written 16
March, 2018
published 24Mar18
This second
article on the unsuitability of nuclear power discusses radioactive waste. Waste disposal assumes there is a place
'away', where unwanted things can be discarded.
This is a dualistic assumption.
Holism recognizes that everything is connected: there is no 'away'. In nature, everything is recycled, but humans
have yet to learn this. Since 1945, more
than 80K chemicals have been created and dispersed into our air, water, and
soil, 90% of them untested for biological toxicity. Bacteria and fungus can break these chemicals
into component parts, rendering them non-toxic and available for reintroduction
into living systems.
However, radioactive
waste is toxic by processes of nuclear physics (not chemistry), and only
becomes safe over long periods of time. The
life span of radioactive isotopes is measured by the time needed for 50% decay,
a half-life, which can be tens of thousands of years.
The Nuclear
Regulatory Commission (NRC) legislates that nuclear waste be categorized and treated
based on level of radioactivity. Very
Low Level Waste, twice as radioactive as natural granite, will decay to natural
levels within 30 years. This material is
disposed of in monitored landfills. Low
Level Waste, about 20 times more radioactive than granite, contains isotopes
with long half-lives. In the US, this
material must be buried in one of four NRC regulated sites.
Intermediate
Level Waste, generated from reprocessing spent fuel rods, is 100K to 100M times
more radioactive than granite and can take more than 100 thousand years to return
to natural levels. High Level Waste,
spent fuel rods, is a billion times more radioactive than granite (an exposure
of less than 20 seconds is lethal), and remains radioactive for millions of
years. The 99 reactors currently
operating in the US, have already produced 80,000 tons of High Level Waste. This will double by the time the reactors are
decommissioned. These rods are stored in
cooling pools, or dry cask storage, within the reactor facilities, but space is
limited.
The only safe
disposal of Intermediate and High Level waste requires geologic and social
stability for hundreds of thousands of years.
Globally, there are six research facilities studying the problem but,
after 60 years of commercial nuclear power, there are no repositories that
accept this type of radioactive waste. Geologic
sites might exist with this kind of longevity, but human structures, social and
physical, are relatively short lived.
The Pandyan Empire in southern India, lasted 2000 years, and the oldest
culture, the Australian Aborigines, dates only 50,000 years. Warning signs about enduring danger are
problematic, since language originated about 10,000 years ago.
Yucca
Mountain, designated as the High Level depository in the US, was shut down in 2011,
after decades of construction and billions in cost, because of unexpected ground
water intrusion and political resistance from the State of Nevada. In any event, it is too small to store the
waste now in storage, let alone future production, and would require air
conditioning for a century. There are no
plans for alternative sites, although the Trump administration wants to reopen
Yucca for consideration.
"Spent
fuel rods" contain 90% of the original enriched uranium and fissionable
plutonium is produced within the rods, as a result of nuclear reactions. Advocates of nuclear technology and weapons,
see this as a potential resource, and want consideration for future access. High Level waste must not be allowed to
migrate into the environment for health reasons, and national security demands
that this material be kept out of the hands of terrorists. Constructing geologic depositories with
possible future access complicates an already difficult design problem.
A nuclear
power plant boils water for less than half a century, and leaves a legacy lethal
to life for a million years, with the added risk of it falling into the hands
of terrorists to produce weapons of mass destruction. Such short-sighted thinking is typical of the
dualistic mindset, which seems comfortable sacrificing future generations for the
immediate gain of a few. We must be
better than that.
