Planning for nuclear waste trains, but to where?

Feds Want Nuclear Waste Train, but Nowhere to Go

The U.S. government is looking for trains to haul radioactive waste from nuclear power plants to disposal sites. Too bad those trains have nowhere to go.

Putting the cart before the horse, the U.S. Department of Energy recently asked companies for ideas on how the government should get the rail cars needed to haul 150-ton casks filled with used, radioactive nuclear fuel.

They won't be moving anytime soon. The latest government plans call for having an interim test storage site in 2021 and a long-term geologic depository in 2048.

No one knows where those sites will be, but the Obama administration is already thinking about contracts to develop, test and certify the necessary rail equipment.

Click to expand...

Our brain dead so called leaders here in Texas will Welcome this Crap with open arms, will even offer "Incentives" to bury it in the wilds of West Texas since there's nothing there except Sand, Mesquite and Jack Rabbits!

Their justification is that it provides Jobs for the few hundred people that live in the lowest populated counties in the US!

The question is, who in their right mind would want to live there, and also there is this pesky thing called Underground Water in the Aquafers which is becoming Liquid Gold here in Drought stricken Texas?!!

The Fracking going on all over Texas by the Oil Greedheads might just make this a mute point by the time thi Poison rolls in on Trains!!!

Aren't they just going to dump it in Yucca Mountain?

Swadian Hardcore said:

Aren't they just going to dump it in Yucca Mountain?

Click to expand...

According to what I've read Yucca Mountain is a actually a fairly poor location for storing nuclear waste, both in terms of chemical and geologic criteria. Not to mention that we've apparently created more nuclear waste than Yucca Mountain could ever hold anyway. The US alone has literally hundreds of reactors that will eventually need to be carefully cut up and stored along with the operational waste. There are a number of theoretical solutions that may eventually reduce our waste burden slightly, but even after a half century of nearly continuous research there are still no solutions that are both chemically sound and energy efficient enough to be economically viable on a large scale.

What about dumping it in Atlantic City since nobody goes there anymore! ( see closing of Casinos in the News!) Jersey officials will appreciate the bribes and let s face it, Jersey is basically a toxic waste dump anyway!

Stop talking so kindly about New jersey. It's not that nice!

Swadian Hardcore said:

Aren't they just going to dump it in Yucca Mountain?

Click to expand...

From a geological standpoint for really long term storage, there are better locations in Nevada which are on federal land (but then again, so is most of Nevada). And in NM, Utah, west Texas IIRC.

There is a low level nuclear storage site for the waste from production of nuclear weapons in southeastern NM called the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) that is currently burying stuff. According to wikipedia, WIPP is projected to cost $19 billion before it is closed down, if someone wants to keep the costs of big transportation projects in perspective.

But the politics of where to store the radioactive waste from nuclear power plants is almost as toxic as the waste, so I think nothing will actually be done until there is a major leak at a storage site at a nuclear power plant or facility in a populated area.

I'm going to bet that everything is going to end up either in (or next to) the WIPP or in the contaminated lands in Nevada (the ones where they blew up the nuclear bombs). There's a strong incentive to reduce the number of separate no-go sites. Right now, the priority should be to shut down the old nuclear plants so that we stop generating this crap.

Not great for Nevadans, huh?

This thread bring's to mind the former so-called "White Train's", that carried nuclear weapons around. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_Train

I was in Fort Collins, Co. some time in around 1980, when one of these with heavy security moved thru the streets on BN's Denver to Wyoming line, amidst scores of protestor's....

Was BN the only carrier of the White Train? All photos I could find show BN EMD locomotives pulling it.

Swadian Hardcore said:

Was BN the only carrier of the White Train? All photos I could find show BN EMD locomotives pulling it.

Click to expand...

Don't know the answer for sure...but since the weapons were assembled at the Pantex plant near Amarillo, Tx., and also at the Rocky Flats plant between Golden and Boulder, Co., the BN mainline from Texas to Colorado, Wyoming, and Montana, where there were SAC bases and silo's; yes,,,BN probably did get most of the mileage on that train.

The Rocky Flats plant was reached from a branch off the UP trackage that the CZ operates over daily....

Swadian Hardcore said:

Was BN the only carrier of the White Train? All photos I could find show BN EMD locomotives pulling it.

Click to expand...

Look at the pictures and see if you can see numbers on the engines. These trains moved at a low speed which allowed the protesters to leapfrog the the train movements and show up everywhere there were news cameras. Thus, all these pictures you are referencing may be of the same train. this method of movement made it look like there were hundreds or thousands of protesters when there were actually very few.

Since the heat from the radiation is what boils the water to spin the turbines, there should be less radiation in the material out of the plant than in the material into the plant. If you simply shipped it back to the location of the mine there would still be less radioactivity there than before the material was mined.

Years ago there was planning for rail lines into potential storage sites in Nevada. Seems that some US senator killed the idea. I think we know who.

GML: agreed It has long been that way. One of the jokes about Urban Renewal going around when I was a student was for Newark was "How many megatons is required." That is megatons of nuclear explosive for those unfamiliar with the term.

George Harris said:

Since the heat from the radiation is what boils the water to spin the turbines, there should be less radiation in the material out of the plant than in the material into the plant. If you simply shipped it back to the location of the mine there would still be less radioactivity there than before the material was mined.

Click to expand...

Surely the issue is concentration of radioactive material, not total radiological output. Your notion would only work if you pulverised the spent fuel rods and then carefully mixed them into the thousands of tons of mine tailings and packed them back into the mine. I'm no engineer, but I'd imagine that there would be some practical problems with that.

