Yucca Mountain may not be needed (Feb 26)
By Chuck Doud
The Madera Tribune
President Obama will cut funding for the nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain, Nev., and that may not be a bad thing in the long run, even if it will anger the nuclear industry.
Nuclear power is getting more backing as an alternative to power generators that burn coal or natural gas — both of which pollute. Nuclear power doesn’t pollute, but it does generate nuclear waste, which concerns many, especially those who don’t like nukes in the first place.
Yet, many in the nuclear industry know you don’t need a Yucca Mountain depository to have nuclear power. Nuclear waste created in light-water
reactors, for example, can be reprocessed and used again.
France and Japan do this. France generates the majority of its electricity with nuclear power.
The old saying that dilution is the solution to pollution also works with nuclear waste that for some reason can’t be processed. About 40 years ago, a system of glassification for safely diluting and storing low-level nuclear waste was developed, and has been used successfully if not widely.
An updated version of it is being developed for disposal of waste at the Hanford, Wash., nuclear facilities.
The Defense Waste Processing Facility at the Department of Energy’s Savannah River Site in South Carolina near Augusta, Ga., turns liquid nuclear waste into glass, which is highly stable, and then is stored in canisters.
Another waste treatment plant, the Saltstone Facility, extracts salts from the liquid wastes, mixes them with cement and boiler ash then mixes them into grout. The grout is pumped into big concrete silos, where it cures into
concrete. The silos are then sealed with concrete.
In both these methods, the waste is basically harmless, and above ground where it can be seen — and avoided.
