35 results
3 - The ocean as a dumping ground
- from Part I - The problem
- William M. Alley, Rosemarie Alley
-
- Book:
- Too Hot to Touch
- Published online:
- 05 February 2013
- Print publication:
- 22 November 2012, pp 29-45
-
- Chapter
- Export citation
-
Summary
Roll on, thou deep and dark blue Ocean – roll!
Ten thousand fleets sweep over thee in vain;
Man marks the earth with ruin – his control
Stops with the shore
Lord ByronIn the early days of atomic energy, the oceans were viewed as a convenient place for getting rid of all kinds of radioactive waste. The volume of water is huge and dilution would quickly reduce concentrations to minuscule levels. There was a catch, though. Toxic materials can be ingested by microorganisms and concentrated as they are passed up the food chain to higher organisms, including human beings. Moreover, ocean circulation can carry waste over large distances in short times.
Any doubts about the potential for long-distance transport of waste, particularly in the ocean’s surface, should be dispelled by the studies of Dr. Charles Ebbesmeyer, a retired oceanographer living in Seattle. Ebbesmeyer originally monitored ocean currents by tracking buoys and markers dropped at sea.When his mother heard about 80,000 Nike shoes floating at sea in 1990, she brought it to her son’s attention. Thus began Ebbesmeyer’s second career, tracking objects accidentally spilled at sea using a worldwide network of enthusiastic beachcombers. In 1992, Ebbesmeyer and his network began to track 29,000 bathtub toys washed overboard from a container ship during a storm in the eastern Pacific. Adrift on the open sea, many of the castaways floated south where some beached on the far-flung coasts of Australia, Indonesia, and western South America. An armada of about 10,000 rubber ducks, beavers, turtles, and frogs headed north toward Canada and Alaska, propelled by wind and sea. Some circled back to Japan. Others got caught in the Arctic and hitched their way eastward with the floating ice. By 2000, some of those caught in the Arctic ice had reached the North Atlantic, where they were freed from the thawing ice. In 2003, after an epic 11-year journey halfway around the world, a rubber duck was found in Maine and a rubber frog in Scotland.
14 - The Nevada Test Site
- from Part II - The mountain
- William M. Alley, Rosemarie Alley
-
- Book:
- Too Hot to Touch
- Published online:
- 05 February 2013
- Print publication:
- 22 November 2012, pp 204-216
-
- Chapter
- Export citation
-
Summary
How come dumb stuff seems so smart while you're doing it?
Dennis the MenaceThe Trinity test of the first atomic bomb in New Mexico and the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were horrific displays of shock and awe. Yet, at war's end military officials still knew very little about the overall effects of nuclear weapons. The Joint Chiefs of Staff requested and received presidential approval to conduct a series of tests during the summer of 1946. The radiological hazards of atomic bombs were known, and strongly influenced the decision to locate the tests in the middle of the Pacific Ocean at Bikini atoll in the Marshall Islands.
Under an agreement with the United Nations, the Marshall Islands were a new trust territory of the United States. The agreement allowed for military use of the islands, along with responsibilities for native welfare. It was hard to make a case that relocating the natives and turning their island into a nuclear weapons test site was to their benefit. Nonetheless, the Bikini islanders were moved to Rongerik atoll, which was too small and barren to support them. The USA did little to help. When the dismal record of American stewardship became known in the fall of 1947, it stirred up worldwide protest. Regardless of the international ramifications, the Joint Chiefs had no good alternatives. Even these islands had serious drawbacks. The distance from the United States made for extraordinary logistical and security challenges, while the humid climate wreaked havoc with the sophisticated electronic and photographic equipment.
List of abbreviations
- William M. Alley, Rosemarie Alley
-
- Book:
- Too Hot to Touch
- Published online:
- 05 February 2013
- Print publication:
- 22 November 2012, pp xi-xii
-
- Chapter
- Export citation
2 - Brainstorming
- from Part I - The problem
- William M. Alley, Rosemarie Alley
-
- Book:
- Too Hot to Touch
- Published online:
- 05 February 2013
- Print publication:
- 22 November 2012, pp 21-28
-
- Chapter
- Export citation
-
Summary
The general public can be divided into two parts: those that think science can do everything, and those who are afraid it will.
