Disposition of Spent Fuel - Separation option

[nikkkom]

However, as I described more than once, even if the waste were completely liquid but were established sufficiently deeply it wouldn't matter a dam because its mobility would be negligible.

No matter how many times you say it, it still remains completely false. In any achievable burial depth (even ~10km), water-solible forms of waste can reach surface on a timescale of one century.

 

[nikkkom]

why anyone in his right mind would want to drill down dangerously and expensively

Wrong. Drilling boreholes is neither particularly dangerous nor particularly expensive. US drills about 35 thousand gas wells every year today (fracking).
Where's the danger? I take thousands are dying?
Where are horrible expenses? Natural gas in US become very cheap.

The expertise in deep borehole drilling is already extensive, and becoming more advanced by the day. The old videos in this thread already show wells 4+ km deep being inspected.

The "expensive" part is reprocessing - but we already have it working. Huge expenses in R&D already are paid for!

for multiple km to bury possibly valuable material that could safely and economically be stored at or near ground level?

Because pushing our waste onto our grandchildren is irresponsible. If we produce it, we should dispose of it in a way which does not require our grandchildren to deal with it in perpetuity.

I disagree that waste after reprocessing has any significant value.

 

[Jon Richfield]

Wrong. Drilling boreholes is neither particularly dangerous nor particularly expensive. US drills about 35 thousand gas wells every year today (fracking).
Where's the danger? I take thousands are dying?
Where are horrible expenses? Natural gas in US become very cheap.

Do me a favour!
You are confusing "cheap" with "profitable". This isn't even economics 101; it is primary school common sense. You are confusing costs of established commercial practice with exploratory developmental practice. You are confusing drilling for production, with drilling for disposal. You are confusing every kind of reprocessing with every other, whether actinoid extraction or isotopic separation. Do I have to spell out everything for you as well as keeping your nose on the relevant track?

The reason that gas (for now anyway) is cheap is that you get a lot of fuel for every successful hole. If a hole that costs $10M to drill yields say, $20M profit in gas, it certainly is profitable. It very certainly is not cheap.
If a hole costs $100M dollars to drill a huge amount deeper (because we can't risk irresponsibly "pushing our waste onto our grandchildren" in holes just 10km deep because "any achievable burial depth (even ~10km), water-solible forms of waste can reach surface on a timescale of one century" (a nice line of hooey that!) ) and doesn't yield a cent's worth of gas or anything else of value, that is more than just expensive, it is ridiculous.

Isn't it? Let's hear your direct response to that for a change.

Remember too that although, astonishingly: "The expertise in deep borehole drilling is already extensive, and becoming more advanced" ("by the day" yet! MEGO!) the costs and risks attendant on drilling deeper than more shallowly do not rise linearly; whether they rise polynomially or exponentially (personally I suspect they rise discontinuously though monotonically, but I do not undertake to prove it) but I leave it to your imagination to find means of denying it. You could start by proving why organic materials down there would end up as black gunk, or perhaps by showing why it might be cheaper to dig a 10km hole for waste disposal than a 1km hole for gas.

You fail to establish let alone explain what you are talking about here: "The "expensive" part is reprocessing - but we already have it working. Huge expenses in R&D already are paid for!" Could you please elaborate? I thought you were *objecting* to "reprocessing" whatever you mean by that. A few exchanges back you were berating me for stupidly promoting "expensive" (though deferred) reprocessing. What on Earth changed your mind about that?

Because pushing our waste onto our grandchildren is irresponsible. If we produce it, we should dispose of it in a way which does not require our grandchildren to deal with it in perpetuity.
I disagree that waste after reprocessing has any significant value.

That sounds so virtuous that I barely can bring myself to beg forgiveness for pointing out that the billions of cubic metres of wastes we push onto our grandchildren from mining, processing and consuming combustible fossil fuels (look up what "fossil" means; I am not referring to palaeontology) and not counting the huge waste volumes that we spew into our ever-warmer atmospheric duvet, not only dwarf our heritage of a few cubic metres of highly active wastes, and our few thousand cubic metres of uninteresting nuclear wastes, but also contain more radioactivity calculated as as Becquerels.
So virtuous in fact that I blush to add that where fuel mining and ash dumping have created desert regions, our showcase nuclear disaster region, Chernobyl, has become a thriving sanctuary for wildlife, as have exclusion zones around intact installations like Koeberg and abandoned nuclear plant.

Your agreement or disagreement "that waste after reprocessing has any significant value" is totally irrelevant one way or the other, without demonstration one way or the other. What is undebatable is that once shoved down the oubliette the waste certainly is valueless as well as being a hugely expensive possible hazard if we are to take your own assertions of leaky 10km holes at face value. Conversely, when stored accessibly at a tiny fraction of the cost of burial, it remains for "our grandchildren" to decide on its value, significant or otherwise. Who are you to preempt that evaluation for them?

 

[nikkkom]

I thought you were *objecting* to "reprocessing" whatever you mean by that. A few exchanges back you were berating me for stupidly promoting "expensive" (though deferred) reprocessing.

This entire exchange started when I said that I like very much what French do: reprocessing. (Specifically, the post #517 from Feb 17, 2015). You are distorting my position 180 degrees.
Also, your post contains personal attacks.
I am not interested in trolling wars.

 

[Jon Richfield]

This entire exchange started when I said that I like very much what French do: reprocessing. (Specifically, the post #517 from Feb 17, 2015). You are distorting my position 180 degrees.
Also, your post contains personal attacks.
I am not interested in trolling wars.

What the French are doing, as I understood it, was nearly exactly what I have been proposing in the first place, and I made a remark to that effect at that time (remember?): keep the spent fuel and look after it intelligently until they need it. Then reprocess, reducing the waste in the process and deferring buildup of undesirable transplutonics, leaving small volumes of already mitigated waste that are easier to deal with than burying the lot.
What they are doing with what they now regard as final waste I don't much mind, but I bet that if they want any part of it they don't waste that either. If currently they bury those residues, then I reckon that in that at least they are being uncharacteristically wasteful but one cannot have everything and they very likely will learn better practices in the long run.
Even earlier you remarked that you were no longer in favour of nuclear power at all, so it follows that you are inconsistent in your arguments if suddenly you like the French reprocessing. In this respect I freely admit that you have proved uncharacteristically consistent, so don't go saying that I don't give credit where due. _Your_ accusing _me_ of personal attacks and distortions is unexpectedly impressively consistent too. Don't let me discourage you from instancing cogent examples any of my shifts of position, trolling or attacks in the face of your courtesy and consistent avoidance of my repeatedly re-stated basic points. A bit of serious investment of effort is good for developing intellectual integrity. And some other kinds as well.

 

[nikkkom]

What the French are doing, as I understood it, was nearly exactly what I have been proposing in the first place, and I made a remark to that effect at that time (remember?): keep the spent fuel and look after it intelligently until they need it.

Wrong again. That's not what French are doing. They do not defer reprocessing.

They reprocess spent fuel as soon as it is practical - after only ~5 years of cool-down.

 

[Jon Richfield]

Wrong again. That's not what French are doing. They do not defer reprocessing.

They reprocess spent fuel as soon as it is practical - after only ~5 years of cool-down.

Then that was my misunderstanding of what I read, justifiable or otherwise.

My assessment of what the French are doing if what you say here really is the case, degrades accordingly unless there are practical reasons for this practice, other than those so far asserted or discussed.

 

[Dale]

Closed pending moderation.