MetaFilter posts tagged with nuclearwaste

One million years of isolation

Dr Dracator — Mon, 04 Jan 2010 08:09:04 -0800

An interview with Abraham Van Luik, US DoE geoscientist working on the nuclear waste repository under construction in Yucca Mountain. At present, the political future of the Yucca Mountain project looks uncertain. However, the interview gives a good overview of the project itself, as well as the long-term storage situation worldwide. As an added bonus, BLDGBLOG has done a smaller feature on natural nuclear reactors.

What is green and goes burp in the night?

mrzarquon — Tue, 25 Mar 2008 07:20:11 -0800

The Hanford Site in SoutheastWashington (located on the Columbia River) is considered the dirtiest place on earth. 177 Underground storage tanks hold over 50 million gallons of radioactive and toxic waste. And they are leaking. Constructed in 1943 as the plutonium production complex for the Manhattan Project, it covers 580 square miles and grew to have 9 nuclear reactors and 5 plutonium processing plants. Poor management by the Department of Energy, and a changing list of contractors competing for the project by lowest bid have left an incredible mess to cleanup. Here is another timeline of events documenting the habitual mis management of the project. It is hard to believe that such a huge environmental disaster waiting to is rarely discussed. If it wasn't for the Hanford Challenge event I was invited to last week, I still would not have known of it. They are a group working to help moderate the discussion between the whistleblowers and the contractors. Hopefully they will complete the cleanup before these signs are out of date. (And more importantly, before the 1 million gallons of contaminated ground water reach the Columbia River). The Burping (in the title) is in reference to the chemical storage tanks which has an amalgam of toxic and radioactive materials, still undergoing chemical reactions and in some cases releasing hydrogen gas. One whistleblower was a chemist who refused to not writeup an employee for smoking as they were monitoring one of the tanks, waiting for a burp. P.S. Did you know the Richland (city local to the Hanford Site) Bombers are a highschool team with a mushroom cloud as their logo?

Do not dig or drill before 12,000 AD

never used baby shoes — Thu, 03 Jan 2008 20:23:23 -0800

The site must be marked: What is here is dangerous(?) and repulsive to us. This message is a warning about danger...This place is best shunned and left uninhabited. Full document describing the marking plan here(pdf).

Yucca Mountain Johnny is saying goodbye

cerebus19 — Mon, 25 Jun 2007 06:04:00 -0800

The Problem of Nuclear Waste, for kids: Imagine what your house would be like if no one EVER took out the garbage. Not only would your home be dirty and stinky, but it would also be a very unhealthy place to live. See Yucca Mountain Johnny while you can, because it looks like he won't be around much longer.

A Blivet

kablam — Sat, 23 Oct 2004 19:10:40 -0800

A Blivet. More nuclear waste than the planned repository at Yucca Mountain can hold will pile up at reactor sites as the government continues to approve license extensions for power plants, an environmental research organization claimed in a study to be released today. If a repository is built by 2010 in the mountain, 100 miles northwest of Las Vegas, its 77,000-ton capacity will be filled by existing spent fuel awaiting shipment. That's not counting another 9,900 tons that will have accumulated in the meantime from license extensions, according to the study by the Environmental Working Group.

ggggarret — Tue, 09 Jul 2002 18:09:09 -0800

all aboard! next stop, yucca mt. the proposed yucca mt nuclear waste storage site has been approved by the senate. while only a handful of senators believe "we are being forced to decide this issue prematurely," and others are concerned with "thousands of waste shipments crossing 43 states" - most worry only about the risk of the next proposed dump site being in their state if yucca mt falls through. apparently the buildup of toxic waste at the power plants is getting pretty bad - "I believe it is a safe repository," said Lott. If the country does not find a central place for the waste, he said, "we're going to have to shut down" the nuclear industry. is shutting down the industry a bad thing? if the waste produced by these methods is so deadly and destructive... why aren't we questioning the risk/reward factor of nuclear power plants, instead of just worrying about where to stash the glowing green ooze? they've spent 4.5 BILLION dollars just researching the yucca mt site... could that money have been spent on developing clean power generation and maybe even helped fund its deployment?

webmutant — Wed, 06 Mar 2002 10:55:09 -0800

"Sending this message was important to us. We considered ourselves to be a powerful culture. This place is not a place of honor ... no highly esteemed deed is commemorated here ... nothing valued is here. What is here is dangerous and repulsive to us. The danger is still present, in your time, as it was in ours. The danger is to the body, and it can kill." How do we mark our radioactive waste so the warning will be clearly understood for 10,000 years?

dcehr — Fri, 08 Feb 2002 09:43:45 -0800

Nevada's Governor Kenny Guinn and Idaho's own Senator Larry Craig duke it out over nuclear waste disposal at Yucca Mountain. Of course the plan has no shortage of detractors like "Yucca Mountain Facts", and the Las Vegas Sun has done a pile of reporting on it: their "dossier", and "science vs. politics" (first in a five-part series, all of which is now online). The state should have a copy of the Evironmental Impact Statement somewhere, too. It's fun for the whole family! Guinn and Craig's stories are part of the High Country News' syndicated Writers on the Range series.

Wicker — Thu, 23 Aug 2001 08:57:11 -0800

Yucca Mountain Can Meet EPA Radiation Standards, DOE Reports - But there's more to the story WASHINGTON, DC, August 22, 2001 (ENS) - The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) has a new report assessing the performance of the proposed high level nuclear waste disposal site at Yucca Mountain against strict safety standards set by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. The report concludes that the Yucca Mountain site "would likely meet" the agency's radiation protection standards.