Is there a role for nuclear energy?

[Outlaw Yogi]

nuclear dump
http://au.news.yahoo.com/a/-/australian ... mp-stance/

... this bill creates a process for a facility to be built on "volunteered" land.

[mantra]

This was a done deal years ago when the aboriginal leaders decided to sell their people out. Howard had already negotiated a 50/50 deal with Haliburton for the Ghan Railway for easier transportation of nuclear waste and the paper work for the Toxic Tip was signed off on. This is the most disgusting agreement any government has ever signed Australia up to. We'll be the first Global Nuclear Waste Tip in the world. I wonder what's in it for the aborigines - because there's nothing in it for anyone else. The transport by sea of nuclear waste is extremely dangerous in itself - let alone carted through towns and then inland for burial.

The Country Liberals Member for Solomon, Natasha Griggs, has criticised the Labor Member for Lingiari, Warren Snowdon, for supporting a bill that would allow a nuclear waste dump to be built in his electorate.

Muckaty Station, near Tennant Creek in the Northern Territory, is the only site being considered for the dump.

Ms Griggs and several independent MPs voted against the bill, which was yesterday passed in the House of Representatives by 68 votes to 6.

[Pastafarian]

This was a done deal years ago when the aboriginal leaders decided to sell their people out. Howard had already negotiated a 50/50 deal with Haliburton for the Ghan Railway for easier transportation of nuclear waste and the paper work for the Toxic Tip was signed off on. This is the most disgusting agreement any government has ever signed Australia up to. We'll be the first Global Nuclear Waste Tip in the world. I wonder what's in it for the aborigines - because there's nothing in it for anyone else. The transport by sea of nuclear waste is extremely dangerous in itself - let alone carted through towns and then inland for burial.

Even though other people already make Nuclear Waste and we have the best conditions in the world for the safe storage of it? And thus can contribute money to our economy?

[mantra]

Even though other people already make Nuclear Waste and we have the best conditions in the world for the safe storage of it?

Can you provide some proof that there is such a thing as safe storage of nuclear waste - regardless of supposedly "ideal" conditions. It's not only the storage - but the transportation also.

It's all well and good to talk about how much money this Tip will contribute to our economy - but there are human beings to consider also, not just those alive today - but the ones born tomorrow.

I don't know if anyone saw Four Corners on Monday night showing examples of the damage mining & exploration generally is causing to the residentsof Qld and NSW, not only in the city, but in regional areas also - all for the sake of a few dollars for the government coffers. Australia has gotten carried away with mining and exploration to the detriment of our health and property - yet to add to these injuries they have to throw in a nuclear waste tip as well.

Perhaps the ramifications of this agreement won't affect our lives chronically - but it will affect the lives of our children and their children.

[Outlaw Yogi]

Even though other people already make Nuclear Waste and we have the best conditions in the world for the safe storage of it?

Safe storage of nuclear waste does NOT exist anywhere on Earth.

The US's Yacca Mountain nuke waste facility has turned out to be an abject failure, and recent attempts to vitrify nuke waste have turned out to be fantasy.

Setback for safe storage of waste
http://www.robedwards.com/2007/01/setback_for_saf.html

Minerals such as zircon (ZrSiO4) are believed to have kept naturally occurring radioactive uranium and thorium locked in the Earth's crust for up to 4.4 billion years, surviving earthquakes and volcanic eruptions. As a result researchers have argued that zircon, or similar synthetic ceramics, could trap nuclear waste within their crystalline structures for at least 241,000 years, the time plutonium-239 takes to become relatively safe.

Now a study shows that this is unlikely. It turns out that alpha particles released as plutonium decays knock the atoms in zircon out of position faster than originally predicted, impairing the material's ability to immobilise waste (Nature, vol 445, p 190).

Ian Farnan of the University of Cambridge and colleagues at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory in Richland, Washington, added plutonium to zircon and used nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy to distinguish between crystalline zircon and its leaky, damaged form.

