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Greenpeace is fighting nuclear waste recycling. For me, it is a proof that they are manipulated. Disclaimer: I have worked at "La Hague France" between 1994 an

by reacweb 10y ago

Greenpeace is fighting nuclear waste recycling. For me, it is a proof that they are manipulated. Disclaimer: I have worked at "La Hague France" between 1994 and 1999.

swerner 10y ago
Nuclear waste "recycling" is a bit of a misnomer. If you read the article, the fuel rods, and that is the only part that is being "recycled", is just a small part of the contaminated material that needs to be handled. You're not recycling the reactor rubble, the contaminated water or soil. And reprocessed nuclear fuel is not like recycled glass or aluminum that can be reused an almost infinite number of times - nuclear fission always produces waste products like iodine or cesium, which cannot be turned in to fuel again and need to be disposed of. Even when you leave out the fuel, dismantling a nuclear reactor is a challenge in itself. Even the "safe" thorium and potential fusion reactors leave highly contaminated ruins behind. Read about the THTR-300 if you're interested. The German AVR reactor is also a dirty mess that nobody knows how to clean up, even though no major nuclear incident happened there. When thinking of nuclear waste, most people think of spent fuel rods - plutonium and uranium. Those are easy to handle, they're solids, they're comparably small and you put them into molten glass. But storing an entire contaminated reactor building, that we don't know how to do other than do like Chernobyl and just cast the whole thing in concrete.
- hudibras 10y ago
  >Even when you leave out the fuel, dismantling a nuclear reactor is a challenge in itself. Even the "safe" thorium and potential fusion reactors leave highly contaminated ruins behind. There will be some epic horror stories that will eventually come out about the decommissioning of the USS Enterprise, a 55-year-old ship with eight nuclear reactors.
- restalis 10y ago
  "You're not recycling the reactor rubble, the contaminated water or soil." I wonder why is that, why can't all of it be molten and run through enriching turbines. Is it because of too low of a radioactive mass proportion of said material rendering that economically unfeasible?

by reacweb 10y ago

Greenpeace is fighting nuclear waste recycling. For me, it is a proof that they are manipulated. Disclaimer: I have worked at "La Hague France" between 1994 and 1999.

swerner 10y ago

Nuclear waste "recycling" is a bit of a misnomer. If you read the article, the fuel rods, and that is the only part that is being "recycled", is just a small part of the contaminated material that needs to be handled. You're not recycling the reactor rubble, the contaminated water or soil. And reprocessed nuclear fuel is not like recycled glass or aluminum that can be reused an almost infinite number of times - nuclear fission always produces waste products like iodine or cesium, which cannot be turned in to fuel again and need to be disposed of. Even when you leave out the fuel, dismantling a nuclear reactor is a challenge in itself. Even the "safe" thorium and potential fusion reactors leave highly contaminated ruins behind. Read about the THTR-300 if you're interested. The German AVR reactor is also a dirty mess that nobody knows how to clean up, even though no major nuclear incident happened there. When thinking of nuclear waste, most people think of spent fuel rods - plutonium and uranium. Those are easy to handle, they're solids, they're comparably small and you put them into molten glass. But storing an entire contaminated reactor building, that we don't know how to do other than do like Chernobyl and just cast the whole thing in concrete.

hudibras 10y ago
>Even when you leave out the fuel, dismantling a nuclear reactor is a challenge in itself. Even the "safe" thorium and potential fusion reactors leave highly contaminated ruins behind. There will be some epic horror stories that will eventually come out about the decommissioning of the USS Enterprise, a 55-year-old ship with eight nuclear reactors.
restalis 10y ago
"You're not recycling the reactor rubble, the contaminated water or soil." I wonder why is that, why can't all of it be molten and run through enriching turbines. Is it because of too low of a radioactive mass proportion of said material rendering that economically unfeasible?