librlman

3 Comments

    • ON: Thu Jul 3rd 15:16 PM
      Commented on:
      Some Consequences if Oil Prices Stay High
      EDIT, part II:

      that is, "reprocess, recycle, or otherwise repurpose"

      let's hope is doesn't get mangled a third time in publishing
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    • ON: Thu Jul 3rd 15:14 PM
      Commented on:
      Some Consequences if Oil Prices Stay High
      EDIT: "reprocess/recycl... from above post should be "reprocess/recycl...
      View article »
    • ON: Thu Jul 3rd 15:09 PM
      Commented on:
      Some Consequences if Oil Prices Stay High
      Yucca Mountain has too many faults to gaurantee containment integrity for the radioative lifetime of the waste. While the prospect of radioactive waste leaching into the water table in 10000 years (plus or minus) may seem an unreasonable concern to many of those living now, some people prefer to deal with our own problems rather than passing them to future generations.

      As for burying it along a convergent plate boundary (CA, OR, WA... NIMBY, anyone?), there are several factors that make this prohibitive: 1) dewatering of subducting plate may allow waste materials to leach upward along the plate boundary and thru faults; 2) the volumes of waste material (much of which is solid) can't be piped down 10's of 1000's of feet thru a well-sized hole... it would require a massive pit (issues with structural collapse from overburden of rock, flooding of the shaft requiring a massive pumping system, and what happens when earthquakes hit while you're digging thru hard and soft rock layers... and they will); and 3) if you somehow get it all down there and buried, there is no gaurantee it won't integrate into magma that's headed toward the surface in a few hundred or thousand years (what happens if it sprays into the air as part of an ash cloud?).

      Bottom line, Yucca Mountain is too expensive a boondoggle for a temporary storage solution (100 years +/- until a better solution should be found), one that politicians might choose to turn a blind eye to later. The mine shaft to Hades is a non-starter (more expensive and unpredictable than Yucca Mtn.). Far better to try and reprocess/recycle/repu... what there is, and limit the new waste being produced (phase out nuclear reactors in favor of wind, wave, pv, solarthermal, and geothermal). If you insist on using nuclear power, pour money into developing thorium-based reactors (theoretically safer, fuel is more abundant, and produces far less radioactive waste) to replace the uranium reactors.
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