I like James Lovelock's take on nuclear waste storage:
"Wild plants and animals do not perceive radiation as dangerous, and any slight reduction it may cause in their lifespans is far less a hazard than is the presence of people and their pets. It is easy to forget that now we are so numerous, almost anything extra we do in the way of farming, forestry and home building is harmful to wildlife and to Gaia. The preference of wildlife for nuclear-waste sites suggests that the best sites for its disposal are the tropical forests and other habitats in need of a reliable guardian against their destruction by hungry farmers and developers."
What nuclear waste sites? According to the article, the only one in use so far is in Finland. Is it attracting wildlife, or is James Lovelock making this up? (I don't know; just asking...)
I don't think Lovelock was referring exclusively to deep geological repositories like in Zion's article, just sites containing nuclear waste or contamination. The Chernobyl Exclusion Zone for instance has famously become something of a wildlife reserve. The excerpt is from "The Revenge of Gaia" if you're interested.
France has one at Orano la Hague, also the USA at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) in New Mexico [but that one's reserved for nuclear weapons waste], also I believe Norway has one (KBNS-3) at Forsmark.
The Google AI says, "Falls are the second leading cause of unintentional injury deaths worldwide, killing an estimated 684,000 people each year." It also says, "The Chernobyl accident in 1986 resulted in 28 direct deaths, 19 deaths not entirely related to the accident, and 15 children who died from thyroid cancer," and "The Fukushima Daiichi accident in 2011 resulted in no casualties," and "The Windscale fire in 1957 resulted in over 100 fatalities." So if you believe Google, FALLS kill over 4000 times more people every year than all the reactor accidents in history. The LNT model governing radiation safety policies and the ALARA policy crippling the nuclear power industry are based on the premise that even one death due to radiation from a reactor accident would be more horrible than the 8 million deaths a year from fossil fuel pollution alone. Whaaaat??
If you walk down concrete steps without a railing, even if you wear a crash helmet, I can state confidently that you are insanely inconsistent if you worry about leaks from stored fuel rods from reactors. Same if you ever get behind the wheel of a car, or go swimming, or use medicine of any kind, or eat or drink anything unsterile, or... basically, live in the world.
How did the Auntie Nukes manage to create this insanity? Can't people do arithmetic? Can't people even tell the difference between a LITTLE and a LOT?
I hate to tell you, folks, but none of us is getting out of this alive. Your probability of dying is 1. You have a limited opportunity to influence what you die OF, and WHEN; but in the meantime you might want to think about how you want to spend the rest of your life.
Yes, I loved that post! How can we ensure that more people read it? It's in my course references database at https://jick.net/nukes/nukdb/ but only a few folks ever look there.
I agree that even if you can make a technical case against a repository it is genuinely favourable for public acceptance. Very interesting to hear the comparison to other underground wastes as well
My understanding of Yucca based on some critics is that it is both above the water table and has water moving through it. While the proposed worst case scenario is a few thousand cancers in a downhill area many thousands of years into the future, this does create a significant technical issue where to satisfy regulators there are major costs for additional engineered barriers. The WIPP site may cost something like $70 billion less
Another option that seems unexpectedly popular is on site storage in drilled horizontal wells below the water table. Avoiding public concerns about transportation and moving nuclear waste from sites of generation to the host state seem to be public perception winners and the cost may be much less again
Just a thought..... I have presentation on this you are welcome to snarf bits of, plagiarise, etc. Done for lay engineers of the local IET membership. If you need explanation, call me. 01932 772731.
I can send the PPT, or you can probably download it from my Dropbox. ... I have all the images separate in a folder if useful.
The one issue I didn't see is what exactly is put in the repository.
