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Science/Tech See other Science/Tech Articles Title: Moment of truth nears for nuclear waste time bomb FRANKFURT (Reuters) - More than half a century after the world's first commercial nuclear plant went into operation in the United States, the industry may finally be nearing a way to store radioactive waste underground permanently. The world has 270,000 tonnes of used fuel stockpiled, much of it under water in ponds at nuclear power stations, adding to the urgency of finding a permanent storage solution for material that can remain toxic for hundreds of thousands of years. Finland and Sweden hope to be the first countries in the world to be able to put the most dangerous high-level waste (HLW) into underground storage in the next decade, using a new technology to encase fuel rods and protect them from erosion. At a conference in Vienna this week, the 164-nation International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) heard updates from the Finish and Swedish authorities on their model solution. Finland stopped exporting spent fuel for reprocessing to the then Soviet Union in 1996, and does not accept imports. For years, Finland has been building a deep underground spent fuel repository, some 450 meters (492 yards) below the surface in the granite bedrock, at Onkalo, on its west coast. It uses a technology known as KBS-3, developed by Sweden's SKB, which involves the rods being encased in copper containers, then packed into absorbent bentonite clay which swells when wet, sealing off the package from corrosive elements. The operator, Posiva, which is owned by utilities TVO [POHVOT.UL] and Fortum, hopes it can become operational from around 2022. Authorities knew that public acceptance was crucial and sought local approval for the 3 billion euro ($3.38 billion) repository, which can hold 9,000 tonnes of HLW from the nearby Olikluoto and Loviisa reactors. And in February Finland's nuclear regulator STUK issued a safety assessment, which backed the project. "The population has a high trust in regulators and policymakers," STUK inspector Jussi Heinonen told Reuters by phone ahead of the IAEA conference. PUBLIC ACCEPTANCE Other countries keen to persuade their populations of the merits of nuclear power, such as Britain with its new Hinkley Point C plant project, are likely to take encouragement if the Scandinavians are successful. Across the Baltic Sea, Sweden is working on a similar project at Oskarshamn. The legal permissioning process lags that of Finland, with a recommendation to the government possible in 2017 and then a 10-year construction period. "A realistic time for operating a facility is at the end of the 2020s," said Christopher Eckerberg, managing director of SKB, which is owned by Vattenfall [VATN.UL], German E.ON and Fortum. "The critical part is public acceptance." MKG, a Swedish non-governmental organization working on nuclear waste, has serious questions. The most controversial issue is if water molecules, and not only oxygen, react directly with the copper surface, said its director Johan Swahn. "If this is the case, it will be difficult to prove a safety case for 100,000 years," he said. HLW - the most toxic type of nuclear waste, which accounts for 10 percent of total volumes - is not safe to handle at all for 40 to 50 years until it cools, which has allowed the question of what to do with it to be put off, until now. The IAEA is fully aware that waste held in surface level storage poses great risks, leaving it more exposed to floods, terrorism, earthquakes, climate change or human error. "Waste won't go away after reactors are turned off," said Stefan Mayer, team leader of the IAEA's waste technology section. "If we can provide socially and politically accepted approaches, we can implement solutions." Countries such as Germany which have opted to abandon nuclear power still have waste to handle. Some 200 reactors, nearly half those currently operating worldwide, will be phased out between now and 2040, requiring deconstruction and disposing of spent fuel. The decision-making process in Germany has been hampered after plans in the 1970s to turn an interim storage in salt formations in Lower Saxony's Gorleben into a final repository were scuppered by mass protests. COSTS The OECD's Nuclear Energy Agency says it is impossible to gauge the future costs of storage sites, because each country's geography is different and there are no previous projects to serve as examples. The European Union is trying to speed up thinking on the issue by demanding that member countries submit by August individual plans on how to deal with waste. France hopes for success with its Cigeo project at Bure in a sparsely populated part of the country's east, which has thick layers of argilite clay rock. A final investment decision could be due around 2020 and an industrial pilot phase could then be ready to start in 2025. Switzerland has identified two areas, Zurich Northeast and Jurassic East, to be investigated as possible sites. (additional reporting by Michel Rose in Paris and Jussi Rosendahl in Helsinki, editing by David Evans) news.yahoo.com/moment-tru...b-122350223--finance.html Poster Comment: James... It is beyond credulity that Americans haven't demanded we begin using that waste in molten salt reactors. 