While it's true that the some of the lay public is ignorant and alarmist about the issues around nuclear energy and waste disposal, we educators should also be concerned about those who choose to remain ignorant and passive, and about the temptation within the scientific community to react by making handwaving arguements that may sound cavalier (arrogant and careless.)
As a high school teacher of physics and chemistry, I keep some crystals of the uranium ore Betafite around my lab, wrapped in lead, to give students experience with the Geiger counter. When I first unwrap the ore, wearing latex gloves to protect my hands from exposure to the flaking lead, many jump up from their seats to cower in the corners of the room. After I tell them that the Geiger reading I get on a domestic flight at altitude is equivalent to the reading that I get with the ore sample touching the screen of the Geiger tube, some of them relax. Then I ask them all to leave the room while I place the unshielded ore in one of 8 opaque base cabinets. When they return, I invite them to use the geiger counter to try to determine which cabinet holds the uranium. When they fail to locate the sample, some of them volunteer to handle it briefly (with gloves on).
The teachable moment has arrived: the r squared geometry of radiation and the penetrating ability of the 3 types of ionizing radiation emitted by the uranium.
It's a big leap though, to go from considering unprocessed betafite to high grade plutonium-containing spent fuel and its disposal. The debate rages in the newspapers of Las Vegas, Nevada. The concern raised by today’s AP article is a bit of a long shot, "the chance of [a volcano] occurring within the waste repository within the next 10,000 years is 1 in 70 million," but that still may not sit well with the local gamblers.
Anyone who thinks that nuclear waste containment technology has been perfected should refer to the following:
First, Official Transcript of Proceedings NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION Audit Review of Chemistry Issues for the Yucca Mountain Site Recommendation Considerations Date: Thursday, February 22, 2001 , in which the reader learns that nuclear waste containment technology may be in its infancy:
The hard thing is that you have
uncertainties coming in each area, and so what does
that mean. What we are trying to define is what is
the window of environmental conditions that we think
you may have there.
The answer may be that the engineered
system is still robust after you have defined that
window, but for right now that window is pretty ill-
defined, and so we are working to better define what
that window is.
The following brief newspaper article outlines concerns among researchers about the durability of the stainless steel alloys available for the storage of plutonium-containing waste.
The researchers mentioned in that article lead to the webpage of the Materials Research Society and their 2001 symposium, The Scientific Basis for Nuclear Waste Management. I refrain from pasting the list of links to the papers presented as it is several pages long, but it can be accessed at the following address. The titles of the hundreds of papers submitted to the symposium remind us the devil resides in the details.
Unfortunately, the paper presented at the above symposium and alluded to in the Las Vegas Sun article, is not available to non-members of the Materials Research Society. Any members on the list?
Effects of Fluoride and Chloride Ions on Corrosion of Titanium Grade 7 in Concentrated Groundwaters JJ1.9
A.L. Pulvirenti, et alMy point is that the Yucca project will be a learning process with all the attendant uncertainties.-BG
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