Talk:Radioactive waste/Archive 1

message: how reliable are sources [10] and [11]? The papers are written by Kenneth J. Dillon who has no qualifications in the field ( he has a docotate in history) and the papers have no references. are the arguments in the papers valid? no personal attack intended. sorry about the spelling.
cheers, Ben 
----
More could be added to describe the vitrification plants being built by the US government.
:True enough, IP 12.150.68.29. Andrewa 16:52, 27 Oct 2004 (UTC)
thread_title: Early comments

message: I think this article needs to contain more information about high-level waste:
::the contents of high-level waste
::quantitative evaluation of the hazards and evolution with time
::make the paragraph about waste disposal more clear 
--Philipum 11:32, 25 May 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  more! 

message: I'm not sure about the Bernard Cohen book that you've provided a link to, Pstudier. I think it ought to be marked in some way as "disputed". Where an article in Wikipedia itself is disputed, there's a clear method of stating that; but I'm not sure how to mark a reference.
I'm not even sure that a reference to it is called for, since you're not referring to it as a source of any information. Many of the claims made in it, if presented as fact in Wikipedia itself, would cause uproar.Clive
:As discussed above, I have read works of Bernard Cohen. Thank you for pointing out he is disputed! His books are dangerously convincing. The author has a very skilful way of providing precise information while omitting aspects that do not serve his purposes. A good basis for debates! --Philipum 06:55, 30 May 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Bernard Cohen

message: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Radioactive_waste&diff=3543071&oldid=3543034
This edit confused classes of nucleus with level.  I think it is also wrong about peapons production, but that depend on how the inconsistencies are resolved.
I am deleting the paragraph.
--David R. Ingham 19:30, 6 August 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Ahem, how can you use the word "merely" here? This is uranium and thorium that probably would have stayed out of the biosphere roughly forever (the elements of the 16 known Oklo, Gabon reactor are still in place after 1.5 billion years). Coal plants dump it into the air we breathe. I see no reason why we can't bury transuranics so they stay in place as well as the Oklo materials, and I see no reason we need ever breathe them. 
although they have infinite lives, their life in the biosphere is not infinite. It should be noted that all the stable element carcinogens in coal-fired exhausts are naturally abundant in the environment, and we and the whole biosphere have evolved in their presence; they're of local importance around power stations (and domestic coal fires), but of no significance whatsoever on a global scale. (Unlike the CO2 produced in coal burning.) Clive 12:37, 9 August 2005 (UTC)

text: The same argument goes for the transuranics-- the amount of radiation from them is of no global importance once they're buried. As for what specific alpha-emitters we evolved in the presense of, even discussing that presumes that your body can tell one alpha from another. Actually, they all have pretty much the same amount of energy (due to the basic alpha process), and the producers are all chemically actinide rare-earths which behave biologically in similar ways, and the main variable is the alpha dose you get (a function of half-life and isotope dose). Which is controlled by how much you let loose into the biosphere before you bury it. As for evolution, I hardly think it adapted us to tolerate U and Th and of course Po (remember where that comes from), but not Np or Cm. Evolution gave you enough resistance to cancer to reach puberty and raise your first crop of kids, which means its more or less done with you by age 30. So long as your alpha-emitter dose is not high enough to give you cancer before then, evolution is likely to be "blind" to it. Be it thorium or be it americium. Sbharris 05:13, 23 May 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Transuranic waste 

message: This was edited out:"Eventually all radioactive waste decays into non-radioactive elements; for example, after 40 years 99.9% of radiation in spent nuclear fuel disappears"
With the stated reason: (The statement "after 40 years 99.9% of radiation in spent nuclear fuel disappears" is incorrect. Upon viewing that website, it was referring to the radioactivity of the power plant minues the SNF.) 
Quote from the link:"For instance, a newly-discharged light water reactor fuel assembly is so radioactive that it emits several hundred kilowatts of heat, but after a year this is down to 5kW and after five years, to one kilowatt. In 40 years the radioactivity in it drops to about one thousandth of the level at discharge."
Looks to me like they're talking about the fuel. DV8 2XL 18:54, 4 December 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Removed statement 

