Semi-facetious question about nuclear waste disposal

[XemaSab]

Why not dump it into deep ocean trenches?

Okay, so the critters that live at 35,000 feet would be pretty much hosed, and we'd probably drive some unique taxa to extinction, but you'd be localizing the impacts and putting the waste somewhere where people in 20,000 years wouldn't just stumble across it. It seems even less likely that people would just happen to find it there than if we put it on the moon, and if future-people are smart enough to get down there, they're smart enough to go "Wow, this stuff is really radioactive! We'd better stay out of there!" Also, it seems like any radioactivity that came up to shallower waters would be dissipated by the ocean currents pretty fast, and with any luck, the waste would just be subducted under the Philippines.

So what are the reasons why this is a really bad idea? :shrug:

[hughee99]

1. You could always shoot it into the sun...

though I guess the danger would be if your Rocket blows up before it leaves orbit.

[Mz Pip]

2. I did a google search

nuclear waste Mariana trenches. There are lots of links to different points of view. Here are the first two links that came up.

http://www.argee.net/DefenseWatch/Nuclear%20Waste%20and%20Breeder%20Reactors.htm

http://www.larry-daly.com/dox/Subduct.htm

[kestrel91316]

3. I have proposed vitrifying it at very low concentrations and dumping it into the Marianas Trench

and other very deep locations where it will get covered up by sediment. Then in millions of years it will appear in soome future geological formation but much less radioactive.

But I'm just a veterinarian. What do I know about these things??

[Dead_Parrot]

5. I recall a similar proposal...

...where the waste is blended down and buried in old uramium mines (on the grounds it won't make any difference).

I can't think of any real reason why your proposal would be A Bad Thing, other than a vague notion that we've done enough to the oceans already.
:shrug:

[Howzit]

10. Putting the waste back into the uranium mines seems the most logical to me

Dropping dust into the ocean would allow it to spread before it reached bottom. Larger pellets may be OK, but why not put it back into the mines? After all, the mines are set up to handle radio-active material already.

[XemaSab]

14. But as far as the "We've done enough to the oceans" goes...

How is any other form of electrical generation better for the oceans? :shrug:

[Dead_Parrot]

19. It isn't

As I said, it's not a real reason - Just an emotive response. :)

(Edit: I assume we're not talking about used fuel rods, BTW. There's a very good reason why we shouldn't stick that in the ocean - it makes it damn hard to recycle)

[XemaSab]

20. Yeah

I hear ya with the emotive response. :P

[kestrel91316]

21. Vitrify it and put it in the mines. The Kestrel Compromise, lol.

You want to incorporate it into glass so that it isn't accessible to be taken up by living organisms to any extent. If you dilute it out enough, the glass won't melt from the heat of ongoing decay. Somebody else is gonna have to do the math on this one.

[Dead_Parrot]

4. What could possibly go wrong?

[XemaSab]

8. .

[izquierdista]

6. Diffusion

The radioactivity would spread itself throughout the oceans, causing all sorts of problems. Spent fuel is not just a little more radioactive than uranium fuel pellets, it is millions of times more radioactive, so you don't want it uncontained.

Now, "uncontained" is the key word here, because no vessel can be guaranteed not to burst, rupture, or corrode away. That is why in underground burials, it is the amount of the overburden that becomes important. If the time to diffuse through a geologic layer is many times the half-life of the waste, then you have a good solution to the problem. If not, if the waste can diffuse out and still be radioactive, then that will come back to bite you.

There are some "problems" on the ocean floor that scientists in the field are monitoring, like sunken submarines and other unintended drops of radioactive items.

After having worked in the field, my opinion is that ALL nuclear activities should take place deep underground, where contamination can be closed off by the geology. I have maintained that nuke plants are reasonable solutions to future energy needs, IF they are all located at least a half mile underground in a stable geologic formation.

[XemaSab]

7. Well my problem with burying it in the desert of Nevada

is that 10,000 years ago, Nevada was a series of giant inland lakes. I haven't done a lot of research, but I would guess there was abundant vegetation around the lakes, and maybe a pretty good fishery there. All in all, I bet it was a pretty nice place to hang out back in the day.

