WHAT SHOULD BE DONE WITH NUCLEAR WASTE?

Students will be able to analyze the international implications of hazardous nuclear environmental pollutants.

Students will be able to identify and discuss the issues surrounding nuclear waste disposal sites, their locations, and storage methods.

Radiation: : electrically charged particles or waves emitted by an energy source, machine or decaying atoms. It includes everything from sunlight to low-level radiation from the earth itself, cosmic rays from space, medical x-rays and particles from the face of your watch that glows in the dark. Ionizing radiation is capable of altering atoms it strikes, damaging them as opposed to non-ionizing radiation such as visible light and radio waves. Whether radiation harms humans and the environment depends on what kind of radiation and how much people, plants, and animals are exposed to.
Radioactivity caused by the artificial splitting or natural decaying of unstable atoms known as radionuclides. Unstable atoms give off charged particles, ions, until they lose enough energy to become stable elements which can take anywhere from a billionth of a second to a million years.
Decay spontaneous emission of particles by unstable atoms until they transform into more stable elements.
Half-life: the time it takes a radioactive substance to lose half its radioactive energy. After two half lives, a quarter of the sample is unchanged and after three, an eighth. Many highly radioactive materials such as plutonium must go through several half-lives before they become safe to handle without protection. Plutonium has a half-life of 24,000 years.
Near-surface facility: a nuclear facility for waste disposal located at or within a few tens of meters from the Earth's surface. This type of facilities includes trenches and engineered vaults.
Mined Cavaties: near-surface facilities constructed inside mines and caverns.
Geological repositories: nuclear facilities for waste disposal located underground(usually more than several hundred meters below the surface) in stable geological formations to provide long-term isolation of radionuclides from the bioshere.₂

WHAT ARE THE DANGERS OF NUCLEAR WASTE?

Power plants, nuclear submarines, and nuclear bombs produce nuclear waste. There are 424 nuclear reactors worldwide, of whichand 109 are in the United States. A typical nuclear power plant produces 20 metric tons of spent fuel every year..₆ The most dangerous kind of waste is spent fuel waste. Uranium oxide in the form of ceramic pellets sealed inside long metal tubes is used in power plants to generate electricity. As the uranium is used it is converted into other elements, including plutonium. Only a small portion of the uranium is converted before it becomes inefficient for generating power and must be removed from the reactor..₂ There are currently 28,000 metric tons of waste being stored in the United States..₆ In Russia, they reprocess spent fuel, but because the reprocessed form of uranium and plutonium could be used to make nuclear weapons, the United States outlawed reprocessing in 1977.₂

Low-level waste consists of anything that has come into direct or indirect contact with anything radioactive. This includes gloves, clothing, paper towels, and even washing machines. It also includes the concrete and building materials. While not as dangerous as spent fuel waste, it still requires proper handling and disposal.
Exposure to ionizing radiation is dangerous for humans. The amount of damage done to the body depends on dosage; the more radiation the more damage. There is some risk of health effects with any exposure, no matter how small. There is no absolutely safe dose, but there are acceptable levels of exposure for practical purposes, said to be unlikely to produce adverse effects. The risk of radiation exposure is also dependent to the length of time over which the exposure occurred. The human body can tolerate small doses that add up over time better than the same amount all at once. We are all exposed to some radiation due to the naturally occurring radioactivity in the earth crust. In addition, dental x-rays, microwaves, glow-in-the-dark watches, and other daily exposures are extremely small doses that accumulate over a lifetime. Radiation in any amount can induce malignant changes in tissue or damage the in body in other ways. Skin cancer from sun exposure is one example of chronic exposure of low-level radiation causing harm. Response to radiation exposure is individual - what produces no effect in one person may result in cancer for another. Radiation exposure can cause a variety of health problems including leukemia, various other cancers, blood disorders, heart disease, and genetic disorders that can be passed on to children..₇

WHAT DOES RUSSIA DO WITH ITS NUCLEAR WASTE?

There are 36 nuclear power plants in Russia₁₂ and 149 decommissioned nuclear powered submarines..₁₁ There are three reprocessing plants, which recycle radioactive waste and spent fuel. Over the past four decades of reprocessing, large amounts of radioactive pollution has been released into the environment. The waste produced from this process also contains large quantities of acids, cyanide, and organic solvents. These materials pose a substantial danger by themselves, but when mixed together with radioactive waste the risks may be increased through chemical and biological interactions. Another danger is transporting the reprocessed fuel that has become weapons-grade uranium and plutonium. There are international concerns about the security of such fuel. The quality of Russian infrastructure and organization has come into question in recent years..₁ In July of 1993 there was an accident at the plutonium processing plant in Chelyabinsk, which caused an explosion with radiation being released into the environment. The public was not notified for two days..₁₂

