Yucca No Longer an Option

[pinniped]

Source: AP

WASHINGTON -- Secretary of Energy Steven Chu said Thursday that the proposed Yucca Mountain site in Nevada no longer is an option for storing highly radioactive nuclear waste, brushing aside criticism from several Republican lawmakers.

Instead, Chu said the Obama administration believes the about 60,000 tons of waste in the form of used reactor fuel can remain at nuclear power plants while a new, comprehensive plan for waste disposal is developed.

Chu's remarks touched off a sometimes testy exchange with U.S. Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., Obama's rival for president last year, and provided the most definitive signal yet that the government's attempt to address the commercial nuclear waste problem is veering in a dramatically new direction.

At a hearing, McCain and U.S. Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, said the decision not to pursue the Yucca Mountain project threatens the expansion of nuclear energy because the government can give no assurance on waste disposal.

Read more: http://www.rgj.com/article/20090306/NEWS/903060430/1321

---

Since that asshole McLame is so hard up for nuke waste, I'm sure he could find a place to stuff it in his state.

The northeast corner of AZ looks adequate.

[havocmom]

1. good. This is one subject on which I am happy to be a NIMBY

If it is so safe, keep it at Nuke Power corporate offices.

[Buzz Clik]

16. No one -- NO ONE -- is suggesting it is safe. Just the opposite.

Which is why some place like Yucca Mountain is absolutely critical.

[havocmom]

39. bop over to the energy forum. You can post something and start a stopwatch

The Nuke Power is Safe Advocates get there in record time. They are all about what a swell power source nuclear power is and all we have to do is transport the wastes a couple thousand miles away into SOMEBODY ELSE'S backyard to store it. Only those of us out west object and get attacked for it.

[Buzz Clik]

52. There are very few pro-nuke advocates who think it's a safe, danger free source of power.

And, yes, I've engaged the most intelligent of them before. The most intelligent of the pro-nuke group advocate only that nuclear has a better safety record than coal and that coal waste is dangerous but we don't worry about it.

I've yet to hear the argument that nuclear waste is safe on an absolute basis, and anyone who makes that argument is deluded.

[Buzz Clik]

66. I owe you a sincere apology:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=102&topic_id=3770202&mesg_id=3771654

Jeebus. What an arse.

[Thor_MN]

69. Trying to avoid sides here, but out of curiosity

when was the last time you were at Yucca Mountain? Is your objection based on proximity or is it a more general objection to nuclear power?

The reason I ask is that I'm curious how big a backyard is to those in the west. I think there may be an disconnect east/west in what constitutes a backyard. A distance that some in the east consider to be "hell and gone" away may be "just down the road" to some in the west.

To an East Coast person 400 miles is a long way, there's lots of people between here and there. A lot fewer people in those same miles in Nevada. So a "Backyard" has different connotations depending on where you live, possibly leading to confusion.

[lsewpershad]

63. Maybe

you should keep it tn your backyard.

[No Elephants]

2. Expansion of nuclear energy over safety of people and other living things? For whom are we

expanding it then? Aliens from other planets? You don't even need the (R) after the name or a familiar name to know to which party these loons belong, do you?

[Buzz Clik]

17. Yucca Mountain is about disposal of incredibly dangerous high level radioactive waste.

It has nothing to do with expansion of nuclear power. Nothing.

[No Elephants]

22. I'll take your word for that. My post was about Pub priorities, as the Pubs themselves

articulated them.

[Buzz Clik]

28. Sorry. I guess I don't understand your original post.

It seems that we are both opposed to expansion of nuclear energy.

[Viking12]

25. Nothing? Are you series1/?1!!???

[Buzz Clik]

27. Yes. Quite serious. I can back this up with simple facts. Care to engage?

[Viking12]

34. The Congressional Research Service thinks you're wrong

Nuclear waste has sometimes been called the Achilles' heel of the nuclear power industry; much of the controversy over nuclear power centers on the lack of a disposal system for the highly radioactive spent fuel that must be regularly removed from operating reactors. As a result, progress on nuclear waste disposal is widely considered a prerequisite for any future growth of nuclear power.

http://ncseonline.org/nle/crsreports/waste/waste-2.cfm#_1_4

[Buzz Clik]

51. Putting waste in Yucca Mountain is not "progress". It's a solution that's existed for 20 years.

We currently -- today! -- have enough high level radioactive waste to fill Yucca Mountan beyond its capacity, and in the time it would take to ship and store the waste, we would have another Yucca Mountain's worth of waste needing a home. And that is without any new nuclear startups.

If you don't want new nukes, keep them from happening. Playing politics with high level rad waste is a fool's game.

[Viking12]

55. Yucca is not a solution that exists today, let alone 20 years ago

[Buzz Clik]

58. :You're wrong. It's a completely viable solution to a critical problem.

No action is pure stupidity.

[Zhade]

67. Advocating the storage of nuclear waste in a quake zone is fucking stupid.

I thought you were smarter than this.

[enlightenment]

45. Actually, there is a tie-in.

Yucca Mountain, as planned, would have accommodated both high-level waste and 'spent nuclear fuel' that comes from nuclear power plants and is considered medium-level waste.

