Posted: 2/13/2007 8:55:17 AM EDT
| The only problem I have with nuclear power is the cost of maintaining the containment vessel after the useful life of the plant is over. How is this accounted for in their budget? Wouldn't this have to be maintained and protected for hundreds of years? Where is the money going to come from to pay for this? I am not worried about radiation leaks or other physical dangers, only hidden costs which could be huge. |
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With occasional upgrades and fuel replacement as necessary, I doubt a nuclear plant would even have a set "useful life." And when the containment does need to be disposed of, take the radioactive parts, break them up, and send them to a waste repository like the one we ought to hurry up and build in Yucca Mountain, and simply trash or recycle the non-radioactive parts. |
| I don't think it is quite that simple. You are not talking about storing some spent fuel. There would be large quantities of construction materials that would be radioactive, piping, concrete, pumps & machinery etc. And all buildings have a useful life. Concrete does not last forever, if I remember it actually gains strength for about 100 years and then begins to deteriorate. |
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Most nuclear plants have a design life of 40 years but many can be extended another 20 years without any problems. The old radioactive material like pipes and concrete just need to be buried somewhere and the radioacticity slowly decays away. There is all kinds of fear out there of radioactive objects but it is all created through the media by enviro nazi groups like Greenpeace who actually know very little about radioactivity. The truth is the the discovery of radioactivity is the best thing that has ever happened to mankind and will allow us to generate as much electricity as we need virtually forever if we reprocess the fuel and use MOX fuel. Radioactivity is compleletly natural thing and having to bury some of the waste and equipment poses almost no risk at all as the earth is already radioactive. We sholuld also make a way so we can get the highly radioactive material back if we want because in another 20 or 30 years we may make new technological discoveriers that would make some of the material worth using again. |
Now thats just plain wrong. If this wasn't hazardous why not offer to have it buried in your backyard? Radioactivity is natural, however Plutonium and many of the radionuclide's present in waste are not. Simply burying the waste and waiting for it to decay doesn't make much sense either. Spent fuel will remain a huge hazard long after we're all dead, and theres just no way around that. Putting it under ground doesn't mean it will stay under ground. Is there a way to dispose of the waste with a reasonable level of safety? Probably, but no one has agreed on what it is. Objections to nuclear power based on waste disposal are legitimate. The stuff isn't natural, it is long lived and it is incredibly toxic. So until a foolproof method of containing the waste comes up, I don't begrudge anyone for objecting to nuclear power. I disagree with them, but I understand what the issue is, and it isn't just some hyped up fear. My hope is that new processes for reprocessing and containing the waste are developed before nuclear power really gets killed off in the US. It's sad that our best source of power comes with this little nagging problem. But disposing of a couple tons of spent fuel rods a year sure beats burning oil in the long run. |
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The only problem I have with nuclear power is the cost of maintaining the containment vessel after the useful life of the plant is over. How is this accounted for in their budget? (snip) Where is the money going to come from to pay for this? (snip) The costs for de-commissioning, dis-mantling, and storage of contaminated parts (fuel, vessel, piping, etc) is collected over the life of the plant through rates, and at least a portion is paid to the Feds annually, IIRC. This has been done already. One plant in New England, and Trojan, in SW Washington State. Forgot at least one. Ft. St. Vrain, in Colorado. Converted to Natural gas energy source. The Nuke part was de-commed. |
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/\ What he said. Disaster management may also be included. I work in Radiological Emergency Preparedness for my state and our entire group is funded by the utility grants instead of tax dollars. This money, like other utility operating costs, comes from consumers in the form of utility surcharges. Actually, quite a few plants have been decommisioned or are undergoing decommissioning. Most of these were obsolete BWR designs or old Atomic Energy Commission demonstration projects. http://www.nrc.gov/what-we-do/regulatory/decommissioning.html Chances are good we'll see some new Gen-IV plants coming online in the next 10 years. |
I have lived with the stuff buried literally in my backyard my entire life. And it wasn't buried to modern standards either, this stuff dates back to the 1940s. It's not a problem at all. Nuclear waste can also be turned into glass (vitrified) - we have a plant underway to do just that here. It's taking forever to build though. www.hanford.gov |
There is no new process needed. All that has to happen is Carter's prohibition on reprocessing needs to be lifted. |
There are some serious issues with the Yucca Mountain site--one of which is the fact that it sits on a fault line....While you may not be worried about it out there in Virginia, down(stream) here in AZ, we have some concerns as well. Maybe we could bury it in some old coal mines or something. You know, better your backyard than mine.. 