Dixy Lee RayThere is a strong worldwide consensus that disposal in a geologic repository is the only feasible, permanent solution to the high-level waste problem. The concept seems simple and comes to mind almost instinctively – bury the waste in a hole excavated in rocks deep underground. Burial in deep geological formations provides more than adequate shielding from the waste's radiation and decreases the likelihood of inadvertent or malicious intrusion by humans. Yet, this international consensus favoring geologic burial is the product of decades of brainstorming. No matter how outlandish or seemingly impossible, one by one, each conceivable solution was given its turn at the table.
In these early discussions, one idea stood apart from the rest. In April 1951, Representative Albert Gore, Sr. (D-TN), father of Nobel Peace Prize winning Al Gore, suggested using radioactive waste from the Nation’s plutonium production to “dehumanize” a belt across the entire 38th parallel of the Korean peninsula. The contamination would prevent further attacks by Communist forces invading from the North. Yet, the most important result would be “its psychological effect as a mystery weapon, analogous to the initial use of poison gas and of tanks in World War I.” Representative Gore argued that such widespread use of radioactive waste was morally justified as a deterrent, rather than an attack strategy. The enemy would be duly forewarned. Gore had in mind relatively short-lived isotopes. He added that the belt would need to be replenished periodically with new wastes, until a “satisfactory solution to the whole Korean problem” was reached.
Part III - No solution in sight
- William M. Alley, Rosemarie Alley
-
- Book:
- Too Hot to Touch
- Published online:
- 05 February 2013
- Print publication:
- 22 November 2012, pp 307-308
-
- Chapter
- Export citation
7 - Recycling
- from Part I - The problem
- William M. Alley, Rosemarie Alley
-
- Book:
- Too Hot to Touch
- Published online:
- 05 February 2013
- Print publication:
- 22 November 2012, pp 93-111
-
- Chapter
- Export citation
-
Summary
Perpetual care is neither difficult nor costly, chiefly because the inherent volume of nuclear waste is small.
Chauncey Starr and R.P. Hammond (1972)Recycling as a means to reduce waste and conserve resources is viewed as good for the environment. In a society that routinely recycles aluminum cans, plastic containers and cardboard, the idea of recycling nuclear waste seems self-evident. So why aren't we doing it?
In the nuclear world, recycling refers to reuse of nuclear spent fuel after its recovery through reprocessing, although the two terms recycling and reprocessing tend to be used interchangeably. Reprocessing was well developed by the atomic weapons program long before commercial reactors went on-line. The world’s first industrial-scale reprocessing plant began operation at Hanford in December 1944. The plant produced the plutonium that went into the bombs exploded at the Trinity test site in New Mexico and dropped on Nagasaki, Japan.
In the early days, it was taken for granted that reprocessing would be incorporated into the commercial application of nuclear energy. Advocates of reprocessing pointed out that it would close the nuclear fuel cycle. Since spent fuel contains 95 percent of the original uranium plus some plutonium, conceivably there is lots of potential nuclear energy remaining that would be “thrown away” in the once-through cycle. The only problem is that reprocessing of spent nuclear fuel turned out to be a technologically complex, expensive, accident-prone, and very messy business – and only marginally addressed the waste problem.
19 - Shake & bake
- from Part II - The mountain
- William M. Alley, Rosemarie Alley
-
- Book:
- Too Hot to Touch
- Published online:
- 05 February 2013
- Print publication:
- 22 November 2012, pp 287-296
-
- Chapter
- Export citation
-
Summary
Civilization exists by geological consent subject to change without notice.
Generally attributed to Will DurantLittle Skull Mountain, 12 miles (20 km) from Yucca Mountain, was suddenly alive and rocking during the week of July 4, 1992. The proximity of the 5.6 magnitude earthquake to the proposed nuclear repository caught considerable media attention. A State of Nevada spokesman called it a “wake-up call.” Many residents in the region, accustomed as they were to past nuclear detonations, slept right through the 3 a.m. event. The Department of Energy reassured everyone that the quake was well within the magnitude for which they were designing the repository. The DOE spokesman even suggested that the event was a big plus, in that it would help characterize the region's seismic hazards.
