Reply #55: Actually, I'm kind of hoping Yucca Mountain doesn't open or if it does [View All]

[NNadir]

it does so on a temporary basis. This is not because I think Yucca Mountain is unsafe compared with other options, but because I think the idea of dumping nuclear materials is foolish.

Yucca Mountain is an outgrowth of a certain type of hysteria that insists that there is tremendous urgency in dealing with nuclear "waste," although no such urgency exists for dealing with the wastes of any other forms of energy. (Is anyone doing anything serious about climate change for instance?)

Actually we have generations to deal with nuclear materials. Were I in charge of this matter here is what I would do: I would reprocess the removed fuel to separate the Uranium, plutonium, and the minor actinides. The Uranium removed is actually slightly enriched Uranium (all of the fissionable material is not burned.) It can be used directly to fuel new and existing CANDU reactors, increasing efficiency of the fuel use. The plutonium should be separated and burned in Pressurized Water Reactors configured in the Radowsky configuration to transmute Thorium into fuel. As system should be constructed over the next several decades to close this system completely, so that the thorium/uranium/plutonium are burned completely. This type of treatment will account for over 95% of the mass of the "waste" in its entirety.

I would then separate the fission products. Some, like the precious metals Rhodium and Ruthenium will have fractions that have decayed so far that they can be directly sold as valuable materials. There are ways to isolate Palladium from its single long lived isotope, or to use the slightly radioactive Palladium in closed systems as a hydrogenation catalyst. There are hundreds of millions of dollars of precious metals contained in nuclear waste.

Whatever technetium cannot be immediately used in high temperature nuclear systems should be transmuted to Ruthenium and Rhodium. (I can imagine circumstances where the Technetium is transmuted as a side product of its use.

Dr. Cohen is probably fairer than I in calculating the health, environmental and other consequences of the non-nuclear operations (truck driving and the like) related to the operation of nuclear power plants. I think the inclusion of diesel fumes from transporting nuclear materials is a valid issue, as is mining, and other related activities. (Most of these activities of course exist for all other forms of energy on a grander scale, since Uranium and Thorium are extremely energetically dense.) Still, in doing so, he really brings to fore exactly how nuclear power saves lives. His is in my mind the most irrefutable argument for nuclear power I've ever heard. Unfortunately, the public as a whole thrives and revels in its innumeracy. Doctor Cohen's arguments require mathematic literacy to be read. It may be that people will not think until they are forced to do so.

Over the years, thousands of applications for fission products have been proposed. If the public can be educated on these matters, we ought to explore and industrialize many of these. Only then, should we look at the long term disposal of whatever tiny fragment of nuclear "waste" as might not have a use.