How We Should Store Spent Nuclear Fuel

Follow the money, economics determine what is to be done with spent nuclear fuel.

Unfortunately unlike the rubber from your car tires, nuclear waste doesn't "disappear".

The technical articles I have read are not in favor of re-processing.

I tried to find the costs of producing electrical power with spent rods but was unsuccessful. If someone would give the costs of using spent rods for producing electricity, it would be very helpful. My home cost of electrical power is about $.10/kwh. It's produced from natural gas and coal plants. I don't know the production costs. What we need is the production cost of the US nuclear power, the cost of spent rods power (this data could come from the foriegn plants now in operation), and coal power production.

If making power with spent rods is close or even somewhat higher than using coal, then, it would be a really good product because it would have a much less dangerous waste, i.e., the spent rods would have a much lower half-life, and therefore, be less of a threat to future generations.

Have some fun today,

PAPADOC

RMFR

you also need to consider the costs of waste storage in the equation. the waste stream from reprocessing is dangerously radioactive for a much shorter length of time and takes up a much smaller volume than the unreprocessed "depleted" fuel does. Also do not forget the radioactivity released by the coal plant as well which easily exceeds the radioactivity releases of the nuclear plant.

Something like 20 years ago I tried to figure out the fuel cost for the nuclear power station of my local utility from data in their annual report.

IIRC, the fuel cost was less than (but not too far from) $0.01 /kwhr.

At the same time, iirc, they were reporting "operating costs" of about $0.10 /kwhr., but I'm pretty sure that included amortization of the capital cost (~$4 B (US)), so operating cost may not be the right name. (I am not an accountant. And, the numbers were so big, I'm not real confident I got the right results.)

Still, if I'm anywhere close, and fuel costs for reprocessed fuel doubled, it would not be very significant.

And, as another poster has mentioned, waste storage costs should go down.

I was trying to figure out if this type of water could be air liquide frozen as in made into blocks or flat panels of Dry Ice and stored on a frozen continent as an underground glacier to preserve the cool climate.

Important underground glaciers have been found preserved in Volcanic Ash.

I think that lead slag and any junk lead could be used as a packing material around all the spent nucs and radioactive solids to include being covered in Volcanic Ash. ds

Reprocessing is not a very good idea as any of the reprocessing plants had very big problems and released massive amounts of radioactivity into atmosphere and sea.

Why is Windscale now named Sellafield?

A coming solution can be the Deuterium moderated reactors of the CANDU-type.

(Search for CANDU and AECL).

These do need only low enriched (1.5%) uranium or thorium to produce heat and electricity and these reactors have so much reactivity that the elements can be used much longer so that a considerable part of the highly radioactive trans-uranium elements are burnt too.

This is the one and only reactor type where reprocessing would make sense as the long-lasting radioactive elements (the trans-uraniums) can be burnt.

And the fuel elements of these reactors are not mounted in bundles with tight distances but used as individual tubes.

So storage with convection cooling only will be possible very early after some tome of storage with active cooling.

The information is existing, some countries are operating these reactors, the international experts support these types as safer and better (search ICENES) but the big international companies have chosen different lines of approach as you know and are not to convince to try a restart. Governments should force them.

RHABE

Re: Reprocessing is not a very good idea as any of the reprocessing plants had very big problems and released massive amounts of radioactivity into atmosphere and sea.

And re: This is the one and only reactor type where reprocessing would make sense as the long-lasting radioactive elements (the trans-uraniums) can be burnt.

I don't care how the waste is reprocessed (well, as long as it is done "safely" in all respects), reprocess it. If the CANDU reactor is really the best way, then build CANDU reactors.

Get rid of the waste, don't store it!

If things were done unsafely in the 1940s thru 1980s, can't we do better than that now?

RHABE, Japan has been using mixed oxide fuel in it's boiling water reactors for decades. France has been using it in their reactors for at least as long. Part of the issue of reprocessing plants is that governments were in charge of them and generally they were intended for plutonium production for weapons, with recycling fuel a distant second priority. therefore the whole thing was shrouded in secrecy and immunity from prosecution. that breeds complacency and irresponsibility.

Rorschach,

I absolutely agree. And this government involvement did prevent any major discussion about the accidents.

Japan and others that tried MOX = uranium- and plutonium-oxides mixed do this because ample plutonium is existing - but unfortunately not to minimise high activity "waste".

This "waste" can only be burnt in Deuterium moderated reactors.

And this burning of high activity waste is shortening the necessary safe storage time by a factor of 100! (From 300,000 to 3,000 years).

So I really do not understand why there is so sparse activity in this direction?

NIH-syndrome (not invented here) is one point, lobbyists at work another one, sticking to own wrong decisions a third one.

RHABE

How do we know that what is being done today, will not be considered "unsafe" tomorrow ? I think there is much "wait and see" in nuclear, plants license applications are not being pursued in the US, the Japanese catastrophe (at least 4 partially melted down reactors) has everyone holding, trying not to take on more liability.

Put it in hot dogs. They put everything else en them.