The Little Skull Mountain earthquake occurred less than 24 hours after the powerful magnitude 7.3 Landers earthquake shook the Mojave desert in California, about 180 miles (300 km) to the south. Clearly, there was a connection. Almost immediately after the Landers quake, a series of micro-earthquakes began in the vicinity of Little Skull Mountain. The Landers earthquake, recorded as the second largest in southern California in the twentieth century, definitely woke a few people up.
While the media made hay and the State raised the red flag, the Little Skull Mountain quake came as no surprise to geologists. Yucca Mountain lies in the tectonically active Basin and Range. This huge geographic province consists of small, north–south trending mountain ranges separated by nearly flat desert basins. The basins are filled with sediments eroded from the mountains over the eons. The Basin and Range includes almost all of Nevada, the western half of Utah, southeastern California, and the southern part of Arizona. G.K. Gilbert, the nineteenth-century geologist who coined the term Basin and Range, likened the ranges to an “army of caterpillars marching north out of Mexico.”
15 - Yucca Mountain
- from Part II - The mountain
- William M. Alley, Rosemarie Alley
-
- Book:
- Too Hot to Touch
- Published online:
- 05 February 2013
- Print publication:
- 22 November 2012, pp 217-232
-
- Chapter
- Export citation
-
Summary
And it is not our part here to take thought only for a season, or for a few lives of Men, or for a passing age of the world. We should seek a final end of this menace.
Gandalf in The Lord of the RingsThe year was 1972. The proposed salt repository at Lyons, Kansas was in its death throes. Environmentalists were demanding a solution to the waste problem or shutting down the entire nuclear industry. Caught off guard, the AEC contracted with the US Geological Survey to study other geologic media, look further afield, think outside the salt-box. Dr. Isaac “Ike” Winograd, a research scientist for the USGS, had been doing just that. At the annual meeting of the Geological Society of America, Ike proposed using the thick unsaturated zone somewhere in the American Southwest for long-term storage of solidified high-level waste. In the world of high-level radioactive waste, this was quite the revolutionary idea.
For over a decade, burial in salt had been essentially the only game in town. The USGS had a long-standing concern with this medium – salt can behave in a highly unpredictable manner in the presence of the extremely high heat generated by high-level waste. The other option being considered for geologic disposal was to bury the waste below the water table, deep in the saturated zone. Burying the waste in water would protect the canisters from oxidation. Uranium in the spent fuel is also more stable in the absence of oxygen. Yet, even then, eventually the canisters would be breached and radionuclides released. A major challenge with a saturated-zone repository was how to build a solid, secure repository surrounded by all that water, and then seal it back up.
Too Hot to Touch
- The Problem of High-Level Nuclear Waste
- William M. Alley, Rosemarie Alley
-
- Published online:
- 05 February 2013
- Print publication:
- 22 November 2012
-
Today, the issue of waste management is as prominent as reactor safety in the controversies surrounding nuclear power and is particularly topical in the US since the 2010 closure of the Yucca Mountain repository project. William M. and Rosemarie Alley provide an engaging and authoritative account of the controversies and possibilities surrounding disposal of nuclear waste in the US, with reference also to other countries around the world. The book tells the full history from the beginnings after World War II up to today, bringing to life the pioneering science, the political wrangling and media drama, and the not-in-my-backyard communities fighting to put waste elsewhere. Written in down-to-earth language, by an expert with key involvement in the Yucca Mountain project, this is a timely book for public interest groups, affected communities, policymakers, environmentalists and research scientists working in related fields and anyone interested in finding out more about this important issue.
20 - The project gets into hot water
- from Part II - The mountain
- William M. Alley, Rosemarie Alley
-
- Book:
- Too Hot to Touch
- Published online:
- 05 February 2013
- Print publication:
- 22 November 2012, pp 297-306
-
- Chapter
- Export citation
-
Summary
The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.
