9 ms·
A New Specialized Train Is Ready to Haul Nuclear Waste
- bell-cot 2y agoBut with no functioning long-term storage site, it's a Train To Nowhere. Or Train Without a Mission. Or other clever phrases describing a political boondoggle. Idea: Fabricate a bunch of semi-hollow (50% by volume), telephone-pole-sized iron arrows (pointy noses, feathered tails), fill them with radwaste, and dump them in some segment of the Aleutian Trench ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aleutian_Trench https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aleutian_Trench ) where the ocean floor sediments are deep & soft - to maximize penetration when the arrows hit bottom. With some attention to corrosion & leakage issues, the stuff will be down the for lot o' millennia. And whether or not civilization collapses, nobody's going to be accessing it without a deliberate, massive, and difficult-to-conceal effort.
- metadat 2y agoI wish Congress would leave the decision making on such matters to the experts. Politicians have no valid role in this process. Why isn't this farmed out to an appropriate regulatory entity with deep expertise? Akin to the FAA for aeronautical.
- dyauspitr 2y agoThe republicans are actively trying to neuter any agency with expertise and default all these decisions to congress.
- dylan604 2y agoSome are to be sure. Just look at the Project 2025 plans for eliminating NOAA because the talk about climate change
- jojobas 2y agoThe problem is that given enough time, these "expert" bodies become just as politicized and worse, completely unaccountable to the voters.
- FredPret 2y agoThere are strong arguments to be made both for strong technocratic bureaus that make decisions, as well as for direct democracy where the people decide everything directly or through congress. You don’t want to have completely unaccountable bodies ruling society (called the deep state by its enemies) and you don’t want to have zero governing capacity either (what would liberals call this, Galt’s Gulch?) There’s a balance to be struck.
- arrosenberg 2y ago> Why isn't this farmed out to an appropriate regulatory entity with deep expertise? It is, they just also happen to be a major impediment to new Nuclear power in the US. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_Regulatory_Commission https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_Regulatory_Commission
- credit_guy 2y ago> It is, they just also happen to be a major impediment to new Nuclear power in the US. I'm very pro-nuclear, but I'm glad we have the NRC, and I think they are doing a good job. I'm currently reading the book "The Curve of Binding Energy" [1], about the physicist Ted Taylor. It was written in 1973 and the focus was the possibility, even likelihood, that one day a terrorist organization could build a nuclear bomb. This was before the split of the Atomic Energy Commission into the NRC and the Department of Energy. Reading the book is a bit like time travel. You move from today's industry-hostile NRC to the absolute opposite: the AEC was completely industry-captured. The laxity of the controls was terrifying. Of course, the author had no idea that in 6 years we'd have the Three Mile Island incident, but for someone in 2024, TMI now makes perfect sense. Did the NRC become too much of a break for the nuclear expansion. You bet. But I prefer 100 times more to live in a world like we have now than in a world like it was in 1973. We are very lucky that things worse than TMI, Chernobyl and Fukushima didn't happen. [1] https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/54968.The_Curve_Of_Binding_Energy https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/54968.The_Curve_Of_Bindi...
- arrosenberg 2y agoNah, instead atmospheric CO2 is quickly headed to 450ppm. 2-3 meltdowns would be far more manageable (especially considering the non-existent death toll outside the USSR).
- metabagel 2y ago> (especially considering the non-existent death toll outside the USSR) Why would you only look at the death toll outside the USSR? That doesn't seem like the right way to go about risk analysis and management.
- petermcneeley 2y agoIt should be a boat https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mariana_Trench#Possible_nuclear_waste_disposal_site https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mariana_Trench#Possible_nuclea...
- QuiDortDine 2y agoI saw a video on this, honestly just seems like it'd work. And if it doesn't, well, the bottom of the literal sea seems like a good place to put stuff to avoid people stumbling upon it.
- 1970-01-01 2y agoI've always thought piling it up in the middle of Antarctica would be best. Perhaps in another thousand years we can reuse it for some blackhole experiments or something.