message: I removed:
A permanent solution for disposal of high level radioactive waste has been mooted by The Mineral Planning Group.  This involves first vitrifying the waste (see above) then placing waste in purpose designed canister (based upon the Whittle Eathquake bomb that was specifically constructed to penetrate deep into solid concrete).  These canisters are then transported to an internationally agreed location/s above the Deep Oceanic Trench where the sea is at its deepest above the earths crust and thick sediments have built up before being drawn down into the mantle by plate-tectonic movement.  The canisters (shaped like a rocket with specially hardened casing, are then released to fall some 6km+ by gravity and penetrate deep into the sediments.  Plate tectonic movement will safely yet inextricably carry the waste deeper and deeper into the earths mantle from whence the radioactive material originated for it to be finally absorbed into the molten magma.  This concept places the waste as far from human habitation as one can acheive on earth and ulitamately removes any risk. It is recognised that there would be a need for internationally agreed protocols in order to transport the waste through international waters and this is likely to be a long and drawn-out process.  However, the solution is founded on solid scientific/geological concepts and will hopefully be adopted rather than continuing to store such waste on or near the surface of earth and its biosphere.  If there are sound reasons for rejecting the concept please put them forward in an edit and let the matter be fully aired.
First, it was in the wrong section ("accidents").  Second, there are no references.  Third, we don't debate, we report.  This paragraph needs work before inclusion. Simesa 02:41, 13 December 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Removed statement #2 

message: I have setup Radioactive waste management to redirect here, because this article deals with how radioactive waste is managed and disposed of, but the specific management of radioactive waste could be made into its own article, though it might strip this article of a lot of content. I am not willing to strip this article without a little bit of consensus though. --Matthew 19:02, 2 February 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I really don't see the point of two topics as the term 'waste' presupposes the need for disposal. There are other radioactive materials, of course, however they are not necessarily waste and are dealt with under their own headings. That being said I would support renaming this article Radioactive waste management as it is the more appropriate title and redirecting to it from here.--DV8 2XL 15:01, 6 February 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I think it might be possible to separate them and we may reach that point in the future, but I think it should stay together for now. If we do a separation, perhaps it should be between high and low level waste. I prefer that the article be named "radioactive waste", since it is shorter and it is expected that disposal will be discussed, but it isn't that big of a deal as long as one redirects to the other. -- Kjkolb 17:20, 6 February 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Perhaps Kjkolb is right: if it ain't broke don't fix it. --DV8 2XL 17:34, 6 February 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Seperate article: Radioactive waste management? 

message: In February, 2006, a new U.S. initiative, the Global Nuclear Energy Partnership was announced - it would be an international effort to reprocess fuel in a manner making proliferation infeasible, while making nuclear power available to developing countries. Would someone like to blend GNEP into this article? Simesa 20:50, 9 February 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  [[Global Nuclear Energy Partnership]] 

message: Maybe I am having a "blond moment" (in my case redhead) but I don't see the reason for reverting two paragraphs with so little explanation.  David R. Ingham 06:29, 10 March 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Radioactive_waste&diff=43084994&oldid=43074797 

message: Found this addition from a while ago. Looks like it basically covers little new, but copying it here anyway. --Christopherlin 17:13, 23 March 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  School paper? 

message: I've been on a rampage today, looking for stuff that needs to be completely redone. So I rewrote the section on space disposal. It no longer contains any speculation on the feasibility of space disposal using technology that hasn't been created yet. More importantly, it now refers to a reliable source. I hope I haven't hurt anyone's feelings but it really needed to go. -- Captaindan 23:50, 17 September 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Thanks. These are people who nearly had seizures when we launched Cassini at Saturn with a few kg of Pu-238 in it. Even if we had a magical propulsion system for launching actinides into space for free, I doubt that politically people would tolerate the booster failure risk rate. If 1% of these things are going to fail and go into the ocean, why not just include the other 99% as well, while we're at it? ;). At least if you pick your spot, you can drop casks into ocean crustal subduction zones (which has been suggested). SBHarris 00:11, 18 September 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Space disposal

