A Nuclear Waste (James Conca)

Link: http://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesconca/2017/02/09/americas-high-levelnuclear-waste-is-gone/#5c8747795830 For the original article and embedded hotlinks, please click on address above.

A Nuclear Waste: Why Congress Shouldn't Bother Reviving Yucca Mountain February 9, 2017 James Conca is a scientist in the field of the earth and environmental sciences. For 33 years he has been specializing in geologic disposal of nuclear waste, energy-related research, planetary surface processes, radiobiology and shielding for space colonies, subsurface transport and environmental clean-up of heavy metals.

======================================================= The Trump administration and Congress seem to be trying to raise Yucca Mountain from the dead. Yucca Mountain is the site of a proposed high-level nuclear waste repository in Nevada that was halted in 2010.

The site has always been political, from its initial choice to its recent death.

The problem this time is that most of our high-level nuclear waste is no longer highlevel. And most scientists agree we shouldn’t dispose of spent nuclear fuel until we reuse it in our new reactors that are designed to burn it.

So there really isn’t much to go into Yucca Mountain anymore.

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Besides, the highly-fractured, variably saturated, dual-porosity volcanic tuff at Yucca Mountain with highly oxidizing groundwater, was the wrong rock to begin with, causing the cost to skyrocket and the technical hurdles to keep mounting.

FILE - This May 6, 2015, file photo, a caution sign hangs on a fence in front of a building that houses depleted uranium at the EnergySolutions facility in Clive, Utah. (AP Photo/Rick Bowmer, File) The Trump administration and Congress seem to be trying to raise Yucca Mountain from the dead. Yucca Mountain is the site of a proposed high-level nuclear waste repository in Nevada that was halted in 2010.

The site has always been political, from its initial choice to its recent death.

The problem this time is that most of our high-level nuclear waste is no longer highlevel. And most scientists agree we shouldn’t dispose of spent nuclear fuel until we reuse it in our new reactors that are designed to burn it.

So there really isn’t much to go into Yucca Mountain anymore.

Besides, the highly-fractured, variably saturated, dual-porosity volcanic tuff at Yucca Mountain with highly oxidizing groundwater, was the wrong rock to begin with, causing the cost to skyrocket.

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Anti-nuclear activists have used Yucca Mt. to oppose the new generation of nuclear power plants by saying we have no place to put the waste. But we know how to do this and we know where to put it.

Unfortunately, everyone has focused on the political and legal aspects without understanding the science. And we know what happens when Human Law runs into Natural Law – Natural Law wins every time. Otherwise, we’d just make hurricanes illegal.

There are four categories of nuclear waste in America: spent nuclear fuel, high-level waste, transuranic waste and low-level waste. The first three require deep geologic disposal. SNF is solid used fuel from reactors, HLW is mostly wet peanut-butter-like gunk, and TRU is a mixture of solid, debris and gunk. SNF and HLW were destined for Yucca Mt, decided in the 1980s. Since 1970, however, most of the high-level waste has changed to transuranic, and SNF needs to be kept for future reactors, so the whole point of Yucca Mt is pretty well moot.

There are four categories of nuclear waste in America (see figure). In order of descending radioactivity, they are spent nuclear fuel (SNF), high-level waste (HLW), Page 3

transuranic waste (TRU) and low-level waste (LLW). HLW and TRU are almost all defense waste, generated from making nuclear weapons.

SNF is solid used fuel from commercial reactors, HLW is mostly wet peanut-butter-like gunk, and TRU is a mixture of solid, debris and gunk. By law, these three require deep geologic disposal.

We built a deep geologic repository for TRU waste, called the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP), in the massive Permian-age salts in New Mexico near Carlsbad. WIPP has operated extremely well since 1999, having had only one minor incident in 2014 that had no environmental or other effects. All TRU is supposed to go there. In addition, there are six waste sites around the country for LLW that have also been operating well for many years.

SNF and HLW were destined for Yucca Mt, a decision made 30 years ago by the best scientists in Congress.

However, everything has changed since 1970. We removed most of the hot stuff from the HLW tanks (137Cs/90Sr), and the rest has radioactively-decayed to TRU and is no longer high-level. All those high-level tanks up at Hanford are now filled with TRU waste, and many other tanks there, particularly the leakers, were already filled with TRU. In fact, some TRU wastes disposed of in WIPP are hotter than anything left in these HLW tanks, so we know how to do this (see figure).

