This is a semi-serious question: why can't we dump nuclear fuel rods in deep ocean trenches?

[XemaSab]

Sure, there are critters down there, but not many.

By the time the radiation makes it up the water column to areas with substantial amounts of marine life, wouldn't it be pretty diluted? Especially if different trenches were used to spread out the waste.

And future people are pretty unlikely to blunder upon them, no? And terrorists wouldn't be able to get down that far to get them?Even if there's a huge earthquake, they would still be as safe after the quake as they were before.

Why is this a completely crappy idea? Educate me, please.

[terisan]

1. I would like to learn more........this may have possibilities. nt

[mike_c]

2. a better idea is to drill into pre-subduction zone plates...

...and let them be carried back into the mantle, I would think.

[XemaSab]

5. So right off Arcata?

:D

[mike_c]

9. sure....

I mean, why not? Spent fuel buried a kilometer or more in the sea floor would be confined until it slid back into the mantle in a few hundreds of thousands of years and besides, it would piss Dave Meserve off to no end. Mind you, I like Dave, but what can I say-- I like rocking the boat.

[XemaSab]

11. There are a lot of people there who need pissing off.

:P

[EVDebs]

3. Last time we did this, off Paradise Island where Howeird Hughes went

after leaving Las Vegas (oddly since the nuclear testing scared him !) he went to Paradise Island in the Bahamas, where the govt. had been dumping toxic materials...which again really freaked the old oddball. See Citizen Hughes, by Michael Drosnin.

""In 1967 the Americans ignored the objections of Bahamian officials and, with British approval, dumped canisters of nerve gas in Bahamian waters. Up to this day we do not know what effect, if any, this has had on our marine resources and our health.""

http://www.bahamapundit.com/2007/02/climate_change_.html

[napi21]

4. I don't know about the dods, but neuclear wast can be burned.

I have a friend who sorks at a neuclear facility, and he has told me repeatedly that he doesn't understand why there's so much panic about neuclear waste. All you need to do is burn it and it's gone!

I used to live in Pa. and I was quite concerned about safety and waste at all the neuclear facilities...until he took a job at one. He's a very intelligent guy and I trust his opinion. I really think this is the way we should go with energy conservation. 1/2 of all fossile fuels are consumed by electric production. If we could curb that, we'd be well on our way to energy independence.

[TygrBright]

6. Good question. Lemme add MY question, which is, why not shoot it into space?

Just launch it into the sun, or send it out of the solar system altogether.

It's GOTTA cost less than the NIMBY foofooraw and all the ultradoublesupersafe construction for a dump/storage site here...

curiously,
Bright

[XemaSab]

7. It'd really suck if the thing blew up...

:P

[muriel_volestrangler]

16. I don't think there's any 'gotta' about it - that would be incredibly expensive

Launching things into the Sun, or out of the solar system, is incredibly difficult. Since we're already in orbit round the Sun, you have to remove almost all the Earth's velocity (about 30 km/s, or 68,000 mph) to get it to drop into the Sun, rather than just end up in an elliptical orbit that comes back to the Earth's orbit. You might be able to do something sneaky with slingshot orbits, but just getting anything into Earth orbit is expensive. Look at the size of rocket they had to use to launch a small spacecraft like Voyager out of the solar system. And then there's the risk of something going wrong with the rocket before it gets out of range of the Earth.

[phantom power]

17. $5,000 per pound to LEO.

That's just to LEO, mind you. Not the cost of actually getting it out of earth's gravity well, and the additional huge delta-v needed to drop it into the sun.

[rawtribe]

8. They tried that in the 60's and this happened.

[NNadir]

10. This has been proposed, but it's awfully wasteful.

Only a small fraction of the energy associated with nuclear fuel has been recovered in a once through cycle. The rest of the energy will be very important to future generations. This energy must be preserved and kept available.

The "problem" of terrorism and the like is vastly overstated. If we really want to fight terrorism we will ban fossil fuels. Almost all incidents of terrorism have involved fossil fuels. Zero incidences of terrorism have involve nuclear materials.

Spent nuclear fuel is hardly a problem worth considering since it has killed zero people. A far more important problem is what we should do with deadly dangerous fossil fuel waste, which is quickly destroying our atmosphere even as it kills on a vast scale.

