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Going the Distance? The Safe Transport of Spent Nuclear Fuel & High-Level Radioactive Waste in U.S. (2006)
Nuclear and Radiation Studies Board (NRSB)
http://darwin.nap.edu/books/0309100046/html/
No Fundamental Technical Barriers to the Safe Transport of Spent Nuclear Fuel And High-Level Radioactive Waste, But Challenges Remain
The National Academies, Feb. 9, 2006
Complete Study at http://www.investorshub.com/boards/read_msg.asp?message_id=9950715
WASHINGTON -- There are no fundamental technical barriers to the safe transport of spent nuclear fuel and high-level radioactive waste in the United States, but a number of challenges must be addressed, says a new report from a committee of the National Academies' National Research Council. A separate, independent study of the security of such shipments against malevolent acts also is needed, said the committee, which was unable to make this examination because needed information was classified or otherwise restricted.
The radiological risks associated with the transport of spent nuclear fuel and high-level radioactive waste are well-understood and generally low, the report says, noting that spent fuel has been shipped worldwide for more than four decades without a significant release of radioactive materials during an accident. However, more attention needs to be paid to understanding and managing the "social" risks involved in transporting these materials – risks that have potential impacts such as lower property values or reduced tourism along shipping routes, for example.
The Research Council conducted the study to meet the need for an independent examination of the risks and key concerns associated with the transport of spent fuel and high-level waste. Shipments of these materials in the United States will increase dramatically if the Department of Energy opens a proposed repository at Yucca Mountain, Nevada. Spent fuel and high-level waste would be shipped there from more than 70 sites in 31 states, and most of these shipments would likely pass through or near major metropolitan areas. Shipping may also increase if DOE develops a spent fuel recycling facility at another site, or if the commercial nuclear industry constructs a facility to store spent fuel until Yucca Mountain opens.
Responding to a request from Congress, the committee also assessed how DOE currently selects routes for shipping spent fuel from research reactors between its facilities in the United States. DOE's procedures for selecting these routes appear to be adequate and reasonable, the committee concluded, noting that the department has considered risk assessments as well as advice from affected states and tribal nations.
Risks Arising From Transport
The committee examined two types of radiological risks -- those arising from normal transport and those from accidents during shipping. The main radiological risk during normal transport is from the low levels of radiation emitted from packages loaded with spent fuel or high-level waste, since no shipping package can block radiation entirely. The report presents a number of comparisons between this risk and other common sources of radiation exposure.
Releases of radioactive materials from shipping packages during accidents are very unlikely given the packages' robust construction and the strict regulations for transporting them, the committee said. However, recent research suggests that a very small number of extreme accident conditions involving fires of very long duration might compromise the packages. More analysis is needed to understand how packages behave under these conditions and to inform possible regulatory or operational changes. Transportation planners should survey routes in advance of shipments to identify and mitigate hazards that could lead to such accidents.
Transportation planners also should establish formal mechanisms for obtaining advice on managing social risks, the report says. For example, DOE should add experts on social risk to one of its existing advisory groups.
Operating Large-Quantity Shipping Programs
In addition to examining risks, the report provides findings and recommendations on operational issues related to the transport of spent nuclear fuel and high-level radioactive waste. While the recommendations focus on DOE's Yucca Mountain program, they apply to any program for shipping large amounts of these materials.
DOE should identify and make public its preferred routes to Yucca Mountain as soon as possible to support state, tribal, and local planning -- especially efforts to prepare emergency responders. The department should consult with states and tribal nations in selecting these routes. DOE also should immediately begin to execute its responsibilities for preparing emergency responders.
The committee strongly endorsed DOE's decision to ship spent fuel and high-level waste to Yucca Mountain using mostly trains rather than trucks, since rail transport would reduce both the overall number of shipments and their interactions with people along routes. It also strongly endorsed the plan to use "dedicated" trains, which would carry only spent fuel or high-level waste and no other freight. To implement its "mostly rail" option, however, DOE must first build a 319-mile rail line in Nevada. If the department fails to complete this step before the repository opens, it should not resort to large-quantity truck shipments as an interim measure, the committee said.
Shipping older fuel to Yucca Mountain first would provide an additional margin of safety because it generates less heat and radiation, the report says; it would also allow DOE to gain experience and build confidence. However, the Nuclear Waste Policy Act does not give DOE authority to decide the order in which fuel will be shipped from operating plants. The department should negotiate with commercial spent fuel owners to prioritize the shipment of older fuel, and if negotiations do not succeed, Congress should consider changes to the law.
