High level burial

[Marlin]

After all the good answers to the question on uranium abundance I thought a question without any one right answer is in order. I have an answer in mind and will post it in one week, until then here goes:

The answer should be a short and clear response(cracker barrel wisdom) .

Q: There is an ongoing debate on the stability and safety of burying high level waste. Opponents claim that the water table many miles away is in danger. The time period makes predictions difficult, so if you were to defend the burial of High level (Grater then Class C) material as safe what would be your argument be (again mine in one week). (No multipage thesis please)

[alphadude]

boy is that a loaded question- chemical form, nuclide mix, geological data, all figure into this one-anybody that makes general statements needs to look long and hard before opening the ole pie hole......

the ole anti-terrorism excuse should be eliminated from this debate...

My feeling is this.. if your state produces nuclear power.. thats where it should be taken care of.. STATES RIGHTS

[Marlin]

NIMBY, NIMBY, NIMBY, and most states do not have water tables hundreds of feet from the surface. 

[alphadude]

sorry but the last time we entered into a compact the south got the short end of the stick... only to rise latter

nimby- oh thats soooo sad- hear my tiny violin playing a sad gypsy melody-NOT!!!  so the rest of us have to feel their burden- welllllll its gonna cost ya real big time, no more fancy cars and big cigars for you-   are you one of them socialist, union lovin, long islanders??? 

as you know the waste issue is the choke hold on nuke power- don't build until you have a solution.. and the example here is just one of the convoluted problems that faces the nuke revival-

the rich will dump it on the poor...

[Marlin]

sorry but the last time we entered into a compact the south got the short end of the stick... only to rise latter

nimby- oh thats soooo sad- hear my tiny violin playing a sad gypsy melody-NOT!!!  so the rest of us have to feel their burden- welllllll its gonna cost ya real big time, no more fancy cars and big cigars for you-   are you one of them socialist, union lovin, long islanders??? 

as you know the waste issue is the choke hold on nuke power- don't build until you have a solution.. and the example here is just one of the convoluted problems that faces the nuke revival-

the rich will dump it on the poor...

What I was trying to get to is that there are limited areas that are suitable for long term burial unless you are proposing processing to reduce the class of the waste. The original question is aimed at the suitability of burial of the waste not nessasarily the location or socioeconomic impact.

[SloGlo]

o hail!  iffen i wuz to argue pro-burial, i'd go with the vitrification process prior to burial. 

[MrHazmat]

Mixed with glass and in the steel canisters would pose no problem, 
unless someone tried to dig them up, and then they would not get far.
But location would still have to be considered.

[alphadude]

I guess its burial vs sitting above ground?  well burial naturally... but where....

[Imaginos]

Q: There is an ongoing debate on the stability and safety of burying high level waste. Opponents claim that the water table many miles away is in danger. The time period makes predictions difficult, so if you were to defend the burial of High level (Class C) material as safe what would be your argument be (again mine in one week). (No multipage thesis please)

I've got a dumb question...historically "high level waste" was considered to be spent fuel while "low level waste" was everything else. Plants have been disposing of Class C packages (filter HICs, for example), well, for as long as there has been guidance on waste class for burial, I suppose. So my question is whether you are asking about spent fuel, Class C waste or both? Thanks.

[Marlin]

High level waste in general, not looking for rocket science. Remember Einsteins thoeries on gravity came to him in an elevator because of its motion.

[Roll Tide]

I guess its burial vs sitting above ground?  well burial naturally... but where....

If they will stop pouring the thick concrete slabs underneath the dry storage, it will bury right where it is. 

[alphadude]

CTCC greater than class c

[thenuttyneutron]

Wow, this is a very loaded question.  My answer is to use the "waste".  Most of the fission fragments created have short half-lifes when compared to U238.  The argument that nuclear waste remains radioactive for millions of years is not a good argument.  The fuel is radioactive to start with!  I so badly want to take people hung up on the waste issue and take them out on the spent fuel handling bridge.  I would love to show them all that "big bad nasty" waste they complain about.  I would then point out that in the last thirty years of power generation; this is where we keep most of the waste (a small amount is in dry storage).

I can't find it in my old notes, but I recall reading that within 1000 years most of the fission fragments and the daughter products will have decayed away and the only remaining radioactive materials are the long lived actinides.  We can reuse these actinides anyway in the form of new fuel bundles.

My answer to this question is reprocessing.  Take the fission fragments out of the fuel and put them in an engineered structure that can last 5,000 years.  After seeing what the ancients have constructed, this should not be a hard task.  Take the valuable actinides and use them in new fuel bundles. 

I would also stop the robbery of the nuclear power plants by the federal government.  This government has taxed all the power generated for the future disposal of nuclear waste.  What do we have to show for it now?

[alphadude]

nutty are you a lobbiest?? nukes are cash cows- and we all know it. those poor power plants being robbed for making a few pellets of edible spent fuel- come on... reprocessing produces its own high level waste of a different form - more unstable than from a power plant. I agree that we should recycle but look at the demand for the materials other than fuel from reprocessing- the market would be flooded in about 5 years... the present market for Cs137 and others.... dont be lost in the cloud of madison ave hype for nuke power (ive lived thru it) the waste issue is the bottle neck- utilities have refused to be proactive on it but tend to wait and see (ever hear of SAFESTOR?) its cheaper for them and provides high retirement payouts to the CEOs if they just let it sit and let our grand kids deal with it. other wise we would have reprocessing and high level waste repositories.  ITS ALL ABOUT THE MARKET nothing else in America.

here is some of the hype I've been thru

why it will only take 100 people to run these 3 plants (b&w 886 MgW units)
In the year 2000, everybody will have a small reactor in their back yard. ( a well know nuke president)
These units are the safest machines in the world (pre TMI)
We can use fuel that will keep us running for 5 years (fuel never got over 3%)
The reprocessing facility at Barnwell will serve the entire industry (the facility would have been at capacity within 5 years with many "CRIT" zones that would limit human body mass to 100kg in the area)
These land fills are safe. (barnwell leaked for years)

[alphadude]

it was a tipo on my typo

[Marlin]

After all the good answers to the question on uranium abundance I thought a question without any one right answer is in order. I have an answer in mind and will post it in one week, until then here goes:

The answer should be a short and clear response(cracker barrel wisdom) .

Q: There is an ongoing debate on the stability and safety of burying high level waste. Opponents claim that the water table many miles away is in danger. The time period makes predictions difficult, so if you were to defend the burial of High level (Grater then Class C) material as safe what would be your argument be (again mine in one week). (No multipage thesis please)

   Nice discussion again. To defend burial as a mechanism for waste disposal I would point to the Oklo natural reactors. The plutonium produced has not migrated more than 10 feet in the last two billion years. They operated in the water table which provided control through moderation and control by boiling the water away as the power increased thus reducing power until water flowed back into the ore beds. Opponents are discussing intrusion of contaminants into water tables miles away. The water table at Yucca Mountain is hundreds of feet below the burial site.

   If I were to propose an alternative to Yucca it would be a variation of one suggested on this thread. Rather than inject the waste into the Earth's core I would inject it deep into the Earth's mantle near a subduction zone and let natural movement of the tectonic plates to carry the waste into the Earth's core over a long period of time.

[Charles U Farley]

Why does the discussion for long term storage need to be confined by terrestrial limits?

[Marlin]

Why does the discussion for long term storage need to be confined by terrestrial limits?

It doesn't, but then that is a question for another thread.