Obligatory train content: If you're on the Empire Builder heading west, you can see spent fuel storage at the Prairie Island Plant, between Red Wing and St. Paul, and there's a real, active missile silo visible from the left side of the train between Minot and Stanley.

Ispolkom said:

George Harris said:

Since the heat from the radiation is what boils the water to spin the turbines, there should be less radiation in the material out of the plant than in the material into the plant. If you simply shipped it back to the location of the mine there would still be less radioactivity there than before the material was mined.

Click to expand...

Surely the issue is concentration of radioactive material, not total radiological output. Your notion would only work if you pulverised the spent fuel rods and then carefully mixed them into the thousands of tons of mine tailings and packed them back into the mine. I'm no engineer, but I'd imagine that there would be some practical problems with that.

Obligatory train content: If you're on the Empire Builder heading west, you can see spent fuel storage at the Prairie Island Plant, between Red Wing and St. Paul, and there's a real, active missile silo visible from the left side of the train between Minot and Stanley.

Click to expand...

Hey I'm looking to go to Minot soon.

I was but a child when I read "the strange death of Lous Slotin" in the Reader's Digest. :unsure:

I think George has the right idea - that after you take some energy out of the uranium - there's obviously less energy left.

The problems with nuclear "waste" (notice that "waste" is a relative term and that "nuclear waste" has many very green potential uses)

The main problem is -- for more than 99.9 % of citizens -- "nuclear waste" means some super-scary evil that only boffins might understand (and boffins are obviously losers)(and therefore boffins can't be trusted anymore than politicos).

And - OMG - a spider just ran across my couch -- Help Help --- A spider - oh -- might be a trantuala of a brown recluse or .

It might be a 20-mega-year alpha-emitter byproduct of fission energy.

None of you done your homework, even looking "fission products" on Wikipedia.

There has been exactly one lethal release of fission reactor core -- at Chernobyl.

Fact is --

Keeping the weak old fuel rods cooling at site makes sense - not scary.

I, for one, think fission power is cheap, clean, very low risk.

And - I actually looked at the decay products chains (see Wikipedia) and realized that what George said is true over long times - but faster-decaying products in the short term confuse the issue.

It has been at least a half-century.

I read the Time magazine report of Castle Bravo. Real-time or so. back in '54

I attended the "Youth Conference on the Atom" back in the 60's when Fission was hot.

I visited Hiroshima 2 years back, and ate the oysters (yummy) with no qualms at all.

The problems at "good fortune island number one" -- seriously - minor injuries -

Nobody died from reactor at Fukushima.

Nobody died from the meltdown at 3 mile.

Nobody has died of radiocative waste.

The military plutonium-generating reactor at Chernobyl exploded - there are no more reactors of this type. Ever again.

our

Why aren't the public schools teaching our kids the costs and risks of energy?

Repeat that.

George Harris said:

Swadian Hardcore said:

Was BN the only carrier of the White Train? All photos I could find show BN EMD locomotives pulling it.

Click to expand...

This method of movement made it look like there were hundreds or thousands of protesters when there were actually very few.

Click to expand...

Some of these trains made their runs during the 1970’s when the environmental movement hit its most recent high water mark. That would make it quite probable for an individual train to see hundreds of individual protesters over the course of the entire trip. Over the course of the life of the train it’s easy to imagine many thousands had protested one of these trains at one time or another. Indeed the DOE’s decision to end the train is largely blamed on the never ending protests well into the 1980’s.

George Harris said:

Since the heat from the radiation is what boils the water to spin the turbines, there should be less radiation in the material out of the plant than in the material into the plant. If you simply shipped it back to the location of the mine there would still be less radioactivity there than before the material was mined.

Click to expand...

From what I’ve read the radioactivity of spent nuclear fuel is roughly a thousand times higher than when it was originally processed and perhaps a million times higher than when it was originally mined. It may be counterintuitive but that’s how it really works.

George Harris said:

Years ago there was planning for rail lines into potential storage sites in Nevada. Seems that some US senator killed the idea. I think we know who.

Click to expand...

They should bring that waste to Texas. We're surprisingly open to the idea of becoming the nation’s nuclear waste dump. Too bad we’re also willing to risk permanently poisoning the Ogallala Aquifer in the process.

George Harris said:

Since the heat from the radiation is what boils the water to spin the turbines, there should be less radiation in the material out of the plant than in the material into the plant. If you simply shipped it back to the location of the mine there would still be less radioactivity there than before the material was mined.

From what Ive read the radioactivity of spent nuclear fuel is roughly a thousand times higher than when it was originally processed and perhaps a million times higher than when it was originally mined. It may be counterintuitive but thats how it really works.

Click to expand...

The "SECOND LAW" is NOT being broken here. When fission releases energy as heat, many fission fragments have shorter half-lives than the original U235. Shorter half-life == more radioactive -- dangerous now, but fades out quick (like in a few thousand or million years, not billions like the original uranium isotopes).The TOTAL nuclear binding energy released IS subtracted from the potential binding energy of the original uranium. The decay heat, summed over a few billion years, is reduced by the heat that spun the turbine yesterday.

Don't know why -- but most people I meet, on the train or elsewhere -- don't know conservation of energy -- don't know what a Gray or a microsievert or a millirem IS. I suppose that ignorance breeds fear.

It seems that ignorance about radiation and nuclear physics is rife! And I've been around through the whole "atomic age" so far, and I find nobody at all I can talk to about this stuff (except my kid who did (NAVY nuclear) power school

High school teachers have no clue about this stuff - general science classes in lower grades have even less clue.

Suppose it takes a century or two for schools to catch up with science.

Grrrr!