CDR: Re: Nuclear waste

[Tim May]

At 1:41 AM +0300 10/21/00, Sampo A Syreeni wrote:
>On Fri, 20 Oct 2000, Tim May wrote:
>
>>Nuclear waste is easy to track, easy to store, hard to hide.
>
>Self-evidently the problem is *not* in the kind of waste in the containers,
>but the enormous timespans - uranium is a metal, nothing else. What *is* a
>problem is that you cannot secure *anything* for more than about a couple of
>hundred years with any certainty. The only real problem specific to
>radioactive materials is that ionizing radiation of any kind accelerates the
>formation of active radicals which eat away the containers. This is
>something which can be guarded against through proper engineering.

1. Yes, uranium is a metal. So?

2. What is this "active radicals which eat away the containers" 
theory? Vitrification (mixing with glass) of waste is an established 
technology...those glass beads don't get "eaten away" by these 
mysterious "active radicals."

3. Radiation levels are quite low for most wastes of interest in the 
debate. Your theory above suggests some kind of Cerenkov blue glow 
around the waste!

4. Taking the vitreous beads and BACKFILLING THE URANIUM MINES would 
result in a situation which is:

a) less likely to leach radioisotopes into the environment that was 
see with the original yellowcake and pitchblende mineral forms. 
(Think about it. Compute the solubilities in water of the various 
urananites and thoriated suphates and all versus a glass bead.)

b) no more overall radioactivity than had been in the mine area 
before. (There may be some increased _concentration_, especially of 
so-called "high-level waste," but low-level waste is either a mix of 
uranium and other fissiles, or is lightly-contaminated medical waste 
and suchlike. The overall activity will not be greater per unit 
volume than was pulled from the mine in the first place. Further, 
such mines have no other use and can be backfilled and then sealed 
shut.)

5. Not that this is necessarily the best option. The domes in deep 
caves are perfectly fine. And there is much to be said for the 
Pournelle/Hogan solution: put the vitreous beads in concrete-filled 
drums, load them onto pallets, then park the pallets in neat rows and 
columns in the center of a 10 km by 10 km fenced area in the Mojave 
Desert of California. Very little rain (geological records and fossil 
lakes show this); certainly no significant flash flooding. Then erect 
signs, in many languages, and with skull-and-crossbones, saying: 
"This area is poisoned." Even the most bizarre devolution-to-savagery 
scenarios are unlikely to have wandering savages in the waterless 
Mojave trying to scavenge stuff out of sealed drums marked with 
skulls and crossbones!

(I mention this because the Greens and other tree huggers make much 
of the fanciful notion that "radioactive waste lasts FOREVER!!" and 
that once civilization collapses, the Mad Max types will wander in to 
radioactive storage areas and be poisoned. I never saw the big deal 
of a few "mutants" becoming even more mutated...)

>
>>I could go on to educate you and others about the advantages of
>>nuclear power over alternatives, and the ease of storing nuclear
>>waste, but I expect this list is the wrong place for such education.
>
>Again, everybody with half a clue knows that nuclear energy is pretty clean,
>if not very cheap.

Not as inexpensive as it _could_ be, had engineering work not been 
effectively frozen because of U.S. government standards, but still 
less expensive than the alternatives.

Yes, really.

California's Diablo Canyon Nuclear Power Plant accounts for _most_ of 
the profits of Pacific Gas and Electric (PG&E). It's a much better 
moneymaker than are the fossil-fuel-fired plants. Without Diablo 
Canyon, the precarious power situation here in California would 
instead be in a crisis situation.

Most of the reputed "bad economics" of nuke plants come from the 
usual sources: tens of years of lobbying are needed before a plant 
can be even started under construction, another ten years before all 
of the delays and appeals and stalls unfold, then various shut-downs 
on specious grounds, then an absurd "decommissioning" procedure. 
Small wonder that no new nuclear plants are being planned in the U.S.

Countries which have less of a tradition of citizen-units using their 
fears to block things they are afraid of have been building new 
plants. France, for example, which has dozens of nuclear plants. (And 
better designs than the "frozen-in-place" designs the U.S. industry 
was pretty much forced to stick to. The French took the basic 1950s 
design, the Westinghouse and GE designs, and then improved them.)


>This simply means that all of the alternatives are quite
>bad. Spending less energy does not seem to be in vogue, anymore. I still put
>the lights of, spin down my harddrive whenever possible and never intend to
>own a car...

Spinning down your hard drive should be done sparingly. It usually 
makes no sense, for reasons dealt with by others.

As for your not owning a car, whatever floats your boat. Just don't 
confuse your personal choice as somehow changing the world.


--Tim May
-- 
---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:----
Timothy C. May              | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money,
ComSec 3DES:   831-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero
W.A.S.T.E.: Corralitos, CA  | knowledge, reputations, information markets,
"Cyphernomicon"             | black markets, collapse of governments.