Radioactive Waste Management and the Future of Nuclear PowerAditya G, Robin H, Anthony S

Importance of Disposal

One of the most difficult problems Could be a deciding factor in future

energy usage

Past Waste Disposal

United States, Britain, and France disposed of radioactive wastes in the ocean until 1970

Soviet Union dumped 2.5 million curies of radioactive waste

Can contaminate far away sources

Current Efforts

Opposition to past disposal techniques

High-level waste depository Yucca Mountain, Nevada

Billions of dollars have already been spent on this project

Russia has offered to store other countries’ nuclear waste

Future Goals and Sustainability

Experts believe that monitored, retrievable storage is the better option

Holding wastes in underground mines or secure surface facilities

Energy Department has performed crash tests on nuclear holding facilities and has determined that they are safe

Choice

How would you feel if trains were coming through your city carrying radioactive waste?

Do you think it is better to keep the waste at 100 separate locations as it is now?

Questions

1. What is a high-level waste repository?

2. What was the previous method of nuclear waste disposal before new techniques were discovered in the 1970’s? Which country was the main contributor?

3. What is monitored, retrievable storage? Why is it effective?

The End of the Road for a Power Plant

Nuclear plants are usually designed to be in use for 30 years

Lots of work has to go in to preparing an old plant to no longer be used

It’s too dangerous to just walk away from it

The radioactive pieces have to be stored just as the other wastes is stored.

San Onofre Nuclear Plant

Operated 24 years, shut down in 1992

Took a decade to dismantle the reactor and shell and to pack them in a 950 ton shipping assembly

Scheduled to be shipped all the way around South America to South Carolina for permanent storage.

Cost to Decommission

The active 103 reactors will cost somewhere from $200 billion to $1 trillion to decommission

Decommissioning plants generally cost 2 to 10 times more than building them

Changing Future for Nuclear Power

• At first this power was thought to have been the gateway to a brighter, more efficient future. 

• Over the course of time we realized that the energy may have been a good idea, but our current technologies do not seem to hold up to the test. We spend more money manufacturing, sustaining, and dismantling the facilities where it is housed than we gain from its out put.

• After the events of World War II, Three Mile island, and Chernobyl, many people began to fear this energy more than they loved it. 

• Even more recently however, more and more people are saying that they think that nuclear power is a good thing, and would not mind having a plant near by.

 

In conclusion, it seems as though the fate of the concept and our actions involving nuclear power in our everyday lives, is left up to the people of the time to decide. Its future could be either bright, or desolate. 

Questions

1. What happened to Chernobyl? Three Mile Island? Fukushima (Japan)?

2. What do you know about Nuclear Power?3. Would you be comfortable with a nuclear power plant

near by? Why, or why not?