Federal agencies should develop and disclose clear, consistent, and reasonable criteria for protecting sensitive information about shipments, and they should commit to openly sharing information that does not require such protection. For example, before making a shipment, it would be appropriate to share general information such as possible routes, the material to be shipped, and general shipping time frames. More-detailed information -- specific routes, times, and responses to any incidents, for example -- could be disclosed afterward.
DOE's Yucca Mountain transportation program might not succeed unless it is restructured to give it more planning authority and flexibility, the committee said. Though it was beyond the scope of the study to recommend a particular organizational structure for the program, the committee suggested that Congress and the secretary of energy evaluate three possible ways to reorganize it: as a quasi-independent organization within DOE, as a quasi-government corporation, or as a fully private organization operated by the commercial nuclear industry.
The study was funded by the U.S. departments of Energy and Transportation, Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Electric Power Research Institute, National Cooperative Highway Research Program, and the National Academy of Sciences. It was overseen by the Nuclear and Radiation Studies Board and Transportation Research Board of the National Research Council, which is the principal operating arm of the National Academy of Sciences and the National Academy of Engineering. It is a private, nonprofit institution that provides science and technology advice under a congressional charter. A committee roster follows.
http://www4.nationalacademies.org/news.nsf/isbn/0309100046?OpenDocument
DOE's Spent Nuclear Fuel Transportation Study estimates 175 truck & rail shipments average per year to move spent fuel to Yucca Mountain.
http://www.ocrwm.doe.gov/wat/pdf/snf_trans.pdf
A mix of railway & roadway & waterway are used to transport spent fuel assemblies. Truck & rail are the planned for moving spent fuel assemblies to Yucca Mountain, since barges don't yet navigate Nevada desert sand.
Although the U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT) has the primary responsibility for regulating the safe transport of radioactive materials in the United States, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) requires that licensees and carriers involved in spent fuel shipments:
Follow only approved routes;
- Provide armed escorts for heavily populated areas;
- Use immobilization devices;
- Provide monitoring and redundant communications;
- Coordinate with law enforcement agencies before shipments; and
- Notify in advance the NRC and States through which the shipments will pass.
Since 1965, approximately 3,000 shipments of spent nuclear fuel have been transported safely over the U.S.'s highways, waterways, and railroads.
A typical small SNF shipping cask being mounted on a truck. By comparison there has been limited spent nuclear fuel transport in Canada. Transportation casks have been designed for truck and rail transport and Canada’s regulatory body granted approval for casks, which may be used for barge shipments as well. Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission regulations prohibit the disclosure of location, routing and timing of shipments of nuclear materials, such as spent fuel. [4]
Over the past 35 years, British Nuclear Fuels plc (BNFL) and its subsidiary PNTL have conducted over 14,000 cask shipments of SNF worldwide, transporting more than 9,000 tonnes of SNF over 16 million miles via road, rail, and sea without a radiological release. BNF designed, licensed, and currently own and operate a fleet of approximately 170 casks of the Excellox design. BNFL has maintained a fleet of transport casks to ship SNF for the United Kingdom, continental Europe, and Japan for reprocessing.
It is interesting to note that in the UK a series of public demonstrations were conducted in which spent fuel flasks (loaded with steel bars) were subjected to simulated accident conditions. A randomly selected flask (never used for holding used fuel) from the production line was first dropped from a tower. The flask was dropped in such a way that the weakest part of it would hit the ground first. The lid of the flask was slightly damaged but very little material escaped from the flask, a little water escaped from the flask but it was thought that in a real accident that the escape of radioactivity assocoiated with this water would be not a threat to humans or their environment.
For a second test the same flask was fitted with a new lid, filled again with steel bars and water before a train was driven into it at high speed. The flask survived with only cosmetic damage while the train was totally wrecked.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spent_nuclear_fuel_shipping_cask
http://library.thinkquest.org/17940/texts/nuclear_waste_storage/nuclear_waste_storage.html
Serveral photographs of the fuel rod storage site, towards bottom of page. this link directs you to. Pretty cool stuff. I think they plan to use trains, not positive, to transport spent fuel rods from reactor sites to Yucca Mountain.
One can scroll through the pages by selecting th next button at the bottom of each page.
Permanent Fuel Storage/Disposal:
There are many ideas about what to do with nuclear waste. The low-level (not extremely radioactive) waste can often be buried near the surface of the earth. It is not very dangerous and usually will have lost most of its radioactivity in a couple hundred years. The high-level waste, comprised mostly of spent fuel rods, is harder to get rid of. There are still plans for its disposal, however. Some of these include burying the waste under the ocean floor, storing it underground, and shooting it into space. The most promising option so far is burying the waste in the ground. This is called "deep geological disposal". Because a spent fuel rod contains material that takes thousands of years to become stable (and non-radioactive), it must be contained for a very long time. If it is not contained, it could come in contact with human population centers and wildlife, posing a great danger to them. Therefore, the waste must be sealed up tightly. Also, if the waste is being stored underground, it must be stored in an area where there is little groundwater flowing through. If ground water does flow through a waste storage site, it could erode the containment canisters and carry waste away into the environment. Additionally, a disposal site must be found with little geological activity. We don't want to put a waste disposal site on top of a fault line, where 1000 years in the future an earthquake will occur, releasing the buried waste into the environment.
