Posted on 02/20/2010 11:09:33 PM PST by ErnstStavroBlofeld
Dumping all our nuclear waste in a volcano does seem like a neat solution for destroying the roughly 29,000 tons of spent uranium fuel rods stockpiled around the world. But there’s a critical standard that a volcano would have to meet to properly dispose of the stuff, explains Charlotte Rowe, a volcano geophysicist at Los Alamos National Laboratory. And that standard is heat. The lava would have to not only melt the fuel rods but also strip the uranium of its radioactivity. “Unfortunately,” Rowe says, “volcanoes just aren’t very hot.”
Lava in the hottest volcanoes tops out at around 2,400F. (These tend to be shield volcanoes, so named for their relatively flat, broad profile. The Hawaiian Islands continue to be formed by this type of volcano.) It takes temperatures that are tens of thousands of degrees hotter than that to split uranium’s atomic nuclei and alter its radioactivity to make it inert, Rowe says. What you need is a thermonuclear reaction, like an atomic bomb—not a great way to dispose of nuclear waste.
Volcanoes aren’t hot enough to melt the zirconium (melting point that encases the fuel, let alone the fuel itself: The melting point of uranium oxide, the fuel used at most nuclear power plants, is ;. The liquid lava in a shield volcano pushes upward, so the rods probably wouldn’t even sink very deep, Rowe says. They wouldn’t sink at all in a stratovolcano, the most explosive type, exemplified by Washington’s Mount St. Helens. Instead, the waste would just sit on top of the volcano’s hard lava dome—at least until the pressure from upsurging magma became so great that the dome cracked and the volcano erupted. And that’s the real problem.
(Excerpt) Read more at popsci.com ...
“Just image 50 ft. long sea worms attacking New York City. Now, if we could get them to attack Philadelphia, Chicago, Detroit, San Fran...”
Yeah, where’s the down side? If liberals taste like chicken to 50 ft. long sea worms, the worms could barbecue in NYC for centuries before needing to move on.
Don’t forget Cleveland!
“Another “great idea” whose origin can probably be traced back to a bong hit.”
I was thinking a 4 year old had the idea after seeing a TV news story on nuclear power.
Great Idea. As I recall, both Mecca and Riyadh are in the middle of the desert.
Sometimes, one problem solves another. . . (Evil grin)
That “nuclear waste” is actually a natural resource that a rational civilization would use.
Another idea, after it is encapsled in lead steel glass etc, bury one under the statue at the court house of every county that has one in the country.
Sounds like a great new bad idea.
Another “great idea” whose origin can probably be traced back to a bong hit.
We would be swimming in radioactivity.
Hey , minered in Geology, it's ok to sleep with miners, it's just tough gettin' that coaldust out of your sheets!
Fossils Rule!
So does Fossil Fuel!
LOL bet the next idea they have is to put the waste on a UFO and drop it off on the sun.
I didn’t say we should stop researching technology to re-use the spent fuel in the next 100 years. Of course we should do that.
But we do NOT have to store the current “waste” here forever. That was my point.
At some point what we can’t use, we can dump into the sun.
“Haven’t you heard? pResident obama won’t even let us go back to the moon, so forget Jupiter.”
Very much so.
Fighting him on it big time!
The SOB seems intent on attacking all the pillars of America’s greatness and remaking them in his own image.
Join the fight, takes minutes...
http://www.supportconstellation.com
The solar wind could spread radioactive material out into the solar system, which hopefully by then we are colonizing.
So lobbing it into the sun probably isn’t the best place. Jupiter has been “vacuuming” up solar system debris for us a long time now. Seems like a natural to me.
But another good point was made, the waste may some day may be found useful or we may learn ways to make it harmless.
As for a Challenger like event, casings can be built that can survive that. But I expect in a hundred or hundreds of years, getting things to orbit and on it’s way towards Jupiter will be very reliable.
I don't have a link to the story (I'll try to find it) but I do remember that cobalt-60 was mentioned.
“If you use the right technology, nuclear reactors will CREATE MORE FUEL THAN THEY BURN, in some special cases nearly twice as much.”
Hello, mvpel - yes, for those not in the know he is discussing “breeder reactors” which produce plutonium from uranium. I think these are a great idea. Now if only the government will get off its regulatory butt...
“In fact in a normal nuclear reactor, over a third of the energy produced comes from fuel that was newly-created inside the core.”
Please see my post #26; there I discuss reprocessing the spent fuel from a first ‘burn’ (for newbies that’s a figurative description, not literal) and sending the resulting plutonium rich fuel through for a second ‘burn’.
The original fuel pellets for water-cooled pressure reactors is 3% enriched uranium (U235). After this fuel has been fissioned to produce heat, the fuel has atomically altered into a plutonium rich material that can be reprocessed and used as an energy source. It is this reprocessing step that was outlawed by President Jimmy Carter and has effectively altered the course of nuclear energy in the U.S.A.
In the original Japanese title it was Gojira. :)
What can I say - my good buddy is bilingual ;-D
Talk about a movie that ought to similarly be disposed of along with the radioactive waste... Gee whiz.
Do you think that there could be any noticeable effect on the sun?
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