Nuclear Waste Disposal in USA - Dr. James Conca @ TEAC11
ฝัง
- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 26 พ.ย. 2022
- Dr. James Conca's main presentation at TEAC11 was on the state of America's nuclear waste disposal program.
Categories of Nuclear Waste In the USA:
(Different than Europe because of the larger amount of defense waste.)
- Spent Nuclear Fuel (SNF)
- High Level Waste (HLW)
- Transuranic Waste (TRU-CH&RH)
- Low Level Waste (LLW)
Deep Geologic Disposal is required for SNF, HLW and TRU.
National Academy of Sciences (NAS) concludes in 1957 that the most promising disposal option for all radioactive waste is in massive salt deposits.
“Salt at great depth ‘flows.’ It will encapsulate any waste placed at depth and isolate it from the surface environment for eons.” - NAS
“The great advantage is that no water can pass through salt. Fractures are self healing..” - NAS
Disposal options for different waste streams begins to diverge in the 1970s.
1957 - Deep geologic disposal adopted; salt chosen as best.
1970 - AEC establishes new category for transuranic waste, distinct from low- and high-level radioactive waste but with significant overlap in radioactivity. EPA formed.
1976 - Reprocessing of commercial spent fuel put on hold; separate retrievable disposal concept born for SNF/HLW not to go into salt; TRU still to go into salt.
1982 - Nuclear Waste Policy Act…
But the idea of retrieving SNF in the future took hold, killing salt as the host rock and by 1987 the candidate sites were narrowed from 17 to 3:
- Yucca Mt, Nevada
- Hanford, Washington State
- Deaf Smith, Texas
In 1987, Speaker of the House was Jim Wright from Texas, House majority lead was Tom Foley from Washington State. A new junior, Harry Reid, was from Nevada. SoNevada was chosen. Harry Reid became Senate Majority Leader and led the effort to shut down the Yucca Mountain project. In 2008, the YM license application submitted. In 2009, YMP was halted and President Obama put a Blue Ribbon Commission together to develop a new strategy.
Extreme re-engineering, and great cost (~$200 billion extra) is required to counter-act the choice of the wrong rock:
-reducing inverts
-shotcrete
-ceramic coating
-titanium drip shield
-vitrified waste
-package supports
-gravel backfill
Yucca Mt. is a highly fractured, oxidizing, variably saturated, dual porosity, hydrologic system that sits on the edge of the Las Vegas Shear Zone.
Unknown to most, transuranic waste (bomb waste) continued oninto the salt as planned, leading to the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant.
WIPP is ahead of schedule and under-budget.
Only defense-generated TRU waste presently permitted: 100 nCi/g to 23 Ci/L of alpha-emitting 239Pu equivalents but WIPP was originally designed to handle all nuclear waste.
At the 2000 lbs/inch2 pressure at this depth, the salt exhibits significant creep closure, i.e., the salt completely closes all fractures and openings, even micropores, making the salt extremely tight, such that water cannot move even an inch in a billion years. - วิทยาศาสตร์และเทคโนโลยี
![[Full Episode] MasterChef Junior Thailand มาสเตอร์เชฟ จูเนียร์ ประเทศไทย Season 3 Episode 7](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/FOIiws4XMGQ/mqdefault.jpg)
Don't stop educating the world about the background and facts of nuclear energy, never was it more important than now.
Should be required viewing for every person in the western world!
I'm spreading the word.
The solution to Mankind's problems.
Thanks for your keeping us informed.
This is my new go-to link when someone brings up "but what about the waste"! Great presentation and very to the point!
I didn’t expect my favourite presentation from this event to be about salt.
Strictly speaking, WIPP is no longer a 'pilot' plant. Maybe it should be renamed to WIPS - Waste Isolation Permanent Solution, 'cos with it, we've got the 'Waste Problem' whipped😎
Typically only 3% of the energy is extracted from Uranium in power stations.
Use a Thorium Fueled Liquid Salt Nuclear Reactor to process the radioactive waste to use up the other 97%.
Yep, and only the spicy stuff remains. Which is good because it also means the half life is tiny, meaning it goes form angry to inert in up to a few years, meaning containment on site is absolutely possible.
The issue with bomb waste was always that it was just radioactive enough to be a problem but not radioactive enough to dissipate quickly
Moltex Energy are building a fast spectrum molten salt reactor that will be fuelled by irradiated used fuel. It will extract the 96% of fissile energy that PWRs cannot use. Their waste will have a 1/2 life of 30 years vs 30,000 years for the used fuel as it stands today. Their reactor has no moderator so there’s no 7 year switch-out to deal with. And no radioactive carbon to dispose of.
With mild reprocessing of "spent" nuclear fuel, and maybe some of the other high level waste, the better solution would be to burn it up in a molten chloride salt fast spectrum reactor for energy production.
Good info. Thanks for posting.
Why are we talking about this when Thorcon can mass produce power plants cheaper than coal in shipyards and Elysium's reactors burn nuclear waste as fuel?
