Ah, Yucca – the juggernaut of U.S. nuclear waste policy issues for the past several decades. Should we bury our nasties there or not?
Even after 5 years of scientific research related to nuclear waste, I still haven’t formed a strong yes or no opinion. In fact, I think the complicated nature of the problem is a big part of why I find it so fascinating. The answer I usually go with is that I think I could maybe support the site itself, but I can’t support the project the way the U.S. government has been planning it. Here are some pros and cons, each of which will eventually get its own blog post.
Pros
1. On-site interim storage can only last so long, and that stuff has to go somewhere.
2. It is in a fairly remote, sparsely populated area.
3. The government already owns the land.
4. The mountain is located in a large basin (the southern Great Basin), so if nasties do get into the water, they will hopefully be contained in just that one area of the country.
5. Supposedly with the planned engineered barriers (a big steel can, basically) the site is good enough that everything will be a-ok for thousands of years. This is according to a computer program that tries to take everything we know about the site into account. This Discover article spends some time describing the program.
6. Sunk cost: The U.S. has already spent over $10 billion prepping for Yucca. Do we really want to start over?
Cons
1. It is unfair to the state of Nevada, which doesn’t have a single nuclear power plant and is resolutely against accepting the waste. There is some discussion about this on Alas! A blog.
2. It is only about 100 miles from Las Vegas.
3. Transporting all the waste out there is not straightforward.
4. It’s in the Basin and Range Province. That means earthquakes and maybe even volcanoes. The main concern in technical circles is actually not a big fat whopper of a shake-down so much as increased fracture formation, leading to more water dribbling in, meaning more corrosion and dissolution. Still.
5. There is an enormous amount of uncertainty in the models for what will happen, especially if you really have to try to predict out to, say, 1 million years. There is so much uncertainty that it is unclear how meaningful any assurance of long-term safety based on these models actually is.
6. I’ve heard the dryness of the area sometimes mentioned as a pro. Well, it’s not actually that dry, and I’m not actually convinced this isn’t a con, because it means you have an oxidizing environment.
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thanks for the help
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Deletethanks i used this to type a paper that i procrastinated on.
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DeleteThanks I used this on a debate for my science class. Great info!
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DeleteSame here!! In AP Environmental we're doing some kind of mock trial and I'm supposed to be the witness against this so I have to learn all the con points I can so if anyone interrogates me I can lay out all the con points I can.
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ReplyDeletestoring a large amount of nuclear waste in one place is an invitation to turn it into a dirty bomb. a better alternative would be to drill many small holes of at least 1000 meters deep and put only 100 tones in each hole covered by concrete.
ReplyDeleteGeologically, there are more stable places one could go in the US, but that usually means going into more densely populated areas. The most stable areas would probablby be the portions of the Laurentian Shield that are in the US - parts of ND, MI, MN, WI, and NY. But I would suppose that these areas had been studied and rejected? Or did NV get chosen because it does not have the clout of a larger state? Spent reactor fuel is piling up at reactors throughout the US and something must be done.
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ReplyDeleteYou forgot to mention the creation of jobs for the state. Realistically, having another industry besides gaming would help stabilize the economic drought that Nevada is in (I'm a Las Vegan myself). It would also help with UNLV (4) and UNR's (3) tier rankings as well.
ReplyDeleteIt would produce billions of dollars for Nevada which is suffering from a dry economy. Plus it could create some jobs.
ReplyDeleteThe presence of Chlorine 36 in the repository shows that there is water infiltration of the repository.
ReplyDeleteThis is a federal Government plan and other than it's start up jobs I am failing to see how this will make money for Nevada. This seems more like they are making Nevada more of a nuclear toilet then it already is. Yet another short US Government short term fix for a long term problem. With the amount of satellites going in to SPACE every year it makes me wonder where we could toss that junk so it wont effect us.
ReplyDeleteThanks for the help. I'm doing an essay in science class and I'm unsure. I till don't know which is better, but at least I've got some reference!
