5 ms·

A bit tangential, but this week I discovered an interesting tidbit about nuclear waste. We keep hearing that nuclear waste is an intractable problem, that the

A bit tangential, but this week I discovered an interesting tidbit about nuclear waste. We keep hearing that nuclear waste is an intractable problem, that the Yucca Mountain repository could never be approved, and there is no alternative, etc. What I learned this week is that in the US (and worldwide) more waste was produced by weapons programs than by the civilian reactors. Roughly speaking the civilian reactors have produced about 120k tons of spent fuel in the US. Weapons programs created 100 million gallons of waste [1], which is in liquid form. I can't find the density, but I doubt is lower than that of water, and most likely it is much higher (Uranium is an extremely dense metal). In any case, at a minimum this is 380k tons, which dwarfs the waste from civilian sources. All this waste was or will be stored at a facility similar to the one envisioned for Yucca Mountain, called WIPP (Waste Isolation Pilot Plant) [2], located in the desert in New Mexico. By a law passed by Congress, only waste from the weapons programs is eligible to be stored there, but there's no technological reason to not add civilian waste to the program. WIPP is an underground long term storage facility in a massive salt mine. The video in link [2] is quite informative. My personal conclusion is that nuclear waste disposal is a solved problem, both from the technological point of view and the political one. [1] https://www.epa.gov/radtown/nuclear-weapons-production-waste https://www.epa.gov/radtown/nuclear-weapons-production-waste [2] https://www.wipp.energy.gov/ https://www.wipp.energy.gov/

Schroedingersat 4y ago
...SNF and waste are not the same thing. This is incoherent.
- credit_guy 4y ago
  Why do you think they are not the same thing? Waste is more than spent nuclear fuel, that is true. But the long-lived waste that people worry about is either spent nuclear fuel, or processed spent nuclear fuel. Nuclear weapons are made with Plutonium-239, which is created by running a regular reactor that burns U-235 and U-238. U-238 can capture one neutron and become Pu-239, but that can capture one more neutron and become Pu-240, which is not good for weapons. So, to produce weapons-grade Pu-239 you need to run a reactor for very little (in technical terms the burnup is ultra low), take the Uranium rods out of the reactor and dissolve the in some chemicals and extract Pu-239 out of that liquid. The remaining liquid is the one that's being disposed at the WIPP facility. What exactly is bothering you in this description?
  - Schroedingersat 4y ago
    Condescendingly describing something I already know isn't helping your point. Nor is continuing to pretend tritated water somehow magically only counts as waste when in a weapons facility. And the exact same thing happening in mox facilities (but at far greater volume) doesn't count why?
    - credit_guy 4y ago
      I don't count tritiated water as waste, and I don't think anyone does. Not sure what your point is.
      - Schroedingersat 4y ago
        You're counting everything including LLW and chemical waste on one side of the equation and only SNF on the other. It's so stupid one would think you're actively trying to discredit sane nuclear proponents by associating them with you.
        credit_guy 4y ago
        Why don't you enlighten us then? You are saying my comparison is not apples and apples. So, in your opinion, if we look at long lived nuclear waste, did the weapons programs produce more such waste than the civilian reactors, or less? Also, I'm saying it would make sense to dispose of the spent nuclear fuel produced by the civilian reactors at the WIPP repository? Are you saying this does not make sense? Why?
        Schroedingersat 4y ago
        You're welcome to prove your initial assertion now that you're admitting how facile the comparison was. You're also now asserting that weapons waste is handled in a perfectly fine way suitable for orders of magnitude more long lived waste in the same breath you imply they're far more irresponsible.
Schroedingersat 4y ago
So a site that is to contain a quantity of transuranics (primarily Pu239 which is the least dangerous long lived transuranic) roughly the same quantity as a single 1GW reactor produces in a couple of decades and a quantity of fission products that such a reactor would produce in 5 years along with some low level and intermediate level waste, cost billions of dollars, and already had a multi-billion dollar whoopsie where they spilled plutonium is somehow supposed to trivially contain hundreds of times as much?
- olejorgenb 4y ago
  So the problem with OPs argument according to you is that (a) the liquid waste is compacted/dehydrated before storage(?) (so the volume comparison does not hold), and (b) is less hazardous (spent fuel is harder to store) and (c) the handling of the waste is likely to result in some leaks. Or is (a) that the extra volume required to safely store spent fuel is larger than for this liquid waste? If it's true that the liquid waste need to be processed before storage, it seems to me to increase the risk of leaks during handling compared to spent fuel which is already concentrated(?)? IIRC spent fuel is already stored as very robust concrete slabs at the power stations. Nitpick: > The cost of the 2014 accident was expected to exceed $2 billion and disrupted other programs in various nuclear-industry sites.[44] On January 9, 2017, the plant was formally reopened after three years of cleanup costing $500 million, which is significantly less than forecasted Interesting: > The source of contamination was later found to be a barrel that exploded on February 14 because contractors at Los Alamos National Laboratory packed it with organic cat litter instead of clay cat litter.
  - Schroedingersat 4y ago
    If it were diluted to the same level it would be trillions of gallons, but this would be a terrible idea. The site is significantly too small because a long term SNF containment hole is about 100x as big as the spent fuel and needs to be separated from the next one for thermal reasons. The site is also woefully unsuited to containing something that dangerous. SNF is also a very small fraction of the intermediate and long lived waste generated by a nuclear plant.