- petermcneeley 2y agoIf we are here 1k years from now I am sure we can pick up up from the ocean again. Just like how we look through the trash of the Romans.
- senectus1 2y agothis issue then is, will dumping this stop it stumbling along people... ie we know nothing much about that area... who's to say it wont suddenly turn up on a beach or in fish or plant life after 50 years of being down there...?
- saagarjha 2y agoNot saying we know everything but we generally know of where geologically inactive regions are, and hadal habitats are pretty isolated.
- GeoAtreides 2y ago> who's to say it wont suddenly turn up on a beach or in fish or plant life after 50 years of being down there...? erm, the literal 10 kilometers of water above them? Also Mariana Trench is called a trench because is a trench. A trench 10 km deep.
- nimbius 2y agoto where? texas wont take it and no other state is willing to accept the political fallout for agreeing to it. this is the biggest impediment facing the nuclear power proposal that shows up on HN every other month, and nobody talks about it. plants basically idle nuclear waste on-site. we have no comprehensive recycling or storage policy that isnt routinely usurped or derailed by serious environmental issues. we just run these plants until theyre 60 years over usable life and wait until they turn into a superfund site taxpayers have to clean up.
- xbmcuser 2y agoYeah thats my biggest problem with people promoting nuclear as the end of all problems. The nuclear technology today is not good enough to be able to meet the world needs because of the nuclear waste it produces if they are able to get the tech to where the life of nuclear waste left over is less than 100 years than I think it becomes viable. Now that the prices of solar, wind and batteries have dropped so much the need for nuclear is becoming less and less. Most of the world's population currently lives in the perfect area where charging batteries in the day and using at night can meet all the demand for electricity with solar, wind and batteries alone in summer or winter.
- troupo 2y ago> because of the nuclear waste it produces It produces very little long term nuclear waste whose overall impact is invisible compared to impact of other industries and landfills
- Moldoteck 2y agoWe have the tech to make real waste dangerous for less than 300 years. With this tech about 90+% of existing waste can be reprocessed and reused multiple times. It's not a problem of tech, it's a problem of political will and somewhat of economical feasibility when buying refined uranium isn't that expensive
- erentz 2y agoNuclear waste is tiny. It’s been stored onsite safely for half a century and never killed anyone. Why fix what ain’t broke. Something can’t be used 60 years over usable life. Think about it. What happened is that nuclear plants were given 40 year licenses in the US. After 40 years they applied for extensions. They were studied and it was found they had a lot more life in them. So extensions were granted. Why prematurely turn off a great carbon free generating asset that’s already been paid for. (That’d be peak German brain.)
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- FredPret 2y agoOff topic, but your site - damninteresting.com - really lives up to its name. I’ve been reading it for probably 15 years now
- parpfish 2y agoThis feels like it’s be a plot point for a generic action movie.
- Mistletoe 2y agoAnd we would think how stupid it was and a single point of failure to do it this way.
- Joel_Mckay 2y agoUntil anyone proves 1 facility that doesn't leak radioactive material after 20 years, they can keep that BS in their own fall-out theme park... Fission facilities are just another 1950's loss-leader technology. Nonrenewable fuels should be saved for space/remote missions. The film was ridiculous, but fun: "Broken Arrow" (John Woo, 1996)
- jojobas 2y agoNuclear has been the cheapest on the most important metrics - human lives per installed GW and human lives per produced TW-h.
- Joel_Mckay 2y agoUnless amortized over 30k years... =)
- BenjiWiebe 2y agoDon't you think that 30k years of burning coal would kill more people? I'm not sure I follow you.