The waste will probably be encapsulated in large casks designed to withstand corrosion, impacts, radiation, and temperature extremes. Special casks will also have to be used to transfer fuel rods from their holding pools and dry storage areas next to the reactor to the permanent geological storage site.
Aerial View of Yucca Mountain
Image Courtesy Yucca Mountain Site Characterization Process
In the US a permanent storage site has been selected at Yucca Mountain, Nevada. Yucca Mountain is in an extremely dry area of Nevada. This minimizes the possibility of water seeping through the rock and corroding the casks. Additionally, if the casks do get corroded, there is not much water flow to carry the nuclear wastes away. The casks will be buried about 1500 feet underground, further preventing the waste from escaping. It is also far from the nearest population center in Las Vegas. While Yucca Mountain is near of a fault line, the fault is believed to be inactive. There are several volcanoes in the vicinity, but scientists believe that they have been dormant for almost a million years and think it unlikely that they will erupt in the next 10,000 years. Naturally, the people in Nevada are opposed to the creation of a nuclear waste repository. They express the common reaction, NIMBY (Not In My Backyard!!). This is because that although most evidence indicates that Yucca Mountain is a suitable place for storage, no one can guarantee that waste will not leak. However, quite a bit of research has already conducted around the Yucca site. Also, work on tunneling into the mountain has been started. The Yucca Mountain Deep Geological Repository is projected to be ready by the year 2010.
Today: March 01, 2006 at 14:7:19 PST
Iran Refuses to Back Down in Nuke Talks
By HENRY MEYER
ASSOCIATED PRESS
MOSCOW (AP) -
Iran refused to back down Wednesday in crucial talks on Russia's offer to enrich uranium for Tehran, but negotiators agreed to resume discussions Thursday on a plan meant to ease Western fears Iran wants to build an atomic bomb.
The chief Iranian nuclear negotiator also said his country did not intend to agree to Russian demands to impose another moratorium on uranium enrichment activity.
"I want to say that the process of enrichment is the sovereign right of any country," Ali Larijani said after nearly five hours of talks in a Moscow hotel. "You should not take away this right from nations which have a peaceful nuclear program, which consequently, includes also enrichment."
That drew an immediate response from the United States, which fears Iran will use enrichment to make uranium for a weapons program. Deputy State Department spokesman Adam Ereli said Larijani's declaration was "a move in the wrong direction" and cause for concern.
Iran's decision was "one of the reasons why, after trying to resolve this issue through negotiations and through a good and reasonable proposal from Russia, we're having to go to the (U.N.) Security Council," Ereli said.
Russia, whose offer to host Iran's uranium enrichment program has been backed by the United States and the European Union, acknowledged the talks were deadlocked. The enrichment offer is seen as a way to provide more assurances that Tehran could not divert uranium for military purposes.
"There was a constructive and serious discussion, but many questions remain unresolved," Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Kislyak was quoted as saying by the Interfax news agency.
However, with pressure mounting to move toward sanctions against Iran when the U.N nuclear watchdog's board of governors meets Monday, a joint statement said efforts to resolve the nuclear dispute should remain within the framework of the International Atomic Energy Agency.
"Both sides underlined the importance of talks and consultations for the resolution of the nuclear problem through diplomatic means and within the framework of the IAEA," said the statement issued by Russia's Security Council.
Iran insists its nuclear program is only to generate power, but many in the West - particularly the United States - fear Iran is aiming to develop atomic weapons. Enrichment is a process that can produce fuel for a nuclear reactor or fissile material for a weapon.
Larijani said that talks would resume Thursday ahead of the Iranian delegation's departure that day, according to RIA Novosti.
However, Kseniya Roshchina, a Russian spokeswoman, said she could not confirm whether further discussions would take place Thursday.
Wednesday's meeting marked a third round of talks after two previous negotiating sessions last week that made no visible progress. Igor Ivanov, the secretary of the Russian Security Council, led the Russian delegation.
Russia's top diplomat reiterated Moscow's call for Iran to return to a moratorium on enriching uranium as a condition for going forward with the Kremlin plan.
"What is necessary is for Iran to come back to the moratorium, to accept the joint venture proposal as a package that would be supported by the members of the governors' board of the IAEA," Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov told reporters in Budapest, where President Vladimir Putin was on a state visit.