H. L. MenckenIn 2002, Jared L. Cohon, outgoing chairman of the Nuclear Waste Technical Review Board (NWTRB) and President of Carnegie-Mellon University, looked back at major accomplishments of the Board. Among these, he observed, “Proving something not to be true is the hardest thing to do in science, and a decidedly unglamorous undertaking. Yet, the Board did not shy away from the challenge presented by the hypothesis of geothermal upwelling. I think we did a very effective job in marshalling limited resources and helping to spawn reviews of what was a very complicated and controversial issue.”
The issue referred to by Jared Cohon – the question of hot water upwelling into the repository – was among the most complicated and controversial issues faced by the Yucca Mountain Project. While nearly every scientist even remotely associated with the project considered the possibility so unlikely it had been screened out of the TSPA, a few persistent individuals relentlessly stoked the issue to keep it alive. As it turned out, proving upwelling not to be true required scientific detective work beyond Sherlock Holmes’ wildest dreams.
unwelling water
Under today’s conditions, the proposed repository would sit about 1,000 feet (300 m) above the water table at Yucca Mountain. During past glacial epochs, the climate was much cooler and wetter with large freshwater lakes in the now arid Death Valley. Yet, evidence of previous water-level rises indicated that the repository would remain well above the water table even during a much wetter, cooler climate.
16 - How long is long?
- from Part II - The mountain
- William M. Alley, Rosemarie Alley
-
- Book:
- Too Hot to Touch
- Published online:
- 05 February 2013
- Print publication:
- 22 November 2012, pp 233-250
-
- Chapter
- Export citation
-
Summary
I have never, I think, in my life,
been so deeply interested by any geological discussion.
I now first begin to see what a million means.
Charles Darwin in a letter to James CrollModern Homo sapiens, with our great big brains, are really something special. We have walked on the moon. We have peered into the smallest particles of matter. We have developed vaccines and unbelievable technology. Our weapons have moved way beyond wooden clubs. We reason. We create. Yet, when it comes to dealing with time, we haven't changed much over the eons. We don't think or plan too far ahead. We have the ability to imagine the near future, yet when that time arrives it's so different from what we thought it would be. We do somewhat better with looking back and remembering past events, yet in the span of a lifetime our memories of childhood recede into an impressionistic haze. Without effort, most of us have a hard time remembering what we did two days ago. Like it or not, Homo sapiens mainly inhabits the present tense.
For many thousands of years our ancestors created an historical record in written and pictorial forms, yet these glimpses into the past have little meaning and no appreciable effect on our daily lives. Any child studying for a history exam will tell you that. Neil Chapman and Ian McKinley, eminent European geologists in the field of nuclear waste disposal, aptly stated the problem: “A pragmatic approach to time-scales would be that if you can really imagine what it would be like at that time, it is meaningful – if not, forget it. Computer models will happily predict releases after the expected lifetime of the Earth.”
22 - Nuclear waste and our energy future
- from Part III - No solution in sight
- William M. Alley, Rosemarie Alley
-
- Book:
- Too Hot to Touch
- Published online:
- 05 February 2013
- Print publication:
- 22 November 2012, pp 321-329
-
- Chapter
- Export citation
-
Summary
We have conquered Mother Nature;
now we have only to conquer human nature.
D. R. KnowltonImagine that starting tomorrow the world permanently shutters all of its nuclear reactors – in power plants, submarines, aircraft carriers, universities, and medical research laboratories. Even in such an event, massive amounts of spent nuclear fuel, high-level reprocessing wastes, and excess plutonium from dismantled nuclear warheads would still be with us. This huge backlog of wastes remains, whether or not we ever produce another kilowatt of electricity from a nuclear power plant. Regardless of one's stance on nuclear energy, everyone has a stake in finding a long-term solution for the waste.
