• 1067 Days Ago
• 03/07/2009

Wasted potential energy

The global inventory of spent nuclear fuel has the wasting potential energy to produce 3.5 billion barrels of America's oil shale or 6 billion barrels of Canada's bitumen annually.

Each day this heat is exhausted to the atmosphere, contributing to global warming, the equivalent of  16,438,356 barrels of oil is lost permanently and the U.S. exports another $657,534,247 overseas to pay for its foreign oil.

Lord Oxburgh, one of the world’s leading geologists and former British chairman of Shell, has said of this solution to the spent fuel problem, “I have often myself wondered whether it would be feasible to harness the heat generated by sequestered nuclear materials.  I suspect that the major problems might well be political rather than technological.”

What is the political calculus that makes burning $657,534,247 a day PC?

• 1066 Days Ago
• 03/08/2009

A Triumph of Politics Over Science

Anyone who believes that President Obama's decision to abandon a permanent nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain was based on sound science is mistaken.  And the author's assertion that the Yucca Mountain site was chosen without much study is laughably poor journalism.  One need only visit the Department of Energy's  website to find that Yucca Mountain has been the subject of "thousands" of scientific studies.  The President's decision to abandon Yucca, wasting billions of taxpayer dollars and potentially violating Federal law in the process, was merely a political favor to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV), whose constituents oppose the project. 

• 1065 Days Ago
• 03/09/2009

Slash Nuclear waste

Why not suggest that the administration spend some bucks on the TWR "Traveling Wave Reactor" technology that would simplify the entire methodology behind running reactors. This technology, first proposed by Dr. Edward Teller,  could slash the overall byproducts of this type of energy production.  In Mar/April TR10: you published John Gilleland's paper on this technology.  Pass it on!

Soarhead

• 1065 Days Ago
• 03/09/2009

waste (of an administration)

Yucca was a political closure, surely.
Our new Energy Department head has less experience than I do with nuclear waste disposal and storage, and should NOT be making these decisions with BHO. And I'd love to learn how I can use spent fuel to heat my home and power my business(ahem)....something tells me it's another tall tale spun by the Gore-ites, just like global warming and carbon capture.

• 1064 Days Ago
• 03/10/2009

Delay

Delay increases risk.  Risk translates into fear.  Fear increases resistance. Resistance is used to promote one technology over another. Ecopoliticians want to maintain fear of the nuclear process so as to promote non-nuclear alternative energy.  Years ago, my journalist wife was commissioned by Sierra Magazine (Sierra Club) to write on nuclear vitrification.  Every source (including extreme environmental groups) she talked with, including Sierra Club's own experts, thought nuclear vitrification (turning waste into glass) and then burying it in Yucca Mountain, either was the best idea, or they were neutral.  There were no detractors. Sierra refused to run the article because their policy was not to run anything that would give a positive image of nuclear power.  Detractors of Yucca don't use real science, they use fear. 

• 1062 Days Ago
• 03/12/2009

Technicall and political

Having worked on the nuclear waste disposal program for several years, both the technical and political issues are complex. When the repository location was moved from the saturated zone to the unsaturated zone to increase radionuclide transport time, the uncertainties in predicting the container life grew because the chemistry of an evaporating and recondensing environment is much more complex to handle mathematically.Prior to YM unsaturated site, there were many other sites, some of which were ruled out due to technical disqualification and others due to political reasons. Therefore, YM is not the only politically sensitive site. It is interesting to note that now we are thinking of burying CO2 for 1000's of years in a geological site and the technical issues are even more complex. Unlike nuclear waste which was essentially in solid form contained a two or even three layers of corrosion-resistant materials, we are inserting a supercriticall fluid at 2000 psi or above directly into a reservoir. Again, the technical challenge of predicting 1000's of years of performance of an engineering-natural system will not be easy - yet the scientific community, just as in the 1950's for nuclear waste, thinks this is doable. The story on CCS may not have the hysteria of radioactive waste, but technical challenges will be greater.

• 1060 Days Ago
• 03/14/2009

Nuclear waste

Very insightful points about Yucca Mountain. This waste is a very viable for use in the future for fuel. And until means for this are developed it should be left alone. To be sure, the 50 odd days that Obama has been in office I have yet to see a decision that was by him that is anything but political. A great example of this is his thoughts on cap and trade. Very scary plans. This is just the beginning of his many bad ideas.

• 1030 Days Ago
• 04/13/2009

"Glassification"

I think that an "in depth" article on glassification is sorely needed. Does Technology Review have the resources?  I think that federal dollars have been spent on a robotic factory as a part of the cleanup of Hanford.  If glassification works, then the storage location is not very important. My favorite is deep ocean trenches, where tectonic movement pushes ocean floor sediment toward magma formation, deep below the crust.  If glassification doesn't work yet, then some funding emphasis should be placed on glassification development, or some equally effective chemical stabilization means.