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Suddenly No Solution For 56 Million Gallons Of Highly Radioactive Toxic Waste Leaking Into The Ground
Wolf Richter www.testosteronepit.com www.amazon.com/author/wolfrichter
Engineers around the world have done a great job developing nuclear technologies to serve mankind’s many endeavors: medical devices, power generators, naval propulsion systems, or the most formidable weapons ever built, so formidable that they could largely wipe out mankind and its many endeavors.
However, engineers haven’t figured out yet what to do with the highly radioactive and toxic materials nuclear technologies leave behind. They leak through corroded containers, contaminate soil, water, and air, and after decades, we try to deal with them somehow, but mainly we’re shuffling that problem to the next generation. The enormous sums coming due over time were never included in the original costs. We’re not even talking about an accident, like Fukushima, whose costs will likely reach $1 trillion, but about maintenance and cleanup.
For example, the Hanford Nuclear Reservation in Washington State, the largest, most daunting environmental cleanup project in the US. More than 11,000 people work on it. Nine relatively small reactors on that property produced plutonium, starting in 1943 through the Cold War. In 1987, the last reactor was shut down. What remains are various structures, such as the evocatively named “Plutonium Finishing Plant” (aerial photo: red “X” marks denote sections to be demolished) or the “Plutonium Vault Complex” that stored plutonium for nuclear weapons (photo of corridor).
Buried underground are 177 tanks containing 56 million gallons of highly radioactive and toxic waste. The 31 oldest tanks, made of a single layer of now rust-perforated carbon steel, have been leaking highly radioactive and toxic sludge into the ground for decades.
Hence the “Waste Treatment and Immobilization Plant,” a radiochemical processing facility. In its annual report to Congress, the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board, which has jurisdiction over the “defense nuclear facilities” of the Department of Energy (DOE), describes the task at Hanford:
After these wastes are retrieved from the tanks, the plant will chemically separate the waste into two streams of differing radioactive hazard and solidify them into glass in stainless steel canisters. The low-radioactivity glass will be disposed of onsite, while the high-level waste glass will be shipped offsite for permanent disposal once a repository is available.
Turns out, almost none of it, according to the report, can be done safely or at all. And that “repository?” It doesn’t exist. Despite decades of trying, the US has not been able to come up with one.
In 1989, the DOE inked a Tri-Party Agreement with the EPA and Washington State to clean up the site. It would require the construction of a special facility. In 1990, the DOE paid for two sets of plans. Then nothing. People got promoted out of there, did things, or retired. A decade passed. In 2001, construction finally began.
Another decade passed. In 2010, with technical challenges galore, a guy named Walter Tamosaitis, a former engineering manager at the site, sent the Board a letter, claiming that he “was removed from the project because he identified technical issues that could affect safety.” An investigation followed. Later, the Board conceded that Hanford had “a flawed safety culture” that was hindering “the identification and resolution of technical and safety issues.”
By that time, with the plant far from finished, the price tag had ballooned to $12.2 billion. The design and construction contractor, Bechtel National, a unit of the Bechtel Corporation, was getting rich off this project and wouldn’t mind if it dragged on forever. CEOs come and go, but the project’s reliable revenue stream would always be there.
Now, almost 25 years after the original agreement, the price has ballooned further, but the DOE no longer has an estimate, nor does it have any idea as to when the plant will be finished. If ever. Because it has some, let’s say, issues. As the report in bland bureaucratese points out: “Although this is a one-of-a-kind project with novel technology that requires significant research and development, it is being designed concurrent with construction. As a result....”
As a result of starting to build the dang thing before they solved the major technical problems, they now have a mess on their hands; and pending a solution to “the remaining technical issues,” explained DOE spokeswoman, Aoife McCarthy, construction has now stopped.
The Board raised “a serious question as to whether this plant is going to work at all,” said Senate Energy Committee Chairman Ron Wyden, a Democrat from Oregon. The report lists design problems that could lead to mechanical breakdowns, chemical explosions, and nuclear reactions.
But leaving the highly radioactive and toxic sludge in the underground tanks would be dangerous as well. The older single-shell tanks are leaking. And as the report explains, many of the “double-shell tanks currently have enough flammable gas retained in the waste that, if released in the tank headspace, could create a flammable atmosphere.” And blow up.
“These are the questions that should have been resolved at the front end,” groaned Senator Wyden.