- Joel_Mckay 2y agoMy point was there are more sustainable options, than repeating a detrimental pattern of leaving problems for our grandchildren to solve. There is also the folly of assuming centralized distribution grids are economically sustainable in times of scarcity. I remain unconvinced that Goat-carts are not the future for our civilization. =3
- jillesvangurp 2y ago> In the coming decades, the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) will need to transport that material to future storage facilities. No doubt at great cost, none of which is being factored into current nuclear projects or energy pricing. So, this is as unlikely to happen as it has been in the past 8 decades. The size of the problem just keeps on growing every year while we don't lift a finger to address the issues. Long term storage is more of an aspirational thing at this point than a concretely actionable thing. Only a small minority of all nuclear waste ever produced actually sits in long term storage. E.g. the Fins have taken into use an underground facility recently. But most nuclear waste elsewhere sits in temporary storage waiting to eventually be moved. Nobody wants to pay for that. Nobody wants this stuff in their backyard. Nobody really wants to even talk about the cost. Which is of course substantial. Especially people in favor of building more nuclear capacity to add to this problem. Somebody (i.e. future generations of tax payers, for millennia to come) will pay for it. Eventually. Which is convenient because we can pretend things are cheap short term.
- opo 2y ago>> In the coming decades, the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) will need to transport that material to future storage facilities. >No doubt at great cost, none of which is being factored into current nuclear projects or energy pricing. This is not correct: >...Moreover, every commercial nuclear power plant was required to help finance the construction of the federal waste repository. The plants raised funds for this by charging their customers a fee of one one-tenth of a cent per kilowatt hour. Every quarter, money has been transferred from the plant operators into the federal government’s Nuclear Waste Fund (Kacich, 2021). Including interest, electricity consumers have contributed more than $56 billion into that fund, which now generates over $1.5 billion in interest every year (NEI, 2021a; DOE-OIG, 2021). https://crownschool.uchicago.edu/student-life/advocates-forum/our-silent-zombie-commercial-nuclear-waste-storage-united-states#:~:text=Every%20quarter%2C%20money%20has%20been,DOE%2DOIG%2C%202021 https://crownschool.uchicago.edu/student-life/advocates-foru...). In reality, burying fuel without reprocessing it would be incredibly wasteful. Really it seems like it would make more sense to store it until the fuel can be reprocessed and some of the more dangerous remaining material burned in a 4th gen reactor. But there is so much fear-mongering about nuclear power I doubt there will ever be a rational discussion of it by politicians in this country.
- ggm 2y agoThe train isn't very specialised. the specific waste truck is. So is the final escort truck called the REV which reminds me of an armoured carriage in the Delhi rail museum collection: it's from the pre-independence days of the north-west frontier wars. Those look like pretty normal diesel-electric locomotives. https://www.energy.gov/sites/default/files/2022-01/Rail%20Escort%20Vehicle%20Fact%20Sheet.pdf https://www.energy.gov/sites/default/files/2022-01/Rail%20Es... says As required for operational security, further specifications for REVs are not publicly releasable. So it's "security by obscurity"
- cdchn 2y agoSecurity by obscurity is just another layer of security. The problem arises when its your only layer of security.
- Animats 2y ago> Those look like pretty normal diesel-electric locomotives. Yes. Here's UP 8359 hauling a trainload of grain.[1] It's a common locomotive type, SD70ACe, with thousands in use. Dull, boring, and reliable. Way too many pictures of UP 8359 doing ordinary locomotive things.[2] The armored caboose, VWXX-800, is a custom build designed for the Navy.[3] [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-FX9vgSOAdA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-FX9vgSOAdA [2] http://www.rcbsd45.rrpicturearchives.net/Locopicture.aspx?id=54203 http://www.rcbsd45.rrpicturearchives.net/Locopicture.aspx?id... [3] https://www.twz.com/39654/wait-this-mysterious-heavily-armored-blue-train-caboose-belongs-to-the-navy https://www.twz.com/39654/wait-this-mysterious-heavily-armor...
- wiradikusuma 2y agoI'm all for clean energy, but with how it is at the moment, isn't nuclear energy basically like pension/ponzi scheme (for lack of a better term)? Because other people down the line will pay for what we enjoy now. "Thousands of years" is a long time to put something away and ensure nothing bad happens.