Low level waste is supposed to be stored by the states under legislation passed in 1980; but that's not the only sort of waste nuclear power plants produce.

So there is a connection between Yucca and nuclear power expansion - the states that have nuclear power plants still need a place to put it and aren't going to build a lot of new facilities until they have a storage site for their waste . . .

It's incredibly confusing - drove me bonkers when I was putting my lecture together on the topic for my Nevada history class, and I only scraped the surface.

[Buzz Clik]

53. Granted, they might be related, but they should be treated as separate issues.

I am not anti-nuke on an absolute scale. I recognize the risks of nuclear power generation, but so many countries have had clean safety records that it's hard to get too excited about.

HOWEVER, I am anti-nuke because there are no good options for other than the approach taken in Yucca Mountain. And, even Yucca does not have the capacity to accomodate all of our current waste.

We cannot continue to let the waste linger in an unsafe environment. We wouldn't let human feces, animal manure, or ever garbage lie about without proper disposal. Why are we so willing to do so with material that is far more dangerous?

[MADem]

3. I think they need to find a way to RECYCLE the shit, myself. Not bury it. NT

[izquierdista]

6. They need to bury it first, not last

Recycling can only go so far, and then you are still left with highly radioactive stuff. Better to put the nuke plant half a mile down in a stable geologic formation. Then when it's time to scrap it, you cut the wires and backfill the hole.

[Buzz Clik]

15. The reason why Yucca Mtn was chosen in the first place is because stable sites are hard to find.

Your suggestion is impossible and essentially equivalent to banning nuclear plants altogether -- which is fine, but we still have decades of nuclear waste that is not going away.

[Grinchie]

20. Mr. Buzz Click Expert

I'm sure he's been studying the fault lines, water tables and other threats to "Long Term" storage.

This stuff should not even be around, let alone buried in the earth. The fact that the Military just dumps theirs in the ocean probably make that look viable to you as well.

There are a lot of issues that the so called experts haven't even dreamed of yet. You know, like they didn't think the Meltdown at Three Mile Island was possible.

The thing with Yucca Mountain is this, as soon as you build it, you have to transport the shit all over the country to get it there. Sooner or later, the Saudis are going to insist we take their Nuclear waste as well.

[Buzz Clik]

26. Okay. You still are low on the learning curve. I'll help.

1. Yes. I studied this for ten years. I was working on the Hanford Basalt location that was rejected due to possible fault activity.

2. The waste exists NOW. I'll agree that maybe it should not exist, but it does exist.

3. I don't recall supporting dumping of any waste of any kind in the ocean.

4. Meltdowns at nuclear reactors have been a known possibility since the first reactors were designed. You didn't know that?

5. The "shit" is all over the country already -- unconfined, unprotected.

6. The Saudis? Where did that come from?

I understand your fears, but they are unfounded and irrational.

[wordpix]

81. I think buzz click works for the nuke industry---right, buzz click? How much're you paid?

[spoony]

100. Silly comment

"You know, like they didn't think the Meltdown at Three Mile Island was possible."

Who didn't think it was possible? Certainly not the designers and engineers, who built it like every other nuke plant in the country: to contain a meltdown. Which is exactly what it did. So maybe you could point me to anyone of the nebulous "they" you cite who said, ever, that a meltdown wasn't possible?

[NMDemDist2]

42. Yucca isn't 'stable' and that's why it's not a good choice

http://www.state.nv.us/nucwaste/yucca/seismo01.htm

Nevada ranks third in the nation for current seismic activity. Earthquake data bases are available that provide current and historical earthquake information, and these can be accessed to gain information on seismic activity in the vicinity of the proposed High-Level Nuclear Waste Repository site at Yucca Mountain, in southern Nevada. .........

The most notable event during this period was a magnitude 5.6 earthquake near Little Skull Mountain, about 8 miles southeast of the Yucca Mountain site, that occurred on June 29, 1992. This earthquake caused damage to a nearby Department of Energy field office building. This earthquake, and many after-shocks, occurred on a fault that had not previously been identified. The Little Skull Mountain earthquake and numerous others at about the same time in the western U.S. are considered to have been triggered by the magnitude 7.4 Landers earthquake, in California.

The only significant cluster of earthquake activity in the 50-mile radius area is in Rock Valley, about 12 miles southeast of Yucca Mountain. The data base also reveals that, in 1948, there was a magnitude 3.6 event on the southeast boundary of the Yucca Mountain site, in an area known to have a number of faults. Recently, there have been other events recorded beneath Yucca Mountain with magnitudes less than 2.5.

Earthquake activity is a safety concern both during operation, above and below ground, and after closure of a repository at Yucca Mountain. (more)

[Tempest]

49. I was waiting for someone to point this out

Yucca was a political decision because Nevada was considered to have the weakest Congressional members at the time the location was decided on.

The politicians felt they could get away with it since no one cares about Nevada (outside of Nevada) and they had no political power.

It wasn't until the scientists started pointing out the dangers of Yucca that its location was questioned.

