Showing posts with label blog. Show all posts
Showing posts with label blog. Show all posts
Friday, July 30, 2010
new blog
I just started a new, somewhat different blog. I’ll still sometimes write about nuclear waste, but the narrow-ish topic of nuclear energy is a little too confining for me right now.
Saturday, November 14, 2009
Hanford and the Nevada Test Site
Wow. I got my first comment! Thanks for the encouragement, Heart of America Northwest, oh ye of the Hanford cleanup!
My understanding is that after reprocessing (making the pure Pu that was used to bomb Japanese civilians in Nagasaki), the workers at Hanford just threw all the random leftover radioactive stuff together in a series of (now leaky) metal drums. This makes for some fabulously weird chemistry. Technetium (Tc), for instance, typically forms the pertechnetate ion (TcO4-), meaning it has an oxidation state (implied charge) of +7. (It can also form +4 compounds like TcO2 in more reduced environments.) In Hanford tanks, it has been found in the +1 state complexed by carbonyl ions. So weird.
Weird and gross. The site has been described as “the most contaminated of the nation's nuclear weapons plants” by the NY Times and “the nation's most contaminated nuclear site” by the Associated Press.
I was a little surprised then to read the following in the LA Times:
“The [Nevada] test site receives about $65 million a year from the [Department of Energy’s] $5.5-billion annual nuclear cleanup budget. By contrast, about $1.8 billion a year is spent on the Hanford plutonium production site in Washington state, even though soil and water contamination there is one-thousandth as severe as in Nevada.” One-thousandth! Where are these numbers from? Can Hanford still be the winner on non-soil and non-water contamination? What exactly is contaminated then?
My understanding is that after reprocessing (making the pure Pu that was used to bomb Japanese civilians in Nagasaki), the workers at Hanford just threw all the random leftover radioactive stuff together in a series of (now leaky) metal drums. This makes for some fabulously weird chemistry. Technetium (Tc), for instance, typically forms the pertechnetate ion (TcO4-), meaning it has an oxidation state (implied charge) of +7. (It can also form +4 compounds like TcO2 in more reduced environments.) In Hanford tanks, it has been found in the +1 state complexed by carbonyl ions. So weird.
Weird and gross. The site has been described as “the most contaminated of the nation's nuclear weapons plants” by the NY Times and “the nation's most contaminated nuclear site” by the Associated Press.
I was a little surprised then to read the following in the LA Times:
“The [Nevada] test site receives about $65 million a year from the [Department of Energy’s] $5.5-billion annual nuclear cleanup budget. By contrast, about $1.8 billion a year is spent on the Hanford plutonium production site in Washington state, even though soil and water contamination there is one-thousandth as severe as in Nevada.” One-thousandth! Where are these numbers from? Can Hanford still be the winner on non-soil and non-water contamination? What exactly is contaminated then?
Thursday, October 22, 2009
Two Really Useful Links
Nuclear waste is a huge topic. Huge. If you want to know about something specific, I recommend looking though radwaste.org, which is a big fat comprehensive list of rad waste resources on the internet. Seriously, they have a list of links to other sites that are also just lists of links. It's like a radioactive candy store.
Also, if you want to know the latest news that's come out, Nevada has already done a lot of the leg work.
Also, if you want to know the latest news that's come out, Nevada has already done a lot of the leg work.
Tuesday, October 20, 2009
Topics for this blog
Hello and welcome to the world of Nuclea-ette. I will start this blog with a list of topics that I plan to write and collect links about:
* Nifty nuclear waste chemistry
* Disposal strategies
* Alternatives to direct disposal
* Yucca Mountain and other possible repositories
* Crazy contaminated places
* The politics of nuclear waste disposal
* Effects on the nuclear energy and weapons industries
* Careers in nuclear waste management
* Nifty nuclear waste chemistry
* Disposal strategies
* Alternatives to direct disposal
* Yucca Mountain and other possible repositories
* Crazy contaminated places
* The politics of nuclear waste disposal
* Effects on the nuclear energy and weapons industries
* Careers in nuclear waste management
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