The Vienna-based IAEA board of governors is to discuss the Iranian nuclear issue on Monday, and it could start a process leading to punishment by the U.N. Security Council, which has the authority to impose sanctions on Iran.
But it remains unclear if veto-wielding council members Russia and China, which have close economic and political ties with Iran, will back sanctions.
A confidential IAEA report made available to The Associated Press this week said a more than three-year-long investigation had not revealed a secret nuclear weapons program in Iran, but cautioned that a lack of sufficient cooperation from the Iranian side meant the agency could not rule it out.
The report said Iran plans to start setting up thousands of uranium-enriching centrifuges this year - a possible pathway to nuclear arms - even as it negotiates with Russia.
http://www.lasvegassun.com/sunbin/stories/w-me/2006/mar/01/030103780.html
Iran forges ahead on nukes
By Scott Peterson | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor
March 02, 2006 edition
Talks for a deal with Russia continued Wednesday. But Iran appears ready to defy the UN watchdog agency.
As a Monday UN deadline approaches, Iran is expanding its controversial nuclear enrichment program - a calculated dare that crosses a "red line" for Western governments concerned about Iranian atomic weapon ambitions.
Iran continued talks with Russia Wednesday about a proposal to shift Iranian enrichment to Russian soil - a move that Tehran until now has rejected.
But pressure on Iran increased this week when details of Iran's new steps to enrich uranium were revealed in a confidential report by the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), Mohamad ElBaradei. Iran plans to set up 3,000 centrifuges later this year.
The report states that the IAEA "has not seen any diversion of nuclear material to nuclear weapons," but lists a string of questions about Iran's nuclear program that it has yet to answer.
"The fact is, [the IAEA] has gotten more access [to Iranian facilities], and clarification has been better," says a Western official in Vienna who follows the IAEA closely. "But the actions that Iran has taken - to get enrichment up and running - that is clearly a provocation."
Iran says the material is to fuel a peaceful nuclear power program. Western capitals, led by Washington, believe that stated goal masks a desire to become a nuclear weapons state.
The 35-member IAEA Board of Governors voted on Feb. 4 to "report" Iran to the Security Council, for multiple disclosure violations of the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). Russia and China insisted that action be delayed until the March 6 meeting, to find a diplomatic solution.
The IAEA also requested that Iran cease all nuclear activities, to build confidence that its efforts are "exclusively peaceful."
But Iran's reaction has been in keeping with tough rhetoric from hard-line President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. He has vowed - like his reformist predecessor - that Iran will master uranium enrichment on its own soil, regardless of the diplomatic or military cost.
"It is partly a calculation, and partly a gamble," says Davoud Hermidas Bavand, a professor of international law at Alameh University in Tehran and a former diplomat at the UN.
"From a technical standpoint, [Iran] is not in violation of the NPT, but the reaction in the Western world is that all enrichment activity must be suspended," says Mr. Bavand, reached by phone in Tehran.
The decision to renew enrichment work now "was provocative, actually. Iran did not need to be involved in these primary activities," says Bavand. "It creates a lack of trust, [and] does not [yet] have any relation to real enrichment. It's just a scientific pursuit."
The IAEA report notes that tests began Feb. 11, when Iran fed a single centrifuge with converted uranium gas. Acascade of 10 connected machines was fed with gas several days later; a week ago, a 20-machine cascade was being vacuum tested. Some 3,000 are to be installed by the "fourth quarter of 2006."
The cascade is a chain of centrifuges in which each in turn enriches the gas.
Still, myriad technical problems have slowed past Iranian centrifuge efforts, and thousands of machines working in concert would be required to create sufficient quantities of nuclear fuel. Enriching to weapons-grade is even more complex.
"They have not done a whole lot. It was a calculated move to say to the Americans: 'If you keep pressing us, we can go all the way,' " says Hadi Semati, a Tehran University political scientist currently at the Woodrow Wilson Center in Washington. "It was a signal: 'Don't push us into that corner.' "
Two years of talks with the EU, during which Iran suspended all nuclear activities, failed last August. Until the Feb. 4 decision by the IAEA, Iran had also adhered voluntarily to provisions of the Additional Protocol of the NPT, which permits snap inspections.
But after the IAEA decision, Iran gave notice that it would only continue with its minimal obligations under the NPT. At Tehran's request, IAEA seals were removed from centrifuge equipment, and video surveillance cameras taken down.
"Iran is taking a pretty deliberate position not to cooperate with the IAEA," says David Albright, a former IAEA weapons inspector and head of the Institute for Science and International Security in Washington. "It's not a surprise, but it's sad, because it seems it will inevitably lead to a confrontation."