How are we to know that in a future climate Nevada won't be the breadbasket of a future civilization? :shrug:

Or that future geologists won't see a pocket in the substrate and go exploring? :shrug:

[izquierdista]

9. Where to bury

I didn't work at Yucca Mountain, so I don't know if it is "deep enough". However, the WIPP facility in New Mexico, half a mile down in the middle of a salt bed, meets the requirements.

Geologists have identified formations that have been stable for millions of years, so those are the ones that would be likely candidates for a repository. Like you say, the climate could change and a great river could form above the repository and carve it's way down to it like the Colorado River has done to the Grand Canyon, but by then, all the radioactivity should have decayed away.

The WIPP formation needs to be stable for almost a million years to ensure the isotopes are all decayed, however for Yucca Mountain, it is only a few hundred years since the half lives of the spent fuel isotopes is about 30 years.

The other argument against Yucca Mountain vs. WIPP is that Yucca Mountain is in a geologically active area that is still being uplifted. With other areas that are geologically inactive, why even bother with that as an added factor?

[Dogmudgeon]

11. The oceans are loaded with uranium

If we put spent reactor fuel into the sea, it would, over time, reduce the seas' radioactivity.

But you'd have to sinter it real fine and spread it over a large area, so it wouldn't stay concentrated in any given area.

Almost all the nuclear "waste" we make decays to background levels of radiation in a few hundred years. So it isn't anything you want to idly play with, but it's also not the Devil's barbecue charcoal.

There's also the problem we have, thinking of radioactivity as a kind of demon possession -- nuclear cooties, like the Scientologists' "body thetans". But in reality, it's a specific and well-known physical property. Radioactivity, that is -- with body thetans, you're on your own.

Caution and respect for the power of radioactivity is essential; atavistic fear isn't just unnecessary, it's contrary to rationality. No matter what your stand may be, superstiton about radioctivity brings us down to the level of Terri Sciavo and Stem Cell idolatry cults.

--p!

[pscot]

12. At one time the French (who else)

tried deep ocean disposal. One of their cement filled barrels is alledged to have washed up on the Oregon coast. Vitrification has been a vague promise for 40 years, by my own certain knowledge, and they still can't seem to get it done. I think recoverable storage in a geologically stable formation, is the way to go. Key is, somebody needs to tune out all the static and make a decision, and then make it stick.

[jpak]

13. That's just plain nuts - 3.3 micro-grams of uranium per liter of seawater is not "loaded"

and spreading "finely sintered" spent fuel over the ocean will increase is radioactivity - not reduce it.

and marine organisms *would* concentrate bio-available radioisotopes up the food web to economically important fishes and render them unfit for human consumption.

beyond nuts

[NNadir]

18. If you don't know what you're talking about make stuff up.

The ocean has between 3 and 5 billion tons of uranium in it, and is saturated with respect to uranium. In fact all of the world's fish evolved bathed in radioactivity and currently the radioactivity of the ocean, dominated by K-40 and Uranium isotopes is at the lowest level that it has ever been.

As usual you have no fucking idea what you're talking about.

In general, there is NOT ONE fundie anti-nuke who knows shit from shinola about chemistry or physics, but in fact each fission of a uranium atom prevents the decay of 15 radioisotopes in the environment.

It is widely understood by people who know science that uranium 238, one of the three extant actinide decay chains - the 4th, the curium-245 chain, is extinct, decays through the following sequence: U-238 -> Th-234 -> Pa-234 -> U-234 -> Th-230 -> Ra-226 -> Rn-222 -> Po-218 -> Pb-214 -> Bi-214-> Po-214 -> Pb-210 -> Bi-210 -> Po-210-> Pb-206.

Thus 14 nuclear decays are involved, if one knows how to count, but there are ZERO anti-nuke fundies who can do this.

Typically, the fission of a uranium or plutonium atom in a reactor results in a decay chain, however most of the isotopes are short lived and decay in the reactor. About 3% of the energy obtained from a nuclear reactor results from such internal nuclear decay. Many nuclides, such as Ce-144, Ba-140, Y-91 etc, etc decay in the reactor.

