geojac I have been influenced by Prof Colin Keay who has been advocating the rod exchange for reactors for years. He was trained as a reactor physicist but has spent his career before retiring teaching and researching the nuclear reactions in stars. He has published some booklets on the fallacies and exaggerations about the nuclear industry made by the radical environmental element. You can google them but as far as I know they are out of print.
He states that after reprocessing the waste from a 1MW reactor per year would fit under a normal office desk.
As far as storage we need to look at the lesson at Oklo. This is the site of a Uranium mine first worked by the French in the Congo. The uranium was depleted in the U235 wanted for reactor use. It turns out that the uranium deposit, in water filled shale, had gone critical over a billion years ago as a water moderated natural nuclear reactor. Whenever it got hot enough to boil the water to steam this killed the reaction till it cooled when it again started. This continued for a long time till the nuclear fuel was burnt up. All the fission products are accounted for with in 100 metres of the reactor site in the rocks. They were not dispersed as predicted by the anti nuclear lobby even though an aquifer moves through the site is. About 20 such natural reactors have now been found in the area, all with similar characteristics. Here is a billion+ year safety test result for the safe storage of nuclear waste with multiple repetitions, so is not a one off.
This gives me absolute confidence in the safety of the storage of spent nuclear waste.
geojac Uranium content at this level is common in shales. Most would be surprised how common this is. Dunedin in the Shaky Isles has much higher levels for example in the soil. Even more worrying is the fact that the fly ash recovered from power station flues with around 20ppm Uranium and daughter products are not stored but are mixed with cement that is used in the construction industry.
The dangers of radiation is badly exaggerated. The city of Ramsar in Iran on the Caspian Sea has been settled for millenia, yet the background radiation there is as high as the area around Chernobyl which was evacuated as unsafe for human habitation. I rest my case.
Wonder when we are going to hear any news of the progress at Habanero.
Regards to all
RB
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