[Buzz Clik]

54. So, what is your alternative? Another 60 years of study?

Shall we wait for a catastrophe and then accept a less considered alternative?

[NMDemDist2]

68. the Waste Isolation Plant Project in my area is a much better idea

and close to the facilities that are breaking down the old nukes (with in a couple hundred miles)

stable geology, DEEP salt layers 2100 ft down

Yucca mountain was a boondoogle.

[greenbird]

8. Recycling

isn't yet a perfect solution. There are byproducts of the recycling process that are nasty and have to be dealt with. Not that it shouldn't be done; I'm just saying that it's not simple. This stuff has to be monitored for-e-ver. Also, the utilities that have counted on Yucca to be a depository for their waste, and now have to go elsewhere, are probably going to sue the gummint for billions of dollars . . . it's a mess, a complicated situation. No easy answers.

[MADem]

13. It's something that merits further research, then. I think that would be a good

thing for our nation to invest in, myself. If we could find a way to safely use that flotsam and jetsam, and put it to good and productive use, instead of burying it underground in drums that will eventually leak, well, that would be a good thing.

I remain convinced that this is a problem that technology can overcome.

[greenbird]

31. I agree with you about that.

Absolutely.

[izquierdista]

4. That's sacred country

To the Navajo and the Hopi. But southeast New Mexico has a facility up and running that could take it: http://www.wipp.energy.gov/

[clixtox]

11. No Navajo or Hopi have been there but...

it is sacred for the Western Shoshone. I remember hearing Corbin Harney, a Shoshone elder and activist speaking at numerous demos at the gate to the Nuclear Bomb "test site" near Mercury, NV, just south of Yucca Mountain. He spoke of the treaty of Ruby Mountain from the 19th century and how the USA has ignored that treaty or tried to jam through concessions by dividing the American Indian beneficiaries by appealing to the greed of some of them.

Another disgusting example of how might makes right as the USA continues to steal the property of indigenous people at home, actually their home by legal right.

[mrs_p]

35. wow - i didn't even know

that it was sacred to the shoshone (which is my grandfather's tribe).

[NMDemDist2]

41. WIPP would need a lot of time to get up and running for that stuff

It's currently doing VERY little of the really *hot* stuff and would need a major upgrade to allow that much remote handled waste

that being said, the way they are handling waste is a viable disposal idea, but it would take time (perhaps a decade) to ramp up for those kind of deliveries.

and since it's IMBY I have studied their program pretty closely


edit to add, they will be hiring hundreds of people soon, if you're looking for a new career SE NM is a place to consider

[DUlover2909]

5. Where can I find good info on this issue?

My layman's opinion points me toward the ocean for disposal, or inside a mountain. How large are the radioactive rods or fuel things or whatever? How much shielding is necessary? What are the dangers associated with transporting waste materials?

I work every day with the most dangerous radioactive materials known to man. Iridium 192 and Cobalt 60. Both are gamma ray sources and are among the most regulated materials that exist. Are the waste products of nuclear energy gamma emitters? If they aren't, I just don't see what danger that they pose. Can someone educate me?

[izquierdista]

7. Answers

Shallow ocean burial has been tried in Scandinavia (Sweden, I think), but it wasn't all that great. Still some seepage into the ocean. Fuel pellets are about the size of a piece of blackboard chalk and are stacked in rods 10'-20' long depending on the reactor configuration. A stainless steel cask is used to transport spent fuel rods, and a lead lined overpack is sometimes added. The danger in transport is if there is a rupture in the case of an accident. Fuel rod casks and TRU-packs are well tested under a number of accident scenarios (including fire).

For high level waste, like nuclear fuel rods, Cs-137 and Sr-90 are the main products and are both gamma emitters with half lives around 30 years. And yes, sitting somewhere for 300 years until they have decayed to (1/2)^10 of their original radioactivity is a guideline for waste disposal.

Any more questions?

[DUlover2909]

9. Ok then, thank you. Yes, I have more questions.

What is the penetrating capacity of the gamma emitters? Why couldn't the waste be buried right next to the power plants? Dig a hole around the plant and drop the expended fuel into it.

I will admit that I am in favor of nuclear energy because of the greenhouse gas issue, but I welcome the opposing arguments in order to understand the other issues.

[greenman3610]

10. bottom line, if North Korea's nuclear plants are all safe, clean and efficient

I'm still not reassured.

[wordpix]

82. big IF - N. Korea can't even feed its people - we trust their safety of nukes?

I don't

[quaker bill]

12. The fewer locations the better

The material has to be secured. It is highly toxic and without reprocessing, contains weapons capable materials. The N. Koreans were cracking open spent fuel rods to obtain plutonium, because that is one of the byproducts of exposing U238 in a reactor. Fuel rods contain a somewhat enriched mix of U235 and U238, like the stuff Iran is producing. The resulting modestly enriched uranium is not the threat for weapons development, it is the plutonium byproduct of reactors that is the concern.