The use of nuclear power temporarily raises the level of radioactivity because most radioisotopes removed from nuclear reactors are short lived and there is an inverse relationship between activity and half-life. It is well understood that any system - and this applies to everything in the universe, and not just radioactive isotopes - that a system in which a material is simultaneously destroyed and created will reach equilibrium.

You can't be an anti-nuke if you passed 5th grade math, but this is the essence of the Bateman equation, a differential equation that can be solved numerically through matrix methods.

If you have no fucking clue what an equation is, you are eligible to join the Greenpeace cult.

The length of time that it takes for a fission program to reduce the amount of radioactivity on earth with respect to naturally occuring uranium and thorium depends on the nature of the fuel cycle used. In a continuous plutonium recycling scheme using thermal fission the length of time that it takes for nuclear power to reduce the radioactivity of the planet with respect to natural uranium ores is about 1000 years.

Without recycling, the radioactivity of the earth would decline below the natural level available in 1940 in about 5 million years, with almost all of the activity after 1 million years deriving from Np-237, a member of the only extinct radioactive decay series that resulted from the supernovae that formed the solar system. There's a certain lovely irony in this.

There is a very nice discussion of this in William Stacey's <em>Nuclear Reactor Physics</em> pp 228-233, ironically enough, replete with graphs, not that there is ONE fundie anti-nuke who can interpret what a graph means.

I consider the reduction of radioactivity via nuclear energy to be one of the greatest risks of nuclear energy, since life evolved in the presence of radioactivity and may depend on this radioactivity in subtle ways that have not been generally appreciated.

Ignorance kills.

[jpak]

25. Like I said above - beyond nuts

:rofl:

[Dogmudgeon]

22. How many liters of water are in the oceans?

Let me do it without scientific notation, which is not permitted by the anti-nuclear faith.

There's 1.3 to 1.4 billion cubic kilometers of water on the Earth. (http://hypertextbook.com/facts/2001/SyedQadri.shtml">Source at The Physics Factbook™.) 1 cubic kilometer = 1,000,000,000,000 or one trillion liters. That gives us 1.3 billion trillion liters of water in the Earth's oceans with an average concentration of uranium of 3.3 parts per billion.

The most commonly used amount for the oceans' uranium yield is 4.5 billion tons.

There's also thorium in seawater -- about 15% as much as uranium, because it's less soluble. And there's deuterium and tritium, which could be used in fusion reactions, but more practically, is used by the original CANDU reactors and some newer "fourth generation" reactors.

From the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uranium">Wikipedia article on Uranium:

Its average concentration in the Earth's crust is (depending on the reference) 2 to 4 parts per million,[6][9] or about 40 times as abundant as silver.[7] The Earth's crust from the surface to 25 km (15 mi) down is calculated to contain 10^17 kg (2×10^17 lb) of uranium while the oceans may contain 10^13 kg (2×10^13 lb).[6] The concentration of uranium in soil ranges from 0.7 to 11 parts per million (up to 15 parts per million in farmland soil due to use of phosphate fertilizers), and 3 parts per billion of sea water is composed of the element.[9]

Add about a billion tons of thorium and less-common radionuclides to that total. There's also radioactive material in petroleum. And it looks like there is plenty in plain old dirt, too.

So, there's more than 5 billion long (metric) tons of "nuclear" material in the world's oceans, NOT counting the heavy water.

Yeah, loaded is the right word.

Meanwhile, most of the world's fish are already contaminated with toxic metals like mercury and cadmium, which are pollutants from coal burning (and from semiconductor manufacture). Uranium doesn't rate a mention, but maybe it should. Then, people would learn that uranium is abundant in nature, and nearly all of the radioactive pollution is from fossil fuels, not nuclear reactors.

The anti-nuclear-energy jihad is as futile and as doomed as the crusades against stem cells and the teaching of evolution.

--p!

[jpak]

27. Yes, according to sickfuck logic adding radioisotopes to the list of toxic fish contaminants

will make them disappear.

Maybe we should resume atmospheric nuclear tests and reduce the radioactivity of the biosphere.

like I said above - beyond nuts.

