Postby Sable » 16 Dec 2009, 08:28
The spent fuel rods are hardly left "lying around," it's not as though you can go to The Big Nuclear Waste Facility and walk away with a fuel rod. There are many, many methodologies for dealing with nuclear waste and byproducts that can render it stable and if not inert, then certainly manageable over the long-term.
For example, a common method is called vitrification, a process by which the nuclear material is glassified by intense heat and stabilised into a long-term storage medium. This process is being employed across much of the European Continent (where nuclear power has been moving forward at a faster pace than U.S.-based interests) and a massive vitrification facility is being built at the Hanford Area in eastern Washington for the disposal and management of the Area's gifts that keep on giving.
Other methods have included harvesting the fission products for useful isotopes (while this does not alter the need for management of the other fission products, it does introduce an element of recycling), and in a similar vein, extraction of uranium and plutonium from the spent rods for other uses or separation of disposal duties, as these are the most highly-radioactive byproducts. Uranium extraction in particular may eventually lead to reprocessing and re-enrichment of extracted fission products to put back into new fuel rods with a minimum of having to mine new uranium.
"Plutonium," I hear you saying, "What on Earth is that good for, other than bombs?" Well, the question is a good one: Plutonium is unbelievably dangerous. It's powerfully radioactive, and the key component of nuclear weapons. So what could extracting plutonium possibly be good for, in an age when nuclear proliferation is a global faux pas?
Curiously, the answer is space exploration. Plutonium is a fantastic material for a nuclear battery (which is not some kind of miniature fission cell as you see in science fiction), providing a very high energy density and a very long lifespan with which to use it. Nuclear batteries (also called radioisotope generators) capture either the heat of nuclear decay, the very radiation itself, or a combination therof, and use it to produce electricity. In concept, process is not dissimilar from the use of phosphors inside a fluorescent tube to produce a more pleasing spectrum.
"But wait!" I hear you cry, "What do you use nuclear batteries in?" Terrestrial uses for nuclear batteries have largely been limited to very remote weather stations (Some Soviet-era weather stations were built with nuclear battery sources, and some U.S. stations in Alaska were as well) where solar or wind was not feasible at the time. Referring to space exploration, a number of satellites in orbit right now employ nuclear batteries to either augment or entirely replace the more-traditional solar arrays, and the upcoming Mars Science Laboratory mission will use a super-sized version of the Spirit and Opportunity rovers to move around the Red Planet - powered by a plutonium-driven nuclear battery, allowing it to be completely independent of sky conditions or dust storms. In addition to the Mars Science Laboratory, the Cassini probe is also carrying a nuclear battery, as solar power was certainly not an option that far from the Sun.
Finally, if we must trust anyone to handle nuclear waste, the only entities with the resources, time, and wherewithal to manage it properly are, for better or worse, governments. Until eccentric billionaires start financing vitrification plants, extraction facilities, the search for geologically stable terrain features for long-term storage, or buy some area of the planet near a subduction zone that isn't subject to the contradictory laws of a dozen nations, a government of some sort will have to be the driving force behind the complicated procedure of the reclamation or reprocessing of spent nuclear materials. There are simply not a lot of ways around it.
Containment and management of nuclear byproducts is certainly a concern associated with fission power, and as a result does need to be considered carefully, however these considerations should not preclude nuclear power as being an option for power generation. There are tremendous benefits associated with nuclear power, even the fission systems we rely on now. In the next twenty years, who knows? We have been promised fusion power for decades, perhaps it's time for that promise to come true.
In the meantime, alternative energy systems are, of course, always a possibility in areas that are amenable to the installation of wind turbines, solar panels, hydroelectric plants, tidal generators, geothermal systems, or any of the other bevy of energy solutions. There is no one single answer - wind, solar, coal, nuclear, gas, or the magical energy of happy bunnies are, individually, no good answer. Hybridized systems have always had the highest chances of success, which seems more or less how things are going right now.
And really, if you're that tired of it all, there are things even individuals can do. Rooftop solar is viable in huge tracts of the United States alone (although our northern correspondents - Alaska, western Washington, British Columbia, it takes a lot more effort) and while it is expensive, it is a tangible and viable way to make your own power. The question always comes down to money and effort. I can tell you now that when my wife and I eventually buy a house, rooftop solar or back-yard wind generation are high on our priorities to install, since I already know how to do it (it's frightfully easy once you have the equipment) and, above all, pretty cool.
Holy shit that was a lot of words.
. But in general just storing waste in old mines and underground complexes is a good option.