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So long as it is buried deep enough. 
| The only part of the primary system that is actually radioactive is the reactor vessel, which is exposed to neutron radiation. The rest of the parts are merely contaminated with radioactive material like cobolt 60, which has a relatively short half life of 5 yrs. These parts can be cleaned and then disposed of normally, or disposed of as low or medium level waste. Most of the construction material, like the containment building itself, would not be radioactive or at most it would be low-level waste, which is safe to dispose of using conventional means. I'm not sure what they do with the pressure vessel itself though, I think they cut it up, melt it down, and store it with other high level waste. |
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Radon is more of a danger than all of the nuclear power plants combined. And it is NATURAL. One of the reasons power plants are expensive is they require exotic materials...not that the materials are rare but that they are VERY LOW in Cobalt. You see, Co is naturally found with chromium and nickel, both of which are used in high alloy steels like stainless steels. Cobalt is a captures neutrons and becomes very hot since it has a relatively short half life. Other materials like Cr, Ni and Fe have relatively long half-lives meaning they are much less "hot" Concrete and the like are only a minor problem as they only emit alpha and beta. But Co 60 is really bad, emitting heavy doses of high enery gamma. Its half-life is about 5.5 years.. |
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You know what else is natural? The natural nuclear reactors found in Africa. These are zones where the Uranium found no longer has 0.7% U235 isotope as is found in other U deposits. These were concentrations of U235, formed by natural erosion and concentration in sandstones. When these happened, the concentration of U235 was greater due to young age. Water seeping into the formation moderated neutrons, forming a natural reaction process. |
More fear mongering disguised as rationale debate. Objections for high level waste is not a technical problem, it is a political problem completely created for and by the libtard envronazi movement. The solution to high level waste is simple: reprocess to make more fuel. Of course, this would completely sidestep the purpose of the high level waste "objections" in the first place, that is, to shut down the "back end" of the nuclear power industry. Create a false problem at the back end, obviating any and all other advantages to nuclear power. First, you create the problem by banning reprocessing. Then you drag out the selection of a waste dump for as long as possible. Then you threaten and actually sue once it gets ready to sue, including the state it's located in and any states that the waste will travel in. That's the strategy of the environazi's and they are losing. The fact is, nuclear power is by far the cleanest source of energy we have, period. Europe and Japan reprocess their nuclear fuel now and they do it well. Most people don't really realize how much high level waste a nuclear power plant produces in one year: About enough to fill, volume-wise, the bed of a standard 1/2 ton pickup or about one cubic meter per year. The entire high level waste produced by all power plants in the US since the start of the nuclear power industry, if collected all in one place, would cover a football field about 5 1/2 feet tall. Woopie. Granted, it's nasty stuff as-is, but it's also a valuable energy source - or would be if the environazi's would grow a pair and brain. Other waste, usually low or medium in nature, like someone said earlier is usually due to contamination, not because the material itself is radioactive. This is easily buried and segregated from the environment. Enough for now. Merlin ETA: Oh, as far as the snotty "bury it in your back yard" is concerned: I live about 20 miles east of Brown's Ferry Nuclear Power Plant. Every pound of high level waste created by the operation of all the BF nuclear power operations is still on site. It's currently located in deep cooling water pools, but according to my next door neighbor, they are getting ready to transfer it to dry storage caskets. As I understand it, these caskets will also be stored on site. They are planning to section off a section of the parking lot for the dry caskets. So much for not being able to store it safely. Merlin |
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The Containment domes are essentially imortal, in several cases the reactors in the domes have been replaced making it essentially a new plant. To answer your question however water is a non-ionizing substance so no disposal worries there. The only thing you would have to worry about disposing of long term is the reactor vessel itself and the spent fuel rods. The pipes of a reactor are usually made from an alloy calld Inconel which is very resistant to spallation radiation induced by neutron flux. Long story short when decomissioned nuclear power plants are dissasembled you aren't going to have to sequester the materials long term in a Yucca mountain style facility, only the spent fuel rods. |
That's ok. When the global warming psychos get thier way and all the coal/natural gas plants are shut down, we'll see new nuke plants popping up like dandelions. Even the anti-nuke crowd will get real tired of no MTV or CNN or American Idol after a couple of weeks of rolling blackouts.  
