Nuclear Waste Disposal in USA - Dr. James Conca @ TEAC11
6,065
Published 2022-11-27
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.
All Comments (21)
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Don't stop educating the world about the background and facts of nuclear energy, never was it more important than now.
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Should be required viewing for every person in the western world!
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This is my new go-to link when someone brings up "but what about the waste"! Great presentation and very to the point!
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I'm spreading the word. The solution to Mankind's problems. Thanks for your keeping us informed.
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I didn’t expect my favourite presentation from this event to be about salt.
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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😎
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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%.
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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.
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Good info. Thanks for posting.
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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.
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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?
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Good.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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Ship salt into Yuka ?
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Who's that talking loudly in the background? I hope you're not disturbing their conversation.
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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
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Very misleading! The law currently says that yucca Mountain will be the US site for High Level Waste! To change the law it will require it going to a different State. That won’t happen because of Political reasons! Yucca Mountain is at the Nevada test Site where over 1000 Nuclear detonations have been conducted! Therefore the land will never be put back into the public domain! Yucca Mountain was determined to be the best site after reviewing 9 sites in the Country. Salt sites will not be possible to retrieve the Waste for any reason. Dr James Conca is from SNL, and has a $ connection to Whipp . Start Yucca Mountain up by allowing the money already collected from the Commercial reactors in this Country.
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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.