[ben_meyers]

13. Thank you for pointing this out

I have been saying the same thing for years. What we might consider "waste" today will someday be our source of power. Recall that the oil industry at one time flared off "waste" like natural gas and gasoline in the refining process. What's needed is a short term storage solution for this resource.

[MichaelHarris]

12. Leakage

and ocean currents.

[intaglio]

14. There was something in "New Scientist" about this some weeks or months ago

IIRC the idea was to use dart-like "bombs" to fall and self bury deep into the Pelagic mud at a subduction zone. The difficulty is that the mud is largely scraped off during subduction and, in geological and radiological terms, rapidly recycled.

[soothsayer]

15. Omigod. "Why don't we just try to totally poison our oceans?" is

what I'm hearing. "The ocean is so big we could NEVER pollute it all" was the common thinking before our trash reached absolutely everywhere. Unbelievable.

[happyslug]

18. The biggest problem is making sure the waste gets to the trench

There have been people advocating ocean dumping of trash for about 20 years. The problem is for this to be effective the waste must be dumped into the Open Ocean Trench NOT the Continental Shelves. When ocean dumping has been performed before (off the East Coast of the US) the waste (Non-Nuclear waste) was dumped 100-200 miles from the coast, but in the Atlantic that is still the Continental Shelves. You have to go halfway to Europe before you are NOT over the Continental Shelves, and no one wants to tote out conventional waste that distance let alone Nuclear Waste.

Several Years ago a Scientist did propose Ocean Dumping of conventional waste. He was out of Los Angles where the Continental Shelves is barely 50 miles from the coast. Such dumping would contain the waste and since the current in that part of the world flow FROM Southern California the chances of any of the waste hitting the coast of California was slim to none. On the other hand, given the distances one has to travel in the Atlantic and that the Gulf Stream brings anything dumps on the Continental Shelves is driven by the Gulf Stream right back to the East Coast, Ocean Dumping has been a non-starter in the East Coast. As to the West Coast, you have a lot of empty desert that can be used to dump the waste.

Now the above is NON-Nuclear Waste, contained in steel drums that would implode as the Drum fell into the ocean and right to the Ocean Floor. The implosion would seal the waste even more. The problem is given the distance needed, you have a lot of old abandoned Strip mines in Pennsylvania that are a lot closer and easier to take trash to. Thus ocean waste dumping has been a non-starter for at least 30 years and will remain so for the next 30 (i.e. till the Strip mines of Pennsylvania, West Virginia and Ohio are filled up with East Coast Garbage).

Now I read a report many years ago about the US Navy's plan to dispose of their Nuclear Ships once the ships are NO longer usable. Part of the Plan is conventional, strip any part that is NOT contaminated like you would a conventional powered ships. The parts of the Ships to hot to be re-used are to be dumped in the deep ocean. Both the Russians and the US have lost Nuclear Powered subs in the Deep Ocean and no harmful radiation leaks have been detected (Now there have been harmful radiation leaks from Russian Nuclear Subs sunk on the Continental Shelves, but that is a different situation). Thus the US Navy's plan is to dump the Ex-nuclear ships into the Deep ocean if the steel and other metals can NOT be made safe enough to be reused.

Thus there is NOTHING that prevents deep ocean dumping of Nuclear Waste, except making sure the waste GETS TO THE DEEP OCEAN NOT THE CONTINENTAL SHELF. The biggest problem is the distance from the East Coast. A secondary problem is that the Atlantic Ocean is EXPANDING not CONTRACTING, thus any nuclear waste will stay on the bottom of the Atlantic for 100 of Millions of years

As to the West Coast, the distance is NOT that far, and the Pacific Ocean is deeper than the Atlantic (And the Pacific Ocean Shelvees is being pushed back into the Mantel by the Westward movement of the North American Shelves). Thus the Nuclear waste dump right at the point of induction of the Pacific Plate would in Millions of years be forced back into the Mantle. The biggest problem will be convincing people it is OK to Dump Nuclear Material 50 miles of the California Coast (Remember to get the waste into the Mantle, the waste has to be just ahead of the North American Plate as it forces the Pacific Plate back into the Mantle).