Name One Nuclear Plant That the NRC Approved In Advance To Have PERMANENT Onsite Storage?

[Blackhatjack]

The problem with nuclear power in this country is how to permanently dispose of spent nuclear fuel.

As I understand it, construction on a nuclear power plant cannot be initiated until the NRC(Nuclear Regulatory Commission) issues its certificate. That happens only after a comprehensive review of every aspect of construction of the plant AND approval of the plan of operation of the power plant. One particular aspect of the plan must detail how nuclear fuel will enter the plant, how it will be inserted in the reactor, how it will be removed from the reactor to temporary onsite disposal, and how it will leave the plant for permanent disposal.

Right now nuclear power plants in this country are storing spent nuclear fuel onsite INDEFINITELY because there is no permanent disposal site for the spent nuclear fuel.

Look at the NRC site and its explanation of how spent nuclear fuel is being handled:

http://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/doc-collections/fact-sheets/dry-cask-storage.html

"For years, nuclear power plants have temporarily stored used fuel, known as “spent fuel,” in water pools at the reactor site. Periodically, about one-third of the nuclear fuel in an operating reactor needs to be unloaded and replaced with fresh fuel. Designers of nuclear power plants anticipated that the spent fuel would be reprocessed, with usable portions of the fuel to be recycled and the rest to be disposed as waste. However, commercial reprocessing was never successfully developed in the United States, and a permanent waste repository has not yet been developed. As a result, many of the spent fuel pools at commercial nuclear power plants are nearing capacity."
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Yucca Mountain was a perfect example of how difficult it will be to create a permanent storage facility for spent nuclear fuel.

Environmentally speaking, there is nothing 'climate friendly' or 'clean' about nuclear power where the resulting spent nuclear fuel continues to pile up at the nuclear facilities where permanent disposal was never intended or approved by the NRC.

And nuclear power plants have a useful life before they are decommissioned. So we are creating storage sites of spent nuclear fuel that will 'live on' long after the power plants are decommissioned....

[truedelphi]

1. plus nuke plants are a lose-lose for the consumers

First the rates are jacked up so that the plants can be built. Then the rates are jacked up so that the nuclear power plants can be decommissioned.

If they do make a go of it, the shareholders and the Executives at the utility make the profit.

But then again, that is the American Way.

And of course, in the worst case, Three Mile Island scenario, we all get to glow in the dark for 125,000 years!

[Statistical]

6. How do you explain MEAG and TVA being interested in nuclear energy?

Both a public non-profit utilities. The closets thing we have to socialized energy in this country.

[jpak]

14. Nuclear power IS socialized energy - we the taxpayers *own* all that spent fuel

thanks to that noted pronucular socialist Ronald Reagan and the GOP.

Commercial nuclear power would not exist without taxpayer R&D during the Manhattan Project and the naval reactor programs.

US uranium enrichment plants were built and operated with taxpayer money - up until the 1980's, these plants provided uranium enrichment services to *commercial* nuclear reactor operators *at cost*.

Taxpayers subsidized the risk of operating nuclear power plants by limiting their liability to accidents (the Price-Anderson Act).

More nuclear plants were canceled (110) than actually built and operated in the US - ratepayers and taxpayers picked up the tab for the $112 billion in stranded costs from those cancellations.

nuclear power sucks ass

the end.

[Confusious]

2. link

http://www.utexas.edu/news/2009/01/27/nuclear_hybrid/

[Blackhatjack]

3. Fusion would be the answer to reducing spent nuclear waste, but it is a long ways off

As one of the commenters in your linked site observed, he saw the concept demonstrated in 1968 --and we still don't have a working model in production.

[Confusious]

4. Fission is the splitting of an atom.

Fusion is the combining of two atoms.

We may not have a production model, but there are plenty of labs that have gotten as much power out as they put in through fusion.

This is a hybrid.

"The CFNS would provide abundant neutrons through fusion to a surrounding fission blanket that uses transuranic waste as nuclear fuel. The fusion-produced neutrons augment the fission reaction, imparting efficiency and stability to the waste incineration process."

[Blackhatjack]

5. I know the difference between fusion and fission, and I have followed the science...

My OP stands as accurate. Not a single plan of operation approved by the NRC with the issuance of their certificate has ever approved permanent onsite storage of spent nuclear fuel.

And until that problem is solved nuclear power generation is too much a danger to expand its usage.

My understanding of fusion is that the method of controlling the fusion reaction has not been perfected, and that has prevented its use in dealing with spent nuclear fuel outside the laboratory.

[Confusious]

8. Number one

Maybe they haven't, but the government took money from the utilities to build a long-term waste site. The government has not come through on that end of the agreement.