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Keith_J, Someone posted this above and I've heard it quite often, but am ignorant as to it's particulars. If it's not too much to ask, could you explain this to me? Thank you. Justin |
We currently use what is referred to as an open fuel, or once through fuel cycle. The fuel rods we use are MOX or Mixed Oxide composed of Slightly Enriched uranium and processed Plutonium. When these rods are used in a power plant a very small percentage of the Uranium and Plutonium are burned. Once the daughter products of fission build up in the rod (which is what makes it highly radioactive) is pulled and essentially thrown away. This is stupid and wasteful. A closed fuel cycle uses a reprocessing plant to break down the fuel rods and recover the useable fuel from the rod. This reduces that amount of highly radioactive waste produced by greater then 90% and massively increases our supply of fissile fuels. With the combination of fuel reprocessing and liquid metal fast breeder reactors we would have essentially an unlimited source of power with almost no waste. The fact that we have the technical capability to do this and don't is one of the great tragedies of the 20th century. I'm not going to complicate the discussion by bringing up the possibility of using thorium fueled reactors. |
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When you split uranium, one of the by-products is plutonium. (Earlier post describes MOX fuel production very well) That is also a nuclear fuel, and that can then be used again. So essentially you can use the same fuel over and over. Kinda like if I cleaned out my fireplace and could burn the ashes. ..and then burn those ashes... The gist is a fuel rod gets less efficient as it is used and much usable energy is still available if it was chemically seperated from the junk byproducts and made into new fuel rods. Here's a good description: news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/647981.stm Think of the absurdity of... buying rechargeable batteries but then throwing them away after one use. That's what the peanut farmer did for us. 
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| The reactor vessel itself could not go to Yucca Mountain because it is not considered high-level waste. The vessel would be low-level waste and could be disposed of at the Nevada Test Site or a commercial low-level waste disposal facility. Depending on how the reactor was constructed, the vessel could be pulled out as a single piece and filled with grout before being disposed of in a low-level waste disposal facility. I can't imagine the cost would be too high, with the exception of the transportation costs. |
.. Amazing, I did not know that. Have to look it up and read more on it. |
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http://www.ocrwm.doe.gov/factsheets/doeymp0010.shtml http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2004-10/wuis-rdh102804.php http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/image/0210/oklo15_curtin.jpg couple of links about these natural reactors. "Researchers at Washington University in St. Louis have analyzed the isotopic structure of noble gases produced in fission in a sample from the only known natural nuclear chain reaction site in the world in Gabon, West Africa, and have found how she does the trick. Picture Old Faithful. Analyzing a tiny fragment of rock, less than one-eight of an inch, taken from the Gabon site, Alexander Meshik, Ph.D., Washington University senior research scientist in physics, has calculated that the precise isotopic structure of xenon in the sample reveals an operation that worked like a geyser. The reactor, active two billion years ago, worked on a 30-minute reaction cycle, accompanied by a two-and-a-half hour dormant period, or cool down. In the Oct. 29, 2004 issue of Physical Review Letters, Meshik and his Washington University collaborators write: "This similarity (to a geyser) suggests that a half an hour after the onset of the chain reaction, unbounded water was converted to steam, decreasing the thermal neutron flux and making the reactor sub-critical. It took at least two-and-a-half hours for the reactor to cool down until fission Xe (xenon) began to retain. Then the water returned to the reactor zone, providing neutron moderation and once again establishing a self-sustaining chain." |
Thanks A_S! Now why would Carter enact a ban on doing so? Also, can you elaborate on the feasibility of that last part? Danke! |
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The Carter moratorium on spent fuel reprocessing has been lifted, the only thing stopping us from reprocessing right now is no facility and economics. At the current price of fuel once through is cheaper. It was origonally enacted due to weapons proliferation concerns. You can recover plutonium from spen nuclear fuel using the PUREX chemical process. Carter thought the United States would lead by example and not reprocess fuel for this reason. In reality what happened was everyone else pretty much said "thats nice" and went on with reprocessing while the US didnt. Some countries such as France have really gotten good at reprocessing over the years. Also now we have other ways to reprocess (such as using the UREX process rather than PUREX) that make it less of a proliferation concern. |
I wonder if the Purex here at Hanford could be restarted or if they would have to build a new one. |
Last I heard the Purex plant at Hanford was still in mothballs, unfortunetly in 2005 they did eventually decomission the breeder reactor that was never used there. It's unfortunate, nuclear power with breeding and reprocessing had the potential to be 'to cheap to charge for', that was actually a slogan of nuclear power research in the 1950s. The future isn't what it used to be. |
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en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Integral_Fast_Reactor I had never heard of this until today...I started reading about nuclear power and stumbled upon it. Another outstanding nuclear power decision by the Dims.