There's still Fission Products to dispose of. There will still be some Uranium and Plutonium isotopes that won't fission. Pro-nuclear people know about how fuel can be recycled or used more efficiently, but there are laws, for example in California, saying no new reactors can be built until there's an operating permanent waste repository. If you'd like to build a reactor in such a state, there needs to be a DGR for used fuel. Don't have to stick all the fuel in it, but there's needs to be an operating facility. The WIPP could do it, but its mandate was changed from receiving-everything to only-millitary-waste.
@@gordonmcdowell(thankyou) I looked up a bunch of this stuff. Trying to find out if Elysium's (or other) MSRs use up transuranics, or maybe some fission products. Found what they call a "MSTR" ("molten salt transmutation reactor"). Mentioned a critical mass of transuranics for transmutation.
Nuclear waste problem is a non-problem. That is my general take. The 'stuff' is bad but that is just a technical problem in handling it.
Yes, there are dumb laws on the books like requiring deep geological repositories for this incredibly valuable stuff. Maybe we should work on changing those laws so we can start using that valuable stuff instead of planning around them as though they were laws of physics or some ludicrous junk like that.
Thank you, thank you, thank you for the information that has been missing from the debate. And "waste" is shown how and why it's a bs misnomer.
Good.
Ship salt into Yuka ?
Who's that talking loudly in the background? I hope you're not disturbing their conversation.
Deep borehole can be done anywhere, 5 kilometers down is nothing.... build artificial island, than when all waste disposed. Cover the island and turn bird nesting site
why bury the used fuel rods - why not reprocess and reuse them like the clever French do - 95% is reusable
Is it really "too easy" to get oil and gas out of the ground? Fracking companies were filing for bankruptcy in 2019. The whole industry collapsed in April 2020 and had to be bailed out. It might be "easy" but not enough to be profitable. This is not to mention the role of US military intervention in the petroleum markets. The US industry is propped up by kneecapping other petroleum producing nations. Would US petroleum be profitable, If Iran, Iraq, Libya, Venezuela had not been invaded or sanctioned? No, they would not.
Something being easy to do technologically doesn't make it profitable. In fact, I'd argue that if you don't have some sort of barrier to competition, an 'easy' industry is probably more difficult to make a profit in. Restaurants are a pretty easy technology, but it's very hard to make a profitable one. I haven't followed the shale oil industry, but I'd bet that after an initial boom phase, the industry started shaking out the less competent firms. And I don't think that needing a bailout in 2020 indicates anything other than the fact that 2020 was crazy.
I think it is quite clear that if we ignore environmental side effects, oil and gas fracking is a far better deal than things like wind and solar power. This is concerning if you believe that those environmental side effects are large.
According to Wiki, Iraq produced ~2.5 Million Barrels per day in 2000, down to about 1.5 during 2003, and up to 4 Million by 2015. 4 Million in 2021.
Iran had height of ~6 Million barrels in 70s, were a little under 4 Million in early 2000s, now down to about 2.5 Million.
Libya had a height of ~2.9 Million barrels in late 60s, were at 1.6 peak in late 2000s, and were at 1 M in 2019. 1.2 M in 2021.
Venezuela had a height of ~3.5 M barrelse in late 60s, were around 3.2 M in late 2000s, then declined to .8 M in 2019. 0.6M in 2021
If we attribute all the difference between 2000s peak production with current production to U.S. policy, we get +1.5-1.5-0.4-2.6 = -3 Million barrels per day. US production in 2021 was 11 M barrels per day, and there are plenty of other places that produce relatively "expensive" oil. Russia adds another 10M, and Canada 4.4M. Norway is 1.7M, and UK is 0.8M. There are plenty of other countries that produce 'expensive' oil, but I can't recognise them from a list, and I've exhausted my willingness to research this topic tonight. Maybe there is a case to be made that US actions abroad increased the market for "expensive" oil by 10-20%, but I don't think it is fair to say that the US industry would be unprofitable without those interventions. (Accepting for the sake of argument that all those changes are attributable to the interventions.)
Lots of people want oil, and that demand exceeds the capacity or willingness of the cheap oil producers to meet. So, there will still be room for more expensive oil in the market.
@@lacklustermathie If by "crazy" you mean that the US shale oil industry was destroyed by economic warfare then I will agree with you. The US oil boys got their asses handed to them by the Russians and the Saudis. It was sweet revenge for the sanctions on Nord Stream 2. The fact of the matter is , Shale Oil was not profitable. It was all debt financed. Show me a shale company that was making a legit profit? Why did the whole industry tank? The US was using its reserve currency status to finance the unprofitable shale oil industry. US companies are not subject to the same financial discipline. Because the government will always bail them out. It is only now with the Ukraine debacle that US fracking oil and gas is profitable. But, they are destroying Europe in order to make a dollar.
thorium lftr project quashed, in favor of explosive fast breeder products, care of Richard Nixon