"My understanding of fusion is that the method of controlling the fusion reaction has not been perfected, and that has prevented its use in dealing with spent nuclear fuel outside the laboratory."

For the most part, there is NO connection between fusion and fission. Until now.

Fusion will be used to generate neutrons to burn the waste.

Multiple fusion reactors around the world have achieved "breakeven" the point where the energy they put in to the reaction equals the energy they get out.

[Statistical]

11. "Multiple fusion reactors around the world have achieved "breakeven"

I do not believe that is correct. The term is unity or ignition. To date no fusion reactors have achieved ignition.

The ratio of output energy : input energy is Q

The most powerful fusion reactor achieved a Q of 0.7.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joint_European_Torus




The ITER being planned now
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ITER

has goal of acheiving continual Q of 5 and peak Q of 10.

Still likely a commercial nuclear reactor would require a continual Q value of 20 - 30

If ITER is successful the next step is DEMO with a timeline of construction in 2024 and operation in 2034. Comercial reactors could possibly be built in 2040 or 2050.
DEMO goal is to achieve 2GW of fusion power at a Q of 25. (25 units of energy output per unit of energy input).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DEMO

[Confusious]

13. Jt-60

During deuterium (D–D fuel) plasma experiments in 1998 plasma conditions were achieved which would, if the D–D fuel were replaced with a 1:1 mix of deuterium and tritium (D–T fuel), have exceeded break-even—the point where the power produced by the fusion reactions equals the power supplied to operate the machine. JT-60 does not have the facilities to handle tritium; currently only the JET tokamak has such facilities. In fusion terminology JT-60 achieved conditions which in D–T would have provided Q = 1.25 where Q is the ratio of fusion power to input power. A self-sustaining nuclear fusion reaction would need a value of Q that is greater than 1.

As of 1998, a higher Q of 1.25 is claimed for the JT-60 tokamak; however, this was not achieved under real D-T conditions but estimated from experiments performed with a pure deuterium (D-D) plasma. Similar extrapolations have not been made for JET, but it is likely that increases in Q over the 1997 measurements could now be achieved if permission to run another full D-T campaign was granted. Work has now begun on ITER to further develop fusion power.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JT-60

This is not the point anyways. The point is, there are ideas on how to burn up the fission waste.

"The CFNS would provide abundant neutrons through fusion to a surrounding fission blanket that uses transuranic waste as nuclear fuel. The fusion-produced neutrons augment the fission reaction, imparting efficiency and stability to the waste incineration process."

[Statistical]

7. What is permanent?

The govt is still collecting fees ($50 billion to date) from utilities for the permanent storage of spent fuel.

All onsite storage is temporary. 50 years, 100 years, even 200 years may seem a long time to humans (and our small lifespans) but it still is temporary storage.

Still to say the waste "piling" up is rhetoric at best.



In the photo is about two decades worth of spent fuel (assuming there are 9 casks both visible and hidden).

Spent fuel needs to spend about a couple years in cooling pond (while short lived isotopes burn off into stable non radioactive elements) after that they can be casked.

Some utilities want a "refund" of the billions they have paid for long term storage (as govt has violated terms of the contract) and instead built interim storage facilities designed to last for 100-200 years while a permanent repository is built.





It may require interim storage centers to "bridge the gap" before US develops a final deep geological repository.

Finland has finished studies and is mining one now. Drilling down the 1700 feet into solid bedrock is in progress right now. It is estimated the shafts will be complete by 2012 when the cavern will be mined out. Repository should begin accepting spent fuel by 2015.

[hunter]

9. "Spent" fuel is not much spent.

Current reactors extract a small fraction of the energy.

There are reactor designs and recycling schemes that allow this fuel to be used again.

This "spent" fuel could becomes a very valuable resource with the right infrastructure. There's no good reason to bury it away forever.

[Statistical]

12. The idea of "burying" is a anti-nuker myth anyways.

In a deep geological repository the spent fuel would be cataloged and stored in dry casks.

Essentially this except underground


Spent fuel could be retrieved for reprocessing, or use in fast breeder reactor, or transmutation in high neutron flux (fusion reactor).

The idea that we will simply dig a whole somewhere and dump a bunch of leaking barrels into it (of course green glowing goo Simpsons style) and then pile a little dirt on top is just a myth.

A deep geological repository would simply be a giant underground warehouse with dry casks stored in rows and cataloged by number. The advantages are:
centralized location
better security
accountability
protection from elements
secure geological location in the event of damage to a cask.

[leeroysphitz]

10. The energy has to come from somewhere, man. n/t