Posted on 09/08/2008 12:15:20 PM PDT by bruinbirdman
WASHINGTON -- The Nuclear Regulatory Commission announced this morning it will conduct an in-depth review of the government plans for Yucca Mountain, another step forward for the controversial nuclear waste storage project.
The decision by the nuclear safety agency to place a Department of Energy license application on its docket represents a milestone for the project over the objections of Nevada's elected leaders.
The NRC concluded following an initial 90-day screening by its technical staff that an application that DOE filed on June 3 "is sufficiently complete" for the agency to move forward, according to its announcement.
The move opens the way for detailed safety studies that will be performed by NRC technical staff, and for legal hearings before panels of administrative judges where Nevada and other parties would be able to raise objections.
The process will result in a decision whether to grant a license for the repository to be built.
The decision was announced shortly after the NRC notified members of Congress. Those from Nevada were not happy although they were not altogether surprised.
"The NRC’s decision puts nuclear politics over the health and safety of Nevada families and you can bet that we will continue fighting the Bush-McCain Yucca Mountain plan," said Rep. Shelley Berkley, D-Nev.
The licensing process is envisioned by law to take three-four years. Many officials believe it could take years longer for the NRC to sort through a project that is the first of its kind.
Following construction the agency would consider a second application for DOE to begin receiving waste at the site.
The Energy Department proposes to build a warren of tunnels beneath Yucca Mountain, 100 miles northwest of Las Vegas, where 77,000 tons of used nuclear fuel and highly radioactive material from U.S. weapons manufacturing would be stored and eventually sealed within the mountain.
An above-ground waste handling complex also would be constructed where canisters of waste would arrive, mostly by rail, from sites in 39 states.
The repository plan is opposed by a majority of Nevadans. State leaders have committed millions of dollars to fight at the NRC and in courts.
The presidential nominees are split. Democratic Barack Obama has said he will stop the project if he is elected. Republican John McCain said he would support it if it can meet "environmental requirements."
France has been recycling for years but using fast breeder reactors. The problem is only political.
In certain designs a large chunk of the energy created comes from the fission of Pu-239, even though the original fuel rods started out with 0 Plutonium.
99.3% of all Uranium is U-238. We should be building fast breeder reactors like nobody's business. You wouldn't even need to mine one ounce of new Uranium for centuries.
(Unless you are willing “kill your friends while making a radioactive wasteland of your lab” in doing so.)
1. Partial recycling: Use low-enriched enriched U235 fuel, let it stay in a regular reactor for a while under a “normal” (low energy) or “thermal” neutron flux. This creates power, many nuclear fission by-products, and uses up a portion (NOT all!) of the original U235 atoms.
Some of the original U238 absorbs a neutron, but DOES NOT fission. The U238+1 = a 239 atomic weight nuclei, which, after a short time, becomes Np239 and (later) Pu239. Pu239 IS a valid nuclear fuel, and some of the Pu239 fissions in place and creates more power and more fission by-products. This Pu239 (created the original waste u238) is “free” fuel.
Much of the Pu239 however, is NOT fissioned by the neutrons in the reactors, but it stays mixed in the old fuel as a separate chemical.
2. Take the “used up” nuclear fuel fro the reactor, dissolve the stainless and zirconium and steel cladding, dissolve the waste material and the by-products in acids and bases of the original thousands of pounds of fuel and coverings to get the 1 or 2 pounds Pu239 available.
3. Take that Pu239 and insert it into new fuel rods and re-insert those in the reactor for the next load. The process is really just “siomple” remote-control arm chemistry labs. And a few melting pots and sheetmetal presses 8<)
Alternate: Use a special high-neutron energy reactor and a different kind of coolant than regular power reactors (the Russians use carbon block moderators - which is the kind that burned at Chernobyl.) The French and several of our earlier research reactors use liquid metal, which is more efficient but more expensive.
1. Run the initial fuel through the reactor's u235 and U238 fuel mix and make power, but with high-speed neutron fluxes.
Many times more Pu239 atoms are created because there are many more tons of U238 available as targets, and each target atom absorbed the high-energy neutrons more efficiently than the slow neutrons. Results, you get power out, and more Pu239 than the amount of U235 you started with.
Take the old used up fuel out, and recycle it to get Pu239 as before: Use the Pu239 in the next reactor as a regular thermal fission fuel.
Or, as the Russians still do, and as the US did in Hanford and Savannah River plants, use the new Pu239 to make nuclear bomb warheads.
Watermelons.
> Watermelons.
Yup.
Green on the outside, Red on the inside.
It was on TV?? Good. I hope some folks actually paid attention.
Don’t forget the Th232-U233 cycle. IIRC, India is developing a breeder cycle based on that.
Thank you.
That’s another option - But I don’t remember enough about it to quote reactions from memory....
Not the part about the nuke waste, just the part about the plates. Also showed how Hawaii was formed and would slowly move west. Other islands to the west were originally formed where Hawaii is now.
Any isotope that is radioactive enough to be dangerous, is radioactive enough to be useful for some purpose, if we were able to extract and concentrate it.
Which the Jihadis have demonstrated they are willing to accept.
Oh, I agree. And I'm sure we will come up with even more uses in future
They changed names but they are still around as the FSB.
thanks, bfl
You'd do better depositing it in a subduction zone.
Just watch,
Once they get all of that waste down there ‘Science will be surprised’ when it starts cooking off on its own all over again.
Next thing we know, Yucca Mountain is an active volcano ‘again’.
Can't happen. This is an area where science has "really good data".
Yeah, but I don't think they are funding anti-nuke groups any more, since they opened their files on those activities.
I kinda like the Idea of flinging it into the sun,
besides we need more sunspots, anyway what could go wrong?
A moot point anyway once they fire up the collider
and we’re all converted to grey goo...
Nope.
Been there, done that, run the calculations myself.
(Don't want to brag or anything, but I AM a nuclear engineer, ya know, and this problem IS a standard simple calc that even an EIT (first year grad student) can do with any isotope, or group of isotopes, for any mass, with any shielding under any type of heat transfer conditions desired at any point after shutdown that you choose. Ain't no melting gonna happen.)
Ain't gonna happen.
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