German nuke waste storage site 'dead'

[bananas]

German nuke waste storage site 'dead'
Published: Aug. 26, 2009 at 2:24 PM

GORLEBEN, Germany, Aug. 26 (UPI) -- Germany's only storage test facility for high-level nuclear waste, into which Berlin has invested nearly $2 billion over the past years, is unsafe and needs to be closed, experts say.

German Environment Minister Sigmar Gabriel, a known opponent of nuclear energy, said Wednesday that the salt dome Gorleben, chosen in the 1970s to become Germany's national storage facility for high-level nuclear waste by 2030, "is dead."

The comments came a day after it emerged that the former government of Chancellor Helmut Kohl had brushed over legal and safety concerns related to the site. The Kohl government altered a scientists' report that came to the conclusion that the dome in Lower Saxony was not suitable for long-term storage of nuclear waste, the Frankfurter Rundschau newspaper reports.

"Under those circumstances, research (at Gorleben) can't be continued," Gabriel said.

<snip>

There were supposed to be several permanent waste sites worldwide by now, there aren't any.
There may never be any.

[Tikki]

1. No safe NUKE....

And few smart enough governments to understand that...


Tikki

[AnOhioan]

3. +1

[Fledermaus]

5. ++ good

[NNadir]

2. What about Gerhard Schroeder's sequestration for Gazprom's dangerous fossil fuel waste storage?

It seems to me that Gerhard Schroeder - before joining Gazprom and while destroying Germany's nuclear science infrastructure - didn't make a single fucking plan for disposing for all the dangerous fossil fuel waste from his dangerous natural gas burning plans.

So kiddie, what's YOUR plan for pretending to deal with dangerous fossil fuel waste, like the carbon dioxide that's accumulating in earth's atmosphere?

Oh...I see...your workable "dump" is earth's atmosphere!!!!!

You won't dream of calling for shutting Germany's dangerous coal and dangerous natural gas plants "until they find a waste dump" even though zero people have been killed by the stuff you fantasize is "nuclear waste" and air pollution kills every damn day.

Arbitrary?

How many people's lives do you balance against your "theoretical" deaths from nuclear waste.

Is your imagination of one death in 500 years worth the lives of 500,000 in the next year, or is the figure bigger than that?

[kristopher]

6. You're framing a false choice: it's nuclear vs renewables, not nuclear vs fossil

And the experts agree that nuclear is a poor choice when considering all problems and all available solutions:

http://www.rsc.org/publishing/journals/EE/article.asp?doi=b809990c

Energy Environ. Sci., 2009, 2, 148 - 173, DOI: 10.1039/b809990c
Review of solutions to global warming, air pollution, and energy security

Mark Z. Jacobson

This paper reviews and ranks major proposed energy-related solutions to global warming, air pollution mortality, and energy security while considering other impacts of the proposed solutions, such as on water supply, land use, wildlife, resource availability, thermal pollution, water chemical pollution, nuclear proliferation, and undernutrition.

Nine electric power sources and two liquid fuel options are considered. The electricity sources include solar-photovoltaics (PV), concentrated solar power (CSP), wind, geothermal, hydroelectric, wave, tidal, nuclear, and coal with carbon capture and storage (CCS) technology. The liquid fuel options include corn-ethanol (E85) and cellulosic-E85. To place the electric and liquid fuel sources on an equal footing, we examine their comparative abilities to address the problems mentioned by powering new-technology vehicles, including battery-electric vehicles (BEVs), hydrogen fuel cell vehicles (HFCVs), and flex-fuel vehicles run on E85.

Twelve combinations of energy source-vehicle type are considered. Upon ranking and weighting each combination with respect to each of 11 impact categories, four clear divisions of ranking, or tiers, emerge.

Tier 1 (highest-ranked) includes wind-BEVs and wind-HFCVs.
Tier 2 includes CSP-BEVs, geothermal-BEVs, PV-BEVs, tidal-BEVs, and wave-BEVs.
Tier 3 includes hydro-BEVs, nuclear-BEVs, and CCS-BEVs.
Tier 4 includes corn- and cellulosic-E85.

Wind-BEVs ranked first in seven out of 11 categories, including the two most important, mortality and climate damage reduction. Although HFCVs are much less efficient than BEVs, wind-HFCVs are still very clean and were ranked second among all combinations.

Tier 2 options provide significant benefits and are recommended.

Tier 3 options are less desirable. However, hydroelectricity, which was ranked ahead of coal-CCS and nuclear with respect to climate and health, is an excellent load balancer, thus recommended.

The Tier 4 combinations (cellulosic- and corn-E85) were ranked lowest overall and with respect to climate, air pollution, land use, wildlife damage, and chemical waste. Cellulosic-E85 ranked lower than corn-E85 overall, primarily due to its potentially larger land footprint based on new data and its higher upstream air pollution emissions than corn-E85.

Whereas cellulosic-E85 may cause the greatest average human mortality, nuclear-BEVs cause the greatest upper-limit mortality risk due to the expansion of plutonium separation and uranium enrichment in nuclear energy facilities worldwide. Wind-BEVs and CSP-BEVs cause the least mortality.

The footprint area of wind-BEVs is 2–6 orders of magnitude less than that of any other option. Because of their low footprint and pollution, wind-BEVs cause the least wildlife loss.

The largest consumer of water is corn-E85. The smallest are wind-, tidal-, and wave-BEVs.

The US could theoretically replace all 2007 onroad vehicles with BEVs powered by 73000–144000 5 MW wind turbines, less than the 300000 airplanes the US produced during World War II, reducing US CO2 by 32.5–32.7% and nearly eliminating 15000/yr vehicle-related air pollution deaths in 2020.

In sum, use of wind, CSP, geothermal, tidal, PV, wave, and hydro to provide electricity for BEVs and HFCVs and, by extension, electricity for the residential, industrial, and commercial sectors, will result in the most benefit among the options considered. The combination of these technologies should be advanced as a solution to global warming, air pollution, and energy security. Coal-CCS and nuclear offer less benefit thus represent an opportunity cost loss, and the biofuel options provide no certain benefit and the greatest negative impacts.

[phantom power]

4. I like that sign: "Ceiling fan cools pirates and runners."

[NMDemDist2]

7. there is one I know of.....

the WIPP site here in southern New Mexico

http://www.wipp.energy.gov/