Re: Oil-pipeline shutdown in Alaska to choke flow

Gashauler wrote:
"Roger Shoaf" <shoaf@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message news:1155176425.84224@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
"Gashauler" <swordfish2@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
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"Roger Shoaf" <shoaf@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
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Coal vs Nuclear

Both are bad.

Where are you going to store the waste from the reactors?


First off the quantity of spent fuel from the production of electricity is
not much, all of the fuel rods used in the US so far would fill a building
the size of a high school gym. Right now all of the fuel rods are currently
stored right where they were used at the nuclear plants in cooling ponds.


I think you should do some more research on the facts because you're way off here. The expected amount is around 77,000 tons of high level waste. You'd have to have a very large gym for that amount. You are right about the current storage location. A location where security sucks and if the water is released in the pool then you have a major problem.





There are several options for disposal. Currently the plan is to dispose of
them in a remote site in Nevada.

Yucca Mountain in Nevada has been studied for 20 years at a cost of 8 billion. That's only for the study and not the license process through the NRC. Nevada is agaisnt this and it's not as remote as you think.



The better option in my opinion would be
to recycle them back into fuel rods and reuse them. This reduces
tremendously the quantity of waste.

You're simple wrong on this idea. Recycle is an option but it would only slightly reduce the volume. Just think about that for a moment. We're dealing with one of the most expensive materials known to man. If recycle worked as you say don't you think they would use that option instead of spending billions just to study a site?

The leftover stuff is a lot hotter than the once used rods, but the hotter
the stuff, the shorter the time it takes to decay to a level that can be
disposed of underground.

Not true. One of the requirements of the study of Yucca Mountain is to know how the site will change in 10,000 years.
I don't claim that any of this is nice fluffy stuff to go rolling around in,
it is nasty stuff but it is manageable nasty stuff and the alternatives are
pretty nasty also and a whole lot more expensive.

I don't see what is more expensive than 50 to 100 billion to store the material. The transportation is going to take 25 to 30 years to get all of the high level material to a site where the DOE plans to store and close the doors and forget it. It's a dumb move and Nevada does not want the site there. It would be different if the DOE stored the material then monitored it but that's not their plans. And what really gets me is that they include in their study that they expect 10 accidents a year in the shipments.

I don't mean to slam you here but this is a subject you can not sugar coat and the problem is very complex. All this could go away if the research would go to fusion power but the problems with fission power has turn the people away from nuclear power. You can find more information just by searching Yucca Mountain.



Very well said.




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------George W. Bush to the Houston Chronicle, April 9th, 1999
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Relevant Pages

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  • Re: Oil-pipeline shutdown in Alaska to choke flow
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