Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Pastimes : Let's Talk About Our Feelings!!! -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Jacques Chitte who wrote (21281)	5/4/1998 4:01:00 PM
From: LoLoLoLita	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 108807

Alex, God help us if anyone wants to put this stuff in volcanoes! Yes, there is talk of using reactors to transmute the long-lived radioactinides to stable forms. This would be much much more expensive than any of the other disposal options! Also, it would require prior separation of the long-lived actinides from everything else, then fabrication of the material into targets that could be placed in reactors, etc. Yes, I know that there are some hard-core pro-nukies who advance these ideas. I consider it to be on the extreme fringe. IMO, just as extreme as the views of Greenpeace. re cost and safety of reprocessing. MED/AEC/ERDA/DOE has been doing it since before 1945, most recently at DOE facilities near Idaho Falls, ID and Aiken, SC. I am not aware of any U.S. accidents at reprocessing facilities that resulted in releases to the environment. Other countries though have had such accidents. Windscale/Sellafield, IMHO, with the routine ocean dumping of radioactive waste and its 1957 fire, is a disaster. And the Soviet Union/Russia had a big accident at Tomsk involving reprocessing, and maybe others as well. I am not aware of any such accidents in Japan or France. Pu-239 recovered from spent fuel can be mixed with uranium fuel of low enrichment to make what is called MOX (mixed-oxide fuel). As I stated previously, doing so would reduce the need for mining uranium and performing isotopic separation. MOX is something I would support. Other valuable materials could be recovered as well. Both Cs-137 and Co-60 could be used a gamma sources for industrial or medical purposes. There must be others as well. Further, the cost of separation can be at least partialy compensated for by recovering all the materials of value. Thereby, the volume (and radioactivity) of the waste requiring disposal can be significantly reduced. In summary. In order to select an optimal approach to handling spent fuel, we need to look at the entire fuel cycle, from start to finish, and evaluate both the economic costs and environmental effects of any proposed strategy. When the question is looked at this way, I believe the reprocessing of commercial spent fuel and use of MOX reactors is the optimal solution. David