- can16358p 2y agoI think an efficient way to dispose of/neutralize radioactive waste will be found in the future, which will be very easy for that era, so many are relying on this. Of course there is no evidence for this is ever going to happen but given technological progress, rise of AI's exponential capabilities and bright future of robotics one can say it is very likely.
- eru 2y agoNuclear waste has a half-life, but chemical waste like heavy metals never goes away. And we are mostly dealing with that just fine. If we used breeder reactors, we could cut down on the amount of nuclear waste per Joule drastically, if we wanted to.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- Moldoteck 2y agoIf you reprocess and reuse the waste it's no longer thousand of years. It's barely 300 till the waste is less radioactive than uranium we dig to create the rods. And we have the tech, it's just cheaper for now to dump the stuff underground. With enough political will, 90+ of the waste can be transformed in mol multiple times and reused multiple times
- euroderf 2y agoOn a visit to a pub I talked to a guy from VTT, the Finnish technology institute, about the wisdom of concentrating nuclear waste in particular locations. My point being, Murphy predicts that if there is an asteroid strike, it will hit a nuclear waste repository - and render mankind extinct. His response was that if you put the waste far enough underground, like a km or more, then if an asteroid actually disturbs it, the dispersion of the waste won't actually be your biggest problem.
- darby_nine 2y ago> it will hit a nuclear waste repository - and render mankind extinct. People far overestimate the destructive power of nuclear weapons and nuclear fallout. This fear of them is of course greatly encouraged by states that hold nuclear weapons, but they're far from humanity's most destructive tendencies.
- lupusreal 2y agoYou could also just dump it into a deep part of the ocean. Objectively this is safe and effective, but emotionally it's just terrible and people will think I'm trolling for even suggesting it. Look up the PPM for uranium in ocean water, then multiply that out by how much ocean water there is. The amount of uranium naturally dissolved into the oceans is staggering. Nothing humanity can do will ever come close. Even when you throw the nasty transuranics into the consideration, it's nothing. Dump nuclear reactors straight into the oceans and stop worrying about it.
- thecyborganizer 2y agoIt would be safe and effective if we had a mechanism of distributing nuclear waste evenly throughout the entire volume of the Earth's oceans. But we don't have that and that's impossible to build! Dumping nuclear waste into the ocean will, mathematically, result in a globally acceptable concentration of nuclear waste in ocean water - but it will be locally problematic for wherever we put it, and that's assuming it stays put.
- perihelions 2y ago
- sandworm101 2y agoThis is not a problem with nuclear energy, not directly. This is a political and defense industry issue. The US actively does not want to recycle its nuclear waste. It is a valuable resource to have on hand if you want to one day build more bombs. Equally, keeping all that plutonium locked up as "waste" arguably keeps it out of the hands of bad people. Should the US decide to start actually recycling this stuff, the bulk of the transport/disposal problem disappears. >> The decision to halt commercial nuclear recycling sends a clear message that the United States is committed to nuclear non-proliferation. Such decisions, together with diplomacy such as that taking place in Russia, are deliberate and encouraging first steps towards building an international consensus on reducing the threat from nuclear weapons. https://www.nature.com/articles/460152b https://www.nature.com/articles/460152b
- chickenbig 2y ago> Equally, keeping all that plutonium locked up as "waste" arguably keeps it out of the hands of bad people. https://thebulletin.org/2020/04/britain-has-139-tons-of-plutonium-thats-a-real-problem/ https://thebulletin.org/2020/04/britain-has-139-tons-of-plut... Meanwhile in the UK we've got 139 tons of the stuff from the Magnox program. It was disappointing to see in the Civil Nuclear roadmap to 2050 (from earlier this year) decided against making use of this tremendous resource (although the precise wording does not rule out use in MOX which is presumably an existing and so not an "Advanced Technology"). https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/civil-nuclear-roadmap-to-2050/civil-nuclear-roadmap-to-2050-accessible-webpage https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/civil-nuclear-roa... We are providing clarity to vendors by committing not to support the use of plutonium stored at Sellafield by Advanced Nuclear Technologies whilst high hazard reduction activities are prioritised at Sellafield. Note Plutonium from a power reactor is not "weapons grade" due to the presence of less desirable isotopes because of prolonged irradiation.
