"The Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) in Carlsbad, New Mexico, began accepting shipments of transuranic waste this month for the first time since February 2014 when an explosion of a drum of plutonium and americium waste halted all deliveries"
It seems to me the Americans have their long-term waste repositories built and up and running (WIPP, Yucca Mountain). What about the UK? What are we doing with our waste?
En el artículo , Mike Tomlinson escribió:
Answering my own question:
From a quick skim through, that looks a half reasonable and balanced account of the situation, for a change! Thanks.
Can we not use the heat generated low grade though it is to make more power? After all plutonium generators are powering spacecraft all over the Solar system and beyond. Brian
Usually only those that go beyond Jupiter, where solar panels would be too far from the Sun. Also, the energy generated in those generators is hardly low-grade, the pellets in question are red-hot through their own radiation.
Only the high level waste generates enough heat to use. I don't recall the figures but if I said 1 watt thermal per person it would give you the right idea. Thermoelectric generators are even more inefficient and expensive than renewables.
As people like Walter Marshall and (I think) Jim Lovelock have said, they would be happy to have a few kW down the garden as a compact source for a heat pump. So would I.
And to follow up another point from the OP, Yucca Mountain has been built but never used because of endless legal challenges.
WIPP is for weapons waste. Yucca Mountain, for civil waste, is built but has never been used because of legal challenges.
I didn't catch the earlier part of the thread, but if the plutonium referred to is e.g. in waste from reactors, it'll probably be the wrong isotope. Obtaining the right one (Pu-238) would be a bloody expensive way to generate a few hundred watts.
The suggestion was "Why not use the heat from *standard* high level waste". The answer is that it is not, in general, economic. Trying to think of a valid counter-example, I suppose if you had something like a small manned scientific base in the arctic or antarctic, you might be able to reduce the fuel cost of heating this way, although you would still presumably need fossil fuel for electricity (and that would give you useful waste heat). Perhaps a windy enough location could survive on windmills and batteries (plus heat).
You could probably engineer a passive heating system which had no dependency on electrical power. But it would not be cheap.
No, this is the reason.
This has been discussed here before. The reason they had problems at the WIPP site was because drums of waste had been packed with something like wood shavings or other organic cat litter, when it should have been packed with bentonite, also used as cat litter.
It's quite appalling that such a simple error should be made, and the specification of the packing drafted in such lax terms that the wrong type of cat litter should have been used. The phrase 'cat litter' should never have been allowed to circulate, whether in a written description or in casual conversation at the packing plant.
It's not surprising that the Harry's of this world regard nuclear safety with grave suspicion when such simple but serious errors are made.
I say, d'ye mind! That's harries, not harry's. And quite likely harries tweed, to boot.
Debatable, AIUI. Harrys, Harries and Harry's all seem acceptable. And if you're getting tweedy, it's Harris, from the island of the same name. He was also a large-chinned bungling detective in The Eagle comic of the 1950's.
But one Harry here is quite enough!
:-)
Along with Boy, who actually did all the work. Wonder what their relationship was.
Too right sport.
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