Uranium based bombs require a very high level of enrichment, which requires some massive technology to separate the U isotopes. On the other hand, because they are different elements, Uranium and Plutonium can be separated chemically with far less technology. Weapons grade stuff is far easier to get on this path.

The waste needs to be accounted for and secured, for a very, very long time.

Gamma emitters need the most shielding. Alpha and Beta emitters are relatively easily shielded.

[Buzz Clik]

18. The radioactive waste from these plants is extremely dangerous.

It is toxic from the radioactivity and from the acute toxicity of the materials themselves. The half-lives of the many of these materials is in the thousands of years and require a site that is geologically stable. After a decade of study, only three sites emerged as suitable for disposal, and Yucca Mtn was considered the best.

Disposal of the waste on-site at these plants is a horrible idea because they simply cannot guarantee the long-term geologic stability needed safe containment.

[izquierdista]

29. Digging a hole

It has to be a very DEEP hole. The problem with the Swedes I mentioned earlier, they thought that 60 feet under the ocean in a clay seam would contain the radioactivity -- it didn't. The type of geologic formations that need to be used are impervious ones, like salt domes that have oil or natural gas under them, or just plain beds of salt, like in New Mexico. Salt is very plastic under tons of pressure and seals up fissures where radioactivity could leak out. Yucca Mountain, from what I know, it is more brittle, so it will not contain isotopes for tens of thousands of years, but then that is why only high level waste with relatively short half lives was proposed for it.

Your proposal is not so much different from mine though. If there is an abandoned coal mine near the power plant, the waste could be put there, given that the overburden on top of the coal is non-permeable. But then, if you have an empty, abandoned coal mine, a nuke plant could be fit in one of the drifts and there would be NO possibility of problems with isotopes escaping. So that's why I favor building the plants underground. :think:

Another point to make is that the high level waste is chemically processed into a glass and the glass is sealed in a stainless steel container. This makes isotopes leaching out of the glass extremely slow (on the order of geologic time). The problem is moving the spent fuel rods to the glass making facility, and then from the glass making facility to the repository. Transporting spent fuel rods has so much potential for a horrible accident that it is foolish to plan on it. Better to have a place right next to the reactor, so when the rods are pulled, there is a place to put them -- permanently.

[Buzz Clik]

14. Stupidity reins supreme in the environmental community about Yucca Mtn.

Somebody with an actual brain needs to advise the president on this issue. Storing the waste on-site is an incredibly horrible idea.

But, with the uninformed and ragingly terrified nuke-fearers owning the day, we can look forward to another 30 years of inactivity and potential environmental and health disasters.

[MadHound]

23. Ah, so according to you it's a stupid idea to refuse to store this waste

At a site that is the confluence of three separate active earthquake faults, a site that is regularly flooded by groundwater due to these earthquakes, a site where the EPA found that material that leaks into the cracks of Yucca Mt. winds up in Las Vegas' groundwater in a matter of weeks.

Gee, who's stupid on this one?

Yucca Mt. has been a stupid move from the beginning, and should have been disqualified long ago.

[izquierdista]

30. Try centuries

Water moves VERY slowly underground. There's dirt and rocks in the way.

[MadHound]

48. Thanks, but I'll take the word of the EPA who actually did dye tests

Over that of an anonymous internet poster. Thus, I'll stick with the "weeks" timetable, as opposed to "centuries" In fact that EPA stated specifically 2 weeks from Yucca to LV. Ooops.

[izquierdista]

73. Ooops yerself

"Anonymous internet poster" used to see dye tests fail all the time. Ask yourself this: If a flood on the Mississippi, which has no obstacles in the way, can take weeks to progress down the river, how can much larger molecules (lower velocity) percolating through a matrix of dirt, go just as fast? Use some scientific skepticism when confronted with numbers that don't make sense with the laws of physics.

[MadHound]

74. You're assuming that it is a "matrix" of dirt and rock

If you actually do some research, specifically the DOE, NRC and EPA reports on Yucca Mt.(sorry, I can't post a link, many of these came out before the advent of the internet and are paper copies that you have to order, find in library, etc.) you would see that there is no "matrix", but rather a massive web of cracks in the dirt of Yucca Mt. where water comes out when it floods, and water goes down when it ebbs. It doesn't have to filter through much of anything. You would see this if you actually went and looked at the reports rather than simply talking about what you really don't know. I was able to peruse these reports because I worked in the nuclear industry for a number of years and had the access.

Oh, and as far as your point about distance, your comparison is pointless. The Mississippi is over two thousand miles long. Yucca Mt. is 90 miles away from Las Vegas. Living on the Missouri River, I've seen a flood roll over ninety miles in just a couple of days. Your point is meaningless.

Ooops.

[texanshatingbush]

40. I submit that Steven Chu has a brain which is quite capable of that....

WIKI notes:
Steven Chu
*American physicist, is the 12th United States Secretary of Energy
*known for his research in cooling and trapping of atoms with laser light, which won him the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1997
*professor of physics and molecular and cellular biology at the University of California, Berkeley and the director of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
*vocal advocate for more research into alternative energy and nuclear power, arguing that a shift away from fossil fuels is essential to combat global warming

I'm willing to let this guy think "outside the box" on nuclear waste storage.

