Produces shortest half-life Nuclear Waste 1

[zoomi]

Does anyone know which plant type produces waste materials with the shortest half life?

I've heard that some produce waste with a half-life of hundreds of thousands of years which is OTT IMHO.

 

[Zogzog]

I dont think so, I think the half lifes of most waste is around 60 years or so. I may be wrong.

 

[vpl]

Although this seems like a general curiosity question, rather than a work-related issue, I will try to answer it, at least to some degree.

All currently running nuclear plants use the same process - nuclear fission - to generate electricity. The majority of these plants use uranium, although there are a few which use plutonium. The process involves "splitting" the uranium/plutonium atom by striking it with a neutron. The split atom then creates new atoms, some of which are radioactive, some of which aren't. The radioactive ones are called isotopes.

There are charts in various nuclear texts, and probably also on the Internet, which give the probability of a uranium atom splitting into certain isotopes, and the resultant half-lives. Some are very short lived, others very long. Although the probability of certain isotopes changes with plutonium being used, the actual types of isotopes remains the same. There’s a fairly good article on Wikipedia. For this type of question, it is a much better source.

Patricia Lougheed

Please see FAQ731-376 for tips on how to make the best use of the Eng-Tips Forums.

 

[KitoOne]

vitrification plants seem to be attempting to make the half life Not Matter anymore

make them into large glass clumps of radioactivity and stick em in the ground in casks

 

[jpankask]

I must have either missed this thread the first time or thought that Patricia gave a good enough answer. However, I'll throw in my 2 pennies with this revived posting.

Ideally, reprocessing and vitrification would solve a lot of the questions and problems we are currently running into. Reprocessing would remove most of the usable uranium and plutonium still left in the used fuel every plant has sitting in their spent fuel pool (and there is a lot of reusable fuel left in each fuel rod). Vitrification would drastically reduce the dangers from waste products and would be safer to store in the long term. Also, anybody who tried to get some vitrified waste wouldn't be able to do very much with it. The problem is that both processes are very expensive and reprocessing would take congress reversing the ban enacted under Carter, which is why the U.S. has fallen behind the rest of the world in this aspect. By reprocessing and vitrifying the waste, we could get rid of all the spent fuel currently sitting in storage and reduce the volume that needs to be stored drastically. No one will put up the money it takes, though, with all of the uncertainty now. Maybe after the first few companies start building new plants, somebody will get the nerve.

 

[KitoOne]

Well its just so economically feasable (and legal) to just cask it and keep it on your personal grounds.

if they legalized Yucca and ultra regulated keeping Waste above ground it would change real quick

 

[PH927]

There is a vitrification Plant in process at Hanford, Washington. It may have its first Melter finished at the end of summer 08. But the building it goes in will need to be finished before they can even start testing it. The web site is

http://www.bechtelvitplant.com/.

My hope is that this project does some good for the industry all around.

 

[vpl]

The Hanford vitrification project is limited to handling the waste generated at Hanford, a Department of Energy regulated site. It has not, to the best of my knowledge, been approved for any nuclear plant in the US. I don't think anyone has even asked the NRC about vitrification, much less NRC issuing a license approving it.

Nevertheless, we have run rather far from the original post... and into the realm of speculation rather than an actual work situation needing to be solved. I request that if anyone has any further comments about vitrification that a post be made in forum730.

Thanks

Patricia Lougheed

Please see FAQ731-376: Eng-Tips.com Forum Policies for tips on how to make the best use of the Eng-Tips Forums.

 

[zoomi]

Thank you Patricia for your help. I was employed as a lowly structural engineer for the THORP project and have worked on Dungeness A & B. Due to the UK's decision to go ahead with NP I am mindful of the clear up problems we have for the previous generation of reactors.

So my question really is what sort of reactors give us the least problem in nuclear waste?

Regards

zoomi