[ RadSafe ] Subduction Zones and Nuclear Waste
Mudek, Mario D.
MARIO.D.MUDEK at saic.com
Tue Oct 26 09:57:21 CDT 2010
+1
-----Original Message-----
From: radsafe-bounces at health.phys.iit.edu [mailto:radsafe-bounces at health.phys.iit.edu] On Behalf Of Brennan, Mike (DOH)
Sent: Monday, October 25, 2010 5:09 PM
To: The International Radiation Protection (Health Physics) Mailing List
Subject: Re: [ RadSafe ] Subduction Zones and Nuclear Waste
?
-----Original Message-----
From: radsafe-bounces at health.phys.iit.edu [mailto:radsafe-bounces at health.phys.iit.edu] On Behalf Of Jerry Cohen
Sent: Monday, October 25, 2010 5:04 PM
To: The International Radiation Protection (Health Physics) Mailing List
Subject: Re: [ RadSafe ] Subduction Zones and Nuclear Waste
Congratulations!
This post has been nominated for the Congressional Prize for Incoherant Blather.
By comparison, it makes the rantings of many of our congressmen seem like well
reasoned logic.
________________________________
From: "Brennan, Mike (DOH)" <Mike.Brennan at DOH.WA.GOV>
To: The International Radiation Protection (Health Physics) MailingList
<radsafe at health.phys.iit.edu>
Sent: Mon, October 25, 2010 2:39:05 PM
Subject: Re: [ RadSafe ] Subduction Zones and Nuclear Waste
I believe I am the person who originally brought up the idea. I meant
it to be mostly tongue-in-cheek, but it is in fact quite workable.
I agree with those who do not believe that disposing of SNF in a way
that cannot be retrieved is a good idea. My preferred alternative is
eventual reprocessing (after the fuel has cooled down enough that it is
easy to handle), with regional interim storage sites. My very favorite
site is around the gold repository at Fort Knox.
I live in confidence that wastes that we really, REALLY will never want
again can be solidified/encapsulated in such a way as to keep it from
leaking, even at great ocean depths. I also am completely confident
that a delivery system can be designed that will deeply embed the waste
in the part of the zone that will eventually be subducted (I would LOVE
to be on the research/design team!)
I do not, however, have any plans for quitting my job to advocate for
either of these concepts. They are good ideas, but I have learned that,
around here, we don't go and do something simply because it is a good
idea.
-----Original Message-----
From: radsafe-bounces at health.phys.iit.edu
[mailto:radsafe-bounces at health.phys.iit.edu] On Behalf Of
JPreisig at aol.com
Sent: Thursday, October 21, 2010 5:43 PM
To: radsafe at health.phys.iit.edu
Subject: [ RadSafe ] Subduction Zones and Nuclear Waste
Howdy Radsafe:
This is from: _jpreisig at aol.com_ (mailto:jpreisig at aol.com)
One poster to radsafe or more keeps suggesting we put nuclear
waste
into subduction zones for
disposal (in the ocean) and the subduction/convection cycle will carry
the
nuclear waste down into
the Earth and keep it there. I doubt that this would work. The
surface
areas at the entrance ways to
subduction zones are usually covered by layers of sediment (accretionary
wedges???) which would
keep the waste from being subducted. The nuclear waste would just sit
there on top of the sediment layers
without ever moving downward. Duh...
Let's keep the nuclear waste up here on the surface of the Earth,
with no need to put nuclear waste in
the ocean. Nuclear waste in the ocean was an idea for the 1950's ---
not
very viable today.
I don't mind opening up Yucca Mountain at all. So what will happen in
the
November 2010 election---
eh, boys and girls. If that republican woman upsets Reid in Nevada,
will
the Nuclear Waste trucks be
headed to Yucca Mountain???
Tell me it ain't so, Dr. Stabin,... HP types sitting for the HP
CHP
exam and not knowing the difference
between Roentgens, rads and rems??? Isn't this material covered in
many/most first health physics
courses??? HP's who don't know about plateau curves for gas filled
detectors??? Boy, long ago,
I remember running a rad spectrum using a SCA (Single Channel Analyzer)
and
not a MCA (Multi-Channel
Analyzer). Talk about tedious. This story reminds me about my Dad
telling me about having Dr. Geiger
as a lecturer for lab demonstrations in Germany. Still don't know if
that
story is true. I'm told Geiger
was highly animated in his lab lectures and they were very well
attended.