message: Not being sure of the Australian laws on copyrights, I tagged the section as Copyvio since it was a direct cut-and-paste.  The information is good, but the copyright is suspect.  Simesa 22:15, 11 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: What part of Aus copyright laws are you unsure about? Im pretty sure I can help, our laws are pretty broadTalk User:Fissionfox 10:57, 23 March 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Copyvio 11-December-2006 

message: I couldn't find the reference to sacrifice zones in the Jan. 2007 Scientific American.  Can User:Benjiwolf be more specific?  In any case I don't believe that any place in the US so designated, with the exception of the nuclear bomb test sites. Paul Studier 23:38, 18 January 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Sacrifice zone? 

message: Hey! It was "american scientist" Jan/Feb...sorry...not "scientific american"...one of them should really change the name some...(clearly one did it to get some of the readership of the other with a similar name)...it was a review as i said, by an MIT physics lecturer of the book "The Nuclear Borderlands"...towards the back section in the reviews...in his review he states "permanently uninhabitable"...so thats what i first went with...yet then i looked up and retrieved that DOE document i gave a link to(1), which is possibly one of the sources the book writer got his material from as the DOE mentions 108 sites...and the book mentions 109 sites so i figured they were talking about the same sites...and it is possible he overstated his case to "permanently uninhabitable"...so i went back and adjusted how i phrased it after looking briefly at a couple of the sites the DOE is trying to remediate...and of course no place will ever be "permanently uninhabitable" as of nuclear waste...it may take tens of thousands of years yes...or much more...yet at some point it is livable again...yet the DOE does state in that document that some sites will not be able to be remediated fully, ever, and people obviously wont be able to live on them or drink the water for a long time despite strong efforts to clean the sites up...I completely disagree though with "too much scaremongering"...the article previously just gave no sense at all about the harm of radioactive materials...it was some abstract document about nuclear chemistry and didnt at all give the notion..which is true...that this is the most difficult and deangerous waste we have to deal with and that it can sometimes last very very long time periods relative to out lifespans...also the article gave no sense about the scope and scale of the types of amounts of waste we are dealing with...it really seemed to me the article was covering up the realities that it is a serious problem...yet i am going to add that some of the "sacrifice zones" are smaller sites and research labs where the remediation issues are somewhat simpler and restoral of some areas is simpler and of more reasonable cost...i need to skim thru more of the DOE document to get a better sense of the 100+ sites...
as to transport issues...i agree in the US so far it has been handled highly professionally with few to no mishaps at least that we hear about...(yet remember much of this stuff is classified and for instance in the soviet union accidents may have happened that we just never heard about)(just read that a ukrainian scientist was even imprisoned after questioning the "official" estimates of damage...we dont hear the true story on this one im afraid)..also the US hasnt been transporting much nuclear waste yet...it has been stored on site mostly...now that they have Carlsbad to take some to, there will be much higher rates of transport...they definitely take serious care so accidents dont happen...yet in all their shipments they fully acknowledge that accidents may indeed happen and take it very seriously and plan accordingly...and over time, say many thousands of years of nuclear waste shipments...accidents just by random chance will happen...and surely in countries with lower standards and care...i felt it good to give a sense of this so it can be addressed as people reading the article might want to go into this field or already be in it...and to better plan or concentrate site locations and waste sites accordingly...anyways i worded that carefully...i just said there was serious concern...which there is, just read a shipment log and plan...and that "possible" accidents would occur over time...which is a very mild statement...just read there have been accidents during transport in bolivia with defective shielding and bus passengers got irradiated...it came out in a court in the UK that a shipment had defective shielding...now reading about a guy that salvaged some nuclear scrap laying around in mexico and later they turned his truck into scrap and made it into chairs and furniture legs for shipment to the states and canada...and just the furniture set the alarms ringing as the new truck drove thru a los alamos monitoring site by chance...then they found the roads the guy drove on were heavily contaminated...and these things are very hard to find and hidden from the public even when the find out...you really have to search for this stuff...they avoid publication at all costs or put classification holds...will we hear about a serious leak in china??? i think not my friend...i think when u start digging ur going to find many accidents over time...just in transport...after now reading some of this stuff i may even strengthen my wording on the transport section...