"They are beginning to think strategically," he says, such that UN weapons inspectors could pass information to the US military that "could help if there is an attack."
Though Ali Larijani, Iran's chief nuclear negotiator, visited Moscow for further negotiations Wednesday, few analysts expect a deal.
A separate compromise has also been floated, in which Iran would keep a token, experimental enrichment capacity in Iran itself - perhaps a cascade of 500 centrifuges - while the joint venture in Russia does industrial-scale work. Such a deal would be a "very bad compromise," says Albright. "If you allow 500, and they master that, they will want 5,000. You have to have the confrontation now, and see what happens. Not a year from now."
The likely shape of that confrontation remains unclear. Action by the Security Council is uncertain, though if it leads to sanctions they would most likely be applied gradually.
Iran has been working to avoid Security Council sanctions, but may also be figuring that it can withstand any step. "They believe they can stand up to the pressure," says Semati, at the Woodrow Wilson Center. "Whether that is reality of not, that is the perception. They want to change the framework of negotiations."
http://www.csmonitor.com/2006/0302/p06s01-wome.html
Countries with nuclear weapons
There are currently seven states that have successfully exploded nuclear weapons. Five are considered to be "nuclear weapons states", an internationally recognized status conferred by the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).
In order of acquisition of nuclear weapons these are: the United States of America, Russia (formerly the Soviet Union), the United Kingdom, France, and the People's Republic of China. Since the formulation of the NPT, two non-signatory states of the NPT have conducted nuclear tests—India and Pakistan.
Israel is also strongly suspected to have an arsenal of nuclear weapons though it has never confirmed or denied this, and there have been reports that over 100 nuclear weapons might be in its inventory. This status is not formally recognised by international bodies; none of these countries is currently signatories of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.
South Africa once possessed nuclear weapons but has since destroyed its arsenal.
North Korea has publicly declared itself to possess nuclear weapons though it has not conducted any confirmed tests and its ultimate status is still unknown.
Iran has been accused by Western nations of attempting to develop uranium enrichment technology for weapons purposes. As of February 4, 2006, the International Atomic Energy Agency referred Iran to the United Nations Security Council in response to Western concerns on their possible nuclear programs
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_with_nuclear_weapons
Radiological Terrorism: Sabotage of Spent Fuel Pool
The Consequence of Cesium-137 Release
A 400 t PWR pool holds about 10 times more long-lived radioactivity than a reactor core. A radioactive release from such a pool would cause catastrophic consequences. One major concern is the fission product cesium-137 (Cs-137), which made a major contribution (about three quarters) to the long-term radiological impact of the 1986 Chernobyl accident. A spent fuel pool would contain tens of million curies of Cs-137. Cs-137 has a 30 year half-life; it is relatively volatile and a potent land contaminant.
Vulnerability of Spent Fuel Pools
Until today, no accident or sabotage happened to cause the release of radioactivity from a spent fuel pool. However, many scientists and nuclear security experts are very concerned about a significant release of radioactivity by a possible spent fuel fire, especially in the case of dense packing of pools – a method that has been used by many reactor operators worldwide including for most pools in the US.
The most serious risk is the loss of pool water, which could expose spent fuel to the air, thus leading to an exothermal reactions of the zirconium cladding, which would catch fire at about 9000 °C. Thus, the Cs-137 in the rods could be dispersed into the surrounding atmosphere.
Risk of Spent Fuel Pools at Reprocessing Plants
Another risk is from the spent fuel pools at reprocessing plants. A reprocessing plant has even greater pool storage capacity than that of a reactor pool. Before reprocessing, the received spent fuels are stored in wet pools at the reprocessing plants. The buildings that house the pools could be even weaker than those pools at reactor sites. In particular, the roof of the building could be more vulnerable. Most of the sabotage scenarios conceivable for reactor pools could be applied to these pools at reprocessing plants. However, unlike those freshly discharged spent fuels at reactor pools with dense packing, the cooler spent fuel at reprocessing pools, which is at least two years old, could be difficult to ignite automatically in the absence of cooling.
http://www.inesap.org/bulletin22/bul22art30.htm
Precision munitions to close off a bunker's entrances, ventilation, and communications.
Thermobaric weapons -
The effects produced by FAEs (a long high duration pressure and heat impulse) are often likened to the effects produced by low-yield nuclear weapons.
The blast wave destroys unreinforced buildings and equipment. Unprotected personnel are injured or killed as well. The antipersonnel effect of the blast wave is more severe in foxholes, on personnel with body armor, and in "stiff" enclosed spaces such as caves, buildings, and bunkers.