The Russian Northern Fleet has dumped solid and liquid radioactive waste as well as nuclear reactors in the Kara Sea and the Barents Sea since the 1960’s. Thirteen nuclear reactors from submarines have been dumped; six of them had used fuel abroad. The Barents Sea is a highly important international fishery that is in danger of contamination from any leakage that may occur. Finland, Sweden, and Norway are concern about the risks for their countries.₁₃ In May of 1998, Norway and Russia signed an agreement to jointly clean up the nuclear storage in Andreeva Bay. Before this agreement, the base was an operating storage facility for the Northern Fleet. All the containers shipped there in 1997 were stored outside without any protection against the harsh winter environment because the storage tanks were filled to capacity already. The Russians had refused access to international inspections, citing national security reasons. The agreement between these countries calls for Norway to assist Russia in emptying and closing the Andreeva Bay storage facility for spent nuclear fuel and doing a comprehensive study of methods for handling the fuel. Norway will also play a major role in establishing a more permanent solution.₁₁

Discussion Question:
Do you think that this is a new turning point in international relationships? Would you be willing foryour tax dollars to go to clean up another country's nuclear waste? why or why not?

WHAT HAPPENED AT ROCKY FLATS?

The Rocky Flats Nuclear Weapons Plant, located northwest of Denver and southeast of Boulder, Colorado, began operation in 1952, producing plutonium and other components for nuclear weapons. In 1989, production ceased due environmental and safety concerns. By 1995 the massive clean up effort had begun and the plant is now called the Rocky Flats Environmental Technology Site. The site is located near a major metropolitan area, with more than 2.5million people living within a 50-mile radius..₁₈   All of the high-level waste has been now been removed and transported to Amarillo, Texas and Oak Ridge, Tennessee. It is the low-level waste generated during the cleanup operation that is now being transported down I-25 to Carlsbad, New Mexico.₁₀

Hauling nuclear waste as become a national issue, as waste is transported across state lines. Accidents are inevitable as shipments travel on interstates throughout the United States. The Department of Energy has assured the public that the casks used have been test for safety and that the vehicles used are specifically designed for the task. The public is not thoroughly convinced. In 1996, a truck carrying nuclear warheads skidded off an icy road and crashed in Nebraska..₃ It took half a day for the government to determine if any radioactive material had leaked because the radiation monitors had been removed. A federal crisis team found that that had been no leakage, but such incidences shake the public’s confidence in the government’s ability to safely transport nuclear waste..₅

Safety issues are not the only considerations that must be addressed; security is also vital. Terrorism has become an issue in the United States in recent years. Nuclear waste in the hands of terrorist is a scary to think about and must be prevented. Routes that cannot be monitored should be avoided. Such would those that have many intersections or blind curves. Narrow secondary roads, twisting mountain roads, and city streets would not be good routes for transport. Large multilane interstates are the best option, although most pass through high population areas.

Disscussion Question:
Find Denver, Colorado, and Carlsbad, New Mexico on a roadmap. What route do you think the nuclear waste take? How many cities does it go through?

IS YUCCA MOUNTAIN THE BEST OPTION FOR OUR NUCLEAR WASTE? The amount of nuclear waste stored in the United States is growing. Current means of storage are quickly filling up. The nuclear industry is looking to the federal government to provide a new solution..₃ A site in Nevada at Yucca Mountain has been chosen as a possible geologic repository. The military tested over a thousand nuclear bombs in the desert nearby. The mountain is actually a heavily eroded ridge of compressed ash from volcanic eruption that occurred millions of years ago. The area is dry and isolated. The waste would be sealed in miles of tunnels deep in the earth and eventually the entrance would be block by tons of dirt..₁₇

The problems with the site are numerous according to protestors. Yucca Mountain is only100 miles northwest of Las Vegas, a fast growing city with a large population. There are concerns about rainwater slowing penetrating to the repository, although it would take thousand of years for that to naturally occur; the area only get an average of 6 inches of rain per year. Opponents also point out that there 32 mapped earthquake faults in that area and 7 dormant volcanoes..₁₆ Geographical studies of the area suggest that the area is actually very stable geographically and only ruptures every 50 thousand years. The trickiest problem is transporting the waste to the site. High-level waste is currently stored at 76 different sites in 41 different states. Trains and trucks carrying dangerous nuclear waste would be traveling through as many as 43 states to deliver to Yucca Mountain..₁₅

Go to this website to see if the nuclear waste it would go through your community:

If we bury the nuclear waste in the desert, how we mark it to warn future generations that it is there? Remember it will be dangerous for 10,000 years or more. The United States will not likely be here and English will be a dead language by then. We must figure out a way to communicate with people far in the future in such a way that is universally understood. Researchers are looking back to Ancient Egypt and other civilization to seek clues. No solution has been agreed upon..₉

Discussion Question:
How would you warn people living 10,000 years from now that there is a dangerous nuclear waste buried in the ground?

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