Well I probably shouldn't be thinking of stuff this complex, but ....

[Udie]

Do we have any nuclear engineers here?   I just got to thinking about the nuclear waste problem(s) we have on this planet.  So they use the stuff to boil water to make steam to power generators and what not.  Then they throw the used material away where it sits radioactive for 10,000 years.

 Couldn't they reuse that fuel?  If there's all this energy coming off of it couldn't, or shouldn't they be able to figure a way to use it too?  Seems that would be much more efficient than storing it underground where nobody wants it and it has a chance to contaminate the Earth.

 I know I'm way over my head here.  Anybody know anything about what I'm trying to talk about here?

[Creamo]

Um, they are storing it in Nevada, and they label it "waste" for a reason of all things. I'm not a nuclear engineer, but it seems to me, it would be a lot of trouble if it was usable to truck it here for a waste dump and make everyone protest for the last year about it.

Here’s some more Nevada advise if your wondering, hold on 20 in blackjack. Don’t split the Kings.

[Curval]

I saw a 60 Minutes on the Nevada site....it is buried deep in a mountain in huge pools of water.  Scary stuff actually...the containers will rot away long before the stuff is no longer dangerous.

I don't think it is useable with current technology...but "maybe" in the future.

[Raider]

When I was an undergrad at Clemson one of my projects was to test the performance of glassphalt. It was actually asphalt with a small amount of waste glass mixed in. The glassphalt performed well under light to meduim traffic but we had problems with it under heavy traffic loads. The glass would strip from the mix and gather along the road. At this point the glass particles had the texture of dust and was determined that it could potentially cause health problems.

Later that semester that I found out that the the glass was actually made from low level nuclear waste. Apparently they are able to neutralize the radioactivity by either encasing it or converting it into a type of glass. I'll see if I can find my old notes to find out for sure where the glass came from.

umm.. I guess that could explain my unusually hairy back and small digit and my children's large forheads..

[CptTrips]

You could grind it up into a particulate, easily inhalable powder and start crop dusting Iraq, Iran, Libya, and North Korea with it.

What? Don't look at me like that!

Jeeez  you try and help...

Wab

[miko2d]

Current nuclear reactors are designed to use a specific fuel - either enriched uranium or plutonium.

 As a result of reactor operation the fuel splits into various elements, some of them radioactive. Also the surrounding material - heat exchange medium, graphite, structure, case gets bombarded by radiation and some of the elements get converted into other ones - many also radioactive.

 So as a result you get a wild mix of elements with various levels of radioactivity (and varying half-life) mixed among the inert elements of different kinds.

 The technology of separating radioactive uranium from regular one and plutonium from wherever it comes from (mostly uranium replicator reactors) is very complex - in fact Manhattan project was mostly that.

 For each radioactive element in a waste mix a separate technology would have to be developed and then a reactor would have to be designed - provided there is enough of that element to fill a single reactor which most likely there is not.
 Even if it could work, instead of just two types or reactors (ideally) - uranium and plutonium, you would have dozens - which makes it much less safer overall in operation.

 The costs would be astronomical. Much safer and cheaper to store it somewhere safe and dry for a few thousand years.

 miko

[Lance]

Just imagine all the perch you could fry with a nuclear deep fryer.

[qts]

I've always wondered why they don't just dump the nuclear waste down an active volcano - one with free-flowing lava like Hawaii rather than a sticky one which goes BOOM. Everything gets melted and mixed up and when the lava cools, it's safely entombed.

[mauser]

On a related note, check out http://www.bellona.no

Among the other articles, there is the one about the Russian
Northern Fleet and it's problems with storing and getting rid
of nuclear waste.  I don't know how true this site is.. it's a
Norwegian publisher so they are close enough to the problem
area.  Either way... I hope I don't come across anything that
comes out of the North Sea.  And I feel sorry for some Russian
shipyard workers...

mauser

P.S.  qts, unless it can be proven that whatever comes out of the volcano isn't radioactive enough to be a health problem, I'd prefer that not happen.  When the winds change, the other islands get what we call "vog."  It's no where near as visibility detrimental as fog, but it makes the air hazy from the volcanic dust that gets blown up here from the volcanoes on the Big Island.  

[midnight Target]

True Story:

I was teaching special education in San Luis Obispo, CA when PG&E was attempting to bring Diablo Canyon on line. For those of you too young to remember (1980 or 81 I think) this plant caused a huge movement by the Anti-nuke crowd. As a practicing hippie pinko, I had many friends living in the "solar village" set up in a nearby field.

I decided that a tour of the site would be a good thing for my students, so I called PG&E. After explaining that I had a bus load of Developmentally Disabled students that would love to see the facility, they wiped the drool from their PR man's mouth and invited me over.  

In the intervening time I coached my students in some interesting questions to ask the tour guide. I know, it was not entirely kosher, but I enjoyed the heck out of it. I wish I had a video of the tour guides reaction:

Tour Guide: (In Barney-like voice) The containment building weighs as much as a really, really heavy thing boys and girls! And the concrete is really really thick too. Any questions?

Timmah: (not his real name) What do you do with all that concrete when you have to disassemble the building in 50 years?

Tour Guide: ?? huh ??

Freddy: What exactly is the half life of Strontium 90?

Tour Guide: Now that's a good question..........

He eventually had to get his supervisor to answer the "children's" questions. Was one of the best field trips ever.

[funkedup]

The hell with perch.  Wings you fish eating communist!

[GWH]

Originally posted by Raider

Later that semester that I found out that the the glass was actually made from low level nuclear waste. Apparently they are able to neutralize the radioactivity by either encasing it or converting it into a type of glass.

IIRC, the waste treatment process you're referring to is called vitrification.  Basically, it involves 'glassifying' a medium (typically soil) contaminated with radionuclides.  I think this process can either be done in-situ or ex-situ, depending on the method used.  The idea is that since radionuclides require time to degrade into less dangerous species, it's best to physically/chemically immobilize them in a medium that is not favorable for contaminant transport (dust, solutes, etc.).  The contamination is still there and it's still dangerous and it'll be there for awhile, but it can't get anywhere, ideally.  As a grad student at UIUC, I knew a fellow grad student who was studying the dissolution rates of vitrified materials for radioactive waste disposal purposes.

[Leslie]

I was reading this book that dealt with rockets, and one of the things it said was, that we have about 100 years or so to develop a means to leave this planet and move to another.  Though it didn't specifically mention nuclear waste disposal, it mentioned natural mineral resourses which will eventually run out at the rate we're using them up.  Maybe all the sci-fi movies about Mars aren't all that far-fetched.  But I got the idea from reading the book that they were talking about interstellar travel.  Almost like the movie "When Worlds Collide".

Who knows what the future holds?  We need to get to work on it right away.  Sad part about it is, it probably ain't gonna happen without people thinking about it.  We're almost to the point where we need to start thinking seriously about the space program...which may even give us an answer to the nuclear waste problem.

Please excuse my ravings, I'm a little bit drunk.  Good thread Udie.



Les

[Red Ant]

Originally posted by Leslie
I was reading this book that dealt with rockets, and one of the things it said was, that we have about 100 years or so to develop a means to leave this planet and move to another.

Les

These are not ravings at all. In fact, as long as Humanity exists solely here on Planet Earth, we are one medium-sized meteor strike from complete anihilation. While moving to another planet in 100 years seems hopelessly optimistic, moving "out into space" is going to HAVE TO become a reality soon, for the human race to progress forward, and not have "all its eggs in one basket". Near Space will have to be mastered 1st, then the Asteroid Belt, etc etc...  baby steps