Team Gamma Ray Can Nuclear Energy Be Revived?

Waste Management Issues

1. Introduction

   Whether it is driving a car, cooking a meal, or washing clothes, we constantly produce waste. Likewise, almost all forms of energy we use to produce electricity are going to form waste. Whether it is in the form of coal, oil, natural gas, or nuclear energy, we produce wastes which must be disposed of properly. One of the most pervasive issues regarding nuclear power is what to do with nuclear waste. According to the Department of Energy, fuel rods are typically removed and replaced every 8-12 months. Eventually, the generating capacity of the uranium within a nuclear reactor will diminish to a point that requires it be replaced with fresh fuel. Additionally, the fuel is contained. Additionally, the control rods, perhaps the most critical part of a reactor, need to be replaced every so often order to maintain peak operating efficiency and safety. Even though nuclear reactors use relatively small quantities of fuel, over the decades the fuel has added up. We simply cannot just dump the fuel into a landfill or into the ocean. Think back to the discussion about half-life. Uranium will remain dangerous depending on what isotope it is for hundreds and thousands, if not millions and billions of years. Any waste planning must take into account long-term, safe storage options.
   
   

2. Current Methods of Storage

   Currently, waste from spent nuclear fuel rods is stored in specially-designed, water-filled basins, also known as ‘deep water pools’, or dry casks at commercial power reactor sites or at one away-from-reactor storage facility. Dry casks are typically structures designed as a long-term storage option for nuclear fuel made of corrosion, weather, and radiation resistant materials. A cask is typically layered with neutron absorbing materials and radiative shield materials in order to prevent radiation and other dangerous particles from escaping into the environment. Deep water pools which are approximately 20 feet deep act to moderate the nuclear reaction of the spent fuel, slowing it and acting as a shield to contain the radiation and protect workers and plant apparatus from its effects. In addition to nuclear fuel, contaminated water from the cooling systems of power plants needs to be disposed of properly. According to the Professor Pisupati, in 1990 approximately 85,000 tons of spent nuclear fuel was in deep water pools and holding tanks around the country with an additional 100 million gallons in liquid defense (coolant water) waste. The government has been searching for a more permanent solution to the nuclear waste storage dilemma. Waste simply cannot be kept in deep water pools and concrete casks. Most polls are close to being filled to capacity (Fig. 1). A plan has been developed to deposit all of the US nuclear waste in the Yucca Mountain range of Nevada.
   
   
   
   

   Fig. 1
   
   

   
   
   

   Deep Water Pool	Dry Cask Fuel Storage Container

   
   
   

3. Yucca Mountain, Nevada

   The US considered a number of options of high level waste disposal, and decided that a geologic disposal offered the best option for isolation. Yucca mountain is composed of stable volcanic rock The repository in Yucca Mountain will consist of a large number of tunnels or corridors which the spent fuel will be placed, in the form of fuel rods. These rods will be placed in heavy casks of steel, and placed in the mined caverns, which are then sealed with bentonite (a clay that forms a secure seal).
   
   

4. Additional Issues

   One other issue regarding nuclear waste management is transportation and safety during transit of nuclear waste. There have been no accidents involving nuclear waste transportation since the first reactor began operating in the 1950’s. But is the public willing to deal with highway convoys full of nuclear waste heading to Yucca Mountain and do they believe it is safe?