[Leica] RE: LUG Digest, Vol 31, Issue 221

[Frank.Dernie at btinternet.com (Frank Dernie)]

Douglas,
I have always wanted to ask a specialist this question, and it looks  
like you may just be the person.........
What is wrong with burying nuclear waste in the exhausted mines from  
which it originated? Presumably it won't be any more dangerous there  
than the raw nuclear material originally mined????
The biggest concern I have re oil is not its use as a fuel, that  
seems a terrible waste to me, but as the raw material for  
manufacturing materials such as plastics for which we have no  
reasonable alternative.
Frank

On 1 Feb, 2006, at 19:30, Douglas Sharp wrote:

> The technologiy is clean enough, and close to being as safe as it  
> can be - the problem is still nuclear waste. As a production and  
> exploration geophysicist I've worked on nuclear waste storage  
> sites, working and prospective, in Germany, Belgium, Switzerland  
> and a few other places. For the long-term storage of nuclear waste  
> there is NO really safe solution, that stuff stays highly  
> radioactive on a geological time scale.
> Salt dome caverns  are no good - salt moves and migrates so you've  
> never got a constant thickness shielding your waste, the Swiss  
> solution of putting it in caverns blasted out of native impervious  
> (supposedly) rocks is better but radiactive gases (Radon for  
> example) always manage to find a way to the surface. The Belgian  
> method of hiding it under a thin layer of impervious clay isn't a  
> long term solution either.
> So what do we do with it?  Shooting it into the sun is the only  
> real way of getting rid of it, there's been enough dropped into the  
> sea and more than enough buried already, these "fly-dumps" will  
> take their revenge on the environment one of theses days.
> You say that  present day technologies are safe, I agree - problem  
> is, even the most recent reactors just haven't been built with  
> these new technologies, Temsvar in the Czech Republic is one of the  
> newest NPSs
> and is just not safe, the same applies to the latest French  
> reactors, Germany's reactors have been plagued with problems and  
> Sellafield in the UK is a dirty word already. No need to mention  
> reactors in the former soviet block countries.......
>
> Fusion power is pie-in-the-sky (unless the billions for defence are  
> re-channeled), you might just as well try a further development of  
> Nikolaus Tesla's idea by building orbiting spaceborne solar power  
> stations transmitting power as high energy microwave frequencies  
> back to earth, though I dread to think what would happen if a plane  
> flew through one of those tight banded transmissions.
> The only clean options are  terrestrial solar energy farms, wind  
> and tidal energy and geothermal energy - these are the only future  
> I can see in power production.
>
> Some of the latest developments reek of science fiction but could  
> be effective - half mile high chimneys set up in desert regions,  
> the temperature differential between ground level and the top  
> creates winds of incredible velocities, all you have to do is put  
> aturbine in the way of it. Using waste energy (off peak production  
> is always too high and just gets wasted) from conventional power  
> stations to pump water into high level reservoirs
> to run hydroelectric turbines at peak demand times, storing energy  
> as compressed air in salt domes is another option, use it to supply  
> the energy needed to get gas turbines running.
>
> None of these, however give us any kind of solution for automotive  
> transport - when the oil runs out we're going to back with sailing  
> ships and steam engines again, individual or personal  
> transportation will be the rich man's game.