Burying Nuclear Waste Will Not Work
Radioactive environmental contamination IS the paramount issue
of our times. Unless we stop the nuclear Juggernaut the future of
life on Earth is bleak indeed. There IS 'off the shelf' science which
will denature and forever eliminate high level nuclear waste, plutonium
and so-called 'dirty bomb' elements.
http://members.cox.net/theroyprocess
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Yucca Mountain could leak nuclear waste, says scientist
Thursday, February 19, 2004
By Scott Sonner, Associated Press
http://www.enn.com/news/2004-02-19/s_13273.asp
RENO, Nevada — The U.S. nuclear waste dump proposed for
Nevada is poorly designed and could leak highly radioactive
waste, said a scientist who recently resigned from a federal
panel of experts on Yucca Mountain. Paul Craig, a physicist
and engineering professor at the University of
California-Davis, said Wednesday that he quit the panel last
month so he could speak more freely about the waste dump's
dangers.
Yucca Mountain, about 90 miles (145 kilometers) northwest of
Las Vegas, is planned to begin receiving waste in 2010. Some
77,000 tons of highly radioactive waste at commercial and
military sites in 39 states would be stored in metal
canisters underground in tunnels.
"The science is very clear," said Craig before his first
public speech about the Energy Department's design for the
canisters. "If we get high-temperature liquids, the metal
would corrode and that would eventually lead to leakage of
nuclear waste," Craig said. "Therefore, it is a bad design.
And that is very, very bad news for the Department of Energy
because they are committed to that design," he said.
Craig, who was appointed to the Nuclear Waste Technical
Review Board by President Bill Clinton in 1997, planned to
speak Wednesday night at a forum sponsored by the Sierra
Club. He said he's convinced the Energy Department will have
to postpone the project and change to metal less liable to
corrode.
"It would require years of delay and my guess is that is
what is going to happen. The bad science is so clear they
will be unable to ignore it forever," Craig said.
The 11-member technical review board outlined its concerns
about the potential for corrosion in a report to the Energy
Department in November about the metal for the canisters,
called Alloy-22 — "an upscale version of stainless steel,"
Craig said. It was the most important report the board has
produced since Congress created the panel in 1987, he said,
but largely has been ignored by Congress and the department.
"The report says in ordinary English that under the
conditions proposed by the Department of Energy, the
canisters will leak," Craig said. "It was signed by every
single member of the board so there would be no confusion."
Energy Department spokesman Allen Benson defended the design
plans for the repository and the metal in the storage casks.
"We stand by our work," he said Wednesday in Las Vegas.
In Washington, D.C., officials with the industry's Nuclear
Energy Institute did not immediately return telephone calls
seeking comment. The board's report in November said the
government had failed to take into account "deliquescence" —
a phenomenon regarding the reaction of salt to moisture — in
its plans to operate the dump at temperatures well above
boiling water, or about 200 degrees Fahrenheit (93 degrees
Celsius). At those temperatures, the metal canisters would
heat up, causing salts in the surrounding ground to liquefy,
thus leading to corrosion, Craig said.
"It turns out the metals which look like they act pretty
good at temperature levels below boiling water — those same
metals act badly with temperatures that could exist" at
Yucca Mountain, he said.
Craig, who also has served as a member of National Academy
of Sciences National Research Council Board on Radioactive
Waste Management, said he sent his resignation letter to the
White House in January before his term was to expire in
April so he could shine more light on the government's plans.
"When you serve as a member of one of those boards, you
cannot talk about the political consequences of the science
or the big picture. You are supposed to stick to the science
and you should stick to the science," Craig said. "You
cannot have the kind of conversation we are having now if I
was still on the board."
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