100% safe, efficient and "free" energy for years to come. All but 2% of the waste will be used providing clean, cheap, energy. Instead, we suck on the dreams of the pipe solar/wind. Ridiculous, and one more reason we cannot claim to be the country we were. JFK and Ronald Reagan would've gotten this done. Why can't we get visionary leadership like that anymore? 35-9 Wee... We Can not continue to store nuclear waster in the earth - this is not an endless dumping ground and it will affect us sooner or later. Anyone who ever took earth science know the earth is in constant motion no matter where one stores it. We need to get OFF nuclear power now with the advances of green technology (solar, wind, bio). -13 Bruce ... The answer to this dilemma may be as simple as reusing the waste to produce energy. Molten salt nuclear reactors are able to use the 80% of unused energy left over in most nuclear waste. This approach kills two birds with one stone. It produces energy from waste in a safer process than is currently available, and delays the need to store the waste that is significantly less radioactive. The need for nuclear energy is still required despite advances in other energy sources, Nuclear, despite the waste and some danger is basically a clean energy source. It is definitely a cleaner source than coal or burning oil. 34-4 candr ... Your answer is perfectly reasonable, which means that politically it won't go anywhere. Reprocessing of nuclear fuel has long been practiced outside the U.S., but here we're so hysterical about anything related to nuclear power that we're just sort of frozen both politically and from a regulatory perspective. We don't reprocess it, we don't store it underground, so we just let it sit at nuclear power plants with no real solutions in sight. I guess that's the way we do things in the U.S., but it seems pretty dumb to me. 13-2 Flaminius WHy? Nuclear power has "killed" fewer of anythings living in the many decades since it was developed. Oil and hydrocarbons kill thousands a year in good years-just from fires-as in Africa and India and Asia where fuel is used for heat and light and causes awful and deadly fires. Atomic power has killed maybe over a hundred people in the USSR, where no records are allowed to be released-nuclear power is considered part of the defense industry and has state protection. But nowhere else has it caused more than a a few dozen deaths. The thresher disaster was a serious nuclear -related problem for the US Navy, but that was because the reactor on theThresher "SCRAMD" or shut down, and could not be re-started, at 1000 feet or so under water. The boat imploded and all died from the shock , instantly. There has been no serious, no deadly nuclear accident in the US, Canada, SOuth America , Asia, China, EUrope or Africa-there have been minor problems, but nothing like Chernobyl where a hundred might have died and not like the burning of thousands a year from Kerosene and gasoline fires. -1 Sam SpadeSwitch to Thorium; 4 times more abundant than Uranium, and 200 times more efficient (without the chance of a meltdown). 4-1 The Professor This story is about a problem which is manufactured by the use of light water non-breeder reactors which produce "wastes" containing long-lived radionuclides.. The "wastes" are spent fuel cells, spent in the sense that 1% of the fissile material is consumed. The other 99% is still there. The nuclear burning of the "waste"in breeder reactors would leave a residue with half lives of about 100 years, and radioactivity similar to that of the starting material. Then, the BILLIONS$ spent on storage for hundreds of thousands of years would be totally unnecessary. Safety of such storage can never be guaranteed in any case. The Billions $ could then be usefully spent on storage for a few centuries, not a few thousand centuries, which we can manage. Best of all, the fissile material and residue would never need to be leave the plant site. 10-2 red The Government in the US reprocesses the rods, and uses them for armor piercing ammunition. All those anti tank rounds that explode on contact, have reprocessed nuclear alloy tips. It's the density of the uranium that lets it cut through armor. Look at your periodic table, uranium 238 the most heavy dense natural material on earth. The stuff is all over the desert in Iraq. You see all that blown up heavy Iraqi armor, uranium alloy anti tank rounds are what did that. All the armed services use the stuff in everything from .50 caliber rounds to 105 rounds. 6-1 Live Free... Spend $9 billion in taxpayer money to build Yucca mountain, never use it. Gotta love the American way, country stuck on stupid. 20 Post Comment Private Reply Ignore Thread
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