Precisely the quandary not just of Hanford but of the entire nuclear age! We’ve figured out the first part. But we haven’t figured out how to deal with the second part, radioactive waste. Entire careers have been and will be made at Hanford in decommissioning the site and removing its structures, reactors, and contaminated materials. Many more careers will be made dealing with the highly radioactive and toxic sludge. It will eat up fortunes for generations.
Catastrophic nuclear accidents, like Chernobyl or Fukushima, are very rare, we’re told incessantly. But when they occur, they’re costly. So costly that the French government, when it came up with estimates, kept them secret. But the report was leaked. Read.... Potential Cost Of A Nuclear Accident? So High It’s A Secret!
And here is my review of David Stockman’s latest book, an awesome romp through the economic, financial, and monetary shenanigans of our times! Read.... David Stockman: “Money Printers And Wall Street Coddlers”
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credo is entirely correct, General Electric has had solutions to reactor "waste" for decades. Many nuclear "waste" products are fuel for other nuclear processes.
However, no such reactors have been licensed in the US (there might be one or two).
The "we do not know what to do with the 'waste' products" is a false narrative of the anti-nuclear types.
The article is more correctly about the waste and mismangagement carried on by the government.
The wast is being stored in fuel pools ready to become doomsday machines.
Big time. If Carter had allowed us to reprocess our waste the way many other countries do, this wouldn't be an issue. All that to stop nuclear proliferation. Good job Jimmie.
The first step is reprocessing used fuel for MOX rods, which is what they were using in Daiichi NPP #3. Now there's three thousand billion (3,000,000,000,000) Lethal Doses of Radiation (429 Lethal Doses per) chasing each and every one of us on the planet, to put it in a nutshell. This is up from about 70 Billion Lethal Doses March 23, 2011. It is getting worse every day without any intervention by the US and the other nuclear powers….
http://www.veteranstoday.com/2011/05/28/fukushima-how-many-chernobyls-is...
"Use of MOX fuel attacks commercial nuclear reactors where they are the weakest. Many reactors are aging prematurely, and cracks are appearing in vital reactor components. Most atomic reactors were not originally designed to use MOX fuel and MOX makes key reactor components age even faster.
Because of its high "neutron flux" levels, the reactor pressure vessel can become embrittled and fail during accident conditions. A nuclear accident involving MOX fuel could cause a meltdown more serious than Three Mile Island or Chernobyl, because the levels of radiation inside a reactor using MOX are even higher than in a normal atomic reactor."
http://www.nirs.org/factsheets/basicmoxinfo.htm
Regarding 3 Mile island, the average exposure to the population close by was the equivalent of a single chest x ray. (or 1 hour in a jet). Chernobyl was a bomb manufacturing facility.
And the average between size 6 and size 10 shoe is size 8 - pretty sure lots of extra profit to be had from a one-size-fits-all policy, there...
Bet you 10 to 1 thats not true. Bell curves and statistics being what they are and all that.
You realize I was being sarcastic and that Bell curves and stats also apply to your radiation averages?
TMI:
"Peters soon developed diarrhea and nausea, blisters on his lips and inside his nose, and a burning feeling in his chest. Not long after, he had surgery for a damaged heart valve. When his family evacuated the area a few days later, they left their four-year-old German shepherd in their garage with 200 pounds of dog chow, 50 gallons of water and a mattress. When they returned a week later, they found the dog dead on the mattress, his eyes burnt completely white. His food was untouched, and he had vomited water all over the garage. They also found four of their five cats dead — their eyes also burnt white — and one alive but blinded." "Where the Columbia study found a 30 percent average increase in lung cancer risk among one group of residents, for example, Wing found an 85 percent increase." "Exactly how much radiation was released is impossible to say, since onsite monitors immediately went off the scale after the explosion. But Gundersen points to an inside report by an NRC manager who himself estimated the release of about 36 million curies — almost three times as much as the NRC's official estimate. Gundersen also notes that industry itself has acknowledged there was a total of 10 billion curies of radiation inside the reactor containment. Using the common estimate that a tenth of it escaped, that means as much as a billion curies could have been released to the environment."http://www.tmia.com/node/222
But yet somehow lifespans keep going up, and therre are more polar bears and deer than 25 years ago. And turkeys. And Elk. And wolves. Grizzlies. eagles. california condors. even AMPHIBIANS.
People must just be special
'Crisis of epic proportions for California sea lions — Suffering abscesses, seizures — Exponentially higher numbers washing up'
http://enenews.com/crisis-of-epic-proportions-for-california-sea-lions-s...
