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Here is a revealing expose of the true situation with the spent nuclear fuel and the waste that is misrepresented by most critics of the nuclear power industry. It shows that the waste problem is no problem at all. The article was written by a co-worker and colleague of mine, Ed Sayre. Ed is also chairman of the group of engineers of the organization ACRES (Advocates for Clean Responsible Energy).
It is a must read for all interested in the future of energy in the world.
The bottom line to this nuclear waste problem is summed up by the following statement:
If all the energy used by the people of California for all electricity, commercial, heating and transportation, etc. were generated by nuclear energy the amount of nuclear fission product waste per citizen of California would be the size of an M & M candy bar. There is no other source of energy more environmentally friendly than that. This can be safely vitrified and stored.
If you are truly worried about global warming, nuclear power is the answer.
Before you read this page I will put up a recent press release, The house will not fund a facility to convert plutonium to MOX fuel for conventional power reactors.
U.S., Russia reach deal on plutonium
WASHINGTON - The United States and Russia have resolved a major hurdle in their negotiations to dispose of tons of excess plutonium, announcing an accord Friday on a liability issue that has long stymied the program
The two countries signed a protocol that provides a framework for dealing with liability, the Energy Department announced.
But other issues remain to be worked out, including details on how Russia is going to dispose of 34 metric tons of plutonium from its weapons stockpile under the agreement.
At the same time, the future of the U .S disposal program also has become clouded. The Energy Department said it is ready to break ground this fall on a South Carolina plant that would convert its 34 metric tons of excess plutonium into a mixed oxide, or MOX, fuel to be burned in a commercial power reactor. However, the U S House of representatives has eliminated funding for the program for the fiscal year beginning Oct. 1.
Future funding for the MOX conversion plant to be built at the Savannah River complex near Aiken, S.C.; will depend on whether Congress restores the money.
Among those issues is to resolve how Russia will dispose of its 34 tons of plutonium. Russia re recently said it did not want to convert the plutonium to MOX fuel - like the U.S. plan - but to burn it in a high-speed reactor.
Critics have said that could lead to proliferation since such a reactor also can be designed as a so-called "Breeder" that produces plutonium.
A True Knowledge of Used “Spent” Nuclear Fuel"
By Edwin D. Sayre 2-21-2006
Introduction: Most people think that used or “spent” nuclear fuel is a very dangerous material that should be safely stored away forever. This public view and the view of many politicians have been generated by the anti-nuclear organizations to help prevent the use of nuclear energy and technology. In the early days of nuclear research Atomic Energy Commission and the military promoted this fear as an auxiliary aid in security for weapons materials. Fear of radioactive material has also been used to promote security for government nuclear weapons facilities. In order to get the public to agree with having the US move into the peaceful nuclear economy and to live near nuclear power plants and have new and used nuclear fuel transported through their neighborhoods they must learn the truth about radiation and nuclear fuels.
Before Starting we Should Understand What Isotopes Are: The earth is made of atoms. Atoms are made of neutrons and protons in the nucleus and electrons making an outer shell. There are 96 types of atoms called elements, such as iron, oxygen, carbon, hydrogen etc. Every element is made up of several different atoms with different numbers of neutrons but the same number of protons and electrons. These different atoms of each element are called isotopes. Twenty-nine elements have natural radioactive isotopes. Uranium 235 is the one that makes nuclear energy work. Potassium 40 is the most powerful radioactive isotope.
What is Nuclear Fuel? Nuclear fuel is the material that is put in the core of a nuclear reactor. It is capable of emitting neutrons and it is also capable of absorbing neutrons and becoming unstable so that it splits into elements of lesser mass and many free neutrons which keep the nuclear reaction going.. This splitting of the U235 is called fission and the elements of lesser mass are called fission products. When it splits it also gives off large quantities of heat energy that is used to boil water to produce steam to turn turbo-generators that produce electrical energy. Nuclear power plant fuel is rock-hard, very stable; uranium oxide pellets encapsulated in 10 feet long ˝ inch diameter zirconium metal tubes. It is made up of uranium isotope 238 and is enriched with 4 to 5 percent uranium isotope 235.which is the isotope that splits in the fission reaction. Contrary to what most people believe these uranium isotopes are very stable with very low radioactivity compared with other naturally radioactive elements such as potassium. Nuclear power plant fuel is one of the safest materials that is transported through our neighborhoods compared with gasoline, liquefied natural gas, acids, alkalis, organic solvents, insecticides, etc. Keep in mind that a truck load of bananas, which contain potassium going through your neighborhood to the grocery store gives off more radioactivity than a truck load of nuclear fuel going to the nearest nuclear plant.
