Re: Yucca Mtn transport issues

["Frohne, Vickie" <VFrohne@BEN.EDU>]

In response to John Barrer, I do not mean to imply that the issues are
either simple or inconsequential. They are both complex and important. The
problem with nuclear waste is that its half-life is much greater than the
entire human written history (~10K years). In researching the problem of
waste handling and disposal, the people behind the Yucca Mountain
intitiative are taking the long view. Ten thousand years from now, will the
United States of America and its Congress exist?  Will civilization as we
know it exist? Will future generations be as knowledgable about
radioactivity as the current experts?  Yucca Mountain is an attempt to
address a major problem of ethical responsibility, which is: How can we keep
future generations safe from these products of our civilization, through the
inevitable natural disasters, war, strife, and periods of ignorance that
history has taught us will happen?
        Yucca Mountain may not be completly perfect, but it's the best
alternative that we've come up with according to the best science we have,
tempered with what is politically and economically feasible.  OK, so it's
barely politically feasible, but I hope that you understand my point. We
have to look beyond ourselves.
        It's a biological fact that whenever a population of animals becomes
so plentiful that it depletes its resources, the population crashes. It's
also a fact that Homo Sapiens has seriously depleted its resources. Over 50%
of the petroleum has been burned. While there's plenty of coal, most of it
is low-quality and it's not clear that the planet's ecology will remain
stable under increases in atmospheric CO2. Much land is being farmed in a
non-sustainable way, most of the virgin forests are gone, hundreds of
species have become extinct due to habitat loss, and even the open oceans
are over-fished. Skim through 20 years of Science or Science News, and
you'll see the scientific awareness of these issues developing.
Archaeologists can tell you that history is full of civilizations and
empires that crashed when they outgrew & depleted their resources. The
difference is that this time, the problem is global. There are too many
people, there's no place to run, and the crash is coming. Not today or this
year, but within a century or two. We depend on having copious amounts of
cheap energy.  Before our civilization crashes, I predict that there will be
a lot more use of nuclear power. As an example, recall that during last
summer's power outages, nuclear became much more popular in California.  I
live in Chicagoland, where the power utility reports that our electrical
energy is 67% nuclear. We're going to have to deal with the waste, if only
because we've already made a lot of it. Either we do it now, or we leave it
to our decendants.

Specific replies to John's points follow below.

Vickie

-----Original Message-----
From: John Barrer [mailto:forcejb@YAHOO.COM]
Sent: Friday, August 02, 2002 3:10 PM
To: PHYS-L@lists.nau.edu
Subject: Re: Yucca Mtn transport issues


In response to my email,

--- "Frohne, Vickie" <VFrohne@BEN.EDU> wrote:
>  Seems to me that the nuclear waste is far more
> accessible for terrorists
> where it's sitting now.  (snip)

Agreed, the present situation is NG. But that doesn't
necessarily mean we should truck spent fuel all over
the country.

**** Do you have any better ideas?  If so, I'd like to hear 'em.

 Note that
> the waste in the casks will probably be processed
> on-site before shipment
> into a "glassified" form,  not a liquid or a powder
> that is spread
> easily.. (snip)

PROBABLY?? Not very reassuring.

**** "Probably" refers to my ignorance, not the treatment of the waste. I
had read recently that glassification on-site before shipment was part of
the process, but I'm not sure about my facts here. Even if the waste is in
liquid/powder form, I doubt that a terrorist-sized "dirty bomb" could
severely contaminate more than a couple of square miles...again, thinking
about past chemical spills & etc. BTW, I read a few years ago that the
forests & wildlife around Chernobyl are in excellent condition. A little
radioactive, sure, but the ecosystem is looking very good. Getting rid of
people really helped it. The effects of a "dirty bomb" may be comparable to,
say, the dioxin contamination of Times Beach, MO.


> you'd have an extremely localized contaminated area
> and an event with a lot
> more propaganda value than actual
> physical/environmental damage.   (snip)

Do not underestimate the damage that "propaganda"
value/psychological impact would inflict.

**** True. I can talk about the physical consequences, but I leave the
psychological to the experts in that field.

As for
> the 1000th shipment being protected, as has been
> pointed out, reactor fuel
> is already being transported routinely, without
> incident. (snip)

But reactor fuel is benign compared to spent fuel
rods.

*** New fuel is still radioactive enough to cause all of the psychological
consequences mentioned above.

  If we
> leave the stuff in the on-site storage where it is,
> the government will have
> to fund the (considerable) storage maintainence &
> security eventually.
> Companies & power plants don't live forever.(snip)

It's definitely true that in the present system,
consumers/taxpayers will foot the bill.



