13-14yr olds standing next to used nuclear fuel

   / 13-14yr olds standing next to used nuclear fuel #21  
What happened in Japan is that they were too cheap and did not dry flask the used fuel from the 1970's into the 2000's. the fuel bays were overloaded.

Not exactly. The used fuel is too hot to place in dry casks (where they are air cooled) until they have been out of the reactor for about 10 years. Even if you use dry casks, the spent fuel pools still contain the hottest and most radioactive spent fuel. The casks only negate the need for additional storage pools.

The Japanese did a lot of things wrong, and it's hard to understand why, but having dry cask storage would not have made any significant difference in the event. The fuel that could have been moved was not the fuel that caused the pools to overheat.
 
   / 13-14yr olds standing next to used nuclear fuel #22  
Nuclear anything is a bad idea, .

Based on what? There are many nuclear plants in the US that operate cleanly and safely for everyone involved. We have uranium mines where I live so those plants support those jobs as well.
 
   / 13-14yr olds standing next to used nuclear fuel
  • Thread Starter
#23  
   / 13-14yr olds standing next to used nuclear fuel
  • Thread Starter
#24  
Not exactly. The used fuel is too hot to place in dry casks (where they are air cooled) until they have been out of the reactor for about 10 years. Even if you use dry casks, the spent fuel pools still contain the hottest and most radioactive spent fuel. The casks only negate the need for additional storage pools.

The Japanese did a lot of things wrong, and it's hard to understand why, but having dry cask storage would not have made any significant difference in the event. The fuel that could have been moved was not the fuel that caused the pools to overheat.

Note I said 2000's. 2004 was 10yrs ago and that 1970-2004 fuel is ready and should have been flasked.
The best solution for spent PHR fuel is not to re-process it but to reload the fuel pellets into fuel PHWR bundles. Then burn that used PHW fuel from 1.5% U235 down to .1% U235. Extract the PU239 afterwards then if need be.
Being used but enriched PWR fuel. The used fuel bay needs to be poisoned to prevent criticalaity as well as having decay heat removed.
If there was fresh used fuel of less than a month and if less than a week in particular. Then yes that few days old fuel will make more heat than the rest of the old fuel combined.
There was enough residual heat from the sheer amount of 10+ yr old fuel to significantly add to the cooling demands of the used fuel bay.
There was a batch of PHWR fuel dry flasked at 5yrs but the 2.5mrem threshold had to be moved out 10-12ft instead of a couple of feet. Still very do-able.
 
   / 13-14yr olds standing next to used nuclear fuel #25  
The decay heat is higher if the core has been operated for a longer time. A relatively fresh core when shut down will generate much less decay heat than an old core. This is because the longer operating time allows the build up of longer half life fission products that subsequently decay. The greater amount of U-235 in fresh fuel is immaterial because of the very long half life of Uranium. The decay heat is proportional to Effective Full Power Days of operation.

US and Japanese light water reactors have greater decay heat loads than the heavy water reactors because of the enrichment and the resultant higher density of fission products. The US NRC allows dry cask storage starting at 5 years after off load but, in practice, I don't think anyone in the US is going to dry cask before 10 years because of the greater challenge to cask design.

Anti nuclear groups made a big push some years ago to require fuel to be moved at 5 years, because they recognized it was a major cost and they continue to try to make nuclear less economic. The US NRC performed major risk studies and confirmed what those of us in the industry knew - that there was no significant safety advantage in moving fuel to casks earlier.
 
   / 13-14yr olds standing next to used nuclear fuel #26  
lots of the spent fuel bundles are headed north to Canada ... to be re-used in our reactors .... then to be housed / buried in the old mines way up north ..... do I trust the officials to do it right? ( no way in He**)

once the bundles cross the border , its our problem to deal with and dispose of.

we have nuclear power at .15 a Kw PLUS .15 a Kw delivery charge ..... at peak hours

they pay up to .80 a Kw for "green energy" that only works when the sun shines or the wind blows ....


Natural gas / water and coal could supply us without nuclear or "green" quite easily .....and a lot cheaper ..... my hydro bills are estimated to be $1000 an month next winter ..... when the rates go up again.


nuclear is " cheap" initially .... no arguments there. But the "waste" is the real problem ....
the 1/2 life is just that, in 1000 years it will be 1/2 as strong , after the next 1000 years it will be 1/2 as strong as the previous , and so on ... but they never state how long it will be before you can safely stand beside it for a day or so without dying from it ....

our officials can't keep track of material they buried 70 years ago (Love Canal anyone?), are they going to keep track of it for the next 10,000 years or so ? and who is to say we don't have another major earthquake / volcano ( Yellowstone National Park ) ( pick a disaster) and now we have spent fuel bundles exposed and leaking for the next million years ....

Chernobyl was capped and buried ... yes wildlife has returned .... but the background radiation is still too high for "safe" human occupation ... I've yet to see animals running around with radiation tags .... and animals in the wild survive for 5 - 7 years before they die naturally ... long before most cancers appear.

Long after we are gone , our children will have to deal with our stupidity and greed ....

should we be looking at "new" energy ... absolutely ... wave / tidal / ocean current / and more

OK , I'll get off the soap box now ...
 
   / 13-14yr olds standing next to used nuclear fuel
  • Thread Starter
#27  
lots of the spent fuel bundles are headed north to Canada ... to be re-used in our reactors .... then to be housed / buried in the old mines way up north ..... do I trust the officials to do it right? ( no way in He**)

once the bundles cross the border , its our problem to deal with and dispose of.

we have nuclear power at .15 a Kw PLUS .15 a Kw delivery charge ..... at peak hours

they pay up to .80 a Kw for "green energy" that only works when the sun shines or the wind blows ....