I seem to remember from Weekly Reader articles back in the day (I know, I'm dating myself) that the govt decided to bury the nuclear waste at the Hanford facility as a temporary measure, because they figured that technology would come up with a better solution in the future. That was, what, 60-70 years ago, and we are still talking about burying nuclear waste as the only viable alternative?

A geologically-active planet coupled with an increasingly unstable world would seem to make underground storage and long-term security of the site a not-so-good bet.

[Buzz Clik]

50. The current options are awful.

We have spent fuel rods laying in pools of water behind a locked fence. Tanks of screamingly radioactive material leaking into the soil (we yanked all the leaking underground petroleum tank out of the ground 10 years ago).

Sure, let's have Chu think out of the box, but let's have a solution on the table in 2 years.

[acmavm]

19. Stick it in the basement of one of his houses. I'm sure he won't

mind sitting on the stuff.

[Pavulon]

21. Short of Jeebus power there is NO EXISTING

technology that can generate 400MW sustained. Cant idle industry when no wind blows. Solar is not there yet.

So short of miracle power you have nuclear or coal.

France had this issue, they just picked a town and made the call.

[MadHound]

24. So I suppose you're discounting the power of a smart grid

That can pull power in from hundreds of miles away eh? Or how about tidal power or geo thermal.

Your attempt to make this argument into a nuclear vs. coal argument is utterly false, sorry. With a smart grid we can easily direct power from where it's being produced to where it's need in the blink of an eye, why the hell do you think that Obama is pushing a smart grid?

[Pavulon]

85. time for the holy hand grenade

none of those technologies currently produce enough power to energize a manufacturing plant drawing 50Mw. Never mind an smelting operation demanding hundreds of Mw.

A smart grid is a great way to move energy generated by an Westinghouse AP1000 grid around for maintenance and demand out of line with projection. Heat waves, cold snaps, and such.

All the bird choppers and imaginary technology you listed will not cover a socal heat wave.

Time to smell the coffee.

[MadHound]

89. Argue your limitations, and guess what, they're yours

Sorry, but experts from around the world, including the DOE among others have stated time and again that the US has enough potential wind energy to meet all of our electrical needs for the forseeable future. Nuclear isn't needed or necessary.

Hell, I can cool your SoCal house right now, and all the energy you'll need is enough to run a decent size squirrel fan. Check out Earth-Air tubes

You need to start thinking outside the box instead of arguing your limitations.

[Pavulon]

90. Cold fusion is the way to go, almost there

nuclear works well. It has zero carbon footprint. Pays people very well and did I say actually works right now. So china is busy buying up Westinghouse AP1000's. I guess they are just dumbasses and missed out on the bird chopping revolution.

Again, industry and large populations require massive power. You can wreck thousands of acres with windmills in a distributed transmission grid or take 30 acres and generate much more power. 1200MWe vs 2MWe per turbine. Lots of bird choppers and ruined views for a happy warm feeling.

[MadHound]

91. If nuclear is so safe, why does every private insurance company refuse to touch it?

Nuclear works well, except for the occasional Chernobyl type disaster, oh and all that waste. Pays people well, well better than some professions, worse than many others. You're not going to get rich working a nuclear plant, but you won't go hungry either.

Oh, and China is installing many more wind turbines and solar panels than nuclear plants.

As far as carbon footprint, I suppose that you're not country the carbon released in mining, processing, transporting the fuel and waste.

Oh, and while you can establish a nuke plant on thirty acres of ground, you can establish enough wind turbines on 120 acres of land to match that nuke figure, oh and graze livestock on it too.

As far as your reference to "birdchoppers" you're channeling the remarks of freepers from a dozen years ago. Due to improvements in technology, lowered tip speeds and better placement, wind turbines kill much fewer birds than cell phone towers and high rises.

Your arguments are outdated, I suggest that you go do some research before you go opening your mouth and embarrassing yourself again.

[Pavulon]

93. 600 Turbines feeding a grid that is non existant

or technology that has been used by the us navy for decades. How many hours of operations do you think they have on reactors? Reactor technology exists to breed fuel. 6 years of operations create enough fuel for another reactor. Sure it uses PU but it is not like we have a shortage of that on hand.

Of course they install more turbines, because you have to have hundreds to one for the same output.

None of this turbine infastructure exists right now. It is all fairy tale, there is no mechanism to stand it up in any useful time. You are talking about a decentralized grid, rather than the current system that relies on central generation points. Maintenance functions of a decentralized system tend to be simpler, right?

oh yeah, you're fucked if the wind is not blowing. Just cancel that shift until it picks back up. Cradle to grave wind turbines will require plenty of carbon outlay. They don't miracle themselves into production.

The government would be responsible for any event involving a nuclear reactor failing in a way that releases radiation.

There has not been one death from civilian reactors in the united states.

As for my mouth, my power rate a Kw/h is 7c. From a nuclear reactor. That is a fraction of what any other technology can provide now. Maybe coal can match it..