Finland will encapsulate the entire spent fuel and bury it, with the heavy, unfissioned, long lived actinide isotopes. Mostly Alpha emitters. Other approaches separate the U238 from the fission products and only bury the fission products, as has been done at Sellafield - but discontinued because of the costs and the low cost of "clean" new 5% enriched Uranium. There is also the future possibility that the entire spent fuel can be fully consumed/fissioned in future Fast reactors, as Russia plans, and has had a fast reactor pilot running on the grid for several years. The really, really good news about this is the fuel is almost free AND the long lived Plutonium actinides in the spent fuel that are even Atomic Weights so don't fission in slow/thermal fission reactors are fissioned in fast reactors, so the there are no plutonium isotopes left with very long half lives. There is slide on this in the PPT.
Do you know that French geologists have found the remains of a natural underground reactor that existed millions of years ago in Africa, at Oklo. There have probaly been others where the conditions were right.
They were looking for Uranium but when they assayed it the 235 was much lower tha expected and needed, , because it had fissioned in nature. They looked and found the long lived fission products. Natural nuclear waste in the water table, etc....
nb: This far back in time the U-235 was still at 5% of the whole, so criticality was possible with enough natural water in the affected strata as a moderator, is the theory.
U-235 is a lower percentage in nature now because it has a shorter half life than U-238. Also a slide.
Hope that is interesting... useful even.....
PS Are you really in SF now? I note the address....
PPS LTN is junk science. Political science. Nothing to do with what we now know. As the stand off between the US Health Physics Association, who know the modern radiobiological science, and the NRC who don't but have jobs sinecured jobs protected by out of date laws made in complete ignorance of how cancer happens, so just a guess. A wrong guess on the facts discovered later.
I worked in that field for 12 years, when we didn't know the celular biology and immune response science, and the uncertainty of the science and the dangers of regulating in ignorance were strongly debated then. Not now, even when we know much more, debate is effectively banned.
The same science is settled and cannot be questioned. Because it's run by inadequate technicians with phoney baloney jobs, budgets and power over people. Change to reduce this extreme approach to something less onerous and more science based as we now understand it is strongly resisted. It's not about the science any more, it's a legacy craft that denies the current science.
The most stable radioactive waste storage is salt mines (salt basins) because of the low water content and dense material formation. The Permian basin in SW US is a perfect site and we have the WIPP radioactive storage site there. Yucca is one of the worst possible sites due to underground water flow above the proposed storage area. Technical knowledge has a hard time penetrating politics sometimes. Long term storage to allow radioactive decay is needed, even though casks will do for now, because the lowest waste output breeder fuel cycles, ones that convert the entire mined fuel from fertile to fissile and continue to convert fission products developed in the reactors into fissile isotopes for burning, and extract fission products for downstream domains such as medical -- eventually burn all material that can be made fissile and convert it to highly radioactive non fissionable isotopes and low level radioactive non fissionable materials. the former need long term isolation in order to decay and as fission becomes scalable/affordable and becomes the main source of new energy capacity - the football fields of high level waste will multiply. long term engineering is needed, something like an engineering paradigm of 'design for intensity and safety' is the most effective ecosystem conservation, because it designs in the intense production through the lifecycle of services and lifestyles.
Maybe the proposed site in Nevada could be re-introduced now that nuclear is much more in favor than it was a couple decades ago.
You barely mentioned the re-use of spent fuel, but it's an important part of the equation, isn't it? Because re-use reduces the amount of waste by as much as 10 times.
Can you give us an update on the progress of SMRs and GenIV nuclear, Fast reactors, that will re-use spent fuel, as to when they will be approved for actual commercial operation, rather than continual development and testing?
Yes, I read your earlier post on it last year - good job. But a little repetition doesn’t hurt - people need to hear something again and again before they will change their minds.
I like James Lovelock's take on nuclear waste storage:
"Wild plants and animals do not perceive radiation as dangerous, and any slight reduction it may cause in their lifespans is far less a hazard than is the presence of people and their pets. It is easy to forget that now we are so numerous, almost anything extra we do in the way of farming, forestry and home building is harmful to wildlife and to Gaia. The preference of wildlife for nuclear-waste sites suggests that the best sites for its disposal are the tropical forests and other habitats in need of a reliable guardian against their destruction by hungry farmers and developers."
Love that - thanks for sharing!