The overpressure within the detonation can reach 3 MPa (430 lbf/in²) and the temperature can be 2500 to 3000 °C. Outside the cloud the blast wave travels at over 3 km/s. Following the initial blast is a phase in which the pressure drops below atmospheric pressure creating an airflow back to the center of the explosion strong enough to lift and throw a human. It draws in the unexploded burning fuel to create almost complete penetration of all non-airtight objects within the blast radius, which are then incinerated. Asphyxiation and internal damage can also occur to personnel outside the highest blast effect zone, e.g. in deeper tunnels, as a result of the blast wave, the heat, or the following air draw. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermobaric_weapon
Napalm down vents - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Napalm
Boots on the ground, Engineers w/munitions.
Special forces, infiltration, espionage, bribery.
Additional problems with nuclear bunker busters...
The largest problem with a nuclear munitions is fallout. Nuclear bunker busters are not believed to be free of fallout. Instead, the reasoning is that fallout will be contained within the shielding of the target attacked. However, underground nuclear testing has revealed a "chimney" or "smokestack" effect, whereby fallout "leaks" through the roof of the cavity created by the charge.
Another problem is that bunkers can just be built farther into the earth. If a tunnel can be built 300m into the side of a mountain then it would only require the same equipment to build it 1000m into the mountain. Then the potential target would be the openings like the ventilation system, which conventional bombs can handle. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_bunker_buster
What would those means be?
Back in '45, we alone had the A-bomb, at least for a few years. And the sheer scale of horror at Hiroshima & Nagasaki were enough to keep both sides in check, MADdly speaking. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atomic_bombings_of_Hiroshima_and_Nagasaki
I've no doubt we & others are developing such weapons. But using them poses the risk of retaliation by the other guys with something big & dirty, since that's all they may have. We may be surgical, but they or their sympathizers probably won't.
Though not as quick & final, we have other means of getting to underground bunkers that don't require the atom & the risks.
We will at some point.
Did Hiroshima set a precedent?
Too early to tell I think.
And do you think we would or should actually use small tactical nuke weapons as bunker busters? Wouldn't that set a precedent for others to follow?
ths for the input, relentless.
If nuclear plants are necessary to help ween us from the mid-east oil teat, why aren't we rushing to build them?
Virtually all spent fuel from U.S. commercial nuclear plants is currently stored at the plant sites themselves in spent fuel pools http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spent_fuel_pool & dry cask storage. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dry_cask_storage
Yucca Mountain for longterm underground storage of spent fuel & other nuclear waste is projected to be operational in 2010. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yucca_Mountain
Bird's eye view... http://maps.google.com/maps?ll=36.799938,-116.478767&spn=0.200574,0.324200&t=h&hl=en
Nuclear power plants are required at this point as dependence on oil is getting us into more problems than it's worth.
Nuclear bombs are required at this point as a detterent?
Yeah to some degree.
More likely nukes will be redesigned with vastly smaller warheads aimed at bunker busting.
To get at the enemies we have accumulated we are going to have to destroy bunkers built hundreds of yards underground.
Conventional weapons at this point can't do the job..
Good luck with the board... A monumental topic you've chosen.
Disadvantages are:
- Nuclear waste produced is dangerous for thousands of years
- Consequences of an accident might be disastrous
Currently most of our spent fuel rods are stored in salt mines in Nevada. To get a better look at what is going on in these salt mines, I am posting the actual chain reactions which occur during the decay cycle of Uranium. Keep in mind, each time a atom splits to form other elements heat energy is released in significant amounts. In a reactor this energy is used to heat water producing steam then the steam is pressure released to turn a generator which produces electricity, the steam cools becoming water again then goes back to the water storage facility and the process repeats itself over and over and over again. When these fuel rods from the reactors are spent, reactions no longer occur fast enough to cause effiecient steam creation, they are stored, the fission reactions are still occuring, just not fast enough to efficiently heat water. Once stored their is nothing to capture the released heat from the spent materials reactions, thus it gets hotter than hell in the storage areas. We store spent fuel in salt mines because the humidity levels are so low, this significantly delays corrosion, of the spent fuel's containers.
http://www.ccnr.org/decay_U238.html
For a quick education on the workings of breeder reactors, nuclear power, see below link.
http://education.jlab.org/qa/transuranic_01.html
If you have gone through both of the above it should become clear as to how simple it is to develop enough plutonium, about the size of a grapefruit, to build an atomic bomb, like the one dropped on Hiroshima Japan, ended WWII, all one needs is a breeder reactor and a little nitric acid. Walla !
A very good idea, Serious , very important issues indeed.
Mazzel - Tov & Hats-off
Dubi
How should we deal with nuclear proliferation?
