Dry Cask Storage
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Dry Cask Storage
1–10 of 23 posts
Re: Dry Cask Storage
#2It's a shame we don't do fuel reprocessing in the US. Generally those rods have quite a bit of usable fissile material left it's just fallen below the economic threshold where it's better to replace them than continue using them.
Re: Dry Cask Storage
#3There is a maintenance-free fusion generator in the sky so powerful that it can burn out your retinas from 150,000,000km away.
Re: Dry Cask Storage
#4It's a shame we don't do fuel reprocessing in the US. Generally those rods have quite a bit of usable fissile material left it's just fallen below the economic threshold where it's better to replace them than continue using them.
Reprocessing is still an option in the future. But it generates a lot of waste streams and as you indicate is more expensive than just fabricating a new rod. Plus our nuclear fleet is in decline and we could see a wave of decommissioned plants in the next decade (if we don't pivot our national energy policy) so our usage of fuel will decline in turn.
Re: Dry Cask Storage
#5There is a maintenance-free fusion generator in the sky so powerful that it can burn out your retinas from 150,000,000km away.
I wonder how the stats stack up between damage from all the worlds nuclear accidents, and damage from the sun ($ spent to restore degradation of materials from UV, skin cancer, etc.) Bit moot since the sun can't be switched off.
Re: Dry Cask Storage
#6It's a shame we don't do fuel reprocessing in the US. Generally those rods have quite a bit of usable fissile material left it's just fallen below the economic threshold where it's better to replace them than continue using them.
Reprocessing is still an option in the future. But it generates a lot of waste streams and as you indicate is more expensive than just fabricating a new rod. Plus our nuclear fleet is in decline and we could see a wave of decommissioned plants in the next decade (if we don't pivot our national energy policy) so our usage of fuel will decline in turn.
I think reprocessing is actually cheaper than creating a new rod because you don't have to do as much enrichment of the uranium material. What I meant is the rod produces less power than a fresh replacement so it's better for the operator to replace it with a new rod to keep the reactor at it's design output.
The main reason the US is against it is because of old Cold War concerns about countries using it to harvest plutonium which is created in small amounts in regular reactors so there's a small concern that reprocessing would allow secretive creation of plutonium for nuclear weapons while appearing to be a purely peaceful civilian nuclear fuel reprocessing system.
Re: Dry Cask Storage
#7There is a maintenance-free fusion generator in the sky so powerful that it can burn out your retinas from 150,000,000km away.
I wonder how the stats stack up between damage from all the worlds nuclear accidents, and damage from the sun ($ spent to restore degradation of materials from UV, skin cancer, etc.) Bit moot since the sun can't be switched off.
Don't forget to account for the approximately 100% of the global food supply which needs sunlight to grow.
Re: Dry Cask Storage
#8There is a maintenance-free fusion generator in the sky so powerful that it can burn out your retinas from 150,000,000km away.
It is also unmaintainable and expected to run out of fuel in the future. (very distant future)
Re: Dry Cask Storage
#9There is a maintenance-free fusion generator in the sky so powerful that it can burn out your retinas from 150,000,000km away.
I wonder how the stats stack up between damage from all the worlds nuclear accidents, and damage from the sun ($ spent to restore degradation of materials from UV, skin cancer, etc.) Bit moot since the sun can't be switched off.
UV is definitely higher -- there are about 300K new skin cancer cases per year world wide and about 60K deaths per year from it. Most (although not all) of these are due to UV exposure. That being said, before you blame the sun itself, a lot of this is due to ozone depletion (which is still a thing even though sometimes people make it sound like the problem is solved just because the ozone hole is shrinking)
https://www.wcrf.org/cancer-trends/skin-cancer-statistics/ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ozone_depletion
Re: Dry Cask Storage
#10What are the drawbacks of dumping [denser than water] radioactive waste at the bottom of the ocean? Is transportation to a deep-water site too expensive and risky.