Quote:
Originally Posted by Concrete
as for radiation - I may think you are over simplifying
what are the half lives of the the products we are talking about?
many of them are +10,000 years
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Remember that the faster a radioisotope decays, the more radioactive it will be. Here is a good link on nuclear waste.
World Nuclear Association
Quote:
Originally Posted by Concrete
as for other waste - yes some of it will be cool/safe in decades
but there is a lot of it - concrete, re-bar, safety gear, the cooling water it self
it is not as simple as you make it sound
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You need to put this in perspective. Right now society has no problem using plastics or styrofoam cups etc in huge quantities that will not biodegrade for a few hundred years and we derive minimal benefit from it. Yet we are opposed to something that on a volume x timeline basis has a much smaller impact.
The following is from
Reprocessing: processing of used nuclear fuel for recycle
Reprocessing used fuel* to recover uranium (U, as RepU) and plutonium (Pu) avoids the wastage of a valuable resource. Most of it - about 96% - is uranium at less than 1% U-235 (often 0.4 - 0.8%), and up to 1% is plutonium. Both can be recycled as fresh fuel, saving up to 30% of the natural uranium otherwise required. The materials potentially available for recycling (but locked up in stored used fuel) could conceivably run the US reactor fleet of about 100 GWe for almost 30 years with no new uranium input.
DUPIC
Another approach to used nuclear fuel recycling which could be employed by some countries is DUPIC (Direct Use of used PWR fuel in CANDU reactors).
The DUPIC technique has certain advantages:
• No materials are separated during the refabrication process, uranium, plutonium, fission products and minor actinides are kept together in the fuel powder and bound together again in the DUPIC fuel bundles.
• A high net destruction rate can be achieved of actinides and plutonium.
• Up to 25% more energy can be realised compared to other PWR used fuel recycling techniques.
• And a DUPIC fuel cycle could reduce a country¹s need for used PWR fuel disposal by 70% while reducing fresh uranium requirements by 30%.
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I know waste is a problem but look where society was even 100 years ago; the first cars, no aeroplanes, no satellites, no TV, poor comunication methods, no computers, minimal medicine. The nuclear industry is only 60 years old. Humanities knowledge base is growing at an exponential pace. There are solutions being developed like thorium reactors, breeder reactors, fission reators, we will have a waste solution eventually.