'Sickened Alaska animals getting more tests for Fukushima radionuclides — Oozing sores, bleeding, swollen internal organs, hair loss'
http://enenews.com/sickened-alaska-animals-getting-more-tests-for-fukush...
There are more animals now, but soon there won't be as the Fuku radiation continues to spread, and the fallout from the original blasts begins to 'work its' magic' on the world's DNA.
That would be the mercury from your CFL's. The half value layer for nuclear BOMB radioactive fallout in water is 7 INCHES!
Until dust, etc. starts to sink and drift away or deposit at the bottom, contaminating food chain trough accumulation, a "detail" you forgot to mention...
Let it sink. Good thing the ocean is only 3 inches deep ehh?
...because radiation can't handle deep, right? So it "dies" off at 3 inch deep...
And one Godzilla is enough protein for all of Africa. Unless you're also against modified foods.
Radioactive waste was solved back in the 1990s using lasers - radioactivity was annihilated using light.
The problem is that this approach causes a change in process and vendors - so like many other innovations, it got buried.
That is just silly. Lasers can't affect radiation.
There is enough silliness about these matters from the anti-nuke fanatics. All this radioactive material came out of the earth. The net result is that the earth will have less radioactivity than before, albeit, there can be short life elements for a while, which is pesky. The best place to put nuclear waste is back in the earth, enclosed in glass. But, the environmentalists have blocked safe disposal at the Yucca Mountain nuclear facility. The other solution is to burn up the nuclear waste in a Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactor.
You are correct about the problem with Light Water reactors and its vendors. They are financially locked unto an obsolete system.
NBC weapons materials also came out of earth, and were also safe until weaponized; that doesn't mean they're still safe afterwards, their sole reason of existance... on a more "mundane" level, poop also comes out of food (and the earth), but it's hardly beneficiary to health...
Kind of hard to zap the stuff that leeched into the environment already, I imagine.
Unless, of course, we equip the woodchucks with frickin' laser beams.
And every nation, and every scientist
is in on the conspiracy to protect "clean-up vendors".
Wow!
make that double WOW!
Drink Radithor !
http://talesfromthenuclearage.wordpress.com/2010/08/30/drink-radithor/
Radium Girls
http://talesfromthenuclearage.wordpress.com/2010/09/13/the-radium-girls-2/
The SL-1 Incident (4 parts)
http://talesfromthenuclearage.wordpress.com/2010/06/18/the-sl-1-incident/
http://talesfromthenuclearage.wordpress.com/2010/07/02/sl-1-part-2/
http://talesfromthenuclearage.wordpress.com/2010/07/17/sl-1-part-3/
http://talesfromthenuclearage.wordpress.com/2010/08/01/sl-1-aftermath/
Fortunately, everything at Fukushima is under control.........
http://english.kyodonews.jp/news/2013/04/217995.html
http://enenews.com/video-strangeness-happened-to-my-body-after-fukushima...
And everything is just fine elsewhere in the US.......
http://pbadupws.nrc.gov/docs/ML1309/ML13092A024.pdf
http://enenews.com/new-official-flyover-shows-intense-oil-sheen-around-g...
Existing waste is a big problem. However the statement: "engineers haven’t figured out yet what to do with the highly radioactive and toxic materials nuclear technologies leave behind" is not completely true. See http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bHJuz5pNQL8 for example. There are numerous new reactor ideas and designs being worked on that could actually break down or "burn" or use the waste that is left behind by the current reactor types. Eventually this quite likely to be what ends up happening, technically speaking. In regard to timelines, hopefully, one of these new reactor designs gets up and running without a major accident or crisis being required so that the effort receives proper attention. But on that front, I am less hopeful.
The waste contained in the handford waste tanks is not spent fuel rods. its liquid gunk that was used to separate Plutonium from the processed fuel using a process like Purex. The processing plant is designed to remove the water and other liquids from the radioactive material so it can be safely discharged. It can't be burned up in a reactor.
Most of the reactors that would process spent fuel rods take more energy to operate than the produce and would like take a very long time to process just a tiny fraction of the spent fuel rods. There are millions of tons of spent fuel rods. The primary reason why spent fuel rods are not reprocessed is because it incredible expensive!
What is going to happen is absolutely nothing. There is no money to pay for any grand programs to address the nuclear waste. What probably will happen is that there will be a grid down for extended period (caused by a gov't collapse, Solar Storm, WW3,etc), Then they will unleash judgement day as billions perish from exposure as the spent fuel pools catch on fire.