Adding urgency to solving the waste problem is that nuclear energy is one of the proposed solutions for addressing global warming. In a widely cited article in 2004, Stephen Pacala and Robert Socolow of Princeton University argued that humanity can solve the climate problem by scaling up what we already know how to do. Although technically feasible, the magnitude of this scale-up is monumental. Meeting the world’s projected energy needs over the next 50 years, while also stabilizing atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2), would require the equivalent of all the following actions: (1) increase fuel economy for 2 billion cars from 30 to 60 miles per gallon, (2) cut carbon emissions by one-fourth in buildings and appliances, (3) replace 1,400 GW (gigawatts) of coal plants with natural gas plants amounting to four times the current production of gas-based power, (4) capture and store 80 percent of the CO2 from today’s coal energy production, (5) increase biofuels production to a level that would require one-sixth of the world’s cropland, (6) install 2 million 1-megawatt wind turbines that would occupy an area equal to three percent of the United States (some on land and some offshore) and, finally, (7) replace 700 GW of coal-based power generation with nuclear energy, an increase equal to about twice the current worldwide nuclear capacity.
Appendix - Discussion questions
- William M. Alley, Rosemarie Alley
-
- Book:
- Too Hot to Touch
- Published online:
- 05 February 2013
- Print publication:
- 22 November 2012, pp 330-333
-
- Chapter
- Export citation
-
Summary
Science and risk
(Part I) The long-lived radioactivity and intense heat generated by radioactive decay make high-level nuclear waste unique among society's wastes. How do these characteristics affect how the problem is viewed and the difficulty of resolving it?
(Part I) Many Americans today have a diminished trust in Congress and the federal government. How do you think most people view scientists?
(Part I) For decades, the international scientific community has viewed a geologic repository as the only viable “solution” to dealing with the waste. Nonetheless, many people continue to think that we should recycle the waste. What are the arguments for and against reprocessing? Given these complexities, based on your reading of Chapter 7, should reprocessing be part of the nuclear fuel cycle?
(Part I/Part II) While the “uncertainty factor” is a problem with developing a geologic repository, many Americans appear to be more comfortable with the uncertainties associated with spent-fuel pools and open-ended dry cask storage. How would you explain this paradox?
(Part II) One of the characteristics of scientific research is that as new information is obtained toward resolving one question, new questions arise. Give examples of this from the book. How do you make any policy decisions regarding high-level waste when the scientific studies continue to raise new questions?
(Part II) From a scientific viewpoint, what were the strengths of a proposed geologic repository at Yucca Mountain? What were the weaknesses? How did the scientific surprises and nuances discussed in the book complicate these strengths and weaknesses? In your opinion, based purely on the science, should Yucca Mountain have continued through the licensing application process or should it have been shut down? What about when we take into consideration competing stakeholder views?
(Part II) Determining the regulatory standards for Yucca Mountain was a highly contentious issue (Chapter 17). Among the controversies was the ruling by the US Court of Appeals in 2004 that the timeframe for measuring compliance with the standards should be one million years rather than the 10,000-year period proposed by the Environmental Protection Agency. Summarize the contributing factors to this ruling. If you had been the judge in this appellate court, how would you have ruled? How would you have supported your ruling?
4 - Radioactivity and atomic energy
- from Part I - The problem
- William M. Alley, Rosemarie Alley
-
- Book:
- Too Hot to Touch
- Published online:
- 05 February 2013
- Print publication:
- 22 November 2012, pp 46-59
-
- Chapter
- Export citation
-
Summary
“The Italian navigator has just landed in the new world.”
“Is that so; Were the natives friendly?”
“Everyone landed safe and happy.”
Coded dialog between Arthur Compton and James Conant that Enrico Fermi's nuclear reactor had worked.In 1789, the German chemist Martin Heinrich Klaproth discovered that pitchblende, a black mineral with a dull, pitch-like luster from the mountains of central Europe, contained an unknown element. He named it uranium after the newly discovered planet Uranus, Greek for Titan of the Gods. The substance that Klaproth identified, however, was not pure uranium; it was uranium oxide. In 1841, Eugène M. Péligot, a French chemist, was the first to isolate elemental uranium.
The first known use of uranium dates to antiquity. When archaeologists excavated the Imperial Roman Villa near Naples, they found pale yellow–green glass from a first century AD mosaic mural. Roman artisans had used a uranium-bearing mineral to obtain the color. When Rome fell, the technique disappeared with it.
