Tag Archives: leaks of radioactive waste

Making Nuclear Energy Sustainable Means Getting Rid of Nuclear Waste: Is this Possible?

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“When using fast reactors in a closed fuel cycle, one kilogram of nuclear waste can be recycled multiple times until all the uranium is used and the actinides — which remain radioactive for thousands of years — are burned up. What then remains is about 30 grams of waste that will be radioactive for 200 to 300 years,” said Mikhail Chudakov, IAEA Deputy Director General and Head of the Department of Nuclear Energy.

Fast reactors were among the first technologies deployed during the early days of nuclear power, when uranium resources were perceived to be scarce. However, as technical and material challenges hampered development and new uranium deposits were identified, light water reactors became the industry standard. However, efforts are underway in several countries to advance fast reactor technology, including in the form of small modular reactors (SMRs) and microreactors (MRs). 

Five fast reactors are now in operation: two operating reactors (BN-600 and BN-800) and one test reactor (BOR-60) in the Russian Federation, the Fast Breeder Test Reactor in India and the China Experimental Fast Reactor. The European Union, Japan, the United States of America, the United Kingdom and others have fast reactor projects tailored to a variety of aims and functions underway, including SMRs and MRs. Russia’s Pilot Demonstration Energy Complex, which is under construction in Seversk, brings together a lead-cooled BREST-OD-300 fast reactor, a fuel fabrication and refabrication plant, and a plant for reprocessing mixed nitride uranium–plutonium spent fuel. A deep geological waste repository will also be built. The importance of this pilot project is not only to demonstrate the making of new fuel, irradiate it, and then recycle it, but to do so all on one site.

“Having the whole closed fuel cycle process on one site is good for nuclear safety, security and safeguards,” said Amparo Gonzalez Espartero, Technical Lead for the Nuclear Fuel Cycle at the IAEA. “It should also make more sense economically as the nuclear waste and materials do not need to be moved between locations — as they are currently in some countries — thereby minimizing transportation and logistical challenges.”

Projects are advancing in other countries. China is constructing two sodium cooled fast reactors (CFR-600) in Xiapu County, Fujian province. The first unit is under commissioning and is expected to be connected to the grid in 2024. In the USA, a fast reactor project backed by Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates is under development; it will not operate in a closed fuel cycle, although the country is renewing efforts to work on closed nuclear fuel cycles and use its existing nuclear waste to develop its own supply of fuel. In Europe, the MYRRHA project in Belgium is aimed towards building a lead-bismuth cooled accelerator driven system by 2036 to test its ability to break down minor actinides as part of a future fully closed fuel cycle.

Excerpts from Lucy Ashton, When Nuclear Waste is an Asset, not a Burden, IAEA, Sept., 2023

How to Clean a Multibillion-Dollar Radioactive Mess: WIPP

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Twenty years and more than 12,380 shipments later, tons of Cold War-era waste from decades of bomb-making and nuclear research across the U.S. have been stashed in the salt caverns that make up the underground facility, the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant  (WIPP) in New Mexico. Each week, several shipments of special boxes and barrels packed with lab coats, rubber gloves, tools and debris contaminated with plutonium and other radioactive elements are trucked to the site.

But the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant has not been without issues.  A 2014 radiation leak forced an expensive, nearly three-year closure, delayed the federal government’s cleanup program and prompted policy changes at national laboratories and defense-related sites across the U.S. More recently, the U.S. Department of Energy said it would investigate reports that workers may have been exposed last year to hazardous chemicals.

Still, supporters consider the repository a success, saying it provides a viable option for dealing with a multibillion-dollar mess that stretches from a decommissioned nuclear weapons production site in Washington state to one of the nation’s top nuclear research labs, in Idaho, and locations as far east as South Carolina… Overall 22 sites around the nation that have been cleaned up as a result of having somewhere to put the waste — including Rocky Flats, a former nuclear weapons plant outside Denver that had a history of leaks, spills and other violations.

For critics, that success is checkered at best since the repository is far from fulfilling its mission.  “It’s 80 percent through its lifetime, and it has disposed of less than 40 percent of the waste and has cost more than twice as much as it was supposed to,” said Don Hancock with the watchdog group Southwest Research and Information Center. “How great of a success is that?” Officials initially thought the facility would operate for about 25 years. Rather than wrapping up in the next few years, managers have bumped the timeline to 2050….

With some areas permanently sealed off due to contamination, more mining will have to be done to expand capacity. The federal government also is spending more than a half-billion dollars to install a new ventilation system, sink more shafts and make other upgrades aimed at returning to “normal business.”..,.

Toney Anaya, who served as New Mexico governor in the 1980s, remembers the heated debates about bringing more radioactive waste to the state. He said there were concerns about safety, but the promise of jobs was attractive. Some also argued New Mexico had a moral obligation given its legacy of uranium mining and its role in the development of the atomic bomb.

Excerpts First-of-its-kind US nuclear waste dump marks 20 years, Associated Press, Mar. 23, 2019

Nuclear Waste: play for time

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The problem now, however, is civilian waste from power plants that came online in the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s. Nuclear power generates a fifth of America’s electricity; its 99 reactors account for almost a third of all nuclear power generated worldwide. Five more are under construction—the first to be approved since the 1970s—partly thanks to federal loan guarantees intended to boost clean energy production. The waste they generate has been stored safely, but it will stay dangerously radioactive for tens of thousands of years. That requires a longer-term plan than leaving it outside, however well encased in concrete.

Under the 1982 Nuclear Waste Policy Act, the federal government pledged to dispose of nuclear waste—both civilian and military—permanently. Several possible plans were drawn up, many involving burying the waste in salt deposits deep under ground. To pay for this eventual cost, a levy was added to the bills of consumers of nuclear power.

But politics got in the way. In 1987 Congress determined that only one place, Yucca Mountain in Nevada, would be considered. This, says Richard Stewart of New York University Law School, was the result of a stich-up between two congressmen who did not want their states to host waste dumps. Tom Foley, the then House majority leader, and Jim Wright, the Speaker, blocked proposals for sites in their home states of Washington and Texas.

Nevadans nickname the 1987 amendment the “screw Nevada” bill, and they have fiercely resisted implementation. Some $15 billion has been spent on building the repository at Yucca Mountain, but no waste has been moved there. Nevadans are quick to point to the damage done to their state by nuclear-weapons tests. Since 2010, the Department of Energy has formally ruled the facility out. In a lawsuit in 2013, the government was forced to stop collecting the levy on nuclear power until a plan exists for a permanent site. It has also been forced to pay utility companies for the costs of storing waste temporarily, since it did not start collecting waste fuel in 1998, as the original law dictated.

Some hope Yucca Mountain might be reopened by a new president. “The only aspect of used fuel in this country that has been problematic is the politics”, says John Keeley of the Nuclear Energy Institute, an industry lobby group. In January the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, the regulator, concluded that the site is safe for the disposal of waste. But the worries of Nevadans—that moving spent fuel on railways might lead to spills, or that radioactivity could leak into the environment—remain.

Recent experience doesn’t help. America already operates one of the world’s few deep storage sites for radioactive waste—near Carlsbad, in New Mexico. It stores waste mostly from nuclear-weapons production. In February 2014 the facility suffered two crippling accidents. One was apparently caused by workers packaging waste with the wrong sort of cat litter. The plant-based “Swheat Scoop” brand they used, unlike the mineral-based kind they were meant to, did not absorb radioactivity very well. The facility has not accepted any new waste since.

Excerpts from Nuclear Waste: Faff and fallout, Economist, August 29, 2015, at 23