An interesting older book on radioisotope methodology is by Chase
and
Rabinowitz.
Nuclear waste is Cs/Sr and things like that, longer-lived low
level
(alpha) components and perhaps
some mobile (in groundwater) radionuclides (Tritium, C-14, Tc-99, I-129,
etc.). I guess the French have
limited other energy resources, and need to reprocess their nuclear
waste.
The USA has other energy
options, doesn't reprocess much Nuclear Power plant waste, leaving it at
the power generation sites.
The USA spends money for storage, but doesn't waste money on
reprocessing
right now, get it???
Global warming, oh my. Perhaps the guy at Penn State and the
people
at East Anglia were early
bearers of the the global warming message. If there was scientific
wrong-doing, then they should be
treated accordingly. But this is important stuff!!!! The work/results
should be revisited, re-analyzed by
more serious, more credible, better funded scientists. The hockey
stick
(dog leg????) in the
global warming data appears real to me, although my atmospheric training
is
rather lacking.
Another curve of interest that can be garnered from the Internet
is
that of world population versus time
for the last 100 years or so. Those data have somewhat of a hockey
stick
(dog leg?) shape also, with
the change in the data slope taking place in about 1945 or thereabouts
(the start of the baby boom???).
One can imagine a 20 year lag/lead time between a person's birth and the
time they enter the adult
(and perhaps industrial) workplace. Compare the two curves. I don't
want
to support global
warming all that much, because I know so very little about it.
Funny, in about 1991, folks at Goddard Space Flight Center (NASA
USA)
were making Global
Circulation (Atmospheric) Model runs on an IBM 3090 Mainframe computer,
which might have been called
a supercomputer by some. I also used that computer for geophysics
calculational spectrum estimation,
and that computer's memory was stretched to the limit just to run one of
my
programs. I'm
sitting here, typing this e-mail, on a personal computer which far
exceeds
the memory capability of that
IBM computer. Sounds like, one day soon, the average JOE scientist
could
be running GCM runs on
a computer sitting right on his/her desk.
I should end here, but I can't resist offering. One poster to
readsafe offered the observation that tritium
will leak out of vacuum systems using O-Ring Vacuum Sealing technology.
Boy, isn't that the truth.
One doing work with tritium should try to use Varian Flange vacuum line
technology, or something
similar. Expensive???, perhaps yes. Also in 1978, EMR
Photoelectric/Schlumberger (Princeton Jct.,
NJ) (No, not EML in New York City!!!!) switched from using some metal
which
I cannot recall, to Uranium
or depleted Uranium as a gas storage getter material in their Minitron
(Also known as a Bit__otron to one
of our former QC inspectors) neutron generator processing stations.
The
tritium is no longer introduced
during tube processing directly from the tritium (also deuterium)
laboratory cylinder, but rather from a
batch of uranium powder. One heats and cools the Uranium powder to get
the deuterium and/or tritium
in and out of the powder. The deuterium and/or tritium is then
absorbed
in a filament (of the other metal)
in each Minitron tube. Each Minitron, if it makes it through the life,
voltage, performance testing heads
to the oilfields for use in oil well logging. One reaction I expect
they
use in the well logging is
(n, gamma) with the neutrons being produced in one part of the oil well
logging device and a hardy
Schlumberger photomultiplier tube receiving any produced gamma returns.
The gas gettering technology
using Uranium was described in a brief article in a scientific journal
from
around 1978 or before. Such an
article might be on the internet now??? I'm not all that sure
Schlumberger/EMR Photoelectric/Weston,
etc. sees a need to disseminate information about how their neutron
generator tubes are built, used and
processed.
That's all for now. Enjoy your weekend!!!!
Regards, Joseph R. (Joe) Preisig, Ph.D.
(not Joseph O. Preisig, formerly of RCA Princeton,
Hightstown and Somerville, NJ USA)
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