as to ocean contamination...i very much disagree...i will retrieve some articles and give links to some of the islands in the pacific and concerning nuclear waste in the seas...i think its a serious issue...it is totally banned...yet surely occurs anyways...at least buried in land we can keep track of it...that line "evidence is lacking" i think is false and also encourages dangerous behaviors...im taking it out till u come up with some studies showing there is no harm in dumping nuclear waste in the oceans...
anyways i do think that in the states it might be able to be handled with few mishaps and in a responsible manner...and its too critical and valuable an industry for the states to realistically abandon it at this time point...it is tough to get away with a nuclear materials accident or leak...and the standards are relatively high in the US when it comes to radioactivity...its one of the few forms of pollution everybody pretty much takes seriously...yet in many of these other countries i have serious doubt as to their handling of nuclear waste...there is much bribery and corruption still...lack of transparency...we didnt even hear about a massive accident (chernobyl) until they no longer could hide it...nuclear waste and contamination worldwide is a serious problem and i dont think anyone is taking it seriously...the states might be able to mostly remediate a site like oak ridge...yet what of these other countries when they start to have sites like that? even if they wanted as high a standards, they just dont have the money in many cases to be able to pursue them, and we know full well u can get away with whatever u want in some of these countries...Benjiwolf 13:02, 19 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Are you taking seriously the idea of choking the world in its own CO2 in a century? Now many people have died from nuclear radiation, vs coal and gas mining accidents?  How many people from nuclear powerplant accidents (even counting Chernobyl which was ridiculously underdesigned with no containment, then had its backup systems deliberately disabled)? Answer, Chernobyl might be responsible, in its entirety, for one SINGLE month of traffic deaths in any given large developed county. Just one. So get some sense of perspective. You're not dying of radiation. You ARE choking. You do far more dangerous things everyday (like drive) than live anywhere near a modern nuke plant. SBHarris 13:20, 19 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Choking is a metaphor. It's poisoning you/us, not radiation. And yes, you seem to have a bad case of double-standarditis. We'd do better to go back to a system of electric trains powered by nukes in the US, but our resources and our geography aren't quite as conducive to it. Nor do we have enough mountains and rivers to power the rest-- our country just isn't geographically built that way. All our good hydroelectric sites are already in use. We've traditionally made our living by aggriculture (which if we subsidized to the extent you do, would bankrupt us) and manufacturing (somebody has to make things). We're also quite active in cleaning up the world (Saddam Hussein and his genocide-- even though it wasn't strictly our business to do it-- the rest of the world should have been in on this), while the Swiss have typically sat on their hands, done nothing against world aggression, and basically just counted their money (during WW II, the Nazi's money). All this can save you a lot of energy! The rest of the world cannot live that way, however. I'm glad your personal environmental footprint so low. I suppose your wife and children commute on the Swiss trains also? Families are still needed, you know. Just not large ones. SBHarris 18:19, 19 January 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  to "Pstudier"...& Transport & Ocean Dumping... a discussion 

message: "double standarditis"??? i said in my edits to this that i am pro-nuclear energy...i am just for some accurate info as to the serious problem of nuke waste so the industry will have to competently address this problem...this article was covering up the realities that there are problems with the nuke energy issue, and that the amounts of nuke waste involved are large...you can be pro-nuke power & anti-nuke pollution...and it is not some rosy world where nuclear energy is our end all and be all, sent from the heavens and devoid of problems...this industry like others needs criticism...and actually i have american citizenship as well, by some accounts still, and my grandfather fought with honors and medals for bravery in WWII in europe...and my brother serves in the US military now in a "special unit"...so lay off...and for the record i felt if saddam was such a problem, which in some ways he was, then he should have been taken out thru espionage, air power, and commando raid...not massive land invasion and occupation... even tho such a scenario puts people like in my brothers area of the military in greater danger perhaps...and i think ull find that the general (Norman S) that used mainly air power in the Gulf War I, who was very successful with a decisive victory...eliminating iraqs capability to aggress, was of a similar opinion before this "foray" into the desert of cheneys and bushies...and did GW find any weapons of serious note after Normans victory...no... Benjiwolf 19:53, 19 January 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  to the doctor 

