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What are the facts about nuclear waste? It is my understanding that the amount of nuclear fuel used per power produced is very small. However, it is protected inside a fuel rod. There are all sorts of tools used and everything that is used to handle the material becomes waste. Then when they store it they surround it by water. Why would nuclear waste be surrounded by something that is difficult to contain? I think the waste is very small but I am sure it depends on the technology used. Also it sounds like historically the methods of storing it were very space inefficient. I hope today that they have seriously improved the techniques so that waste is reduced and storage is improved.
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Wikipedia has some good information. Apparently it is only put in water to help speed up the decay of the fastest decaying particles. It is later extracted, the water is removed and it is made into a glass like substance that takes a million years for water to dissolve. It sounds quite stable. Apparently France reprocess the waste but there process creates a considerable amount of waste water.
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Liquid hydrogen is the best shielding for neutron and heavy ion radiation. However, it's difficult and expensive to contain liquid hydrogen for long. Water is the second best, after it has more hydrogen than oxygen atoms. When spent fuel rods are removed from the reactor, spit atoms are still fresh. Split uranium atoms become two other atoms, usually very unstable. This results in a lot of radiation, but those fission fragments become something more stable when they decay. Spent fuel rods are kept under water so deep that you can stand beside the pool edge without any danger of radiation, even when fresh fuel rods were placed at the bottom just minutes earlier. Standing beside fresh fuel rods would expose you to lethal radiation, but water stops it.
One of the nice things about water is that oxygen, when it absorbs a neutron, becomes a heavier but non-radioactive isotope of oxygen. Normal hydrogen becomes deuterium, also non-radioactive. Deuterium becomes tritium, but that produces beta radiation that's so weak skin will stop it. Extremely intense beta radiation can give you skin cancer, but tritium in a containment tank can't get that concentrated. Water with tritium isn't dangerous unless you drink it.
After fuel rods have sat at the bottom of the pool for several months, the "fast and hot" fission fragments have decayed to something that is safe enough to move into dry storage. "Dry storage" contains spent fuel rods in concrete containers in a warehouse. They spend years slowly decaying the remaining radioactive isotopes. The fuel rods produce a little heat; ventilation is sufficient to deal with the heat. Although the fuel rods can be moved to dry storage after a few months, they usually leave them in the pool for a couple years. After all, there aren't many spent fuel rods and they just sit there; no cost for additional time in storage. After spending several years in dry storage, the fuel rods are cool enough (heat and radiation) for permanent storage.
The Ontario government looked at several sites for permanent disposal of nuclear waste. Every time they decided upon a spot and started the formal process of an environmental impact study, the locals in that area screamed "Not in my back yard!" Several sites were chosen then cancelled this way. Finally they decided to offer $10 million to any community that would accept it, and they would pay for the waste disposal facility. To their surprise, two communities bid for it. One was a uranium mine, a one industry town. The tailings pile has more radiation that the waste storage facility will have. The town's people already know how to live next to radiation. And this means they put the spent uranium fuel back in the hole in the ground where it came from.
Don't you love TVO? "TV Ontario" is Ontario's version of PBS. That's where I heard about this. It was announced several years ago; although I haven't heard anything since the announcement, it was so long ago that the storage facility should be built and operating by now.
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Ever since moving out to Nova Scotia from Ontario, the only thing I really missed was TVO. If it's available via the Internet, I'd appreciate knowing how to receive it if only to keep me up to date re. currently utilized and maintained nuclear power resources.
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It was an old article, and the fact some news announcements still talk about it makes me concerned, have they built it? In fact, I can't find any reference on the internet to this disposal site in a mine.
I checked the TV Ontario website, there isn't any mention of programming available over the internet. There isn't any list of cable or satellite companies that carry that channel either. So I checked a couple:
Star Choice has TVO on channel 253
I tried to look up the channel lineup for Bell ExpressVu, but their website doesn't work. When I attempt to veiew their website, even the home page, I get "Sorry! We couldn't find that page on Bell
You have asked for a page that does not exist on our site. You may have typed the URL incorrectly, or the page or file you are looking for may have been moved or retired.
To report a broken link or if you believe you have received this message in error, please write to Bell Canada." When I attempt to click the link to report it, I get "Sorry! We couldn't find that page/product for your province"
This may be a problem with my privacy blocker. So they're attempting to violate my privacy; what are they trying to get? What spam can I expect after just looking at one of their webpages?
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what about the pebble bed reactors? with the fuel pellets encase in lead and graphite to contain any radiation. they make it sound magical and wonderful, and it was originally developed in 50's but they make it sound like it was new... what is the down side to the pebbles .. besides lower energy density of a traditional nuke power plant?
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what is the down side to the pebbles
The only serious criticism I've seen is that the pebbles are a possible point of failure. There are a zillion of them in each reactor, so eventually one of them will fail, creating a window of vulnerability until it is rotated out.
It's still hypersafe compared to everything else out there, and eliminates the real threat of dual-use technology proliferation.
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a window of vulnerability until it is rotated out.
what do you mean by this? i would just assume that it would go dead and stop producing soo much heat.. or does it mean that the fuel is used up and massive amounts of radioactivity occur inside the pebble?
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a window of vulnerability until it is rotated out.
what do you mean by this? i would just assume that it would go dead and stop producing soo much heat.. or does it mean that the fuel is used up and massive amounts of radioactivity occur inside the pebble?
The pebbles are layered like an onion, with each layer serving a purpose, and the outer layers actually forming part of the containment system of the reactor. One of the inner layers is graphite and some of the outer layers are ceramic. If the ceramic cracks and exposes the graphite then there is a scenario where the graphite could burn and leak radioactive particles into the environment. The scenario is unlikely - the inert cooling gas would have to be contaminated with air, and the operating temperature would have to double somehow - but safety standards for nuclear reactors are so high, that everything becomes a concern.
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so your talking about the low chance of one of the pebble's outer shell failing? which if you have zillions, of course one of them will fail. i thought you were referring to if a fuel pellet died out. which didnt make sense, but the other ways does.
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