Schroedingersat 4y ago

...SNF and waste are not the same thing. This is incoherent.

credit_guy 4y ago
Why do you think they are not the same thing? Waste is more than spent nuclear fuel, that is true. But the long-lived waste that people worry about is either spent nuclear fuel, or processed spent nuclear fuel. Nuclear weapons are made with Plutonium-239, which is created by running a regular reactor that burns U-235 and U-238. U-238 can capture one neutron and become Pu-239, but that can capture one more neutron and become Pu-240, which is not good for weapons. So, to produce weapons-grade Pu-239 you need to run a reactor for very little (in technical terms the burnup is ultra low), take the Uranium rods out of the reactor and dissolve the in some chemicals and extract Pu-239 out of that liquid. The remaining liquid is the one that's being disposed at the WIPP facility. What exactly is bothering you in this description?
- Schroedingersat 4y ago
  Condescendingly describing something I already know isn't helping your point. Nor is continuing to pretend tritated water somehow magically only counts as waste when in a weapons facility. And the exact same thing happening in mox facilities (but at far greater volume) doesn't count why?
  - credit_guy 4y ago
    I don't count tritiated water as waste, and I don't think anyone does. Not sure what your point is.
    - Schroedingersat 4y ago
      You're counting everything including LLW and chemical waste on one side of the equation and only SNF on the other. It's so stupid one would think you're actively trying to discredit sane nuclear proponents by associating them with you.
      - credit_guy 4y ago
        Why don't you enlighten us then? You are saying my comparison is not apples and apples. So, in your opinion, if we look at long lived nuclear waste, did the weapons programs produce more such waste than the civilian reactors, or less? Also, I'm saying it would make sense to dispose of the spent nuclear fuel produced by the civilian reactors at the WIPP repository? Are you saying this does not make sense? Why?
        Schroedingersat 4y ago
        You're welcome to prove your initial assertion now that you're admitting how facile the comparison was. You're also now asserting that weapons waste is handled in a perfectly fine way suitable for orders of magnitude more long lived waste in the same breath you imply they're far more irresponsible.

Schroedingersat 4y ago

So a site that is to contain a quantity of transuranics (primarily Pu239 which is the least dangerous long lived transuranic) roughly the same quantity as a single 1GW reactor produces in a couple of decades and a quantity of fission products that such a reactor would produce in 5 years along with some low level and intermediate level waste, cost billions of dollars, and already had a multi-billion dollar whoopsie where they spilled plutonium is somehow supposed to trivially contain hundreds of times as much?

olejorgenb 4y ago
So the problem with OPs argument according to you is that (a) the liquid waste is compacted/dehydrated before storage(?) (so the volume comparison does not hold), and (b) is less hazardous (spent fuel is harder to store) and (c) the handling of the waste is likely to result in some leaks. Or is (a) that the extra volume required to safely store spent fuel is larger than for this liquid waste? If it's true that the liquid waste need to be processed before storage, it seems to me to increase the risk of leaks during handling compared to spent fuel which is already concentrated(?)? IIRC spent fuel is already stored as very robust concrete slabs at the power stations. Nitpick: > The cost of the 2014 accident was expected to exceed $2 billion and disrupted other programs in various nuclear-industry sites.[44] On January 9, 2017, the plant was formally reopened after three years of cleanup costing $500 million, which is significantly less than forecasted Interesting: > The source of contamination was later found to be a barrel that exploded on February 14 because contractors at Los Alamos National Laboratory packed it with organic cat litter instead of clay cat litter.
- Schroedingersat 4y ago
  If it were diluted to the same level it would be trillions of gallons, but this would be a terrible idea. The site is significantly too small because a long term SNF containment hole is about 100x as big as the spent fuel and needs to be separated from the next one for thermal reasons. The site is also woefully unsuited to containing something that dangerous. SNF is also a very small fraction of the intermediate and long lived waste generated by a nuclear plant.