Struggling with Japan’s Nuclear Waste, Six Years After Disaster
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Inertia is a powerful thing.
In that sense it may be more reasonable to skip the nuclear step and invest the necessary billions in renewable infrastructure, not nuclear reactors.
Economically speaking if I go nuclear I need to compete with solar prices 10 years in the future not the current prices.
Ecologically its the same. I invest in solar or wind, I am displacing coal and gas within two years. The nuclear plant will only start helping 8 years later.
Erm, the cost/damage on the whole region (and not just Fukushima) is much higher than the nuclear power part itself. Let's not forget it's a once-a-millenium kind of tsunami that occurred there.
> Now I see that nuclear power is not only an ecological hazard but also a fool's business from the economical point of view
That's the best thing we have, right now. Good luck powering up cities and means of productions with solar & wind, from tomorrow onward.
Maybe we should stop calling it that. It's now obvious that there was a miscalculation at site surveying stage, no need to hype it up.
> That's the best thing we have, right now.
The environmental record with just two INES scale 1 accidents is poor. As nuclear proliferates to places with even less safety culture and the number of reactors installed reactors grows, so will the catastrophic outcomes.
If nuclear production grows say fivefold worldwide, it's not unreasonable to expect at least fivefold increase of INES 1 incidents. Which means instead of two catastrophes in a 30 years span we'd have 10 or more.
For example, in my native Belarus on a new plant project they dinged the reactor vessel in installation a couple of times already. Three workers have died in process of construction so far. Can't say I'm looking forward to its operation.
> If you consider environmental records of the nuclear power poor what can you say about other types of power plants which have even poorer record?
I say even coal does not have as long lasting effect when replaced by cleaner tech (e.g. natural gas) as a nuclear fallout site.
Coal spreads much more radiation compared to nuclear power plants.
The exact reason why we should avoid nuclear in the medium term is that the events that caused, are causing and will keep cause those accidents are all unpredictable. The cost in consequences for our planet is still too high and will remain that high or increase until we will be capable of "de-radioactivize" things
I can't even imagine the complexities of estimating risk for a reactor design.
I only wish this was more broadly accepted. Nuclear power should be left to extra-planetary use-cases, because it will probably be the only viable option available up there, and more so because it is such a dirty solution down here.
https://mobile.nytimes.com/2011/04/21/world/asia/21stones.ht...
Unfortunately, humanity no longer seems wise enough to extend this same concern for future generations.
We had 2 1/250 year floods in my village within 5 years - exacerbated by the land owners not maintain the waterways on their property
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_historical_tsunamis
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_historical_earthquak...
They don't hem to this probability no matter how you try and frame it.
blaming unpleasant stuff on tsunami in Japan is like blaming "unexpectedly happening winters" in Russia for Russian problems.
Disclaimer: I have worked at "La Hague France" between 1994 and 1999.
Even when you leave out the fuel, dismantling a nuclear reactor is a challenge in itself. Even the "safe" thorium and potential fusion reactors leave highly contaminated ruins behind. Read about the THTR-300 if you're interested. The German AVR reactor is also a dirty mess that nobody knows how to clean up, even though no major nuclear incident happened there.
When thinking of nuclear waste, most people think of spent fuel rods - plutonium and uranium. Those are easy to handle, they're solids, they're comparably small and you put them into molten glass. But storing an entire contaminated reactor building, that we don't know how to do other than do like Chernobyl and just cast the whole thing in concrete.
There will be some epic horror stories that will eventually come out about the decommissioning of the USS Enterprise, a 55-year-old ship with eight nuclear reactors.
I wonder why is that, why can't all of it be molten and run through enriching turbines. Is it because of too low of a radioactive mass proportion of said material rendering that economically unfeasible?
Australia is probably the best country in the world to safely store nuclear waste. Sparse population, and almost no tectonic movement. It already has areas which are radioactive too (from historical nuclear testing)
Australia is also currently in the beginning stages of a major energy crisis, which is partly caused by Japan (Some background, Australia signed a major LPG export agreement that intended to fulfill using coal stem gas reserves. When these reserves didn't deliver the quantities required, they instead raided the local domestic supply). You can currently purchase Australian gas in Japan for less than you can in Australia.
So Japan could directly contribute to Australia's immediate and long term energy security, in exchange for nuclear waste storage.
Japan has the resources to help Australia, without increasing your power bill even more.
