Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
Table
.
Elements of spent fuel
Fission
fragments
Long-lived
component
Component
Uranium
Percentage of total
Radioactivity
Negligible
Intense
Medium
Untreated required
isolation time (years)
the United States, much less the
tons more that will
come from them over their remaining lifetimes. That
doesn
t count what will come from any new reactors that
might be built.When I give talks on waste disposal I usually
start with the title of this subsection:
'
“
Love it or hate it,
we have it.
It is hard for me to decide if the US waste
disposal drama is a comedy or a tragedy. Here is the story.
US law gives the Federal Government responsibility to
take title to all spent fuel and to put it away in a deep
“
”
where it will remain isolated from
the surface world for the time required for its radioactivity
to decay to safe levels. That time is hundreds of thousands
of years for the longest-lived component in untreated
spent fuel. To pay for this repository, the price of electri-
city from nuclear reactors has a surcharge built into it of
geological repository,
”
cent per kilowatt-hour which goes to the government
to pay for the eventual disposal of spent fuel. Over the
lifetime of the reactors currently in operation, this waste
disposal fund will accumulate about
.
$
billion, and there
is about
billion in it now.
Looking separately at the three main elements of spent
fuel (
Table
$
) might lead one to believe that there should
be little problem. Uraniummakes up the bulk and weight of
the spent fuel. Nearly all of it is the uranium-
.
isotope