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A disposal room in the TRU WIPP deep geologic nuclear repository a half-mile below the Earth in massive salt showing the less radioactive waste in various containers in the room, and the really hot stuff, like what most of our HLW has become, deep in the wall behind the radtech. Standing in front of nuclear waste, this technician is getting a tenth of the dose you are getting reading this post.

The other half of what was supposed to go into Yucca Mt was SNF. But SNF needs to be kept in dry cask storage and burned for future reactors, whose waste would be shortlived and easier to handle. Legislation is now moving through Congress to do just that.

So the whole point of Yucca Mt is pretty well moot.

What is high-level nuclear waste? Most statutes use a relic of the old source-based HLW definition established by the Atomic Energy Commission over 40 years ago which introduces confusion when applying more recent legislation. For example, under current policy, wastes emanating from the reprocessing of irradiated and/or spent nuclear fuel are presumed to be HLW unless formally demonstrated to not be HLW using either: - Section 3116 of the Ronald Reagan National Defense Authorization Act of 2005, or - one of the DOE Order 435.1 Waste Incidental to Reprocessing (WIR) processes Each waste determination made using Section 3116 or the WIR Process can take three to five years to complete and can cost several million dollars, so using these two statutes to re-evaluate 57 million gallons of gunky waste would be costly and take a lot of time.

On the other hand, Congress provided better language when it defined high-level radioactive waste (HLW) in the Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1982 (NWPA), that considers both the source and the hazard of wastes, defining HLW as the highly radioactive material resulting from the reprocessing of spent nuclear fuel that contains fission products (137Cs/90Sr) in sufficient concentrations (keep reading for more on this).

The House Armed Services Committee provided a rationale for changing the HLW definition saying, “The recommended definition takes into consideration both the source and the hazard of the waste and permits the regulatory agency responsible under law for setting standards for radioactivity (EPA) to determine the concentration of fission products and transuranic elements that require permanent isolation.” [H.R. Report.97-491, Part II, at 2 and 4 (July 16, 1982)] “[T]he Department believes that the definition of “high-level radioactive waste” should reflect not only the source of waste, e.g., from reprocessing, but also the relative hazard.

Such a definition would permit the regulatory agencies to exclude materials from “high level radioactive waste” that need not be disposed of in a repository because of low activity” [reprinted in 1982 USCCAN 3847-3849].

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In other words, it matters what’s in the waste right now - not what was in it 30 years ago.

To find a conservative interpretation of fission products in sufficient concentrations, the best and only reasonable place is 10 CFR Part 61, a regulation promulgated by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission in the 1980s that established upper limits (Class C limits) on the concentrations of fission products (and other radionuclides) that could be safely disposed of in a low-level radioactive land disposal facility. That level is 7 Ci/liter.

Nothing left in the HLW tanks is over 1 Ci/liter.

If fission products below 7 Ci/liter have been deemed safe by the NRC for low-level waste disposal in a shallow landfill, then those fission product concentrations are not sufficient to require permanent isolation in a deep geologic repository with extreme treatment and barriers including super-robust canisters, titanium drip shields and waste forms such as glass. Instead, they can go into a TRU repository like WIPP. The NRC considered a rulemaking to implement the NWPA HLW definition by quantifying terms using metrics such as Class C concentration limits. The Commission ultimately decided not to undertake the rulemaking because it believed that the principles of waste classification were well known and that questions regarding which tank wastes were, or were not, HLW could be adjudicated on a case-by-case basis [58 FR 12345].

Kind of like when Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart couldn’t define pornography but said you’ll know it when you see it.

This was an unfortunate decision that removed the flexibility needed to address these issues as they evolve. It is also most likely the reason that common sense has not prevailed in our nuclear waste disposal program.

Thus, the WIR Process has the cart before the horse, which is to be forgiven since this subject is, at best, opaque to Congress and the public.

By these definitions, almost all of our HLW is now TRU. This should change the path forward for waste disposal dramatically, especially the cost and schedule. We can safely dispose of these wastes using existing technology at existing sites for a fraction of the cost and time that Yucca Mt would take.

Alternative facts aside, we really cannot afford to do dumb things that cost hundreds of billions of dollars. Treating over 50 million gallons of nuclear waste as high-level, when it isn’t, is really dumb.

Dr. James Conca is a geochemist, an energy expert, an authority on dirty bombs, a planetary geologist and professional speaker. Follow him on Twitter @jimconca and see his book at Amazon.com

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