Article

2011-03-21 -Signs, Portents, and the Weather-

NRC doesn't have the GUTS to address on site spent fuel storage.

Archived material is restricted to Rantburg regulars and members. If you need access email fred.pruitt=at=gmail.com with your nick to be added to the members list. There is no charge to join Rantburg as a member.

Posted by Water Modem 2011-03-21 19:25|| || Front Page|| [11133 views ] Top

#1 Centralizing the storage of spent fuel in a safe place like a certain site in Nevada is like cutting Social Security - no politician even wants to talk about it. This is another one of many cans our political system keeps kicking down the road, hoping we won't fall off a cliff or something. We have stored up a TON of trouble for outselves, and it's not all radioactive.

Posted by Anguper Hupomosing9418 2011-03-21 19:31|| 2011-03-21 19:31|| Front Page Top

#2 I don't have a problem of storing the spent fuel in a central location. My vote is to store it where the electricity was most used. Stop telling me that Nevada, Utah, and Arizona is a safer place. For those of us that live here and DONT use the nuke power this answer is unacceptable and an unacceptable risk. We should keep it on the east coast where it was used and stop using the West as a dump.

Posted by 49 Pan 2011-03-21 19:44|| 2011-03-21 19:44|| Front Page Top

#3 How about the spent fuel from the two California plants, the three Arizona units and the three Washington state ones?

Maybe Nevada and the Feds should give back the billions the utilities were mandated by the Feds into providing to build Yucca Mountain.

Posted by Omiting the Younger 2011-03-21 21:00|| 2011-03-21 21:00|| Front Page Top

#4 I have no issue with having a nuclear waste site in Nevada, 49 Pan's NIMBYism aside, it's a fucking empty desert across most of the state. But now that I've looked at the seismic map of the state, I do have to ask why Yucca Mountain? There are much lower-population areas in the northeast of the state with much lower seismic potential. To be honest, the best place for this sort of thing would seem to be up in central Canada somewhere on the Canadian Shield. But then, we don't own that land, so fft on that.

Posted by Mitch H. 2011-03-21 21:08|| http://blogfonte.blogspot.com/ 2011-03-21 21:08|| Front Page Top

#5 As of a few years ago paraphrasing Scientific American, Nuclear waste in the U.S. is stored at or near one of the approximate 121 facilities across the country where it is generated. So singling out one coast or another seems like a recipe for disgruntlement and disaster, 49 Pan.

Posted by Fi 2011-03-21 21:09|| 2011-03-21 21:09|| Front Page Top

#6 If you lived out here in this "fucking empty desert" as you call it, you would realize what your saying is I am expendable to New York. Burry it in the mines on the east coast/ or at your house, mine is not a nuke dump for either coast.

Posted by 49 Pan 2011-03-21 21:25|| 2011-03-21 21:25|| Front Page Top

#7 Barnswell, SC is a disposal site, one of many geographically disperse sites.

Posted by Fi 2011-03-21 21:36|| 2011-03-21 21:36|| Front Page Top

#8 From Sci American,

Over the past few decades, however, a series of studies has called these stereotypes into question. Among the surprising conclusions: the waste produced by coal plants is actually more radioactive than that generated by their nuclear counterparts. In fact, the fly ash emitted by a power planta by-product from burning coal for electricitycarries into the surrounding environment 100 times more radiation than a nuclear power plant producing the same amount of energy.

As a general clarification, ounce for ounce, coal ash released from a power plant delivers more radiation than nuclear waste shielded via water or dry cask storage.

Living near a coal fired power plant exposes you to far more radiation than living near a nuclear waste disposal site.

And I'll note the media hysteria over the nuclear problems in Japan, which so far haven't killed anyone, while largely ignoring the fact the quake death toll climbs past 20,000.

Posted by phil_b 2011-03-21 22:27|| 2011-03-21 22:27|| Front Page Top

#9 If you lived out here in this "fucking empty desert" as you call it, you would realize what your saying is I am expendable to New York. Burry it in the mines on the east coast/ or at your house, mine is not a nuke dump for either coast.

I thought you said in the past you lived in Arizona.

Are you going to insist that New York store the waste from Palo Verde? Or do you just want to wait until some Iranian idiot sets off a nice U-235-fueled "gun bomb" next to the waste site at Palo Verde and Phoenix is rendered uninhabitable for the forseeable future?

This ISN'T a threat with waste stored at a _secured_ facility out in the Basin and Range country out away from major population centers and located underground where even if something does get through it's not going to wind up being dispersed.

The waste is a lot less dangerous even to its neighbors at a secured facility like Yucca Mountain for much the same reasons Al Qaeda has never thrown major resources into blowing up the City Hall of Elko, Nevada.

Posted by Thing From Snowy Mountain 2011-03-21 23:09|| 2011-03-21 23:09|| Front Page Top

#10 They're already doing consolidated storing of lower level crap at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant, or WIPP, in New Mexico. NM gets a lot of NIMBY stuff, so when you look at the flow of federal dollars out of state and into state, it ends up on the plus side of the equation. Remember, they nuked NM first!

Posted by Procopius2k 2011-03-21 23:23|| 2011-03-21 23:23|| Front Page Top

#11 Thing, your right I do live here in AZ. No I don't think we should dump the waste from AZ into a site in NYC. The waste from our plant, the largest in the US should stay right here. A single dump site would not be practical or safe and would become a target in its own right. A number of sites across the nation would be much safer and more reasonable. I'm just a bit tired of the first answer is send it to the desert. I think if NYC stored their own waste they would be a little more conservative on the usages, this also goes for their trash and other waste that is being shipped across the globe to be disposed of. I also don't like the idea of trucking waste across the flyover states. If some thought was put to it there are a number of places it could be placed closer to where it is produced and consumed with less transportation risks.

I'm no tree hugging no nuker, but this problem of waste is one that needs to be completely thought through and not just sent out west. Which in the current administration clear thought is nonexistent.

Posted by 49 Pan 2011-03-21 23:28|| 2011-03-21 23:28|| Front Page Top

#12 Okay okay come on is this really necessary? There's plenty of room for all our nuclear waste in this country.

Posted by Fi 2011-03-21 23:34|| 2011-03-21 23:34|| Front Page Top

#13 Yucca Mountain probably isn't the perfect site on the Earth, but it's a much better site than Palo Verde is, which wasn't meant to be a disposal site at all.

(But that's what it functions as these days).

Posted by Thing From Snowy Mountain 2011-03-21 23:39|| 2011-03-21 23:39|| Front Page Top

#14 And before anyone asks, I think Yucca Mountain is a short-term solution. For a long-term solution I think the waste needs to be burned in an appropriately constructed breeder reactor.

Posted by Thing From Snowy Mountain 2011-03-21 23:42|| 2011-03-21 23:42|| Front Page Top

00:10 JosephMendiola
23:51 RandomJD
23:42 Thing From Snowy Mountain
23:39 Thing From Snowy Mountain
23:35 gorb
23:34 Fi
23:34 gorb
23:28 49 Pan
23:28 gorb
23:28 JosephMendiola
23:25 gorb
23:24 Knuckles Chack2746
23:23 Procopius2k
23:21 JosephMendiola
23:16 Procopius2k
23:15 Grunter
23:09 Thing From Snowy Mountain
22:56 SteveS
22:52 JosephMendiola
22:50 Knuckles Chack2746
22:45 Dribble2716
22:27 JosephMendiola
22:27 phil_b
22:12 JosephMendiola