This is a political problem, not a technical one. If the Environmentalists won't allow the safest solution, then the spent rods will remain in a water tank near the nuclear facilities. This is not a good long term solution.
The waste won’t be wished away. I’ve heard nothing but complaints from the anti-nuke fanatics.
No problem, just feed all the shite into thorium reactors. Oh, but thats too sensible.
"The thorium-uranium fuel cycle has some advantages over the dominant uranium-plutonium cycle, in terms for example, of the reduced production of long-lived actinides and somewhat diminished radio -toxicity overall. However, it also creates new hazards of its own. As far as radioactive fission products are concerned, there is little to choose between the two.
Thorium reactors do not produce plutonium. But an LFTR could (by including 238U in the fuel) be adapted to produce plutonium of a high purity well above normal weapons-grade, presenting a major proliferation hazard. Beyond that, the main proliferation hazards arise from the need for fissile material (plutonium or uranium) to initiate the thorium fuel cycle, which could be diverted, and the production of fissile uranium 233U."
http://nuclear-news.net/2012/08/15/thorium-nuclear-reactors-not-all-they...
"With uranium-based nuclear power continuing its decades-long economic collapse, it's awfully late to be thinking of developing a whole new fuel cycle whose problems differ only in detail from current versions." - Amory Lovins, Rocky Mountain Institute, March 2009. http://www.jonathonporritt.com/sites/default/files/users/Thorium%20brief...Getting schooled by Kirk Sorensen: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D3rL08J7fDA
Fun with household radioactive materials required by law to be present in the sleeping quarters of the surplus capital resources
http://harpers.org/archive/1998/11/the-radioactive-boy-scout/
There are serious problems with the arguments in the links. Most of the points are specious; they reach for straws. They project difficulties and expenses which are unlikely.
They are anti nuke propaganda sites. The cap line of the first article proclaims its bias. It says it wants a nuclear free world. Too late.
The second article pretends to be unbiased, but it throws up unrealistic assumptions and doubts. It sounds Luddite.
First, a LFTR burns up 100% of the Thorium vs 3% of the Uranium-235 or Plutonium-239 in a Light Water reactor. Hence, the amount of waste is about a hundredth that of a LWR. The nuclear waste has a lifespan of only 300 years, instead of 10 thousand years for spent rods. This is not an advantage?
It is possible, but unlikely, to breed Plutonium-239 in a LFTR. But, this would take $billions to perfect. The Uranium-232 produced in a LFTR is too radioactive for making bombs, but it is just fine inside a reactor. Uranium-232 gains a neutron and becomes Uranium-233.
Even if you could refine out the Uranium-232, it would be very expensive and unnecessary. No one would want to do this, because we have thousands of tons of Plutonium in the spent rods now.
A LFTR is an ideal way of processing much of this nuclear waste.
Next, There are no proliferation problems. Decommissioned bombs could be used to start up a LFTR, then only add Thorium. U233 cannot be easily used for making bombs.
It was bad politics which turned America from using LFTR. LFTR is likely to be much cheaper and safer than Light Water Reactors. There is no way that a LFTR can explode or over heat. IF a gas line from the reactor to the generators broke, then the LFTR shuts itself down until repaired. Both articles are throwing up shadows to scare us.
Let’s see. You don’t want us to use oil, coal or nuclear. Wind and solar are impractical. Geothermal is out in the sticks. Environmentalist want tear down the Dams. It looks like you want us to die in the billions for a lack of energy? This is your way of solving a nonexistent population explosion, right?
Thorium reactors are a dead end. U232 makes them impossible for any commerial operation. Thorium reactors can also have meltdowns, and there are huge enviromential problems mining and processing thorium. This is just another pandora box like Uranium fueled reactors.
It is clear that you do not know what you are talking about. Your errors are too many for me to correct, so watch the following.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P9M__yYbsZ4&feature=player_embedded#!
They should try to stop the Indians and the Chinese from getting on with it.
Ship it to North Korea?
These retards never learn. In Canada they are planning on creating a nuclear waste dump one mile from Lake Huron:
http://www.stopthegreatlakesnucleardump.com/
That is one BIG FUCKING LIE! We got one. It is called Yucca Mountain. You can thank the SOBS in Nevada, Harry Reid, and President Obama on closing it down. Harry Reid ought to be in prison if not tried for treason for his meddling in our nuclear waste disposal fiasco. Harry Reid STOPPED Yucca Mountain.