Eventually, people rediscovered that uranium produces lustrous hues of orange or yellow to glassware and ceramic glazes. Photographers used it to tone photographs. Outside of these trades, demand for uranium remained low. Uranium ore was considered mostly a worthless byproduct. Miners would toss it aside in their search for more valuable elements like steel-hardening vanadium. Then, at the end of the nineteenth century, a few major scientific discoveries changed everything.
12 - The search for a geologic repository
- from Part II - The mountain
- William M. Alley, Rosemarie Alley
-
- Book:
- Too Hot to Touch
- Published online:
- 05 February 2013
- Print publication:
- 22 November 2012, pp 173-191
-
- Chapter
- Export citation
-
Summary
I wonder how one finds the words to talk about a man who has achieved so much,
who has served with such distinction and who has touched the lives of so many.
Only two words keep coming back to me, over and over again – thank you.
Senator John McCain, in a tribute to Congressman Morris UdallFollowing the Atomic Energy Commission’s public embarrassment at Lyons, Kansas in 1972, the search for a geologic repository took many twists and turns until the field was narrowed, in 1987, to a single candidate – Yucca Mountain. In the intervening decade and a half, the federal government searched in vain for what Daniel A. Dreyfus quipped was a “technically appropriate subsurface with a politically compliant Governor on top.” Dreyfus, then staff director for the Senate energy committee, was later to take charge of the Yucca Mountain project – where a politically compliant Governor was certainly not to be found.
In 1970, nuclear power plants provided the Nation with less energy than it derived from firewood. Only a dozen or so reactors of modest size were operating. This would soon change. During the middle and late 1960s, the AEC had authorized the building of nearly a hundred large reactors. Practically overnight, a major construction boom had begun.
8 - Dry cask storage
- from Part I - The problem
- William M. Alley, Rosemarie Alley
-
- Book:
- Too Hot to Touch
- Published online:
- 05 February 2013
- Print publication:
- 22 November 2012, pp 112-121
-
- Chapter
- Export citation
-
Summary
Life is what happens to you while you're busy making other plans
Attributed to Allen Saunders, Betty Talmadge, John Lennon, and othersThe Maine Yankee was situated on Bailey Point, along the scenic Maine coast near the town of Wiscasset – according to locals, the State's prettiest village. From its startup in 1972, this 900 megawatt pressurized water reactor produced much of Maine's electric power until it was decommissioned in 1997. The Maine Yankee was one of the largest commercial nuclear power plants of its time. Originally licensed for 40 years, cracks were discovered in the steam generator tubes in 1995, and the plant was shut down for almost a year for repairs. Investigations by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission identified so many problems that the expense of repairing them became too costly. After only 25 years, the Maine Yankee was turned out to pasture.
What had not gone smoothly during the Yankee’s last years of operating life became a second-to-none decommissioning. Working together, stakeholders broke new ground in a number of areas that won international acclaim for innovation and excellence. The Maine Yankee was one of the first large commercial power reactors to complete its eight-year decommissioning safely and within budget. Firsts included the first ever use of explosives to safely demolish the reactor containment building. All plant structures were removed to three feet below grade. The site was then cleaned up radiologically to a significantly higher level than required by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. Decommissioning also included the largest single campaign to move spent nuclear fuel from wet to dry storage. The Maine Yankee holds the record for the largest dry cask storage project for a decommissioned plant in the United States.
9 - Interim storage
- from Part I - The problem
- William M. Alley, Rosemarie Alley
-
- Book:
- Too Hot to Touch
- Published online:
- 05 February 2013
- Print publication:
- 22 November 2012, pp 122-130
-
- Chapter
- Export citation
-
Summary
One day he is at war and the next day at peace. He has many colors.
CochiseHaving failed to meet a January 1998 deadline for beginning to accept spent nuclear fuel, the Department of Energy (DOE) is now besieged by lawsuits for breach of contract. By 2010, the government had paid about $760 million in settlements, and DOE estimates $13 billion in potential liability costs if the government does not start accepting nuclear waste by 2020.