How Does This Very Stable Fuel Work in The Reactor? If this fuel is so stable how do we get these atoms to break down, fission, and give off the heat energy in the power plant reactor? The technique to make this happen is to put the fuel together in a configuration called a critical mass and to provide a water environment, called a moderator, that controls the free neutron’s energy so it is easy for the fissile-atoms to absorb them and split or fission giving off more neutrons and heat energy. The uranium235 isotopes decay at a high enough rate to provide some free neutrons to start the chain reaction.. As the uranium 235 isotopes start splitting and giving off a lot of neutrons the reaction speeds up until it gets to what is called critical and the chain reaction can continue at a constant rate.
There are four things that can stop the chain reaction,
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1. The volume of the fuel can expand thereby losing the critical mass,
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2. By inserting a neutron absorbing material,
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3 By draining out the water and
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4. By using up too much of the fissile uranium235. When the amount of the fissile isotope is below a useful level the used or “spent” fuel must be replaced
What is used nuclear fuel? When used fuel is taken from the reactor only 3 to 4% of the total uranium is used which means about 75% of the original fissile uranium 235 atoms have been fissioned (split into smaller atoms). This material called (spent fuel, nuclear waste, deadly waste, long term waste, highly radioactive waste and other unreal names) is taken out of the reactor and stored for reprocessing. The used fuel pellets contain most of the original U238, about 25 percent of the original U235 and some other uranium isotopes and transuranic elements. Transuranic elements are elements that are heavier than uranium such as plutonium, americium, neptunium and curium. All of the isotopes of these transuranic elements are either fissile or can easily become fissile if put back into the reactor in recycled fuel after reprocessing. Fissile means they can decay and give off neutrons and they also can absorb neutrons and split into smaller atoms while giving off many neutrons and heat like uranium 238. By chemical reprocessing the used fuel to separate out the fission products and reloading the uranium and fissionable transuranic elements back into the reactor the fissionable isotopes become an asset, not a liability. Many nations using nuclear energy for electric power plants have come to understand this valuable approach for the use of spent fuel.
What To Do With Fission Products? If we recycle everything back into the new fuel going back into the reactor except the fission products, what do we do with the fission products? One metric ton of used nuclear fuel contains about 77pounds or 35 kilograms of fission products. After fifty years of storage & decay, over half of the fission products are just natural non-radioactive elements such as molybdenum, barium, cerium and praseodymium These are rare metals with commercial value. Twenty five percent of the fission products are natural elements with natural radioactive isotopes such as rubidium, tellurium, lanthanum and neodymium. These valuable metals can be separated out for commercial use with advanced chemical and electro-metallurgical processes.
This leaves 16 pounds of radioactive fission products to be further processed. About half of these such as technetium 99, cesium 137 and strontium 90 also have commercial value. Technetium 99, which has very low radioactivity, has some unique metallurgical alloying potential. Cesium 137 and strontium 90 yield high quantities of heat with their decay and can make ideal small electric power sources for remote usage.
This leaves us with just 8 pounds of radioactive fission product waste per each metric ton of used fuel to deal with. Forty percent of this fission product waste is palladium 107 with very low radioactivity but with 6.5 million years half-life. Most of the other eleven isotopes have higher radiation energy but very short, a few years, half-life. The isotope with the greatest problem is iodine 129 with a 16 million year half-life. The ideal way to handle this waste is to separate the short lived elements and store them for about 200 years for complete decay to non-radioactive elements. The long-lived ones such as the palladium and iodine are packaged in the proper neutron moderating materials and placed back into the reactors to be transmuted to either short lived or non-radioactive elements. This will permit all of the decayed fission products to be put back into the environment in 200 years with no harm.
How Much Waste to be Transmuted And Stored For a Short Time is Generated?
If all the energy used by the people of California for all electricity, commercial, heating and transportation were generated by nuclear energy the amount of nuclear fission product waste per citizen of California would be the size of an M & M candy. There is no other source of energy more environmentally friendly than that.
The answer to the waste storage problem, which is holding up nuclear power development, is to recycle the waste.
We have developed, at Idaho National Labs (INL), a less
costly, cleaner, and more effective nuclear waste reprocessing system than those
currently in use by the British,
French, Russians, and Chinese. If we reprocess and reuse the uranium,
residue, we end up with waste that has a half-life of 30 years and a
storage requirement of only 300 years. We also reduce he amount needed
to be stored by 95%. That waste can be stored on-site.