Nuclear proliferation is the spread of nuclear weapons production technology and knowledge to nations which do not already have such capabilities. It has been opposed by many nations with and without nuclear weapons, who fear that more countries with nuclear weapons may increase the possibility of nuclear warfare, de-stabilize international or regional relations, or infringe upon the national sovereignty of individual nation-states. Other nations have pursued their own independent weapons development, calling into question the authority of some countries being able to specify who can or cannot have their own defensive nuclear weapons.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_proliferation
Do we need nuclear power plants?
A nuclear power plant (NPP) is a thermal power station in which the heat source is one or more nuclear reactors generating nuclear power.
As of 2005 there are 443 licensed nuclear power reactors in the world [1], of which 441 are currently operational [2]. Together they produce about 17% of the world's electric power.
Advantages of NPPs are:
- Essentially no greenhouse gas emissions
- Does not produce air pollutants such as carbon monoxide, - sulfur dioxide, mercury, nitrogen oxides or particulates
- The quantity of waste produced is small
- Small number of accidents
- Low fuel costs
- Large fuel reserves
- Ease of transport and stockpiling of fuel
- Future designs may be small and modular (SSTAR, etc.)
Disadvantages are:
- Nuclear waste produced is dangerous for thousands of years
- Consequences of an accident might be disastrous
- Risk of nuclear proliferation associated with some designs
- High capital costs
- In the past long construction periods, imposing large finance costs and delaying return on investment
- High maintenance costs
- High cost of decommissioning plants
- Current designs are all large-scale
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_plant
Nuclear Energy & Society
Overall, nuclear energy has proven to be most beneficial to our society. As a result of this technology, the United States has decreased its dependency on foreign-imported oil. In fact, the United States saves about 12 billion dollars each year through the lack of oil it imports from other nations. Nuclear energy has also proven to be a protector of the environment because of the lack of CO2, greenhouse gasses, and other gases it emits into the atmosphere. There are, however, some major drawbacks to using nuclear energy. These drawbacks include the actual safety of using nuclear energy, the waste it produces, and the atomic weapons that nuclear energy promotes. Overall, however, we believe that the use of nuclear energy greatly outweighs any other source of energy.
http://www.umich.edu/~gs265/society/nuclear.htm
Benefits of Nuclear Power
• Safety - No form of electricity generation is completely safe but nuclear power has a good record. In the last forty years of using nuclear power there have been no fatalities occurring as the result of operation in the United States (Smith).
• Decreased Dependency on Oil - Decreasing our dependency on imported oil is beneficial from a political and environmental stand point (Smith).
• Economical - “Fuel costs for an equivalent amount of power run from 1/3rd to 1/6th the cost for fossil production, and capital and non-fuel operating costs are roughly equivalent, resulting in the overall cost of nuclear generation of electricity running 50% to 80% that of other sources (Smith).”
• Reliability - Nuclear power plants and fossil run plants are equivalent in their reliability. “Nuclear power plant capacity factors average about 75% (Smith).”
• Sustainability - Through the use of breeder reactors the generation of electricity could continue for over a thousand years at present levels (Smith).
http://www.personal.psu.edu/users/a/l/alt198/nuclear.htm
SL-1 - First nuclear power plant accident in U.S.
The SL-1, the Stationary Low-Power Reactor Number One, was a U.S. experimental military nuclear power reactor. It was destroyed in the first nuclear power plant accident in the United States. Part of the Army Nuclear Power Program, during design and build it was called the Argonne Low Power Reactor (ALPR). It was intended to provide electrical power and heat for small, remote military facilities, such as radar sites near the Arctic Circle, and those in the DEW Line. The design power was 3 megawatts (thermal). Operating power was 200 kW electrical, 400 kW thermal, for space heating. For testing it was located approximately forty miles (60 km) west of Idaho Falls, Idaho, in the National Reactor Testing Station,
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SL-1
India unveils 'world's safest nuclear reactor'
rediff.com, August 25, 2005 14:24 IST
India unveiled before the international commuity Thursday its revolutionary design of 'A Thorium Breeder Reactor' that can produce 600 MW of electricity for two years 'with no refuelling and practically no control manoeuvres.'
Designed by scientists of the Mumbai-based Bhabha Atomic Research Centre, the ATBR is claimed to be far more economical and safer than any power reactor in the world.
Most significantly for India, ATBR does not require natural or enriched uranium which the country is finding difficult to import. It uses thorium -- which India has in plenty -- and only requires plutonium as 'seed' to ignite the reactor core initially.
Eventually, the ATBR can run entirely with thorium and fissile uranium-233 bred inside the reactor (or obtained externally by converting fertile thorium into fissile Uranium-233 by neutron bombardment).
