[ RadSafe ] Your Editorial on Nuclear Power

[Joseph Shonka]

Roger.
  I think a great deal of the radioactive components in coal are highly concentrated in fly and bottom ash and does not go out the stack.  U and Th ( and their daughters) are present in coal at levels not too different from other materials that make up earth. When burned, and when 95% of the carbon is burned, those nuclides become concentrated 10X or more (along with other toxic metals).  While some daughter products are gaseous or volatile, most remain with the ash. The ash may well be more hazardous than depleted uranium.
Joe Shonka

Sent from my iPhone

> On Apr 16, 2020, at 7:41 AM, Roger Helbig <rwhelbig at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> Mr Editor,
> 
> Depleted Uranium is not nuclear waste from a nuclear reactor.  Spent fuel
> assemblies are and yes they do contain some Uranium-238 (aka DU) since the
> fuel is 3% enriched uranium which means that 97% of it is still U-238
> (natural uranium is 99.3% U-238 and 0.7% fissionable U-235) - Spent fuel
> has less than 3% U-235, but that part of the original 3% which is no longer
> U-235 did not turn into U-238, it turned into fission products and those
> generate decay heat.  Once the fission products with the shortest
> half-lives and greatest level of decay heat (the shorter the half-life, the
> more radioactive the isotope and the greater the heat from decay) are gone
> (have undergone 10 half-lives) the spent fuel is now cool enough that it no
> longer needs to be in a spent fuel pool and can be transferred to a dry
> cask for longer term storage.  Dry casks no longer need to be cooled. U-238
> decays so slowly, one half-life is the age of the Earth, 4.5 billion years,
> that it generates no appreciable decay heat.  Lies about depleted uranium
> abound on the internet.  Usually, though, editors do not make them in their
> own writings.  You should learn a lot more about uranium and about nuclear
> power before you write about it again.  I expect you are in Oswego County,
> Illinois and if that is the case, the coal underneath the county is more
> radioactive than the spent fuel.  Look it up; coal contains uranium and all
> of its decay daughters and when coal is burned that goes out the stack in
> the smoke.
> 
> Roger Helbig
> born in Amboy, raised in Sublette and Mendota, but now a Californian
> 
> ---------- Forwarded message ---------
> From: Google Alerts <googlealerts-noreply at google.com>
> Date: Thu, Apr 16, 2020 at 4:02 AM
> Subject: Google Alert - "depleted uranium"
> To: <rwhelbig at gmail.com>
> 
> 
> [image: Google]
> <https://www.google.com/alerts?source=alertsmail&hl=en&gl=US&msgid=NzA4MzM5NjY3MzI0MzE1ODAwNw>
> "depleted uranium"
> Daily update ⋅ April 16, 2020
> NEWS
> 
> <https://www.google.com/url?rct=j&sa=t&url=http://www.oswegocountynewsnow.com/columnists/nuclear-waste-the-problem-that-will-never-ever-go-away/article_39f2211c-7f58-11ea-9421-93cbd1c100fb.html&ct=ga&cd=CAEYACoTNzA4MzM5NjY3MzI0MzE1ODAwNzIaMjkzM2JkYTM3MmIzMDRhMjpjb206ZW46VVM&usg=AFQjCNFSatP4t5HNqqOKNaPf9u2zeH9xww>
> Nuclear waste: the problem that will never, ever go away
> <https://www.google.com/url?rct=j&sa=t&url=http://www.oswegocountynewsnow.com/columnists/nuclear-waste-the-problem-that-will-never-ever-go-away/article_39f2211c-7f58-11ea-9421-93cbd1c100fb.html&ct=ga&cd=CAEYACoTNzA4MzM5NjY3MzI0MzE1ODAwNzIaMjkzM2JkYTM3MmIzMDRhMjpjb206ZW46VVM&usg=AFQjCNFSatP4t5HNqqOKNaPf9u2zeH9xww>
> oswegocountynewsnow.com
> After several years in a cooling pool adjacent to the reactor itself, the
> *depleted* *uranium* is entombed in steel and concrete silos (known as dry
> cask ...
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