Jack around and waste money on pipe dream technology, it is a boondoggle and we can just spend the money again on something that actually works after the silly shit fails.

[MadHound]

99. Frankly at this point the nuclear infrastructure doesn't exist either

Every single reactor in this country is at least thirty years old, most of them much older than that. Reactors have a life of thirty five to forty five years, so we're basically going to have to be starting from scratch again to rebuild our nuclear infrastructure. How long does it take to build a nuclear reactor? About ten years. How long does it take to build an equivalent amount of wind turbines? About two years. Hmm, which can get online faster? Oh, and you can get wind turbines in 3 and 5 MW sizes now, meaning fewer wind turbines.

As far as no wind blowing, you're correct. But the solution for that is to simply bring in power from a couple of hundred miles away, where the wind is blowing or the sun is shining.

You disclaimer concerning deaths and injury is very meticulously worded, very much like a lawyer. Of course I know why, you don't want to include all those deaths from cancer caused by release of radioactive material(see TMI for examples)

Tell you what, I'll accept nuclear when the majority of private insurance companies decide to start insuring reactors. Oh, but wait, they'll never do that. Wonder why:think:

[Pavulon]

103. Prove one tmi case, just one

and you win. There are none that can be attributed to tmi. radon yep, tmi radiation no. So replace the old reactors with new one. The grid is already there. Or make up some pie in sky bullshit technology that on its grandest scale cant equal one reactor.

It does not take that long for a sub to leave groton. The reactor process is slowed by red tape. Not the productive kind, the kind that wastes time.

30 years per reactor, how long do turbines last? not that long.

EDIT: terrible spelling

[blue97keet]

32. Use it to dispose of Wall Street's "toxic assets"

[Buzz Clik]

33. Not In My Back Yard, thank you very much!

[jmowreader]

36. We've joked about this for a while, but...

I wonder what the geologic stability of the Prairie Chapel Ranch is like?

Consider: It's on 2500 acres in the middle of nowhere. There's a 10,000 square foot home that contains a boardroom--no shit, Dubya had a boardroom built in his house--that could be easily converted for use as a command center. There are plenty of outbuildings to store the various machines you'll need for a high-level waste dump. I-35 is fairly close, so you could truck the waste in. It's more centralized than Nevada is. Plus, Bush needs the money to build his propaganda museum cum conservatism advancement institute, and the sale of the Pig Farm would bring him enough to make the nut.

[hunter]

37. Nuclear waste is boring. Properly stored it goes nowhere, it does nothing.

Chu is making sense. Yucca Mountain was a boondoggle from the start.

nuclear waste stored on site

Eventually we'll probably want to recycle the stuff, but storing nuclear waste on site isn't a terrible plan. It remains protected within the security perimeter of the nuclear power plant and it stays off the roads, railroads, and waterways. Even if it never gets recycled it becomes less toxic over time, very much unlike many other forms of industrial waste (for example coal power plant scrubber wastes...) which have a "half life" of forever.

[Buzz Clik]

60. LOL! Are you kidding?

We treat low level rad waste with far more repect than the trash cans you posted.

[hunter]

64. No. I'm not kidding.

Those are bars of dry metallic fuel in a very sturdy container. Bars of nuclear fuel are not going to leap out and bite you. They just sit there doing nothing. You could leave them there a hundred years and they'd still be sitting there, doing nothing.

Dogs injure and kill more people than nuclear waste. But if you really want to play with the deadly stuff, try cars or coal.

[Buzz Clik]

65. "Dogs injure and kill more people than nuclear waste." Holy shit.

That's all. Just holy shit.

[hunter]

71. Fossil fuels have already killed the ecosystem this civilization inherited.

Especially coal.

How far down that road do we want to travel? Until the oceans are acidic and the deeper waters anaerobic? Until the last coral reefs die? Until the ice melts, the coastal cities drown, and the most common causes of human death are starvation, disease, and war? Until the oceans start burping up sulfurous gasses that make the atmosphere unfit for most every species of plant or animal we ever knew?

Our descendent's won't hate us for using nuclear power. They'll curse us to their early graves for burning coal and other fossil fuels -- if they remember what killed the world at all.

Nature shrugs off nuclear waste in a single tick of the geological clock. The other far deadlier horrors we have already inflicted upon this biosphere by our use of fossil fuels will linger much longer.

Holy shit.

[Buzz Clik]

75. "the ecosystem" is dead? Are you speaking from the grave?

Hysterical arguments are useless on both sides of the issue.

We have seen far higher CO₂ levels with thriving ecosystems. I'm no global warmning denier, but even the most shrill prognosticators in the scientific community are not calling for the death of the earth.

I particularly like this quote of yours: "Nature shrugs off nuclear waste in a single tick of the geological clock." Consider that the half-life of the nuclides in the waste can be over 500,000 years; agreed -- that's a tick of the geologic clock. Are you saying that the insult that humans will invoke on this planet from fossil fuels will last more than 500,000 years? I suggest you take a look at the estimates of historical CO₂ levels dating back that far (and beyond), and convince me that the current trends will "kill the world."

