The Nuclear Waste Problem

At our current level of technology, this planet doesn’t have a solid means of disposing of their nuclear waste. In the United States, this is a huge problem because we have primitive means of disposing of nuclear waste. Power plants use spent fuel pools and have to house nuclear waste until it is cool enough to be transferred to a more permanent storage facility. Another method for the disposal of nuclear waste is reprocessing or breaking down components such as plutonium. Scientists may see nuclear fuel sources as cleaner than fossil fuels but average people see this sort of energy use as dangerous.

The Fukushima disaster in Japan has proven the common people right over the scientist. Nuclear waste canisters are supposed to be effective but the device has three lids and two liners making up the components of the sides. It would seem that drip shields keep the waste packages dry. The government wants to build facilities to store nuclear waste in Yucca Mountain but due to the constant backlash they receive, the project doesn’t move very far. This is mostly a social problem the government finds itself in.

A facility called the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant, or WIPP, is a series of salt caverns 2,000 feet below the New Mexican desert. This plant stores radioactive waste that can come from a nuclear power plant or nuclear weapons. The drums used to store nuclear waste spread through the caverns, leaking above ground also, because the contractors used the wrong type of cat litter. This facility had to close but reopened December 2016. During that time, the Department of Energy filed for a permit to build temporary storage above the underground facility.

Accidents exposed problems with nuclear waste disposal at WIPP. Making our nuclear warheads means that there are collections of radioactive waste out there with nowhere to be put. They often do not know what to do with regard to handling nuclear waste in the United States. The United States Nuclear Regulatory Commission helps design storage facilities. It would seem that reactor fuel spends five years inside the reactor where five percent of the energy in the fuel is used, but fission products of the reactors mean the fuel has to be replaced. Spent fuel then spends five years in pools of water (Forbes).

And then, both heat and radiation need to be cooled sufficiently to allow the fuel to be cooled inside a dry cask. Oak Ridge National Laboratory did a study on an interim storage site meant to save the United States $15 billion by 2040, $30 billion by 2050, and $54 by 2060. One conclusion the United States has come to will be that nuclear waste is safe to dispose of in pools and casks. The amount of used fuel the United States has to deal with is 70,000 tons at operating nuclear facilities even if some facilities have been shut down.

Nuclear waste containers get tested in various ways to make sure they are safe. The waste is disposed of in stainless steel canisters. Waste that is vented into our atmosphere causes global warming, along with wasting energy. The general public feels that nuclear energy is hazardous. This is why many protests about nuclear energy are held. The United States Environmental Protection Agency decided to establish Yucca Mountain standards in June 2001 (Wikipedia). The limit set is 15 millirem per year because of the public areas surrounding Yucca Mountain. The Department of Energy feels that Earthquakes are not so much a risk of happening at the Yucca Mountain Facility. As a planet, we still have yet to figure out safe ways of disposing of nuclear waste because we don’t really know much about how to do so in an environmentally friendly way.

Works Cited

https://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesconca/2018/03/06/will-we-actually-get-a-place-to-store-our-nuclear-waste/#3a4864f823a0

http://large.stanford.edu/courses/2016/ph241/keller1/

https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2016/11/nuclear-waste-wipp-new-mexico/506117/

https://www.ucsusa.org/nuclear-power/nuclear-waste#.W1YJgmQzqRc