ReplyDeleteI once asked a physicist why we couldn't blast that stuff to the sun, and he said the rocket might blow up on take-off.
ReplyDeleteWhat a helpful blog post!
ReplyDeleteAs far as the economics go: $10bb in sunk cost is really nothing if you amortize over the life of the project.
thank you! YES! UP GOES MY GRADE! :D :D thanks
ReplyDeleteThat was some pretty good info! I'm doing a story on Yucca Mtn. for the newspaper, and still have a few more questions I was wondering if you could answer. I can't find any contact info on this page, so do you think you can upload some on here? If not, please get in touch with me at: bpeirce7@gmail.com
ReplyDeleteThank you,
ReplyDeleteThis post is after the Japan Earthquake/Tsunami and Nuclear Accident.... My kid is in the US Air Force and plays with ICBMS.... Having it in 1 place is not a con, but a pro (its easier to protect and its stored in deep tunnels) his ICBM's are all over the western states.
ReplyDeleteThe Nevada nuclear test site is next door to Yucca, the Gov owns the land and has exploded dozens of nuclear weapons at the site next to Yucca, just check out Google Earth and look at all the circles from the blasts.
I live in Illinois where we have 11 nuclear plants (more than any other state) The spent nuclear waste is stored in water pools and in dry casts all on the reactor property.... I would be more worried about having a terrorist attack or a tornado hitting the plant, than being buried deep in the desert at Yucca ... or in Japan right next to a melting nuclear reactor.... The crisis in Japan is only 2 weeks old when this is written, but I would guess the the radioactivity was caused by the stored waste in the boiling reactor storage pools rather than the containment vessels being breached (we will see what comes of this!)
We has sunk a bunch of money into Yucca Mountain. Nevada can have a Field Day charging the states rent or a tax to bring it into the site or to enter the state.
Yes, there maybe stable geology elsewhere in the USA, but Yucca and the Nevada Test site are there and ready to go. Can we really wait any longer?
And lastly, just as a tongue and check wise crack .... Las Vegas already "Glows in the Dark" .... Sorry, I had to say it, or ....What happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas!!
Yucca Mountain storage of US nuclear waste is not possible, neither in the short term nor in the long term. There is no method to safely move the waste from current and future locations to the Yucca Mountain storage shafts. Every transportation method introduces dangers along the entire path taken (say from Illinois, loading there, trucked over public highways, rail cars going through cities and farmland, or air, yikes). No matter where hazardous waste is stored it remains a possible weapon for the wicked to exploit AND a threat that a Big Event turns into a Big Disaster. So, what can we use the existing waste for???!!! Perhaps it can teach. Perhaps it can control. Distribute it in small household size garbage slabbies according to each person's contributions to its production. This may be unfair to the neighbors of politicians, government agents, company directors and media moguls, but so is living next to a prison, airport and football stadium. Plan now: Stop creating unmanageable hazardous waste. Find another way to generate power OR go without. Let's turn off a few million street lights and accept the glow of the moon and stars as sufficient and even beautiful.
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ReplyDeletethanks!
I agree with the guy from Illinois, its better to have it all in 1 place on a military base, protected by our troops than to have it at every power plant across the USA, waiting for something to happen, like the tornadoes in Alabama. Browns Ferry Nuclear Plant was safely shut down because the power lines were all torn down from the storms. The shut down happened without any problems, but what if the tornado went through the plant or the building storing the spent fuel?
ReplyDeleteI agree let Nevada charge rent or fees, but this stuff is all around the country .... lets get it protected, rather than have our head in the sand hoping nothing (natural or man made disaster) ever happens!
Whoever thought of pro #4 is an idiot. I guess it is just ok for the people in Vegas to be effected by the possible nasties in the water.
ReplyDeleteCon #1 states that Nevada as a whole is against it, therefore Las Vegas is not okay with it, the whole state is not.
Deletewow fail! jk
ReplyDeletehow is a big steal can going to help contain necular waste
ReplyDeleteI trust steel, but never politicians.
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