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Author Topic:   Yuca Mountain Nuclear Waste Depository
Dr Cresswell
Inactive Member


Message 8 of 8 (197393)
04-07-2005 6:13 AM
Reply to: Message 6 by jar
04-06-2005 5:15 PM


Re: I have a few questions for you.
quote:
Are the places they are currently stored such as SRP better suited or less suited than Yucca Mountain?
I can't really speak to the US situation, but there has been a similar long-running deep storage issue here in the UK (for many years there's been invesigation into deep burial under the Sellafield site in Cumbria). At the moment in the UK waste generated during nuclear power generation is initially stored at the power plant to allow the very short lived activity to decay away until it's safe to transport - I assume that is true of all nuclear plants, the technical problems of safely transporting highly active nuclear waste are too high to do anything else. The waste is then transported to Sellafield where it is recycled (my understanding is that the US has no civil reprocessing programme, and even the military Pu extraction programme is currently non-operational). This results in a multi-stage storage programme - short term at site of production, medium term above ground at Sellafield, and long term .... well, nowhere at present.
Most nuclear power plants are unsuitable locations for even medium term (ie: 10-100 years) storage. There would need to be major construction at each site to build suitable buildings with adequate shielding for employees and the public. Longer term, most nuclear power plants are built on the coast or major rivers because of the need for cooling water - these are environments that are prone to erosion and so very few of these sites would be suitable for surface storage (which in the industry includes shallow burial, which is the norm as soil provides an effective radiation shield reducing the need for as substantial a construction job) for more than a few hundred years after power generation ceases.
Geological burial is the only realistic long term storage option. The difficulty really is in finding suitable locations where the geology includes non-porous rock (so that any leaks from the containers are contained within the store - though the use of vitrification technology is intended to prevent such leaks, at least large leaks) and historic geological stability to give confidence that there won't be any instability (eg: fractures or faulting) during the lifetime of the store (at least 10 000 years).
Of course, as well as geological issues there are also political issues. The biggest isn't actually related to the long-term safety of the store, which if there is a problem will be hundreds or thousands of years in the future which is of little concern to politicians with 4 year terms of office, but the transport of waste to the site. The biggest risk is in a spill during transport, and that transport will have to go close to residents near the site. That's why the UK government keeps on trying to put our long-term store at Sellafield - most of the waste is already there.

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 Message 6 by jar, posted 04-06-2005 5:15 PM jar has not replied

  
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