Natural gas / water and coal could supply us without nuclear or "green" quite easily .....and a lot cheaper ..... my hydro bills are estimated to be $1000 an month next winter ..... when the rates go up again.


nuclear is " cheap" initially .... no arguments there. But the "waste" is the real problem ....
the 1/2 life is just that, in 1000 years it will be 1/2 as strong , after the next 1000 years it will be 1/2 as strong as the previous , and so on ... but they never state how long it will be before you can safely stand beside it for a day or so without dying from it ....

our officials can't keep track of material they buried 70 years ago (Love Canal anyone?), are they going to keep track of it for the next 10,000 years or so ? and who is to say we don't have another major earthquake / volcano ( Yellowstone National Park ) ( pick a disaster) and now we have spent fuel bundles exposed and leaking for the next million years ....

Chernobyl was capped and buried ... yes wildlife has returned .... but the background radiation is still too high for "safe" human occupation ... I've yet to see animals running around with radiation tags .... and animals in the wild survive for 5 - 7 years before they die naturally ... long before most cancers appear.

Long after we are gone , our children will have to deal with our stupidity and greed ....

should we be looking at "new" energy ... absolutely ... wave / tidal / ocean current / and more

OK , I'll get off the soap box now ...

The only US fuel we receive is warhead PU239 to burn it as MOX to get rid of the plutonium. Good deal for us to get free fuel. Do you have any idea how much PU239 is in spent Candu fuel that went into the reactor at 0.7% ?
The fuel after 250 years is not particularly radioactive. Do you know anything about stable geological rock formations in western Ontario? Apparently not.
It's really annoying when some know nothing gets all wound up and panicky after listening to the scare mongers in Green Peace shake up the public for more donations.
 
   / 13-14yr olds standing next to used nuclear fuel
  • Thread Starter
#28  
should we be looking at "new" energy ... absolutely ... wave / tidal / ocean current / and more

Do want to be able to turn the lights on and and have the fridge run any time it wants?
Where are you setting up these green energy projects?
Does winter visit your part of the country?
Are transmission lines expensive and lossy?
 
   / 13-14yr olds standing next to used nuclear fuel
  • Thread Starter
#29  
The decay heat is higher if the core has been operated for a longer time. A relatively fresh core when shut down will generate much less decay heat than an old core. This is because the longer operating time allows the build up of longer half life fission products that subsequently decay. The greater amount of U-235 in fresh fuel is immaterial because of the very long half life of Uranium. The decay heat is proportional to Effective Full Power Days of operation.

US and Japanese light water reactors have greater decay heat loads than the heavy water reactors because of the enrichment and the resultant higher density of fission products. The US NRC allows dry cask storage starting at 5 years after off load but, in practice, I don't think anyone in the US is going to dry cask before 10 years because of the greater challenge to cask design.

Anti nuclear groups made a big push some years ago to require fuel to be moved at 5 years, because they recognized it was a major cost and they continue to try to make nuclear less economic. The US NRC performed major risk studies and confirmed what those of us in the industry knew - that there was no significant safety advantage in moving fuel to casks earlier.

I was taking about the exponential drop in decay heat of used fuel fresh form the reactor.
A PWR deposits large amounts of fuel into the UFB every 12-18 months. A PHWR maybe a dozen bundles a day.
The japan UFB heating problem would be far worse if the last batch of used fuel was days old instead of months old.
 
   / 13-14yr olds standing next to used nuclear fuel #30  
The fuel after 250 years is not particularly radioactive. Do you know anything about ? Apparently not.
It's really annoying when some know nothing gets all wound up and panicky after listening to the scare mongers in Green Peace shake up the public for more donations.

1 ... I would still not stand beside it after 250 years .... "not particularly radioactive" doesn't answer answer the original question of "when is it safe" as in " can I let my kids play beside it all day every day."

2 .... "stable geological rock formations in western Ontario" northern Ontario is "stable" at the present , but in the past it wasn't , and will be unstable in the future ..... ever hear of Pangea? the earths crust is constantly moving / changing , even today .... ???? tomorrow , we never know ( just ask the experts when and where the next earthquake is going to be )... things change ....
you may not consider waste disposal as a threat to future generations .... I do, same goes for "incidents" ( AKA human error ) ...

3 ... wound up, panicky, fear mongering ? did I ever once mention getting rid of nuclear ????? shut it all down ? run for the hills ? No, I just said I hoped we'd find something better... and ranted about how we never get a straight answer about " how long till the spent fuel is safe " and all we get is "half life" ,,,, like saying "what's the gas mileage on this vehicle " and the sales person keeps saying "its a 55 gallon tank so you should go far" ..... Apples and Oranges .

4 .... If you're under the illusion that I'm anti nuclear, sorry it isn't so ....nor have I asked for "more money" for Green peace ... ( lunatics) .... the "specs" for safety at the N/A plants are far higher than anywhere else ... the majority of the problems stem from "human error" ( as in building a plant near known fault lines ).... it does provide "clean and stable" electricity but has the "spent fuel disposal problem" that should be addressed WORLDWIDE .... and not every country in the world disposes of it properly ( or builds plants to specs / trains employees. etc ) ...

5 .... Candu runs on fuel and ditronium ( hope I got the spelling right ) ... opposite to regular reactors ..... If you lose coolant , the reaction shuts down ... almost fail safe and fool proof .... yet we still have occasional tridium venting from plants ...

do I know all there is to know about nuclear ? ... hardly ...

Do I work in the field? ... nope and never said I was an expert.

can I read and make informed decisions ? .... yes

can I tell when a politician / press spokesperson is lying ? ... yes , their lips are moving ....:laughing:
 

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