The researchers found five times as many damaged zircon atoms as estimated by computer simulations. They conclude that radioactive plutonium trapped in zircon would start leaching out after just 210 years and lose its crystal structure entirely after 1400 years.

Originally published by New Scientist magazine:
http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg1 ... waste.html


USGS May Have Falsified Yucca Mountain Research
http://usgovinfo.about.com/od/technolog ... calies.htm

... if proven true, the use of falsified computer modeling data about Yucca Mountain called into question the entire scientific basis of the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) license application to the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission for use of the site as a nuclear waste storage facility.

[Pastafarian]

The researchers found five times as many damaged zircon atoms as estimated by computer simulations. They conclude that radioactive plutonium trapped in zircon would start leaching out after just 210 years and lose its crystal structure entirely after 1400 years.

Originally published by New Scientist magazine:
http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg1 ... waste.html

[/quote]



Even better, just go to SYNROC then.

[Outlaw Yogi]

Cracks in the Ringwood solution
http://www.bmartin.cc/pubs/84cr.html

One important example of an irradiation effect which promotes the breakdown of nuclear waste disposal materials by atmospheric moisture was identified in 1980 by E. H. Hirsch.[2] The radioactive disintegrations cause changes in the structure of the waste form. The surface eventually can become chemically sensitised, begin to react with water vapour and break down. This effect operates both in glass and in crystalline materials such as Synroc. The net effect is increased leaching of the waste disposal material. At the temperatures that Synroc will encounter this effect could be very serious.

These technical considerations must be considered in the context that even if Synroc were impregnable once synthesised and placed in the ground -- and this remains to be shown -- this would not solve the whole problem of radioactive waste.

This is because the most environmentally sensitive time for radioactive waste is in the years before it is processed and entombed. Spent fuel rods from nuclear reactors are typically left in cooling ponds or other storage areas for years or even decades before reprocessing and disposal take place. During these years the waste is more highly radioactive than later, which indeed is why it is not disposed of sooner. If what is feared is release of radioactive elements to the environment by accident, natural disaster, terrorist attack or warfare, then this is where safeguards may still fail.

Watchdog savages Synroc salesman
http://article.wn.com/view/2000/10/30/W ... _salesman/

Australia's corporate watchdog has warned against an elaborate scheme under which $9 million has been taken from investors to promote Synroc, the Australian invention once billed as the answer to the world's nuclear waste storage problem. The Australian Securities and Investments Commission has written to investors, warning that the sale of bonds in a bankrupt United...

Unfortunately the rest of this (originally) SMH article is apparently no longer available.

Here's ANSTO's Dr Lou Vance's mumblings on SYNROC
http://wn.com/synroc
Note Dr Vance states (in vid) SYNROC is not yet comercially available.

[Outlaw Yogi]

Here's what ANSTO has done since 1978 to make SYNROC viable, as the various forms of SYNROC fail to live upto desired results, requiring ever more modifications to the formular.

Synroc
Published: February 11, 2010, 5:08 pm
Lead Authors: World Nuclear Association, Ian Hore-Lacy
http://www.eoearth.org/article/Synroc

[Pastafarian]

Here's what ANSTO has done since 1978 to make SYNROC viable, as the various forms of SYNROC fail to live upto desired results, requiring ever more modifications to the formular.

Synroc
Published: February 11, 2010, 5:08 pm
Lead Authors: World Nuclear Association, Ian Hore-Lacy
http://www.eoearth.org/article/Synroc

Formula. Actually the reason why SYNROC has been modified hasn't been that it is failing to live up to desired results, more tailoring a specific formula for a specific solution.

How do I know this? Well I worked for five years in that particular division, not on SYNROC but on a similar project.

[Outlaw Yogi]

Wouldn't matter even if a safe storage mechanism/process/formular/invention actually became a reality, because nuke power itself is ridiculously expensive as an electricity provider, and cost factoring for waste storage is only for 100 years.
Nuke waste is a mutagenic menace for eons.

In short Nuclear power is a subsidy scam.