NRC Blog, Praise, and Spent Fuel (a dismal hot potato)

Visit the NRC blog, they want to become more "involved" with communicating with the community

http://public-blog.nrc-gateway.gov/2014/02/18/appreciating-a-thumbs-up-from-our-overseas-peers/
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stockFebruary 18, 2014 at 9:45 am

Many US citizens will join in this praise when the NRC gets on the program of removing the most dangerous material on earth, from on top of the most dangerous machine on earth, and not letting it sit there for decades on end.
I speak of the spent fuel being stored at the reactors “for convenience”. Everything over 5 years should be dry casked immediately for mutliple benefits, including national and local security, and the economic shot in the arm of doing so. Also as plants close down, this will be the perfect transitional job for those losing jobs at the plants.
We all live on borrowed time until we address the spent fuel, and waiting on the dreamland of the safe single repository is a weak excuse for doing nothing. Get on it, and God speed to ye.

Reply

• CaptDFebruary 20, 2014 at 4:46 pm

  Stock
  Posted on 10/26/12
  I’ve already suggested that the NRC offer a Million Dollar Prize for the best way to “solve” the nuclear waste storage problem” for the next 50 years, so please consider this idea as my “low cost” solution to America’s “long term” radioactive waste storage problem:
  Make use of our Military Testing Bases and or our MOA’s (Military Operation Area’s) out west, which are really huge tracts of land (think tens of thousands of acres) used ONLY by the military and already secured by them 24/7!
  Placing these very large (heavy) concrete casks in a poke-a-dot pattern will allow for at least 50 to 100 years of storage, safe from everything except a War, (in which case every reactor is just as vulnerable) and then revisit the storage problem then; at which time, probably a future solution will allow for an even better, lower cost “final solution”…
  Because these casks would be very large and all look alike nobody would know what was in any one of them, which would be yet another level of security for the casks containing even higher levels of nuclear waste! An ideal outside coating for these casks would be similar to the spray-on “bed liner” used for pickup trucks that not only prevents rusting and or damage for the life of the vehicle but would also seal the casks to prevent leakage of any kind!
  Hopefully these casts would be similar in size to a large shipping container so that existing material handling equipment could be used to load, unload and or move them about without “inventing” a mega hauler vehicle. By keeping the “footprint” of these casks similar to a large 40 foot container, the stacking and or placement of them might also be semi or fully automated which would not only save money but again keep the exact location of any specific cask secret! The monitoring of these casks 24/7/365 could even be done via satellite since these casks are similar in size to rocket launchers which are easily seen from space.
  In another 50 to 100 years, storage technology will be such that, yet another lower cost solution for all this waste will be found, and then it can be considered verses continuing to using the above storage plan… Perhaps sometime In the future, a safe low cost solution like lifting it all into space via a space elevator* and then shoving it into an orbit that will send it into the SUN for final recycling will present itself…
  BTW: Area 51 (which does not even exist officially) contains huge tracts of land that has already been used as a nuclear testing site (and is still contaminated and is now off limits to all but a few forever) would allow all this material to effectively disappear…
  * The Space Elevator Project (LiftPort) http://liftport.com/ is something that the NRC should help fund ASAP, because it represents the best way to actually eliminate storing nuclear waste on Earth!

  Reply
  • ModeratorFebruary 21, 2014 at 8:34 am

    Suggestions on dealing with spent nuclear fuel are best sent to the Department of Energy, which is the entity responsible for it. You can find more information here: http://www.energy.gov/downloads/strategy-management-and-disposal-used-nuclear-fuel-and-high-level-radioactive-waste
    Moderator
  • stockFebruary 21, 2014 at 10:45 amYour comment is awaiting moderation.
    

    CaptD, great and creative thinking, and all this casking work will be a real economic shot in the arm and a source of work for those from the closing nuclear industry.
    However, spent fuel is a hot potato that no one wants to touch, so here we are, at grave risk to environmental disaster (storm, flood, Carrington) or terrorist attack.