Nuclear waste a growing headache for SKorea
Source: AP-Excite
By YOUKYUNG LEE
ULSAN, South Korea (AP) - North Korea's weapons program is not the only nuclear headache for South Korea. The country's radioactive waste storage is filling up as its nuclear power industry burgeons, but what South Korea sees as its best solution - reprocessing the spent fuel so it can be used again - faces stiff opposition from its U.S. ally.
South Korea fired up its first reactor in 1978 and since then the resource poor nation's reliance on atomic energy has steadily grown. It is now the world's fifth-largest nuclear energy producer, operating 23 reactors. But unlike the rapid growth of its nuclear industry, its nuclear waste management plan has been moving at a snail's pace.
A commission will be launched before this summer to start public discussion on the permanent storage of spent nuclear fuel rods, which must be locked away for tens of thousands of years. Temporary storage for used rods in spent fuel pools at nuclear power plants is more than 70 percent full.
Undeterred by Japan's Fukushima disaster or recent local safety failings, South Korea plans to boost nuclear to 40 percent of its energy needs with the addition of 11 new reactors by 2024.
FULL story at link.
Read more: http://apnews.excite.com/article/20130326/DA58NE0G2.html
In this Tuesday, Feb. 5, 2013 photo, nuclear power plants, Kori 1, right, and Shin Kori 2 are seen in Ulsan, South Korea. North Koreas weapons program is not the only nuclear headache for South Korea. The countrys radioactive waste storage is filling up as its nuclear power industry burgeons, but what South Korea sees as its best solution _ reprocessing the spent fuel so it can be used again _ faces stiff opposition from its U.S. ally.(AP Photo/Ahn Young-joon)
onehandle
(51,122 posts)Expect the worst, most corporate friendly, most environmentally damaging 'solution.'
leftyohiolib
(5,917 posts)nuclear energy should end until they can deal with the wate. what a stupid short-sighted energy policy
RobertEarl
(13,685 posts)The waste is only dangerous for maybe a few hundred years. We'll all be dead by then. Besides, radiation is good for you. It cooks food, it warms the planet, it makes things go round. You are already radiated. Bananas, airplane flights, even the sun and the dirt, are radiating you all the time.
Of course, it really is the radioactive metal particles in the waste that are like little balls of sun shining 24/7 that if you somehow drink or breathe one or two pieces.... well, it's like eating a ton of bananas at one time and no one is stupid enough to do that.
SK needs power and they need it now. SK makes a whole bunch of stuff that we would die without... must be, because it sure looks like we'll die from it if we don't get it all piled up somewhere somehow sometime.
Hey, there's their idea: Just burn all of it! Pyro! Make it into really tiny particles. That way and it just goes everywhere. Spread the love!
End sarcastic cynical snorking.
I hope they figure something out and do it quick. RE