What nuclear waste sites? According to the article, the only one in use so far is in Finland. Is it attracting wildlife, or is James Lovelock making this up? (I don't know; just asking...)
I don't think Lovelock was referring exclusively to deep geological repositories like in Zion's article, just sites containing nuclear waste or contamination. The Chernobyl Exclusion Zone for instance has famously become something of a wildlife reserve. The excerpt is from "The Revenge of Gaia" if you're interested.
Yes, I’ve read that the Chernobyl area is recovering quite well, much to everyones’ surprise.
France has one at Orano la Hague, also the USA at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) in New Mexico [but that one's reserved for nuclear weapons waste], also I believe Norway has one (KBNS-3) at Forsmark.
The Google AI says, "Falls are the second leading cause of unintentional injury deaths worldwide, killing an estimated 684,000 people each year." It also says, "The Chernobyl accident in 1986 resulted in 28 direct deaths, 19 deaths not entirely related to the accident, and 15 children who died from thyroid cancer," and "The Fukushima Daiichi accident in 2011 resulted in no casualties," and "The Windscale fire in 1957 resulted in over 100 fatalities." So if you believe Google, FALLS kill over 4000 times more people every year than all the reactor accidents in history. The LNT model governing radiation safety policies and the ALARA policy crippling the nuclear power industry are based on the premise that even one death due to radiation from a reactor accident would be more horrible than the 8 million deaths a year from fossil fuel pollution alone. Whaaaat??
If you walk down concrete steps without a railing, even if you wear a crash helmet, I can state confidently that you are insanely inconsistent if you worry about leaks from stored fuel rods from reactors. Same if you ever get behind the wheel of a car, or go swimming, or use medicine of any kind, or eat or drink anything unsterile, or... basically, live in the world.
How did the Auntie Nukes manage to create this insanity? Can't people do arithmetic? Can't people even tell the difference between a LITTLE and a LOT?
I hate to tell you, folks, but none of us is getting out of this alive. Your probability of dying is 1. You have a limited opportunity to influence what you die OF, and WHEN; but in the meantime you might want to think about how you want to spend the rest of your life.
Excellent points Jess. People are bad at risk assessment and tend to go with "gut" feelings informed by years of fearmongering. I wrote this post on viewing risks in context: https://zionlights.substack.com/p/should-we-be-afraid-of-nuclear-meltdowns
Yes, I loved that post! How can we ensure that more people read it? It's in my course references database at https://jick.net/nukes/nukdb/ but only a few folks ever look there.
Thanks for including it! If you think of anyone else who might benefit from reading it please share it with them
I agree that even if you can make a technical case against a repository it is genuinely favourable for public acceptance. Very interesting to hear the comparison to other underground wastes as well
My understanding of Yucca based on some critics is that it is both above the water table and has water moving through it. While the proposed worst case scenario is a few thousand cancers in a downhill area many thousands of years into the future, this does create a significant technical issue where to satisfy regulators there are major costs for additional engineered barriers. The WIPP site may cost something like $70 billion less
Another option that seems unexpectedly popular is on site storage in drilled horizontal wells below the water table. Avoiding public concerns about transportation and moving nuclear waste from sites of generation to the host state seem to be public perception winners and the cost may be much less again
Once you accept the science of observed health effects of radiation, the waste problem becomes simple. This post elaborates Jack Devanney's ideas.
https://hargraves.substack.com/p/benign-nuclear-for-a-prosperous-temperate
Canada putting nuclear waste into Lake Woebegone.
Does that mean there is a safe disposal site for NPR?
I thought it was only 5% spent, why then dispose permanently?
Just a thought..... I have presentation on this you are welcome to snarf bits of, plagiarise, etc. Done for lay engineers of the local IET membership. If you need explanation, call me. 01932 772731.
I can send the PPT, or you can probably download it from my Dropbox. ... I have all the images separate in a folder if useful.
https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/dinne49wn1b0fdl9zm6qf/Nuclear-Waste.pptx?rlkey=ain4nhk9h36720j3cpzur5uai&dl=0
The one issue I didn't see is what exactly is put in the repository.
