The Nuclear Reactor Graveyard - Page 1
Forum section: electronics / general

author: electromotive
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: March 28, 2019, 06:40:00 pm
content: In the grand scheme of things.... that's a *small* graveyard.This is truly terrifying:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ocean_disposal_of_radioactive_wasteIt's unfortunate that previous irresponsibility has sullied nuclear power. The newest generation of reactors are safe and self consume most of their waste products, leaving little if any *legacy* contamination.

author: apis
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: March 28, 2019, 06:55:50 pm
content: People were nuts back then. I recently found out about this:http://www.spiegel.de/international/tons-of-mercury-found-in-the-baltic-sea-europe-s-underwater-chemical-dump-a-434329.html

author: helius
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: March 28, 2019, 07:17:32 pm
content: Quote from: electromotive on March 28, 2019, 06:40:00 pmThe linked article says that the contamination detected was "negligible". Why is this terrifying again?One would hope that more thought and coordination would be applied to the problem—bores in geologically stable seafloor were studied, I think—but the ocean is the ultimate thermal sink and fission moderator. Putting waste there makes it extremely difficult to reprocess, but I see few other downsides.

author: tszaboo
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: March 28, 2019, 07:32:34 pm
content: meh:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lake_Karachay"Built in the late 1940s Mayak was one of Russia's most prominent nuclear weapons factories. Mayak was kept secret by the government until 1990. When Russian president Boris Yeltsin signed a 1992 decree opening the area, Western scientists were able to gain access. The sediment of the lake bed is estimated to be composed almost entirely of high level radioactive waste deposits to a depth of roughly 11 feet (3.4 m).In 1994, a report revealed that 5 million cubic meters of polluted water had migrated from Lake Karachay, and was spreading to the south and north at 80 meters per year, "threatening to enter water intakes and rivers". The authors acknowledged that "theoretical hazards developed into actual events".In November 1994, officials from the Russian Ministry of Atomic Energy stated that Soviet officials initiated a process following the 1957 Kyshtym disaster resulting in the transfer of 3 billion curies of high level nuclear waste into deep wells at three other sites.The Techa river, which provides water to nearby areas, was contaminated, and about 65% of local residents fell ill with radiation sickness. Doctors called it the "special disease" because they were not allowed to note radiation in their diagnoses as long as the facility was secret. In the village of Metlino , it was found that 65% of residents were suffering from chronic radiation sickness. Workers at the plutonium plant were also affected.""Some parts of the lake are extremely radioactive (600 röntgens/hour) and one could receive a lethal dose of radiation in 30 minutes"

author: helius
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: March 28, 2019, 08:07:36 pm
content: I see that as shifting the goalposts, as the discussion was about waste from nuclear power, not weapons production. The history of weapons production and testing is rife with environmental disasters, the civilian power industry much less so.It has been argued that the whole reason for developing nuclear power was to facilitate building bombs, but I personally don't put a lot of stock in it. Yes, maybe fission power was accelerated by a few decades by the Manhattan Project, but it would have happened anyway as the most plentiful energy source on Earth capable of being supplied continuously.

author: dmills
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: March 28, 2019, 08:43:10 pm
content: One can however make a reasonable argument that one of the design criteria for the civil reactors back in the 1960s was to operate in a manner that produced usable weapons Pu of sufficient isotopic purity (And most modern designs are basically 1960s cores).The typical 6 months or so of a fuel cycle strongly hints that way (You don't want to leave the Pu in there too long lest Pu 240 contaminate the 'good' stuff).About the only reactors that I can think of that don't have this short, low burn up fuel cycle are, ironically, the military ones, but they have other tradeoffs. The need to be able to restart a propulsion reactor without waiting weeks for the core poisons to decay says that there must be a LOT of reactivity available by fully pulling the rods, probably enough that if you did it to a fresh, cold core with no core poison load you would transition from delayed to prompt criticality, and **nobody** likes a prompt criticality in the neighbourhood (See SL1 for that particular cockup).I would not be surprised to learn that the military plants have to use borated water when the fuel is fresh to keep them shutdown when cold (One of the BORAX experimental plants had to resort to this, and then had a problem when the improvised power system failed and they could not run the pump to inject more after shutdown).Regards, Dan.