Publicatie Laka-bibliotheek:
Get the Facts on High Level Atomic Waste Storage Casks
Auteur | Kevin Kamps, NIRS |
6-01-5-51-92.pdf | |
Datum | juni 2001 |
Classificatie | 6.01.5.51/92 (AFVAL - OPSLAG OP LAND (oa ZOUT/KLEI)) |
Voorkant |
Uit de publicatie:
Get the Facts on High-Level Atomic Waste Storage Casks! Prepared by Kevin Kamps, Nuclear Waste Specialist, on June 11, 2001. Nuclear Information & Resource Service, 1424 16th Street, Suite 404, Washington, D.C. 20036 202.328.0002; fax 202.462.2183; nirsnet@nirs.org; www.nirs.org The Dangers Past and Present Storage Techniques Dry Storage Casks Problems with Dry Cask Storage Surfaced Immediately: A Meltdown of Democracy, a Retreat from Regulation Cask Fabrication Before Certification: Build ‘Em First, Ask Questions Later Bubble, Bubble, Toil and Trouble: Cracks, Corrosion, and Explosion Atomic Brinksmanship When in Doubt, Rush Full Speed Ahead Anyway The First Rule of Holes: When You’re in One, Stop Digging So What’s To Be Done?! Leave it in the pools? Ship it away to be buried? Stop making it! The Dangers “Spent” nuclear fuel is a misleading term. Irradiated nuclear fuel rods discharged from commercial nuclear power plants are highly radioactive, a million times more so than when they were first loaded into a reactor core as fresh fuel. If unshielded, irradiated nuclear fuel just removed from a reactor core could deliver a lethal dose of beta, gamma and neutron radiation to a person standing three feet away in less than a second. Even after decades of radioactive decay, a few minutes unshielded exposure time would be enough to deliver a lethal dose. Certain radioactive elements (alpha emitters such as plutonium-239) in “spent” fuel will remain hazardous to humans and other living beings for hundreds of thousands of years. Military high-level radioactive wastes – the highly radioactive liquid and sludge “leftovers” from reprocessing irradiated fuel rods to extract the uranium and plutonium for making nuclear bombs – has the same hazardous characteristics as “spent” commercial fuel. Irradiated fuel rods and high-level nuclear wastes are perhaps the most hazardous poisons ever created. There is the added danger that fissile materials still present in