The
> whole point of Yucca
> Mountain is to phase Congress out of the equation
(snip)

This will NOT get Congress out of the situation b/c
they will have to fund the facility on an ongoing
basis. The only way to get Congress out of the picture
is to require consumers of nuclear-derived electricity
to pay the true cost which includes future storage and
equipment cleanup costs as plants are retired. Of
course, were this to happen, nuclear energy would be
highly uncompetitive. But if it were to happen, then
the system would be similar to Social Security in that
"taxes" on current waste producers & consumers would,
on a continuing basis, pay for the care of
previously-generated wastes. (No, I'm NOT calling SS
recipients "wastes".)

***** Congress will be involved in paying for Yucca Mountain as long as the
facility is open and accepting wastes.  Once the facility is closed and
sealed, Congress will probably pay for environmental monitoring for a while
afterwards. At some point, Congress won't exist anymore. At that point,
nobody will be "running" the facility.  BTW, if your power utility uses
nuclear plants like mine does, you're already paying for the decommissioning
of the nuclear power plants that are now supplying your power. It's one of
those "additional charges" tacked onto the bill.

by
> putting the stuff in a
> place that has a chance of being maintainence-free
> for thousands of years. (snip)

Maintenance-free? I know of NO real system that is
maintenance-free.

*** Take the long view.  Think thousands of years. It'll be free of
maintainence eventually, whether it needs maint. or not.

> For example, it is well
> known by epidemiologists that normally operating
> coal-fired power plants
> cause lots of illness, deaths, and even
> radiation-induced cancers.  (Coal
> contains naturally occurring radioactive elements,
> which are released to the
> air upon burning the coal.)  Furthermore, there's a
> considerable amount of
> disease/death/environmental damage associated with
> mining the coal.
> However, when it comes to liability/insurance &
> etc., there may be a whole
> boatload of "grandfather" clauses protecting the
> coal industry. (snip)

All true, but you're comparing indirect,
hard-to-quantify costs (which are nonetheless all too
real) with the DIRECT costs of spent fuel storage.
Very different kettles of fish I think.

*** And what are the indirect costs of spent fuel storage, and the direct
costs of fossil fuel?  All costs must be considered. I'll be the first to
admit that there are huge national security issues with nuclear fuel. Few
issues are more dire than these national security problems. Obtaining energy
in the long term, and global warming, are two of these more dire issues.

The fact is
> that for the past thirty years, nuclear plants in
> North America have had
> excellent safety records.  Even the Three Mile
> Island incident wasn't bad,
> compared to other industrial incidents (think
> Bhopal, for example). (snip)

It's interesting to view the similarities between TMI
and Bhopal. Both situations got out of control when
operators either didn't believe or didn't understand
the significance of instrument readings. People
problems. In addition, the Bhopal plant had become an
economic albatross due to collapse of the local
pesticide market. To save money, plant maintenance was
reduced, safety systems disabled, etc. This
"inattention" risk will exist wherever the spent fuel
is stored. Maybe one local repository is better in
that regard. But maybe having government-run storage
at each and every generating plant is better.
Obviously "store it where it's made" removes transport
hazards from the equation. It might also provide
better overall management (people issues!) as
different groups learn from each other since the
problems of spent fuel storage will be both managerial
and technical.

*** Government-run storage only works as long as the government does.

"Market
> judgement" is a poor argument for/against actual
> safety, as opposed to
> public perception of safety, especially when most of
> the people running the
> market  (snip)

I disagree. It is the BUSINESS of insurance companies
to assess risk and write policies with appropriate
premiums. These companies have concluded that the
risks of nuclear power are incalculable and therefore
they don't want to play in that sandbox. As Hugh H.
has pointed out, government needs to be the
insurer-of-last-resort. In fact, it already is since
remediation of any major accident would be a Federal
effort and therefore paid for by you and me, just like
we're still paying for the S&L "accident".

It would be nice if all generating methods were
compared on a "true cost/total cost" basis, but I
don't think you'll EVER get agreement on the indirect
health and environmental costs of coal and oil plants.
In fact, IMO just getting the Bushies to admit that
there really ARE such costs would be a feat in itself.

*** Fortunately or unfortunately, nature does what it does whether anybody
agrees with it or not. Richard Feynman had a great quote about that on the
occasion of the Challenger investigation, which escapes me now. In science,
we can take the "long view" and worry about the centuries to come. In
politics, "long-term" is defined by the date of the next election. *sigh*

  John Barrere



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