there's too much talk about the controversy of stashing nuclear waste at Yucca Mountain in Nevada, and not nearly enough talk about the reason that the government is leaning toward storage and accumulation as opposed to development of nuclear waste reprocessing. so i needed to mull over this one for a bit.
until 1976, there was a reprocessing plant in West Valley, New York, which extracted various elements of nuclear waste and recirculated them into reactors. plutonium as well as other actinide components (essentially, radioactive rare earth elements) were separated/burned off by nuclear fission and recycled as fuel to generate electricity. the reprocessing plant was closed by Pres. Ford, not because it was detrimental to the economy, but because of paranoia regarding nuclear weapons proliferation. but. during the time it was active, the nuclear fuel service plant (nfs) recovered 1926 kg of plutonium, shipping ~80% to the atomic energy commission (aec). the other remaining 20% was re-sold to industry for use in plutonium recycling [fas.org/sgp/crs/nuke/RS22542.pdf]. as i understand it, nfs blended their recovered plutonium with other metal oxides, precluding its use in weapons production. which seems to me like it addresses the issue of safety at least adequately. so then why was Ford so bent on closing the reprocessing plant? recycling nuclear waste into its more-or-less innocuous components for recirculation seems like the better alternative to shoving the still-reactive mixture under Yucca, eh? this is where i become garbled...
until 1976, there was a reprocessing plant in West Valley, New York, which extracted various elements of nuclear waste and recirculated them into reactors. plutonium as well as other actinide components (essentially, radioactive rare earth elements) were separated/burned off by nuclear fission and recycled as fuel to generate electricity. the reprocessing plant was closed by Pres. Ford, not because it was detrimental to the economy, but because of paranoia regarding nuclear weapons proliferation. but. during the time it was active, the nuclear fuel service plant (nfs) recovered 1926 kg of plutonium, shipping ~80% to the atomic energy commission (aec). the other remaining 20% was re-sold to industry for use in plutonium recycling [fas.org/sgp/crs/nuke/RS22542.pdf]. as i understand it, nfs blended their recovered plutonium with other metal oxides, precluding its use in weapons production. which seems to me like it addresses the issue of safety at least adequately. so then why was Ford so bent on closing the reprocessing plant? recycling nuclear waste into its more-or-less innocuous components for recirculation seems like the better alternative to shoving the still-reactive mixture under Yucca, eh? this is where i become garbled...
1) how is nuclear waste less dangerous than blended plutonium? 2) what was Ford's other incentive? 3) and why does the Bush administration actually sound like they know what's going on here?
"the United States should also consider technologies... that are cleaner, more efficient, less waste intensive and more proliferation-resistant" [Report of the National Energy Policy Development Group, May 2001]
1) ok. well, nuclear waste is typically blended with cementitious material (20/80) supposedly shielding against radioactive awakening/travesty. there's also the mixed oxide fuel burning method, mixing plutonium with uranium to burn off the plutonium by nuclear fission. and the other is vitrification; the storage of actinide components in borosilicate glass logs and - you got it - burying them deep, deep underground [Bullen and McCormick 1998]. is this less dangerous though? not really. the difference is making a somewhat neutralizing mixture which you then stuff into the ground to accumulate and wait for something to possibly wake it up. or. making a somewhat neutralizing mixture which you then recycle, keeping new highly reactive mixtures from being created in the first place, lessening the threat to the earth's safe-keeping. i may just be a hippie (and i like to think i'm not...), but i'm quite partial to the latter. reusing what we've already procured as opposed to incessantly taking more and more. one of the arguments against nuclear waste reprocessing is that it only recaptures plutonium (which really isn't entirely true either, but for the sake of argument...). plutonium is ~1% of actinides in nuclear waste, the rest would still need to be stored in a repository. so why is it worth it to spend the extra money on reprocessing in the first place? because it makes use of what we already have, and prevents us from accumulating so many tons of nuclear waste (GNEP estimates 96,000 metric tons by 2050 when Yucca will only be able to hold 77,000). if we have to stash our garbage at Yucca, we might as well do our best to reuse what we've already got planned to put there instead of accumulating more. eh? here comes the notion of Yucca and nuclear energy being a transitional tool from coal to entirely clean renewable energy [see section post numbers].
2) Ford. it actually turns out that proliferation was his main concern. as it was through Carter until Reagan lifted the ban in '81. so where are we now? we're paranoid about the crashing state of the economy. fair enough. Yucca Mt is terrorist-resistant (as much as any place can be), and inexpensive. i don't think this gives it substantial theoretical leverage over reprocessing. an accident or infiltrative attack of Yucca would be just as expensive as a few decades of reprocessing. and what's more, burning off plutonium that otherwise has a 10,000 year half-life just seems the safer bet. but we're not talking safe, we're talking money (go figure...).
3) because i ordinarily default into staunch disagreement with Bush, and not being able to instantly do so leaves me monstrously befuddled.
2) Ford. it actually turns out that proliferation was his main concern. as it was through Carter until Reagan lifted the ban in '81. so where are we now? we're paranoid about the crashing state of the economy. fair enough. Yucca Mt is terrorist-resistant (as much as any place can be), and inexpensive. i don't think this gives it substantial theoretical leverage over reprocessing. an accident or infiltrative attack of Yucca would be just as expensive as a few decades of reprocessing. and what's more, burning off plutonium that otherwise has a 10,000 year half-life just seems the safer bet. but we're not talking safe, we're talking money (go figure...).
3) because i ordinarily default into staunch disagreement with Bush, and not being able to instantly do so leaves me monstrously befuddled.
which leads me to wonder... why now, especially because we are even considering nuclear energy as an alternative to coal, are we shying away from nuclear waste reprocessing? fine, i understand the economy is chaotic of late whose rescue has become a fiasco all its own. so stash some more waste at Yucca Mt for a few more years. but at least show some signs of interest in pursuing funding for development of efficient nuclear waste reprocessing. fighting climate change is all about baby steps. minor transitions that are concretely progressive in their direction away from dirty energy. endorse Yucca for a few more years while the economy climbs out of Bush's toilet... use that time to begin endorsing nuclear reprocessing plants that produce non-proliferative blended components... meanwhile, don't produce such massive amounts of fresh actinides, but use the recycled components... then relieve Yucca. but don't fucking fall backward.
i have a problem accepting the idea that the government's idea of combating climate chaos is to ignore the problems we've already created and begin, instead, by thinking about possibly addressing the issues regarding our current production on our future. which is also extremely important, but you cannot ignore the mess we've already made. especially in this particular case, where the mess is a perfectly transition-renewable energy fuel until we are able to invest in enough wind turbines and solar panels to take over. all part of the baby steps.
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