Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
is kept together. Plutonium, the stuff of nuclear bombs,
in the spent fuel is not separated from the rest of the
material, and so cannot be used in a weapon. Access
to the plutonium is prevented by the intense radiation
of the FFs that go with it into storage in a geological
repository.
The once-through system may not be workable in a
world with a greatly expanded nuclear-power program.
The public wonders if the material can really remain
isolated from the biosphere for hundreds of thousands
of years. In addition, a large number of repositories would
be required in a world with vastly expanded nuclear
power. For example, even if nuclear energy in the United
States were to remain at the projected
% fraction of US
electricity needs through the end of the century, the
spent fuel in a once-through scenario would need nine
repositories of the capacity limit set for our designated
repository at Yucca Mountain in Nevada (the limit is by
legislation; the physical capacity of Yucca Mountain is
much larger). This would be quite a challenge since the
United States has not yet been able to open its
rst one.
Yucca Mountain is right next to the Nevada test site,
where hundreds of test nuclear explosions were carried
out in the days of the cold war. There is a pretense that
the existing radioactive contamination of the ground
made it the logical site for a repository. However, the
radioactive material at the test site from all the weapons
tests ever made there is about the same as that from two
weeks of operation of the power reactors in the United
States. The truth is that Nevada was chosen because it
lacked the much larger political muscle of the alternate
sites being considered.
