Muons are elementary particles similar to electrons. They were discovered in 1936 by Carl Anderson and Seth Neddermeyer at Caltech in 1936. They have a negative charge and are two hundred times as heavy as an electron. They occur naturally as a result of cosmic rays hitting the atmosphere of the Earth. About ten thousand muons hit every square meter of the Earth’s surface every minute of every day.
I have discussed many issues that might lead to closing a nuclear power plant. There can be concerns about earthquakes, flood, tornados, hurricanes, explosions, leaks and many other problems. One thing that has nothing at all to do with reactor design, the weather but does have to do with the location is the demand for electrical energy.
French scientists discovered natural radioactivity and explored its properties early in the history of nuclear science. France was involved in nuclear research prior to WW II and, following the war, the government created the Commissariat à l'Énergie Atomique to fund and guide research. In the 1950s, the emphasis was on nuclear weapons research but progress was made on civilian use and the first nuclear reactor in France started in 1963.
Germany currently has operational nuclear reactors at present. Nuclear power accounts for about twenty percent of Germany’s electricity. Following the disaster in March of 2011 at Fukushima, Japan, Chancellor Angela Merkel appointed a panel to look into the issue of shutting down Germany’s reactors. The previous government in Germany had announced that all German reactors would be shut down by 2012 but the Merkel government had extended the lifespan of German reactors by 12 years.
In my previous post, I discussed recent rule changes at the Nuclear Regulatory Commission with respect to extending the time allowed from 30 years to 60 years for utilities to temporarily store spent nuclear fuel in pools or dry cask storage while a permanent geological repository is sited and developed. The new rules went into effect in January of 2011. In February of 2011 Connecticut, New York and Vermont sued the NRC to repeal the new rule for storage.
On January 24, 2011 a new rule was put in place by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission with respect to the storage of spent nuclear fuel. The new rule covered the storage of spent nuclear fuel in pools near the reactor, onsite in temporary storage casks or offsite in independent storage facilities. The NRC made changes in 1990 to the Waste Confidence rulemaking procedures to allow for the extension of temporary storage.
In the previous post, I talked about the Blue Ribbon Commission on America’s Nuclear Future. On December 12, 2011 before the release of its final report, the BRC sent a letter Secretary of Energy and President Obama.
Before the Obama administration moved to cancel the Yucca Mountain Repository Project for permanent storage of high-level nuclear waste in March of 2010, the President created the Blue Ribbon Commission on America’s Nuclear Future to study the problem of permanent spent nuclear fuel disposal on January 29, 2010. The Commission was co-chaired by former Congressman Lee Hamilton and former National Security Advisor Brent Scowcroft.
In 1982, The U.S. Congress passed the Nuclear Waste Policy Act. Included in the Policy Act was the provision that the U.S. utilities would pay a tax on the radioactive waste being generated by the U.S. utility companies operating nuclear reactors. The money in the fund was to be used by the U.S. government to create a safe permanent disposal facility by 1998. The Yucca Mountain Repository was the intended solution to permanent disposal.
I have already written about the Yucca Mountain Repository Project in a previous post including mentioning the cancellation of the project. The cancellation was complex, confusing and politically charged. I decided that I needed to dig deeper into the subject.
We have been covering a lot of issues involving disposal of nuclear waste. There is a process called “vitrification” that helps prepare nuclear waste for disposal. The specific meaning of the term is the process of turning something into a glass. For substances that have a glass phase, vitrification would consist of causing the substance to undergo phase transition to its glass state. Chemical processes can also result the creation of a glass.
Writing this blog has been a very educational experience. I have been aware of the problem of disposal of nuclear waste for a long time but lately I have been delving into the details. I knew that the Yucca Mountain Repository Project had had all its funding pulled recently, leaving the United States without any long term plan for permanent disposal. In addition, I found that the U.S.
Some elements are transmuted to other elements in nuclear reactors. This process is called nuclear transmutation. One of the options discussed for disposal of some radioactive materials is to intentionally convert them to other less radioactive elements in a reactor or with another source of radiation.
As we discussed in a previous post, one of the standard solutions for getting rid of things that we do not want is to bury them. While nuclear waste depositories for the most part utilize existing exhausted mines, an alternative is to drill extremely deep holes into the earth to dispose of nuclear waste.
Another option for burial of high-level radioactive waste such as spent nuclear fuel rods is burial at sea where it would not be disturbed by geological processes or human activity.
There are hundreds of thousands of tons of depleted uranium hexafluoride in temporary storage in the United States. A very small amount has been used in the manufacture of such things as tank armor, armor piercing artillery, shields for industrial radioactive materials and other applications.
When nuclear fuel has been burned in a reactor and there is no permanent disposal site, there is an alternative to storing the spent fuel rods after they have cooled off in a pool of water for at least a year. Spent fuel rods can be stored in steel cylinders in what is called ‘dry cask’ storage.
While the United States has been struggling with the Yucca Mountain site for nuclear waste disposal, other countries have been operating or planning repositories.
Sweden has been operating a repository since 1988. Finland has one that has been in operation since 1992 and another that opened in 1998. Germany operated one that closed in 1995 and another that closed in 1998. The US has been operating a repository for transuranic wastes since 1999.
In 1957, the National Academy of Sciences of the United States recommended long term burial as the best solution for permanent disposal of nuclear wastes. Starting in 1978, the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) has been studying Yucca Mountain in Nevada as a possible site for the first long term geological repository for U.S. The U.S.