Basically Australia can help Japan in exchange for a return to cheap energy.
Maybe they should dig deep into the earth and then let it merge with the earth's nuclear core :)
In order to keep the reactors cool, they pump 400 tonnes of water through the reactors everyday. This water has to be stored in tanks after that. The radiation seems to be never ending and they will run out of the space to store this water in a couple of years. There is also the radioactive debris around the place that they have to take care of.
We have the science to create energy from nuclear fission, but the science to deal with the aftermaths of a nuclear accident is still a work in progress.
Problem is it'll merge with the water table first. :-)
It appears to be this:
Japan sells LPG sourced from Australia back to Australia (presumably at some price less than the Australian spot price, and perhaps more than the Japanese contracted price), and then Australia agrees to also take nuclear waste (presumably getting paid for it too).
Is that roughly correct?
There are quite a few problems with this:
Firstly, I believe the company that signed the long term gas purchase agreements isn't the same as the nuclear company, so they might have a problem.
Secondly, Australia has plenty of gas reserves, and this is way too simplistic: "When these reserves didn't deliver the quantities required, they instead raided the local domestic supply" - the problem was more that many gas seam and LNG mining projects didn't go ahead in the 2009-12 timeframe because the big drop in prices meant the economics didn't add up).
Thirdly, Australia doesn't want the waste. The South Australian government came the closest of any in recommending it, but it was so roundly rejected in community consultation that it has become apparent it is political poison. No party will ever support it, and if one did every other party will use that to win lots of seats.
Fourthly, Japan selling the LNG back to Australia means that Japan has an energy shortage. That isn't helpful to them.
This will never happen.
Public opinion will be completely against any proposal to do this. Partly NIMBYism, but also legitimate fear of a bungled process which exposes the public to radiation risk (e.g. a truck/ship crash). This would also potentially tarnish the international brand of Australian tourism and agriculture industries, which both like to project an image of a clean and protected environment.
Any smart politician will recognise the nightmarish public relations battle is not worth the reward for them personally, so the project will never get a fair hearing to begin with.
Personally I would support the establishment of a nuclear waste facility in Australia in principle. But I don't think it will happen unless our economy goes right down the toilet and we become significantly more desperate for funds.
Using less energy doesn't solve everything, nor does suggesting conservation mean anyone wants to return to the stone age or to lower anyone's standard of living, nor any of the usual straw men misinterpretations.
Nearly everyone can use less power than they do with no loss of quality of life. Doing so will reduce the waste we create in creating the power.
There are three ways to motivate people IMO: cost, convenience, and social pressure. All of my neighbors have recycling bins sitting out front so I have one too. I switched to CFLs because they're cheaper to run, and then I switched to LEDs because they're far more convenient. I'd have an electric car, but in my northern climate they're not cost effective, they're really, really not convenient, and none of my friends or neighbors have one. But I have an electric snowblower because it's cheaper and more convenient.
Does the writer prefer gallons because it makes it look so many? Why not barrels instead?
400 tons of contaminated water a day - lets say matric. = a 7.3 meter cube
962,000 ~ 1,000,000 tonnes of water accumulated so far - a 100 meter cube
64,700 cubic meters, 17 million gallons of radio active clothing - 40 meter cube.
200,400 cu m3 of contaminated rubble - a 60 meter cube.
Why doesn't the writer use stats or pictures people can visualize? Like compare it to the size of the Empire State Building, former World Trade Centres etc? Is he hiding the extent of the damage or expressing it in meaningful terms?
At least we can extrapolate the extend of the problem into the future.
3.5 billion gallons of contaminated soil ~ 13 million cubic meters of soil, a 235 meter cube.
So after analyzing these figures - is using millions and billions truly expressing the extent of the problem or just obfuscating it, with incomprehensible figures, no matter or large they may be?
I guess it is time now to work out how meters compare with the heights of buildings and street blocks.
E & OE
That's why they use imperial units. It's the New York Times, an American newspaper writing for an American audience. I'm pretty familiar with metric units but even I have a hard time with "one meter" until I remember it's the same as a yard. What's a kilometer? I don't know, but it's a half a mile to the coffee shop from my house. That's pretty easy for me to visualize.
What I absolutely cannot visualize is how big the Empire State Building is. Absolutely terrible comparison, IMO. I have no idea how big the Empire State Building is. But I know how much a gallon is, and my car weighs two tons, so that's pretty easy.