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What is dry cask nuclear waste storage?

By

PlentyMag.com
Tue, Apr 14 2009 at 1:38 PM
Q. My question has to do with Yucca Mountain, which is proposed to be the nation's first nuclear waste dump site. Building the site is now supposed to cost taxpayers $32 billion more than was originally estimated, so a lot of Utah residents I know are understandably upset about the increased price tag, and insisting that storing nuclear waste on site in "dry cask" storage would be safer and more effective. What exactly is dry cask storage, and would it really better than storing nuclear waste at Yucca Mountain? – Sandy, UT
 
A. Right now, there are two methods of storing nuclear waste. One involves storing spent (toxic) fuel at the bottom of large concrete steel-lined pools while it cools—a process that takes anywhere from one to five years. The other method is dry cask storage, which involves storing cooled fuel in large, heavy steel cylinders that sit above ground and provide leak-tight containment.  
 
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission says that both methods are safe and effective for temporary nuclear waste storage, according to Scott Burnell, NRC spokesperson. But the key word here is “temporary.” Though the dry casks can last for decades, the more than 130 nuclear waste storage sites spread across 39 states were never meant to provide permanent storage. That’s where Yucca Mountain comes in. Nuclear waste storage in Yucca would essentially use the same type of casks mentioned above—except larger and designed to last for thousands of years. Another key difference is that the casks would literally be stored under the mountain—about a thousand feet deep. Plus, nobody lives on Yucca Mountain, points out the Department of Energy, which makes storing the waste there a lot safer than sprinkling it across the countryside.
 
Of course, there are drawbacks to using Yucca Mountain for storage. Many advocacy groups are worried that it’s not safe to transport nuclear waste across 43 states, that the casks aren’t durable, and that because Yucca Mountain falls along several fault lines it could prove an unstable storage place. “The idea of geologic disposal is that the waste is supposed to stay put,” says Steve Frishman of the Nevada Agency for Nuclear Projects. Frishman advocates above-ground dry cask storage instead, saying that it would provide a reasonable level of safety until the U.S. can figure out how to properly dispose of the waste. Burnell agrees, saying that “dry cask storage is considered safe and acceptable today, and the question of whether Yucca Moutain is safe and acceptable hasn’t been answered.” 
 
But since dry cask storage is temporary, the government will have to act eventually. The only silver lining in this nuclear mess is that constant bickering over Yucca may have prompted the government to consider whether a different path altogether should be considered—one that could involve recycling nuclear waste, says Burnell. For now, the government seems intent on practicing its infamous “wait and see” method.
 
Story by Jessica A. Knoblauch. This article originally appeared in "Plenty" in July 2008.
 
Copyright Environ Press 2008

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Comments: 2
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anonymous
B Mused Apr 15 2009 at 11:17 AM
Not a bad article, but the photo of what look like 55 gal drums, leaves the impression that this is what "dry cask storage" looks like. The drums are probably for low-level radioactive material (perhaps taken at the manufacturers warehouse since they don't appear to have sins of use.)The link to the NRC web site shows a correct image of dry cask storage. The suggestion by Frishman that dry cask storage is a better alternative than Yucca is not a comparable situation. Yucca is a central, underground
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permanent disposal solution for hundreds of thousands of years. Dry cask storage is indeed safe, but not for the same period. It would have temporary storage in 72 locations around the country, that were never intended to be permanent. As to his "kick the can down the road" reference to figuring out how to dispose of the waste, that was done in 1982 when a law was passed choosing geologic repository as the disposal method and in 2002 Congress approved Yucca as the site. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission is now reviewing a very thorough license application to build it. The NRC has the responsibility and the skilled and objective people to make that decision. Let them do their job!
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anonymous
Axil Apr 14 2009 at 9:34 PM
Mother Nature needs the Thorium nuclear fuel cycle and the Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactor (LFTR). Dr. Edward Teller, the father of Fusion, after a lifetime of work on every aspect of nuclear technology had at the end of his life come to this conclusion in his final study: the LFTR is the best of all possible reactor types. The LFTR is a very simple, efficient, and elegant type of reactor. It can start up on any kind of nuclear fuel, bomb material, or nuclear waste product to produce very high temperature
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heat and at the same time breed more fuel in the bargain. This thrifty approach to nuclear energy greatly appeals to me, but I became even more interested in the LFTR when the details of a new patent were revealed by Dr LeBlanc (see below @ minute 53). It opens up the possibility of building a very compact but powerful reactor that can run for 30 years without refueling. It can be operated remotely in an unattended fully automated intrusion detecting mode and sited underground while it breeds self perpetuating new fuel within the thorium structure of the reactor itself. In order to get to its fuel, U233 that has been produced inside the very solid metal walls of this 200 ton reactor containment vessel, a proliferator must destroy and disassemble the reactor, lift its heavy reactor core out of a 100 meter deep reinforced aircraft crash proof hole in the ground, then cut the thorium containment vessel up into small pieces while enduring heavy killing gamma radiation exposure, next reprocess these reactor pieces using isotopic separation since the U233 is denatured with enough U238 to make chemical separation of bomb grade U233 impossible, and do all this without being detected. Now, this is a tall order for any proliferator and may just be an impossible assignment. At the end of the service life of the Lftr, the reactor vessel is sent back to the factory where it is reduced to liquid fluoride salts that become the feedstock of a next new Lftr. This feedstock can only be used by the new Lftr and not for bombs. A few handfuls of waste products are held at the factory for a few hundred years to cool down before they are mined for the many precious elements contained within like platinum and iridium. Now that is what I call a safe, efficient and thrifty mode of operation! To learn more see one of the following: Aim High http://rethinkingnuclearpower.googlepages.com/aimhigh What Fusion Wanted To Behttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AHs2Ugxo7-8 Liquid Fluoride Reactors: A New Beginning for an Old Idea http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8F0tUDJ35So The Center for International and Security Studies at Maryland has some good things to say about thorium as follows: http://www.cissm.umd.edu/papers/files/future_nuclear_power.pdf
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