re: #86 davinvalkri

I think I read somewhere that most of that nuclear waste, assuming it’s Uranium, was of the comparatively inert variety (U-238?) and could just be stuffed anywhere. The actual live stuff (U-235?) could simply be recycled into new fuel. Nevada is getting WAY too uppity over Yucca Mountain.

It’s not the uranium. U235 has a comfortably large half life if it’s not concentrated to where a chain reaction gets started. (A bit less than a billion years is still a long time). U238 has a yet longer half life. Your problem with nuclear waste is that the fission byproducts are often radioactive themselves, and with much shorter half lives. And their decay products tend to still be radioactive, and the neutrons emitted by fissioning U235 bump some initially stable atoms in the shielding and moderating components of a reactor up to radioactive isotopes.

All that mishmash of radioactive isotopes of this, that, and the other gets to be a pain. Separating out the U235 and plutonium might pay, but the rest of the stuff is useless and dangerous. It does have to be stored somewhere until it cooks off naturally. Half lives in the vicinity of 100 years are the big problem. It lasts too long to easily wait out, and it’s radioactive enough to be a radically greater health hazard than U235. One microgram of Polonium will kill you; one million micrograms of uranium (one whole gram) I dunno. Maybe somebody does. Uranium occurs naturally in granite and people put granite countertops in their homes without a blink. Their radiation exposure from that will be more than their exposure from all the nuclear waste that might ever be stored at Yucca. Opposition to the Yucca storage facility is grounded in fears that live outside the realm of reason.