Danger of Spent Fuel Outweighs Reactor Threat (Japan, USA have same approach to spent fuel storage)

[enough]

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/18/world/asia/18spent.html?hp

New York Times, March 17, 2011

Years of procrastination in deciding on long-term disposal of highly radioactive fuel rods from nuclear reactors is now coming back to haunt Japanese authorities as they try to control fires and explosions at the stricken Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station.

Some countries have tried to limit the number of spent fuel rods that accumulate at nuclear power plants — Germany stores them in costly casks, for example, while Chinese nuclear reactors send them to a desert storage compound in western China’s Gansu province. But Japan, like the United States, has kept ever larger numbers of spent fuel rods in temporary storage pools at the power plants, where they can be guarded with the same security provided for the power plant.

snip>

Now those temporary pools are proving the power plant’s Achilles heel, as the water in the pools either boils away or leaks out of their containments, and efforts to add more water have gone awry. While spent fuel rods generate significantly less heat than newer ones, there are strong indications that the fuel rods have begun to melt and release extremely high levels of radiation. Japanese authorities struggled Thursday to add more water to the storage pool at reactor No. 3.

snip>

Nuclear engineers around the world have been expressing surprise this week that the storage pools have become such a problem. “I’m amazed that they couldn’t keep the water in the pools,” said Robert Albrecht, a longtime nuclear engineer who worked as a consultant to the Japanese nuclear reactor manufacturing industry in the 1980s and visited the Fukushima Daiichi reactor then.

> Much more

[ReturnoftheDjedi]

1. yep. No Contaiment + Tons of Uranium + No Water = Massive Radiation leak

[daleo]

2. I believe some of the most dangerous daughter products are in the spent fuel

Aka nuclear waste. The stuff with the most dangerous half-lifes accumulate in the spent fuel so its very bad if that stuff cooks off.

[LiberalEsto]

3. Let's not blame procrastination

Nobody wants that spent fuel anywhere near them.

The problem is not that nuclear reactor operators have been thwarted by a bunch of prissy environmental freaks.

The problem is that the nuclear energy companies allowed the mess to be created in the first place, by building and operating reactors, without making plans for safely disposing of the spent fuel.

The elected officials at every level of government failed to require nuclear energy companies to develop safe disposal methods for spent fuel. And if the nuke companies couldn't fnd a way to safely dispose of spent fuel, the companies shouldn't have gotten permits to build the damned reactors in the first place.

I am originally from New Jersey, where chemical manufacturers routinely dumped their toxic waste in the environment, or stored them on site with no plans for what to do with them. As I recall, the American Cyanamid plant in Bridgewater, NJ had pools of chemicals on their property so deadly that birds would land on them and die. I believe this toxic stuff was washed into the environment during major flooding of the Millstone and Raritan rivers some years back.

Of course most of these chemical plants were permitted and built before the general public knew about the hazards. When nuclear reactors were being proposed, we knew better, but didn't use the lessons learned about toxic chemicals to demand safe disposal of nuclear wastes.

[BeFree]

4. ""We knew better""

Yes, we did. But we are just hippies. Yeah, hippies with degrees and a higher education than 99%
of the rest of the country, and braver, and more attuned to the environment, but, alas, just hippies.

It is sad to see that the hippies are losing.

[enough]

5. Yes, it has been an insane plan from the beginning, building a system that creates

massive and growing amounts of radioactive waste, with absolutely no idea what to do with it. I spent a lot of time years ago trying to stop a local nuke from being built. I found it very hard to think of convincing ways to argue with a people who had pre-accepted this basic insanity.

[janet118]

6. There's also the problem of no oversight . . .

Sound familiar?

When you say NRC, think SEC.

It's all about money and collusion between federal "regulators" and corporations.