message: "...sometimes many thousands of acres[5](&DOE)[6] The DOE wishes to try..."
Is the "(&DOE)" an attempt at wiki syntax? Or is it just an error or something? Talk User:Fissionfox 09:51, 23 March 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Error? 

message: The following passage "Thus, these wastes must be shielded for centuries and isolated from the living environment for hundreds of millennia" and the few preceeding it need to be deleted or edited because they present information in biased way. The particles with half-life of "hundreds millenia" are -while not entirely stable - not active enough to be hazardous in any meaningful way. It's a misconception that anything radioactive (i.e. unstable) is dangerous.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 137.205.8.2 (talk) 12:40, 25 October 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  The nature and significance of radioactive waste, Physics 

message: The Waste Isolation Pilot Project (WIPP) was commissioned a few years ago, but the first sentence in the geological disposal section says that there won't be one till 2010.
I put in a reference to WIPP, but I did not want to take on the task of rewriting the first part of this section.  Perhaps WIPP is not considered a deep final repository?  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 134.67.6.15 (talk) 14:58, 8 January 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  First deep final repositories in 2010? 

message: The remix & return idea sounds rather unlikely to me. The problem with spent fuel is not just that the Uranium has been refined to a thousandfold concentration. If that were all, it would indeed be a simple matter of remixing it to get the original level of radiation. But the Uranium has been made many times more radioactive. It might be an option for less radioactive waste that has the level of radioactivity of pure natural Uranium, but not for the Uranium itself. For that, it would have to be diluted to a much larger volume than what originally came out of the mine. In other words, it wouldn't fit back in. Or is the idea to dispose of just a fraction of the waste this way? If so, that should be made clear in the article. What percentage could be disposed of this way? Only a tiny fraction, I assume. DirkvdM 11:53, 12 April 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: They are saying that after some period of cooling, the waste is about as radioactive as the original uranium ore or less. However the fission products and actinides in spent fuel are chemically different from the original uranium and its decay products, and therefore some like neptunium-237 may not be as well isolated from spreading in groundwater etc. I think it is brought up more to make a rhetorical point, that uranium is already radioactive and in the earth and that fissioning it does not increase radioactivity except in the short run. --JWB (talk) 07:58, 10 March 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Remix & return 

message: I've heard that due to the mass of most nuclear waste, it is reasonably safe to simply dump it deep into the ocean. Is there any truth to this claim? 71.242.154.167 06:56, 7 June 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: There's a bit in the article about this, under the heading Geological disposal, second-to-last paragraph, starting "Sea-based options for disposal of radioactive waste (...)". Phaunt 09:13, 7 June 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Thanks, didn't see that before. 71.242.154.167 01:43, 8 June 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: The subduction zone option would probably be the safest method of sea dumping, as the waste would be pulled into the mantle and destroyed. However, wouldn't there be a slight possibility that radiation could escape during this process? Due to the nature of high-level waste, it would need to be stored in (probably) lead barrels, which would then melt into the mantle and affect the composition of the mantle itself. Just stipulating, but wouldn't this have an effect on the rest of the world? Leon Xavier (talk) 09:28, 30 March 2008 (UTC)

text: (1) Just to be precise, the idea is that radioactivity would be dispersed into mantle material and kept out of the biosphere for very long time, allowing time for its natural decay.  (2) There is no particular need for lead containers; carbon steel may well suffice.  (3) The amount of container material, waste/or and radioactivity mixed into the mantle would surely be too small to have any effect on the mantle behavior. PJG 20:26, 30 March 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Ocean?