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The FFTF (the one that was decomissioned in '05) was not a breeder reactor. AFAIK we never had a breeder reactor at Hanford. |
| Well I admit I am not very knowledgeable about nuclear power plants. From what I gather from a lot of the posts here is that there is not a very large long time liability in taking care of a decommissioned plant. As I stated in my original post this was my only worry about nuclear power. What are we waiting for BRING EM ON. We need to get away from Arab oil. |
My company (CEG) has teamed up with AREVA and formed Unistar and hopefully in about 10 years or so we are going to see new Nuke plants popping up across our country. If you go to AREVA's website there is a pretty cool virtual reality video on how a future EPR plant would work. |
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They are getting ready to fire Unit #1 at the Brown's Ferry site in the next couple of months or so. There are also plans to build two new ABWR's or APWR's at TVA's site at Bellefonte, AL, about 40 miles east of me. I look forward to the cheap, clean energy. Merlin |
This will only happen if Yucca Mountain opens to accept the high-level waste and spent nuclear fuel that is currently stored in dozens of states. The activists and some Dems are doing everything they can to prevent Yucca Mountain from opening, which de facto seals the fate of any new nuclear power plants being constructed. |
I suspect Old Faithful works the same way. |
I understand that at some point that has to be worked out, but I didn't know it was holding up the construction of the new wave of nuke plants that have been proposed. Our ISFSI is about 2/3 full but with in the ISFSI protected area there is room for about 70-80 new HSM's which are going to have to be constructed relatively soon. |
I hate to break it to you, but we INTENTIONALLY use cobalt in valves seats in the primary side because of its hardness and wear-resistance. Yes, Co-60 is nasty. It's the most prevalent long-lived radioisotope found in primary samples (rad. is negligible from these samples BTW). Luckily, the stuff is so damned hard that its presence in the primary coolant (even after a crud burst) is PFL. An ELT would know more about primary chemistry and radioactive make-up than me though. |
Bingo. The fear with recycling fissile material is that it will quickly generate large amounts of weapons-grade material. Then you either reprocess the material again, or vitrify it. |
Former CRA. They're very careful about where they use it and the decision to use it is not taken lightely. The valve seats do wear and the wear products eventually run through the core. You don't see hardly any in the coolant, but it all settles out somewhere--either in a filter or in one of those valves or pipe elbows that has it's own special yellow and magenta sign, possibly even a cage around it. Co-60 is not only hot, but a high energy emitter (by a factor of 3 if I remember right). The subs that are decom; they just cut the reactor compartment out entirely, seal it up and ship it off somewhere. Anyone know if there's any post-processing done with those (or is the plan to let them sit for a while and cool off first)? |
I did an EMA with a dual-media discharge when I was in; as a result I got to do a whole lot of rad-con bullshit in the RC. I'm not saying you're wrong, but the only really "hot" spots were the flow detectors (on my boat the port was hotter) and they were only like 1.3 or 1.4 REM/hour. Hell, the IX media was pretty "cool" for the amount of shit that stuff is supposed to filter out. Low flow points do develop crud traps though, and Co-60 is the most active of the radioisotopes present. MTS-626 OTOH is all kinds of hot. Due in no small part to the crew (when it was still an SSBN) ignoring a high IX temp warning. There are a shitload of super hot (10-20 REM/hour) crud traps in that RC. It's a factor of 2 IIRC (2 gamma release per decay). |