[DCKit]

23. Yeah, what those paid experts said.

Didn't you ever wonder why sea salt is so expensive? It's all those extra isotopes!

I've been eating that shit for years and laugh at those Hollywood types: My teeth aren't just bright, they glow in the dark! I can't even sleep at night anymore 'cause the light inside keeps me awake. I've got to sleep out in the sun just for balance.

My school pictures used to come out with a dark spot where I was standing and the paparazzi didn't dare bother me - until they came out with those newfangled digital cameras. Now I'm looking for a source of "Super-Duper Sea Salt", you know, the one that contains gamma ray emitters and screws up the CCD cameras.

Now I'm pissed because I just realized that all those dumb monsters that ruled the earth millions of years ago just sat on all that uranium and didn't do a damn thing with it. Now we have less than half what they did to work with 'cause all the rest is lead. The stupid, lazy bastards.

Notice how SOME people post on every thread that includes the word "nuclear", but never, ever, anywhere else on DU?

[Nihil]

24. That's a bit harsh ...

> Notice how SOME people post on every thread that includes the word
> "nuclear", but never, ever, anywhere else on DU?

I'm sure I've seen Jpak post on other stuff ...
Maybe you weren't looking at the right threads?

:shrug:

[DCKit]

28. Is that the only part of my post you actually read???

I thought the rest was kind of funny. It was a riff off what Jpak wrote, not a rag on Jpak.

Oh, you wacky Brits.

[Nihil]

29. Nope, just the only part I thought warranted a reply ...

(I don't often use the sarcasm smiley) :hi:

[XemaSab]

15. Xenu's going to get you for that!

x(

[NNadir]

16. The former Soviet Union did this a lot in the 20th century.

Mostly this was done in the Barent's Sea and the arctic ocean.

Everybody in Russia will die.

It's a terrible waste of nuclear resources though.

The idea of dumping dangerous fossil fuel waste in the ocean has been very popular for the last century, but it appears that the oceans are dying as a result.

[hunter]

17. Nuclear waste is boring and tends to stay put.

The stuff from present-day nuclear plants still has a lot of energy left in it too, not to mention metals that might be worth separating out someday. Even that "depleted" uranium the U.S. shoots at people still has a lot of kick to it.

The low level crap needs to go somewhere people won't dig it up. It's sort of like old prescription medicines. You don't want to flush them down the toilet, there's already too much of it from our pee.

Maybe we should mix nuclear waste that will never be useful with used cat litter and bury it somewhere dry.

[cosmik debris]

26. First you need to separate the low level waste

There is a HUGE difference between low level medical waste and spent fuel rods.

Disposal of low level waste at places like the WIPP site is relatively easy and safe.

The real problems are form high level waste.

Your OP was not clear on which kind of waste you are dealing with.

[XemaSab]

30. I'm talking about spent fuel rods

I'm not talking about garbage left over from the x-ray lab.

[cosmik debris]

31. I favor recycling, not disposal.

But that's just me.

[kristopher]

32. A pro and a con

The con is that dumping of known toxins in the ocean is a really bad thing generally and if it were done to enable a massive expansion of nuclear power, the amount of generated wastes would be a totally different animal than the wastes that are currently stockpiles.

That said, if we were to STOP producing nuclear wastes and were trying to find a site to dispose of the currently mountain's worth, perhaps deep ocean disposal would be a consideration.

Certain conditions would need to be addressed. Bottom currents are very slow moving, sometimes taking up to 10000 years to go from the area where the water sank to the area where it comes to the surface. The rich fishing grounds in the cold waters off our NW Pacific Coast are an area of upwelling deep water that has been submerged for such a time.
This means that any leeching would be contained by the inversion layers away from most marine life so getting into the food chain doesn't seem highly probable. That statement assumes the material has been stored in a vitrified state proven against breakdown in ocean conditions.

As Xemasab wrote, another aspect that increases the effectiveness of the isolation would be dropping it in trenches that are stagnant.

Overall, however, like with fossil fuel and CO2 sequestration, the best answer is to leave the shit in the ground in the first place.