With a geologic repository nowhere in sight, and the government in a legal and financial bind, the idea of a centralized interim site is often talked up. This site would serve as a way station between the nuclear power plants and final transfer to a geologic repository. On paper, this looks like a win–win. The federal government could take charge of the waste and stop hemorrhaging from lawsuits. The utilities would get the waste off their lots. People who live near nuclear power plants would get the waste out of their neighborhood. Proponents of nuclear energy could claim progress with at least some aspect of nuclear waste disposal. But is interim surface storage anymore possible, or palatable, than geologic underground disposal? And how interim is interim?
13 - Nevada wins the lottery
- from Part II - The mountain
- William M. Alley, Rosemarie Alley
-
- Book:
- Too Hot to Touch
- Published online:
- 05 February 2013
- Print publication:
- 22 November 2012, pp 192-203
-
- Chapter
- Export citation
-
Summary
Democracy is the worst form of Government except for all those other forms
Winston ChurchillAfter nearly 30 years of scientific, congressional, and public debate about what to do with the Nation's high-level radioactive waste, the Department of Energy was suddenly under the gun. A daunting schedule was now written into law under the Nuclear Waste Policy Act (NWPA) to get a geologic repository up and running in a few short years. If DOE failed in this mandate, they could find themselves besieged with lawsuits.
The aggressive schedule established by the NWPA meant that the nine sites already under consideration when the Act was passed, automatically formed the basis of site screening for the first repository. By 1984, these were narrowed to five sites – three in salt formations in Mississippi, Texas, and Utah; one in basalt at Hanford; and one in the volcanic tuff of Yucca Mountain at the Nevada Test Site. The process of selecting the first repository from among these candidates became known as the First Round.
List of units
- William M. Alley, Rosemarie Alley
-
- Book:
- Too Hot to Touch
- Published online:
- 05 February 2013
- Print publication:
- 22 November 2012, pp x-x
-
- Chapter
- Export citation
-
Summary
We use a combination of American and metric units, and show both where it is important for comprehension. Conversion factors are listed below for some commonly used units.
1 foot (ft) = 0.3048 meters (m)
1 inch (in) = 2.54 centimeters (cm)
1 mile (mi) = 1.609 kilometers (km)
1 square mile = 2.59 square kilometers
1 acre = 0.4047 hectares
1 gallon = 3.785 liters
1 pound = 0.45 kilograms (kg)
1 rem = 0.01 sieverts
1 metric ton = 1000 kilograms = 1.1 tons
1 - The awakening
- from Part I - The problem
- William M. Alley, Rosemarie Alley
-
- Book:
- Too Hot to Touch
- Published online:
- 05 February 2013
- Print publication:
- 22 November 2012, pp 3-20
-
- Chapter
- Export citation
-
Summary
I can't think about that right now…I’ll think about that tomorrow.
Scarlett O’Hara, Gone with the WindIn January 1949, the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) held a seminar on radioactive waste. In his opening remarks, AEC Chairman David Lilienthal cast the problem of waste disposal as part of “learning to live with radiation.” According to Lilienthal, this learning curve was the same as how we humans learn to live with anything else unfamiliar. The Chairman of the AEC acknowledged that radioactive wastes could become “a subject of emotion and hysteria and fear…[but] we do not believe those fears are justified provided technology applies itself to eliminating the troubles.” The previous year, Robert Oppenheimer, Chairman of the AEC's General Advisory Committee, had dismissed the waste problem as “unimportant.”
In spite of these pronouncements, dealing with radioactive waste gained greater urgency upon passage of the Atomic Energy Act of 1954, making possible the widespread use of nuclear energy for civilian purposes. As such, the nuclear industry would now be close to major cities and towns. And dilution was not the solution. Given the anticipated size of the US nuclear industry by the year 2000, it would require a volume equal to about five percent of the world’s oceans to dilute the dangerous waste to recommended safe levels. This exceeded the volume of freshwater stored worldwide in lakes, rivers, groundwater, glaciers, and polar ice caps.