Yucca Mountain CAN and DOES store nuke waste. It has been made a very expensive football by HARRY FUCKING REID. I hope that fuck DIES a HORRIBLE death!!!!!!!
Looking at the last 100 years I'm not sure TPTB (and we the people who keep voting for them) could fuck up any worse if they were trying.....
It's not so simple. The only thing worse than this nuclear waste would be letting the Soviets do it all by themselves. Like it or not, mutual assured destruction saved the planet and all of us. What price was worth that?
An old quote kept running through my mind as I read this:
"What fools these mortals be."
seems like the nearest thing to do is make more double walled tanks, above ground on concrete pads with catchment systems, pump the waste out of the old tanks and into new tanks.
The old tank shells will need to be scraped down, excavated and canisterized and placed in deep mine salt caverns.
not much else can be done,
You are a genius! I wonder why no-one thought of that?
Maybe because the waste rots EVERYTHING. No pump or piping material will last long. What worker would knowingly operate in this deadly environment? And will ground water invade these salt caverns in, say, 10,000 years?
There is no safe disposal. None. We have poisoned ourselves.
And don't forget about all the rare earth mining radiactive waste being generated by the "green" industries.
And add to that that EVERYTHING that touches this waste BECOME MORE WASTE!! Laws of diminishing returns or beneficial detriments rings not more true than at the nuke waste sites. If you have ever worked at one, EVERYTHING is bad, and the Government workers are coddled, and are absolutely NON PRODUCTIVE if not downright contributing to the problems.
They also forgot the problems with asbestos, heavy metals, and all the rest of the environmental issues out there. 50s, 60s and 70s were polluting wonder years. 80s was the awakening, not the hippy children, it was children of the 80s. Don't believe the SanFran Haite crowd. It was the 80s kids whom recognized we all could be obliterated, look at the movies of the time: Terminator, The day after, end of the world apocalyptic stuff. We were the ones that realized, not the so called stoned "flower children" with peace signs. Long Haired RnRollers that partied like out last night on earth, because it may well be.
Nuclear waste is our past, and PROPER nuclear generation is our future, with solar, wind, and coal. Like it or not. We need to learn to live PROPERLY with the beast and stop giving GOVERNMENT CONTRACTS TO THE FUCKING LOW BIDDER OR THE POLITICALLY CONNECTED!!! Leave this to qualified engineers and scientists that KNOW what the hell is going on, sacrifice the politicos, throw them in the toxic tanks, and fire and jail the corrupt criminal; contractors!
Nuff said!
Put a couple of fruit flies in a jar with some honey on the bottom, and put the perforated lid on. The fruit flies will multiply like crazy, but soon they will all die at once from being overcome by their own waste.
They will fuck and shit all over themselves until they all die together. Just like us.
You need to work on your self esteem. And upgrade your friends. That's just wrong.
What a state of affairs. There is going to be nothing left of this planet in 100 years. We pollute and poison everything we touch. Even pigs don't shit where they sleep. We are so fucken stupid as a species, I bet if we discovered a new earth in space, the first thing we would build is a nuke plant and start poisoning it. Wake up people!
There certainly won't be much left in 100 years. If you wanted to build a 747, you'd have to send 1000 illegals to the dump in search of alluminum cans/etc. Everything will be mined out and/or burned up.
The good news is, at that point the population crashes and the earth begins to heal. Sometime after that, planet earth will be a nice place again. I wish I hadn't been born so early.
LMAO@Stupidity
I guess you have never seen a pig farm
Untrue. According to the EPA, America is cleaner than we were in 1960.
Bjorn Lomborg in his book, Cool It: The Skeptical Environmentalist’s Guide to Global Warming, says that any country who’s standard of living exceeds $3500 starts to tackle pollution problems. It’s how you tell who is dirt poor: they have rusting cars on their front lawn or they have a pollution problem. Even China is starting to clean up its act, but they have a long way to go.
It was bad Leftist politics which got us into this mess. Admiral Rickover wanted Light Water Reactors in his submarines, so he could process the spent rods for Plutonium for bombs. The power industry took a proven technology, especially when the government gave them special benefits and capped their possible outlays in a disaster.
How is this governmental boondoggle an indictment of us as American’s or humans? That was back when the Democrats had been in charge for a decade.
No, the planet will be here.
It's the things that infect it that may be done away with.
The planet has a long enough timeline for everything on it to drop to zero,
and then it can start over.