[hunter]

88. The ecosystem we inherited is gone.

It's not coming back. Nothing's ever going to be the way it was. I've seen too much of the natural environment I grew up in lost already, and I'm not an old man. We are witnessing a planet wide mass extinction event caused by human activity and population growth.

The "half life" of many non-nuclear sorts of toxic industrial waste is forever so the half life of nuclear waste is not a good measure of its overall toxicity except in the case of short lived, highly radioactive elements. After a few hundred years those elements decay, and the overall radioactivity (if not the toxicity) of the used fuel approaches that of the material it was refined from.

What damage was done by leaded gasoline? The half life of this lead is essentially forever. Where did it go? What about mercury released by burning coal? What about all the toxic chemicals like PCBs, DDT, etc., etc., etc....?

What's the half life of the carcinogenic particles in diesel fuel, or the tread that wears away on your tires? A certain number of people exposed to these particles do get cancer. What's "half life" got to do with it?

Yes, nuclear power plants do produce toxic waste, but it is manageable, especially compared to industries and activities we pay little attention to. In every way a nuclear plant is preferable to a coal plant in terms of the toxic waste produced, in terms of the land destroyed, and in terms of the greenhouse gasses produced. What does "half life" matter? What's the half life of all the uranium and thorium released into the environment by burning coal? Where do those toxins end up?

But that's all negligible in comparison to our biggest environmental problem...

The rapid increase in the human population makes all other environmental problems moot. If we cannot control our own population we will devour the planet like locusts, and eventually our population will collapse by very unpleasant natural processes. We're not special, we're not the center of the universe, God is not going to pull our asses out of the fire, and human populations can collapse in exactly the same way that any other overextended population collapses.

I used to do a fair amount of anti-nuclear activism more than twenty years ago, but all things considered the world is a dirtier and unhealthier place for any "success" I had.

http://journals.democraticunderground.com/hunter/34

[MadHound]

83. Are you truly this ignorant of the dangers of nuclear waste?

You think coal wastes last "forever" try the ranges for nuclear waste, which start at tens of thousands of years and go up to a million or more. Hello, McFly!

On site storage is one of the least attractive options, to vulnerable to the elements, disasters, attacks. Oh, and those containers start to leak over time. In fact some already have.

The only true solution to this is to stop producing nuclear waste, which is completely possible, we don't need nuclear to power our country.

[hunter]

92. No, not ignorance. But no irrational fear either.

Nuclear waste is pretty far down the list of damages done by pollutants we spew into the environment, the very worst of which are greenhouse gasses like carbon dioxide. Global warming and climate change will likely end human population growth, and even reverse it by killing billions of people.

It's one thing to maybe get cancer from nuclear power industry waste, and it's quite another to starve or die in a war over food or land.

Compare any of those nuclear waste leaks you are talking about to the environmental damage done by the coal industry:

toxic coal waste containment failure,
http://www.coal-is-dirty.com/not-exactly-clean-coalcoal-ash-slurry-pond-bursts-tennessee

I don't tend to worry about a few stray atoms of tritium or other radioactive elements released in the generation of nuclear power when there's a thick stew of other man-made carcinogens and toxins I breathe every day that are altogether much, much worse for me.

A rational society would outlaw coal power plants. One way of doing this would be to replace coal plants with nuclear power plants. Ideally we could slow down society enough that we didn't need any fossil fuel or nuclear power plants, but the structural changes this would require of our society and economy preclude that within any reasonable time period.

We could, however replace every last coal power plant with nuclear plants in less than twenty years. Myself, I'd rather get rid of automobiles and most of the trappings of our consumer-industrial society in a similar time period, but I don't see how that's going to happen. People are going to hold tight to their cars, air conditioners, refrigerators, and other "modern" conveniences. Given that, I find nuclear power a very reasonable and responsible alternative to fossil fuels.

[Pavulon]

95. Name ONE incident in the US

that involves nuclear waste harming someone who is not directly handling it. I place a caveat on handling because if you fuck up and kill yourself on the job falling off a wind turbine or exposing yourself to radiation ends the same. Death.

Name some random person impacted by nuclear waste here.

[Renew Deal]

38. That's why McCain lost Nevada

What's the point of exanding nuclear if we can't deal with the waste?

[Gregorian]

43. Regardless of right or wrong, at least we're discussing energy.

Finally.

The real issue is that we are using it.

[CreekDog]

44. Nevada shouldn't be the US dumping ground for nuclear waste

:applause:

[NutmegYankee]

98. It should be Utah!

[poverlay]

46. Your backyard looks equally "adequate". Just because the natives of the area are poor doesn't give

us a right to dump toxic poison in their homes.

Yes something needs to be done about the situation, but dumping it on someone who had nothing to do with its creation in the first place is inhumane to say the least.

[MGKrebs]

47. I can't believe we've already spent $13 BILLION studying this.

[alarimer]

56. Well if Murkowski likes nuclear waste so much, let's put it in Alaska.

Or Arizona. Let's see what kind of tune they sing then.

[alarimer]

57. Much of the danger is in transporting it.

So, I think, for now, leave it where it is.

