No subject

his equation.  I consider this to be a reasonable assumption, though the
argument doesn't change a great deal if you assume no reprocessing.  The
main advantage of reprocessing is that it removes the remaining uranium
and the transuranics from the "waste" column and moves them to the
"resource" column.  As the transuranics dominate the activity of spent
fuel after a thousand years or so, having them not be waste shortens the
time that the waste decays below any given activity concentration. =20

In any event, when spent fuel is removed from the reactor, it is very
radioactive.  The radioactivity in the spent fuel decays by about 80% in
the first year, and by about 90% in the first 10 years (it is still
quite radioactive at this point, but not thermally hot enough to be able
to damage the fuel rods if there is no cooling.)  The overwhelming
majority of the radioactivity is in fission fragments, and most of those
have fairly short half-lives.  In the first hundred years or so all the
short lived isotopes have decayed, and activity is dominated by
strontium-90, cesium-137, and to a much lesser extent technetium-99.  If
the fuel was reprocessed, these isotopes are pretty much all the
radioactive material in the waste, and Mr. Beckman's statement is
correct.  If the fuel is not reprocessed, then it will take longer for
the fuel to reach the baseline; probably one to ten thousand years.
This is NOT to say, however, that the spent nuclear fuel will be
"dangerous" for that long, because the activity will have decreased
below a reasonable definition of "dangerous" well before then.  I
haven't seen the numbers, but I would guess that after about 300 years
the easiest way to hurt someone with spent nuclear fuel would be to cut
off a meter-long piece of fuel rod, and beat them with it. =20

While I don't have this version, here is a book that might help you:
http://www.oecdbookshop.org/oecd/display.asp?lang=3DEN&sf1=3Didentifiers&=
st1
=3D978-92-64-09261-7 OECD NEA Radioactive Waste in Perspective.  I have
used older editions. =20

I hope this is useful.
 =20



-----Original Message-----
From: radsafe-bounces at health.phys.iit.edu
[mailto:radsafe-bounces at health.phys.iit.edu] On Behalf Of Theo Richel
Sent: Friday, September 24, 2010 1:26 PM
To: The International Radiation Protection (Health Physics) MailingList
Subject: [ RadSafe ] 600 years


Hello,

I m a journalist from the Netherlands interested in nuclear waste. Petr
Beckman (whom I suppose many of you know) wrote in his newsletter
'Access to energy' (1978) the following:

"But there is one and only one type of wastes that can be completely
removed from the biosphere: nuclear. Their volume is more than one
million times=20
smaller than that of coal wastes from a power plant of equal capacity (a
mere 2 m3/year from a 1,000 MW plant); they can be solidified, sealed
into glass and put in earthquakeproof, fireproof, waterproof steel drums
for burial 1800 feet deep in salt formations where there has been no
water for the last 100 million years, and if water does threaten to get
in next week,=20
the salt will seal up and keep it out. The wastes are easy to monitor
because, thank God, they are radioactive; and within 600 years, their
radioactivity will have decayed below the level of the uranium ore=20
that they originally came from."

Spent fuel is just as radioactive as the ore it came from after 600
years? I cannot ask Beckman anymore, he died in 1993. Is there anyone
here who understands why he said that? What percentage of that 2 m3/yr
waste has decayed to that level then?

I will not quote you without your permission.

Thanks

Theo Richel



-----Original Message-----
From: radsafe-bounces at health.phys.iit.edu
[mailto:radsafe-bounces at health.phys.iit.edu] On Behalf Of Bernard L.
Cohen
Sent: dinsdag 21 september 2010 22:02
To: The International Radiation Protection (Health Physics) Mailing List
Cc: Teachout, Anna M. CIV AFRRI/HPD
Subject: Re: [ RadSafe ] [ RadSafe Yucca Mtn.

  The Nuclear Waste Policy Act is the problem, as explained in the=20
attachment.

On 9/20/2010 4:02 PM, Teachout, Anna M. CIV AFRRI/HPD wrote:
> The Nuclear Waste Policy Act (NWPA, P.L. 97-425, 96 Stat. 2201
> )recognizes that the federal government has the primary responsibility
> for permanent radwaste disposal, as well as the important
participatory
> roles of the states and the public.  Various agencies within the
federal
> government predicted (decades ago) that the site selection process and
> the construction would likely be controversial because there are so
many
> entities involved (Sec DoE, Congress, the President, the states,
Native
> American Tribes, and the general public).  Political posturing and
> anti-nuclear activism haven't made the undertaking any less
complicated
> or less expensive.  Democracies can be oftentimes be rather messy, but
> that doesn't mean we should yearn for dictatorships, does it?
>

--=20
Bernard L. Cohen
Physics Dept., University of Pittsburgh
Pittsburgh, PA 15260
Tel: (412)624-9245  Fax: (412)624-9163
e-mail: blc at pitt.edu  web site: http://www.phyast.pitt.edu/~blc

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