Because of the waste it produces. There is not a single place on the world with permanant storage for the waste.

It is all kept in "temporary" facilities with no solution to the problem.

The time scales involved with storage are very long until it is 'safe'. 10's of 1000's of years.

The waste is very dangerous if released to the environment.

Would be epic if they could work out a solution to the waste issue.

Dawn Patrol said...

Because of the waste it produces. There is not a single place on the world with permanant storage for the waste.

It is all kept in "temporary" facilities with no solution to the problem.

The time scales involved with storage are very long until it is 'safe'. 10's of 1000's of years.

The waste is very dangerous if released to the environment.

Would be epic if they could work out a solution to the waste issue.

yes- understand, but isn't a bit strange that we aren't going to do it, but hell, lets sell the stuff to india . aren't we global now, wont it affect our world

A couple of years ago some professor type of joker was being interviewed on the radio about nuke energy (possibly Doctor Karl Kruselniki?)
He was talking about thoriam (spelling?) generated nuke power being much safer than uranium type nuke power.
Example given was for a town the size of Albany (West. Aust.) a power plant the size of a sea container- cant remember if it was 20' or 40'- buried 10m underground, would supply thier power for 30 years with ample reserve for the towns growth within that time.
After 30 years, there would be a bucketfull of waste, which needed to be stored for just over 100 years until its radiation level was safe.
We currently dont have the tech. know how to store regular nuke waste for the umpteen thousand years that it is dangerous- but the thoriam waste having such a short half life, we can keep safe with our current tech.

Apparently, Australia has huge reserves of thorium.

so........why cant we use the stuff??

India... that's the country with impeccable safety standards.... anyone remember the Bhopal disaster?

There are great places to store the stuff Dawn Patrol.

1km deep shaft in the middle of Australia, a very geologically stable country, right down in the bedrock. Cant affect water supplies, too deep and too far away. But people with no understanding of just how far 1000km is, or just how deep 1km is, knocked the proposal on the head. And then whinge about coal and gas etc etc

I reckon why not shoot it at the sun with a big big magnetic rail gun kinda deal?

Think I heard that Thorium shows great promise but not quite developed enough yet to put all our eggs in that basket is that right?

Bigwavedave said...

Gizmo said...

India... that's the country with impeccable safety standards.... anyone remember the Bhopal disaster?

That was not India's fault. Big USA battery company raping the arse out of a third world.....oops developing country's resources.

Was the union carbide where 15,000 people died

dusta said...

shoot it into space . not like there is anyone else out there right ?

Minor problem. If your rocket gets half way up and does this


Then you end up with an explosion-propelled radiation cloud nicely placed for the jet streams to disperse the fallout over the whole globe. Ooops!

Thorium is the way of the future. The only reason they used Uranium to begin with is that it also produced weapons-grade material as a handy by-product.

intresting how you cant spell ****U on sea breeze!

Mark _australia said...

There are great places to store the stuff Dawn Patrol.

1km deep shaft in the middle of Australia, a very geologically stable country, right down in the bedrock. Cant affect water supplies, too deep and too far away. But people with no understanding of just how far 1000km is, or just how deep 1km is, knocked the proposal on the head. And then whinge about coal and gas etc etc

I reckon why not shoot it at the sun with a big big magnetic rail gun kinda deal?

Think I heard that Thorium shows great promise but not quite developed enough yet to put all our eggs in that basket is that right?

Very geologically stable now(ish), but in 10,000yrs? 50,000yrs? 500,000yrs? Nobody knows. Timeframes until it has decayed to a safe level have been estimated at up to and over a million years.

That's a major issue.

And we still get our fair share of earthquakes. We actually have a surprising high risk to earthquakes when compared to similar regions.


And the water can still be an issue. 1km deep is not super deep for groundwater (The yarragadee aquifer under the leedervile aquifer can be around 2kms thick) . And whilst it may move slowly, it still moves, and on such large timescales it can move a fair way.
Even large solid rock structures can have imperfections. It only takes one earthquake to make a fracture. Water can flow through fractured rocks underground at a surprising speed, can be in the order of 10s of meters a day.
Nobody can say there won't be an earthquake and guarantee burial as a perfectly safe means to dispose of it (I think any means of disposal must be certain it won't fail, can't eff around with bad stuff).

There is also the issue of transporting potential contaminants a 1000kms away. There will always be the potential for spills (road accident, train accident, they can and do happen). Transportation of contaminants is a very real way for contaminants to enter the environment and it does happen.

And into space/sun, that would be ideal...if spaceships didn't blow up/the kessler syndrome happening.
It seems like a big gamble for something we don't know enough about. If it was perfectly safe to bury the stuff deep underground, guess where it would all be now.

Dawn Pat, forget rockets that can blow up, that's why I said rail gun :)

and considering Chernobyl can now be walked thru with just a $1 Bunnings dust mast on 20yrs later, is the waste really that bad after 100years underground?

barn said...

Dawn Patrol said...

If it was perfectly safe to bury the stuff deep underground, guess where it would all be now.

It is perfectly safe. Nobody wants to bury their Nuclear waste because they want to hold onto it. As new, and more efficient technologies become available the waste has the potential to become viable again. It's only 'waste' because we can't do anything with it yet..

And what waste will these new technologies produce (hopefully something with a super small halflife)? My understanding is re-use just reduces the amount of waste...there is still an issue of what to do with what is left.

Seems silly making a large problem on the basis it will be solved by something that isn't in proper existance yet. All other 'clean' nuclear techs are theories really. Who knows when/if they will crack a new technology.

Sure if they do it is all happy days, but if they don't, there is a large problem of having a large amount of crap knowbody knows what to do with.

And Mark, I'm not 100%, but I think when chernobyl went up the stuff that spreads due to an plant explosion is different to the waste produced by the power production process.

I also think i have read somewhere that the waste 'disposal' sites near chernobyl have done more damage to the groundwater that the actual disaster (was awhile ago so I could be getting muddled up).

why dont they dump it into a crater of an active volcano?, should be hot enough to incinerate the stuff

I am wondering why the discussion has not angled towards the "why aren't we using alternative energy" camp yet.

Solar power muthaf*ckas!!!!

You are one of the hottest and sunniest contients, how bout investing in research to harness some of the energy from that giant burning ball of gas up there???

Wave power farms? Tidal power? Monkeys on treadmills? So many options people, think outside the box, but not pressed right up against the box

Thorium is a relatively safe form of nuclear fuel.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thorium_fuel_cycle

Is kind of like when you light an oxyacetylene torch, you first ignite the acetylene (other fissile material) before opening the oxygen (thorium).

Pebble bed reactors are ~safe nuclear reactors
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pebble_bed_reactor

Problem is people are too damn farking stupid to use them and they get lumped with OMG I don't want a nuclear bomb in my back yard.

These are just a couple of examples.
Most operating designs are from the 50's, so it's like using a x286 PC from the 80's and complaining cos it won't load a web page or crashes when it get's hit by a tsunami.

Just on a side note and to make you all sleep well tonight.
Did you know that alone in the US 20,000 people die each year from naturally occurring radioactive radiation from an odourless and colourless gas called Radon. It's caused from natural decay of Radon found in nearly all rocks and soil types. Radon moves from the ground up and enters into homes - and we breathe it in. It's the second most common cause for lung cancer after smoking.

But back to the topic, I don't see what's in it for Gillard to suddenly break the rule and sell uranium to a country that has not signed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, so who's next Pakistan, Israel, Iran?