BARC scientists V Jagannathan and Usha Pal revealed the ATBR design in their paper presented at the week-long 'international conference on emerging nuclear energy systems' in Brussels. The design has been in the making for over seven years.
According to the scientists, the ATBR while annually consuming 880 kg of plutonium for energy production from 'seed' rods, converts 1,100 kg of thorium into fissionable uranium-233. This diffrential gain in fissile formation makes ATBR a kind of thorium breeder.
The uniqueness of the ATBR design is that there is almost a perfect 'balance' between fissile depletion and production that allows in-bred U-233 to take part in energy generation thereby extending the core life to two years.
This does not happen in the present day power reactors because fissile depletion takes place much faster than production of new fissile ones.
BARC scientists say that "the ATBR with plutonium feed can be regarded as plutonium incinerator and it produces the intrinsically proliferation resistant U-233 for sustenance of the future reactor programme."
They say that long fuel cycle length of two years with no external absorber management or control manoeuvres "does not exist in any operating reactor."
The ATBR annually requires 2.2 tonnes of plutonium as 'seed'. Althouth India has facilities to recover plutonium by reprocessing spent fuel, it requires plutonium for its Fast Breeder Reactor programme as well. Nuclear analysts say that it may be possible for India to obtain plutonium from friendly countries wanting to dismantle their weapons or dispose of their stockpiled plutonium.
http://in.rediff.com/news/2005/aug/25nuke.htm
Breeder Reactors - A solution to our energy crisis?
A breeder reactor is a nuclear reactor that breeds fuel by producing more fissile material than it consumes.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breeder_reactor
Nuclear Chemistry Recycling Spent Reactor Fuel http://www.chemcases.com/nuclear/nc-13.htm
Three options are available for cooled spent fuel rods; they can remain at the sites from which they have been removed from service, be moved to a more permanent site for storage or they can be reprocessed to remove the uranium and plutonium. In either case, these fuel rods must cool in storage ponds near the reactor for several months in order to reduce their short-lived radioactivity and to allow them to dissipate their initial high thermal energy. Reprocessing involves chopping up the fuel rods and dissolving the pieces.
The plutonium and uranium are then removed and chemically separated. The byproducts of reprocessing, transuranic elements and fission products can be encapsulated in glass and disposed as waste. Gaseous diffusion or other processes can be used to enrich the uranium. The plutonium can be mixed with enriched uranium to make mixed oxide (MOX) reactor fuel. Purified plutonium can also be used for nuclear weapons. Great Britain and France have built large reprocessing plants to produce MOX fuel. They reprocess spent fuel not only from reactors in their respective countries, but also from reactors in other nations.
Why Reprocess Spent Nuclear Fuel? http://www.cri.ca/nuclear_energy/datagb/cycle/combustiblesuses.htm
The first solution is to get rid of the spent fuel as it is, by burying it deep underground in a stable geological formation. This implies demonstrating the durability of the additional barriers encasing it, since the assembly itself does not represent an optimal barrier. This solution also means virtually giving up any hope of using the energy-yielding material it contains, even in the distant future. Sweden has opted for this solution and the United States has also given it priority in study programs.
The second solution involves reprocessing the spent fuel. This means chemically separating its various components to manage each different category in a specific manner. The fact that the material handled is highly radioactive makes this a difficult and costly operation. Uranium, plutonium (perhaps minor actinides too in the future), and all highly radioactive fission products are separated in this way. Once isolated, they can be stored in the most suitable way, bearing in mind that most of their radioactivity will have decayed in a few centuries. They are incorporated within a glass matrix, the composition of which is specially designed to house this complex mixture. The glass is very slow to corrode and will not easily release the radioactive products it incorporates.
Nuclear Terrorism and Nuclear Reactors
Extracting Plutonium from Nuclear Reactor Spent Fuel Would Increase Risk of Terrorists Acquiring Nuclear Weapons and Exacerbate Nuclear Waste Problem
While some supporters of a U.S. reprocessing program believe it would help solve the nuclear waste problem, reprocessing would not reduce the need for storage and disposal of radioactive waste. Worse, reprocessing would make it easier for terrorists to acquire nuclear weapons materials, and for nations to develop nuclear weapons programs.
http://www.ucsusa.org/global_security/nuclear_terrorism/extracting-plutonium-from-nuclear-reactor-sp...
Fissile Materials Basics - http://www.ucsusa.org/global_security/nuclear_terrorism/fissile-materials-basics.html
If a terrorist group exploded just one nuclear weapon, hundreds of thousands of people could die. Because there is no effective protection against nuclear terrorism, the only solution is to prevent terrorists from obtaining nuclear weapons, and the fissile materials needed to make them, in the first place.
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