- adonovan 2y agoIt says the "empty buffer cars ... maintain a safe distance from the spent nuclear fuel" for the workers on the train, presumably from neutrons and gamma. Wouldn't a thin piece of steel do this better? Isn't the SNF container made of a thick piece of steel?
- remus 2y agoThe inverse square law does a lot to reduce exposure to radiation and is pretty fool proof. Doesn't seem much point in building more specialised rail cars when off the shelf ones will be relatively cheap (compared to other costs on a project like this).
- AnimalMuppet 2y agoThe buffer cars are made of thin pieces of steel. As are most other railroad cars.
- ioblomov 2y agoAccording to the diagram, the buffer cars are empty flatbed cars without walls. Presumably, the inverse square law of intensity over distance is what’s at play here.
- AnimalMuppet 2y agoAccording to the photograph as well, so my error. On the other hand, according to the photograph, there's a thin steel wall on the end of the car carrying the cask. And then there's thin steel walls on the locomotive and caboose.
- adonovan 2y agoRight; hence my question.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- analog31 2y agoThey can put a cask in my back yard for 1000 a month. This sounds weird, but if it's safe then it's safe.
- 1970-01-01 2y agoThat's one hell of a startup idea if I ever heard one. Probably a million other homeowners would also agree to let waste sit on the land for cash.
- binary132 2y agoMaybe, but your neighbors won’t be cool about it
- doodlebugging 2y agoSame here. I'm semi-rural with no HOA restrictions too and I can set aside some space and a defining access point for them so that they can periodically inspect things. My nearest neighbors are far enough away that they probably wouldn't notice a few extra objects on my place and I could always plant some more trees to screen it anyway. This is a great idea for neighborhood nuclear storage. The longer that you store it without issues, the more acceptable it becomes for the rest of society.
- binary132 2y agoI was surprised not to see any mention of derailing hazard. I really expected to see some kind of (possibly interesting or surprising) discussion of how this design solves it. Maybe I missed it?
- chickenbig 2y agoHazard to whom? The cask might make quite a dent in an oncoming train. There are plenty of videos out there testing transport casks against locomotives, planes and fire.
- binary132 2y agosorry if I misunderstood, but are you saying that it’s fine if this derails because nothing is going to break it?
- chickenbig 2y agoYes, as long as containment is maintained then the spent nuclear fuel is safe. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yo22l4wJdx8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yo22l4wJdx8 Are there other pressing problems with derailing that need to be dealt with?
- binary132 2y agoNo, that’s what I was trying to understand (whether containment would be maintained in a catastrophic rail event) but I didn’t see it covered in the article.
- throw0101c 2y ago> Every year, 2,000 tonnes of radioactive heavy metal join the growing inventory of fuel removed from nuclear power reactors—both operating and decommissioned. Given how dense nuclear "waste" (mostly unburnt fuel) is, how much volume is this? (Either in metric or Freedom Units.)
- ThinkBeat 2y ago> DOE paying US $10.6 billion to cover utilities’ storage costs. It is crazy that massive amounts of taxpayer money is spent on subsidizing nuclear power. If you are generating waste, you can't get rid of them then stop producing it. Will factories soon get huge subsidies if they refuse to handle toxic and dangerous waste that is expensive to dispose of? The federal gourmet should create huge places to store all toxic and dangerous waste.
- 8xeh 2y agoThat's funny. $10 billion just to move junk around. The Wheatridge solar/wind/battery facility in Oregon produces the same amount of power as a small nuclear reactor. $10 billion buys you a dozen of them.
- chickenbig 2y agoArguably this security theatre does everything to make people believe spent nuclear fuel is uniquely dangerous. The UK has been transporting the stuff by rail for decades; two locomotives and the flask. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_flask#United_Kingdom https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_flask#United_Kingdom