5 ms·

I don't understand treating nuclear waste as such. If it's radioactive, it means it can still be fuel. Am I missing something? As far as I remember, the plants

by yan 17y ago

I don't understand treating nuclear waste as such. If it's radioactive, it means it can still be fuel. Am I missing something? As far as I remember, the plants in France reuse their waste until it's almost completely non-radioactive and then purpose it to industry.

tome 17y ago
The US and UK used to reprocess. I read recently (I can't remember where unfortunately) than the US has given up on the idea of processing, and wants to look at long term storage (Yucca mountain etc.) and the UK's reprocessing facility (Sellafield) is going offline soon.
stewartbutler 17y ago
I saw an interesting article a while back that proposed using the tactical nuclear weapons we have to dispose of the radioactive waste. The fallout from good thermonukes is apparently very small, and if you bury the bomb and set it off around a bunch of radioactive waste, the blast will destroy the waste with a relatively small amount of fallout. Also, lots of things are radioactive, but they may not be pure enough to be useful unless enriched further. You could probably enrich it, but at this juncture it is probably cheaper to simply get new fuel than to reprocess waste. Just my two cents.
radu_floricica 17y ago
Lots and lots of waste is contaminated stuff, not spent fuel. For example the regulations may (and probably do) require that used protection suits be treated as radioactive waste. This way you end up with huge quantities of waste that may indeed be slightly harmful, but are in no way radioactive enough to be reused as fuel. This is mostly where the "tons" of waste come from.
- yummyfajitas 17y ago
  The low level waste you describe is not strongly radioactive. Although obviously a political impossibility, a safe way to deal with it would be to pulverize it and spread it evenly throughout our national parks. This would not even measurably increase the radiation level above the background level.
  - yan 17y ago
    Good luck introducing that bill to the voting public..
  - radu_floricica 17y ago
    Or build schools with it :) I know the statistics. Steven Chu sounds like an interesting guy. We'll see what happens.

by yan 17y ago

tome 17y ago

The US and UK used to reprocess. I read recently (I can't remember where unfortunately) than the US has given up on the idea of processing, and wants to look at long term storage (Yucca mountain etc.) and the UK's reprocessing facility (Sellafield) is going offline soon.

stewartbutler 17y ago

I saw an interesting article a while back that proposed using the tactical nuclear weapons we have to dispose of the radioactive waste. The fallout from good thermonukes is apparently very small, and if you bury the bomb and set it off around a bunch of radioactive waste, the blast will destroy the waste with a relatively small amount of fallout. Also, lots of things are radioactive, but they may not be pure enough to be useful unless enriched further. You could probably enrich it, but at this juncture it is probably cheaper to simply get new fuel than to reprocess waste. Just my two cents.

radu_floricica 17y ago

Lots and lots of waste is contaminated stuff, not spent fuel. For example the regulations may (and probably do) require that used protection suits be treated as radioactive waste. This way you end up with huge quantities of waste that may indeed be slightly harmful, but are in no way radioactive enough to be reused as fuel. This is mostly where the "tons" of waste come from.

yummyfajitas 17y ago
The low level waste you describe is not strongly radioactive. Although obviously a political impossibility, a safe way to deal with it would be to pulverize it and spread it evenly throughout our national parks. This would not even measurably increase the radiation level above the background level.
- yan 17y ago
  Good luck introducing that bill to the voting public..
- radu_floricica 17y ago
  Or build schools with it :) I know the statistics. Steven Chu sounds like an interesting guy. We'll see what happens.