This process requires the re-construction of a fast burner reactor (we
had two until the Clinton administration) and the construction of an
industrial scale electro-metallurgical reprocessing facility. We have
had an engineering scale facility at INL for the last 11 years. The last
link in the reprocessing and reuse cycle is to create new fuel rods with
the plutonium and other fissionable products extracted in the
reprocessing. We are already making these mixed oxide (MOX) fuel rods
using the leftover weapons-grade plutonium and uranium from our and the Soviet
Union's cold war stockpiles.
The INL process has just been bought into by the South Koreans and they
plan to set up the entire process within 5 years.
If we reprocess and reuse the spent nuclear fuel rods, Yucca Mountain
becomes irrelevant and we get started replacing our old nuclear power
plants and building safer, more efficient new ones.
John Scire, PhD Adjunct Professor Energy Policy
University of Nevada, Reno
DOE still moving ahead with plant: The Department of Energy requested an additional $170 million over last year's $80 million to start the nuclear recycling center process
Creating about 5,000 construction jobs, the recycling plant would cut up nuclear fuel rods and chemically treat 2,000 to 3,000 metric tons of spent fuel annually starting in about 2020. It would separate spent nuclear fuel into reusable and waste components and then make new nuclear fast reactor fuel from the reusable material.
Two other planned projects, which may or may not be built at recycling plant site, are:
--A reactor to destroy long-lived radioactive elements in the new fuel while generating electricity.
--A facility to research and develop spent nuclear fuel recycling processes and other advanced nuclear fuel cycles.
I hope this goes. The democrats usually kill all nuclear fuel recycling activities and then howler about the waste
The YUCCA Mountain Storage Facility
By Malcolm Rawlingson
Those against nuclear power plants like to refer to the spent fuel as "nuclear waste" because it creates the image they want to portray of a profligate wasteful industry discarding nuclear materials and resources in an unregulated manner. The complete opposite of course is true in that this material is the most heavily regulated controlled and protected industrial by-product in the world - bar none.
So waste it most definitely is not. Less than 2.5% of the available energy has been extracted from this used fuel so the recycling opportunities are enormous.
Think about it. The US has operated 100 reactors for about 25 years using only 2.5% of the energy in the already mined and processed fuel. That means the energy in the existing fuel sitting at nuclear plants across America is enough to operate 40 times that number of reactors for 25 years without ever mining another ounce of Uranium.
Sure it will take some energy to reprocess and maybe we could not get 100% of the available energy out but even if we got 25% of the available energy out it would still be well worth the effort.
Surely that is the recycling opportunity of a lifetime. Discarding it in Yucca is both expensive and totally unnecessary and the technology for reprocessing the spent fuel into new fuel is already developed and available.
Burying it or
otherwise making this energy source inaccessible to future generations is about
as dumb an idea as I could imagine. Who in their right mind would shutdown
an oil well with only 97.5% of the available fuel still in the ground? But the
anti nukes have convinced us that this stuff is so dangerous that we need to
bury it for a million years. It is not that dangerous (the risks are greatly
exaggerated) and it is a vast fuel source for producing emissions free
electricity for many years.
Nuclear Waste Storage Requirements.
Below is a peace written by Carl Walters and Per Peterson
My comment: Nuclear waste is not nearly as bad as the anti-Nukes would have us believe.
If we can keep Jimmy Carter out of this we may be able to recycle spent fuel from existing power reactors.
Recent announcement:
Used nuclear fuel contains uranium, transuranic elements (plutonium and other long-lived radioactive material) and fission products. The fission products are waste and make up less than 5 percent of the used fuel. The buildup of the fission products inhibits the nuclear fission reaction, so used fuel must be removed from a nuclear power plant.
Under the Global Nuclear Energy Partnership (GNEP), recycling would comprise uranium extraction plus (UREX+) that would accomplish the following:
Separate uranium from the spent fuel at a very high level of purification
that would allow it to be recycled for re-enrichment, stored in an unshielded
facility or simply buried as a low-level waste.
Separate and immobilize long-lived fission products, technetium and iodine,
for disposal in Yucca Mountain.
Extract short-lived fission products, cesium and strontium, and prepare them
for decay storage until they meet the requirements for disposal as low-level
waste.
Separate transuranic elements (plutonium, neptunium, americium and curium) from the remaining fission products so they could be fabricated into fuel for an Advanced Burner Reactor, a fast reactor.
T
o consume, or destroy, transuranic elements while recovering their energy content, they must be separated from the uranium and fission products and then be fabricated into new fuel. Fast reactors would consume these transuranics, eliminating the need for their disposal in Yucca Mountain. This approach would potentially increase the effective capacity of the geologic repository by an estimated factor of 50 to 100.Epilogue
When you hear the constant drone from the environmentalists about how we cannot contend with the nuclear fuel waste you will be assured that they are wrong. A lie told repeatedly does not become factual.