[Buzz Clik]

59. 100% safe methods of transport have been developed.

Leaving this incredibly dangerous waste in place is inviting problems.

[wordpix]

80. BS about safe transport but I agree it's dangerous to leave it in holding ponds

We all know how well our infrastructure is kept up. :sarcasm:

[spoony]

101. Elaborate on "BS about safe transport"

If you are able.

[PuppyBismark]

61. New England Granite Mountains are the best US Site

This has been studied for many years. Back in the 1970's and 1980's DOE was looking for the location for Nuclear wast storage. The best place they found with the least earth quake history is the granite mountains in New England. However, politics being what it is, no one had the balls to suggest it. We need to solve this problem and long term storage is a viable options for now, but as was mentioned above, "not in my back yard."

:nuke: :nuke:

We are putting our head in the sand now and need to start building new power plants to replace all the coal power plants that are heating up the planet.

[Nevernose]

70. In fact, 3 good sites were found and proposed: Vermont, TX, and CA

All three of which were considered at the time (and still today) as better options than Yucca Mountain. But New England, West Texas, and California all had more congressional pull in the 80s, which is why they passed the "Screw Nevada" Bill in '87.

Yucca wasn't chosen based on any kind of scientific method, it was based on the political bullying of larger states.

[PuppyBismark]

72. Texas was a salt dome under the Southwest aquifer

The Texas site is in Hereford TX, one of those towns you can smell 30 minutes before you get there. However, the salt dome where the waste was to be stored is below the Southwest aquifer, the source of water for many states in the region as well as the Colorado River. Again, all the scientists wanted New England, but what do they know? :sarcasm:

[Buzz Clik]

77. I have no idea where you get your facts.

The final sites on the table did not include California or Vermont: they were the Hanford basalt in eastern Washington, the west Texas salt dome, and Yucca Mountain. That was nearly 30 years ago. Texas fell out for reasons already given on this thread, Hanford fell out due to long-term, deep seismic activity that result in fissures in the rock, and Yucca was the last standing.

And, yes, this was the result of years of scientifitic study.

[Nevernose]

87. I stand partially corrected

The last sites in discussion were, indeed, Hanford and Texas.

This does not change the point of my argument, however: Yucca was chosen for political reasons rather than scientific ones -- hence the "Screw Nevada" bill (among others), which limited all scientific studies to Yucca Mountain. There are probably better options out there. We won't know, though, because Reagan and his congress screwed over Nevada for political reasons.

Note also that I'm not an anti-nuke person. I'm more of a "safe storage" person. Yucca has been shown, over and over again, to simply be unsafe.

[Buzz Clik]

76. That's an absolutely fascinating claim.

I was part of a team (and there were many teams) studying this problem in the early 1980s. Three geologic locales were on the table; none were east of the Mississippi.

Can you provide any sort of documentation that shows that New England Granite Mountains are the safest site for long-term storage of high level rad waste?

[PuppyBismark]

78. New England Never Made the Final Three Because DOE would not Approve it

I worked for the Prime Contractor on the DOE project. It was a frequent subject of discussion about how DOE did not have the balls to suggest any location in New England. Politically, it would have never sold. From a cost perspective, it would have also been the lease expensive.

[Buzz Clik]

84. What year was this?

[Skwmom]

62. McCain is an idiot. What assurance would storing waste

at Yucca Mountain provide?

We would truly be screwed if that idiot had won.

[wordpix]

79. and for those nuke advocates out there, read this

CL&P in CT gives us electricity based mostly on nuclear. I just had ANOTHER rate increase from CL&P in CT, my THIRD rate increase in ONE YEAR. This on top of many previous increases in the previous few years. Nuke power is supposed to be CHEAP. Yeah, right. See my electric bill and you'll know how cheap it is. NOT.

And it appears the CT Legislature is in the pockets of CL&P, based on their approval of these rate increases.

[Pavulon]

86. Welcome to the NE. How do you think all the fairfield

area infastructure gets paid? CT has massive taxes and is expensive to live in. It just is. Our nuke plant is happily churning out power at around 7c a kw/h.

It is cheaper and more realistic than a network of bird choppers.

[hunter]

96. Oh bother.

Where I live in California we get less than 1% of our electricity from coal and pay 26 to 44 cents per kilowatt hour over baseline, and 11 to 13 cents for baseline use and just past it. The baseline turns out to be rather low for people who are used to cheap coal generated electricity. The "average" resident here pays 18 cents a kilowatt hour.

You accept the use of coal to generate electricity, or you don't.

[NutmegYankee]

97. CL&P is also the middle man having fun fucking us around.

It's isn't Millstone, it's the deregulation backers fucking over the state they claim is the wealthiest in the nation. Since I live in the Swamp Yankee lands of Southeast CT, that wealth is imaginary.

[spoony]

102. Lol, so that has nothing to do with a corporation

screwing consumers? (Maybe that never happens where you live!) It's directly necessary as a result of the power supply being nuclear? You sure about that?

[bitchkitty]

94. A dramatically new direction - love the sound of those words. n/t