, but the human race does it every day.
But that is only the first step of re-refining the spent fuel rods. Natural uranium is some 99.27% U-238 (not radioactive), 0.72% U-235 (radioactive, and the "power" in control rods used in atomic reactors) and 0.0055% U-234 (highly radioactive, contributing about HALF of the radioactivity of natural uranium). By careful separation of these isotopes, the concentration of enriched uranium can be raised to about 5% U-235, while reducing the concentration of radioactivity of the processed "depleted" uranium, to about a third of that of natural uranium. This "depleted" uranium is extremely dense, greater than that of lead or even gold, and when used as an artillery round, has far greater penetrating capability through armor plate than lead.
But it is still faintly radioactive. Therefore, it is "atomic waste" and must be segregated from honest, good "non-radioactive" materials, a pariah among elements.
With sufficiently highly developed technology, the radioactive isotopes could be ENTIRELY extracted from the "depleted" uranium, supplying an additional supply of fuel for an atomic pile.
The technology has been done at the laboratory level, but the cost of the processing is horribly expensive (or so it is claimed). Therefore it is cheaper to simply store the "spent" rods.
At least for now.
For the same reason we can't complete Yucca Mountain. The eco-commies are opposed to ANYTHING that might enhance the use of nuclear fission. The opposition stems from the days when the KGB was funding anti-nuke activities to delay any and all progress that the US might make in nuclear research, but it has assumed a life of it's own now that the KGB is kaput.
"IF" we decide we want to get rid of it permanently, then the safest answer is to drop it in the deep ocean in a subduction zone. Plate tectonics will suck it down into the "bowels of the earth", and sequester it for millions of years.
But it is more likely that we will find that we want to make use of the "waste" in the future, so we a better approach is "monitored retrievable storage"---for which Yucca Moutain is perfect. Chemically reprocess the spent fuel and recover the remaining fissionable content (and any other valuable materials--several isotopes are currently useful), and store the remaining tiny amount in Yucca.
Our nuclear reactors begin generating PU on day one of operations after the fuel goes in. During the cycle, PU is created but it is also burned creating almost half the power at the end of the cycle before it is removed. Our reactors are ‘breeders’ but not in the strict sense of the word.
I saw that show on TV also. Eventually, Hawaii will follow!
A couple of fixes.
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