Finland will encapsulate the entire spent fuel and bury it, with the heavy, unfissioned, long lived actinide isotopes. Mostly Alpha emitters. Other approaches separate the U238 from the fission products and only bury the fission products, as has been done at Sellafield - but discontinued because of the costs and the low cost of "clean" new 5% enriched Uranium. There is also the future possibility that the entire spent fuel can be fully consumed/fissioned in future Fast reactors, as Russia plans, and has had a fast reactor pilot running on the grid for several years. The really, really good news about this is the fuel is almost free AND the long lived Plutonium actinides in the spent fuel that are even Atomic Weights so don't fission in slow/thermal fission reactors are fissioned in fast reactors, so the there are no plutonium isotopes left with very long half lives. There is slide on this in the PPT.
Do you know that French geologists have found the remains of a natural underground reactor that existed millions of years ago in Africa, at Oklo. There have probaly been others where the conditions were right.
They were looking for Uranium but when they assayed it the 235 was much lower tha expected and needed, , because it had fissioned in nature. They looked and found the long lived fission products. Natural nuclear waste in the water table, etc....
nb: This far back in time the U-235 was still at 5% of the whole, so criticality was possible with enough natural water in the affected strata as a moderator, is the theory.
U-235 is a lower percentage in nature now because it has a shorter half life than U-238. Also a slide.
Hope that is interesting... useful even.....
PS Are you really in SF now? I note the address....
PPS LTN is junk science. Political science. Nothing to do with what we now know. As the stand off between the US Health Physics Association, who know the modern radiobiological science, and the NRC who don't but have jobs sinecured jobs protected by out of date laws made in complete ignorance of how cancer happens, so just a guess. A wrong guess on the facts discovered later.
I worked in that field for 12 years, when we didn't know the celular biology and immune response science, and the uncertainty of the science and the dangers of regulating in ignorance were strongly debated then. Not now, even when we know much more, debate is effectively banned.
The same science is settled and cannot be questioned. Because it's run by inadequate technicians with phoney baloney jobs, budgets and power over people. Change to reduce this extreme approach to something less onerous and more science based as we now understand it is strongly resisted. It's not about the science any more, it's a legacy craft that denies the current science.
The most stable radioactive waste storage is salt mines (salt basins) because of the low water content and dense material formation. The Permian basin in SW US is a perfect site and we have the WIPP radioactive storage site there. Yucca is one of the worst possible sites due to underground water flow above the proposed storage area. Technical knowledge has a hard time penetrating politics sometimes. Long term storage to allow radioactive decay is needed, even though casks will do for now, because the lowest waste output breeder fuel cycles, ones that convert the entire mined fuel from fertile to fissile and continue to convert fission products developed in the reactors into fissile isotopes for burning, and extract fission products for downstream domains such as medical -- eventually burn all material that can be made fissile and convert it to highly radioactive non fissionable isotopes and low level radioactive non fissionable materials. the former need long term isolation in order to decay and as fission becomes scalable/affordable and becomes the main source of new energy capacity - the football fields of high level waste will multiply. long term engineering is needed, something like an engineering paradigm of 'design for intensity and safety' is the most effective ecosystem conservation, because it designs in the intense production through the lifecycle of services and lifestyles.
Maybe the proposed site in Nevada could be re-introduced now that nuclear is much more in favor than it was a couple decades ago.
You barely mentioned the re-use of spent fuel, but it's an important part of the equation, isn't it? Because re-use reduces the amount of waste by as much as 10 times.
Can you give us an update on the progress of SMRs and GenIV nuclear, Fast reactors, that will re-use spent fuel, as to when they will be approved for actual commercial operation, rather than continual development and testing?
I've already written a long post on recycling nuclear waste, which is linked to in this post as well. https://zionlights.substack.com/p/why-we-should-recycle-nuclear-waste
I'll add advanced nuclear to the list of articles!
Yes, I read your earlier post on it last year - good job. But a little repetition doesn’t hurt - people need to hear something again and again before they will change their minds.