NJ opposes 60-year storage for spent nuclear fuel

[jpak]

http://www.businessweek.com/ap/financialnews/D9M0B0VG0.htm

With four nuclear power plants and no permanent place to store the waste they generate, New Jersey wants to join a lawsuit against the federal government over how long spent nuclear fuel can be allowed to remain at reactor sites.

New guidelines from the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission allow nuclear plants to keep their used fuel on-site for up to 60 years after the reactor is shut down, up from 30 years.

The state Department of Environmental Protection moved Tuesday to join a lawsuit by New York, Vermont, and Connecticut against the recently adopted rule.

The heart of the problem is the lack of a permanent disposal place for the nation's spent nuclear fuel. The federal government announced last year it was ending consideration of creating a depository at Yucca Mountain in Nevada.

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[enough]

1. Very surprised to hear Christie's New Jersey is on board with this. (nt)

[kristopher]

9. Christie is just trying to get money. He doesn't care about the waste.

[Statistical]

2. Some people on DU think we should never build a storage facility.

Just leave it on site forever. Hopefully the event in Japan will convince people that we need to store spent fuel in a safer manner.

[elleng]

4. But there is no 'manner' and there is no 'place.'

If there were, these problems would not exist.

[Statistical]

6. There is always safER. Come on.

Your telling me nothing would be safer than a spent fuel pool balance on top of a 50 year old reactor?

[elleng]

7. There may be more safe, but

there is NO KNOWN WAY to store it in a very safe, long-term way or place, OR to transport it. If there were, we'd be there. The politics won't let it happen, as in 'Not In My Back Yard.'

[Duende azul]

5. How dishonest can you get?

Show me a link to your claim. To your exact claim. Not to your interpretation of someones words.

I did not see anybody wanting to "leave it on site forever".
People want to END the production of toxic nuclear waste.

Nobody has any obligation to discuss the final storage with fierce nuke advocates. Not while the industry your are advocating for isn´t even capable of running the plants safely. Got it?

[kristopher]

10. It's important to understand what scaling up nuclear means in terms of waste

From a presentation by John Holdren.

The nuclear option: size of the challenges

• If world electricity demand grows 2% /year until 2050 and nuclear share of electricity supply is to rise from 1/6 to 1/3...
–nuclear capacity would have to grow from 350 GWe in 2000 to 1700 GWe in 2050;
– this means 1,700 reactors of 1,000 MWe each.

• If these were light-water reactors on the once-through fuel cycle...
---–enrichment of their fuel will require ~250 million Separative Work Units (SWU);
---–diversion of 0.1% of this enrichment to production of HEU from natural uranium would make ~20 gun-type or ~80 implosion-type bombs.

• If half the reactors were recycling their plutonium...
---–the associated flow of separated, directly weapon - usable plutonium would be 170,000 kg per year;
---–diversion of 0.1% of this quantity would make ~30 implosion-type bombs.

• Spent-fuel production in the once-through case would be...
---–34,000 tonnes/yr, a Yucca Mountain every two years.

Expanding nuclear enough to take a modest bite out of the climate problem is conceivable, but, doing so will depend on greatly increased seriousness in addressing the waste-management & proliferation challenges.

Mitigation of Human-Caused Climate Change
John P. Holdren

Repeating that conclusion: Expanding nuclear enough to take a modest bite out of the climate problem is conceivable, *but* doing so will depend on greatly increased seriousness in addressing the waste-management & proliferation challenges.

What does he say about renewables?

The renewable option: Is it real?

SUNLIGHT: 100,000 TW reaches Earth’s surface (100,000 TWy/year = 3.15 million EJ/yr), 30% on land.
Thus 1% of the land area receives 300 TWy/yr, so converting this to usable forms at 10% efficiency would yield 30 TWy/yr, about twice civilization’s rate of energy use in 2004.

WIND: Solar energy flowing into the wind is ~2,000 TW.
Wind power estimated to be harvestable from windy sites covering 2% of Earth’s land surface is about twice world electricity generation in 2004.

BIOMASS: Solar energy is stored by photosynthesis on land at a rate of about 60 TW.
Energy crops at twice the average terrestrial photosynthetic yield would give 12 TW from 10% of land area (equal to what’s now used for agriculture).
Converted to liquid biofuels at 50% efficiency, this would be 6 TWy/yr, more than world oil use in 2004.

Renewable energy potential is immense. Questions are what it will cost & how much society wants to pay for environmental & security advantages.

Mitigation of Human-Caused Climate Change
John P. Holdren

John P. Holdren is advisor to President Barack Obama for Science and Technology,
Director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, and
Co-Chair of the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology...

Holdren was previously the Teresa and John Heinz Professor of Environmental Policy at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University,
director of the Science, Technology, and Public Policy Program at the School's Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, and
Director of the Woods Hole Research Center.<2>

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Holdren

[kristopher]

11. delete dupe

[LiberalEsto]

3. Here's what happened in NJ & elsewhere

Some 25 years ago, when I lived in NJ, the federal EPA decreed that each state would find its own nuclear storage site within the state.

That went over like a lead balloon. Nobody wanted it anywhere in the state. As soon as one site was killed and another proposed, another citizens group would pop up to oppose that site, and so on. I can't blame folks - nobody wants a nuclear waste storage facility in their community.

After seeing state after state come up with the same problem - no site was acceptable, the EPA pushed the states a little harder, but the states refused. Then they talked about regional storage facilities, but once again, nobody wanted one. This process took years.

I'm not sure if any national storage sites were proposed besides Yucca Mountain, but that was the place the EPA and the Department of the Interior finally settled on. Except nobody wanted it there either. I believe there were legal battles about it. Eventually the opponents won some kind of ruling, whether in court or with the federal government, to kill the Yucca Mountain plan.

Meanwhile the waste piles up at reactor sites. There's talk of revisiting Yucca Mountain. I don't think anybody has a realistic and reasonable plan to deal with the stuff.

But now they want to build more reactors. Here we go again.

[elleng]

8. ...

:thumbsup:
:hi: