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The Forum > Article Comments > Can Australia learn from international experience in managing radioactive waste? > Comments

Can Australia learn from international experience in managing radioactive waste? : Comments

By Anica Niepraschk, published 23/7/2015

In March this year, Industry Minister Ian Macfarlane called on landowners across Australia to nominate their land to host a radioactive waste management facility.

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ChristinaMac1 also wrote about the costs of “eternal storage”.
She obviously doesn’t know about ‘breeder’ reactors that fission away nuclear waste! Yes, we have the technology to burn nuclear waste and turn it into abundant energy. Don’t beat yourself up about it. I’ve met people who used to work at Yucca Mountain who just could not believe nuclear waste could be burned away to a tiny amount of fission products (real waste) that only has to be stored for 300 years. True story!

The Russian BN-600 still works.
Japan paid a $billion for technical specs
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BN-600_reactor

The Russian BN 800 is brand new!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BN-800_reactor
From the news on the Russian BN 800!
"Fuel for breeder reactors could even be made from nuclear waste, which from an ecological point of view is a priceless advantage…..Humankind has already produced so much nuclear waste that it would take decades, if not hundreds of years to process and recycle it. "
http://rt.com/news/188332-mox-nuclear-fuel-production/

INDIA have a development program
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prototype_Fast_Breeder_Reactor

The French had the massive 1200MW reactor the Superphenix which worked perfectly until ignorant anti-nuke campaigners closed it down!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superph%C3%A9nix#Closure

The Chinese have a test fast reactor
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/China_Experimental_Fast_Reactor

GE have a blueprint for the PRISM reactor, based on the old EBR2. It's ready to get built in the first country that will approve it.
http://gehitachiprism.com/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PRISM_(reactor)

CONCLUSION? It means the nuclear 'waste' in America is now a *resource* worth $30 TRILLION, and that the American's could run themselves for 1,500 years burning their waste!
http://bravenewclimate.com/2009/10/16/ifr-spm/

Former Chief Scientific Advisor to the British Prime Minister, David Mackay, estimates that the UK has enough waste to run her for 500 years.
http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2012/feb/02/nuclear-reactors-consume-radioactive-waste

But my all time favourite breeder is the LFTR (say Lifter). Watch this 2 hour documentary in half-hour chunks, and you'll get a sense of why even many anti-nuclear greenies I know grudgingly admit they would accept a fast build of LFTR's around Australia.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P9M__yYbsZ4
Posted by Max Green, Tuesday, 28 July 2015 8:00:28 AM
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Just the mere 300 years of toxic radioactive wastes to be safely stored and expensively guarded. What a relief!.

And don't let's worry about the technetium-99, iodine-129, and cesium-135 with half-lives between 213,000 and 15.7 million years (Technical options for the advanced liquid metal reactor). Tiny amounts, but so toxic that the volume of space required for storing these ends up being just the same as for the original so-called "fuel resource" - not wastes)
Posted by ChristinaMac1, Tuesday, 28 July 2015 8:32:21 AM
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Don't worry Maxy.

You're not getting the $$Billions of public money for your nuclear hobby :)
Posted by plantagenet, Tuesday, 28 July 2015 1:10:18 PM
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Hi Christina,
I guess the first thing I should do is thank you for not challenging that there *are* breeder reactors that can burn most actinides back to safe levels within 300 years of storage. The list also appears to have conceded that:-

1. Kerala India is 3 times more radioactive than the 20km Fukushima exclusion zone

2. Cancer rates in Kerala are 3 times *lower* than the global average.

3. Nuclear power is safer than solar or wind on a death per terrawatts basis

Now, as a general rule of thumb you know that the longer lived a radioactive item is, the less radioactive it is? Just how radioactive are technetium-99, iodine-129, and cesium-135, and why do we need to ‘worry about’ tiny amounts of these if they’re being stored locked in synrock in with the really radioactive fission products that are burning themselves back to safe levels in 300 years? Why worry about them? At just one golf ball per human lifetime for *all* the energy a person would ever use (including nuclear generated synthetic fuels like hydrogen or ammonia), why would we ever need to move them from the reactor energy park? They’d go in a concrete pit there and never come out. Park security would take care of it. If energy is half renewable and half nuclear, it’s one 'golf-ball' of waste for every 2 people's 70 year average lifetime. Think about it. If all NSW energy came from the one reactor park, it would only be (rounding up for population growth) 7 million golf balls to bury, or 3.5 million golf balls if we're half renewable. That’s one deep Olympic Swimming pool's worth of waste for an entire 70 year generation! That’s utterly *trivial* to manage, and there’s no extra cost for security because it's on site. Reactor security are managing it! Millennia later, they may have concreted over the thing and turned it into a carpark and built new reactors down the road a bit. But they can keep an eye on the old waste for millennia. Easy.
Posted by Max Green, Tuesday, 28 July 2015 7:33:04 PM
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Park security, transport security - cost of guarding for 300 years - dangers from increasing extreme weather events due to climate change.

Dream on , "Max Green"
And while you're dreaming, - faster, clean renewable and and energy efficiency technologies are established globally, even including Australia.
And all the while, you nuclear shills know that you've got to lobby fast, not only because clean technologies are beating you, but because the next nuclear nightmare could happen any day.
Posted by ChristinaMac1, Wednesday, 29 July 2015 7:08:55 AM
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World Nuclear Industry Status Report 2015 (WNISR 2015) gives a full, independent assessment of the nuclear industry's current state and trends for the future. Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists (27/07/15)gives a summary of the Report's findings. And it's not optimistic http://thebulletin.org/deconstructing-nuclear-industry8565
Posted by ChristinaMac1, Wednesday, 29 July 2015 7:40:20 AM
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