MIT report: don't reprocess spent fuel

We have seen that reactions after the Fukushima accident have led to calls for changes in nuclear waste policy.  Some have argued that the involvement of spent fuel pools in the Fukushima disaster argues for reprocessing or other approaches besides allowing spent reactor fuel to sit around indefinitely.  Others have argued that the plutonium leaking from the damaged Fukushima reactor that used MOX fuel shows we shouldn't reprocess.

A new MIT research study out today argues that after Fukushima we should revisit our entire nuclear waste strategy.  It states that there is no urgent need to reprocess, so the best course of action is to store waste in a temporary, stable, and regularly managed form and leave the option open of reprocessing decades in the future if uranium supplies dwindle. 

This is a new and different approach to the whole nuclear waste question.  Check out more details in this New York Times article.

“The minimum time given is ten years”

The "ten years" we're talking about here is the minimum time for dismantling the damaged Fukushima plant and cleaning up the site to a point where it is completely stable.

Read more about it in this IEEE Spectrum blog article.

Chernobyl 25th anniversary

Today marks the 25th anniversary of the Chernobyl explosion that caused the worst nuclear accident the world has ever known.  A few interesting links:

Time Magazine photos of the abandoned town of Pripyat (housing for Chernobyl workers), 25 years later.

More pictures, from an Economist blog.

LA Times article on how there is still uncertainty about the long-term health effects of the disaster.

The Atlantic article on Chernobyl as a tourist attraction

Don't Go in the Park

In Fukushima City near Fukushima plant, children are only allowed to play in parks for up to one hour. Children also shouldn't go in the sand. Why not warn people to not go outside at all?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Iu-jeKB0-B8

-Oliver

Fukushima timeline and projected total radiation releases

Japanese authorities are claiming that the worst radiation releases are over, and that the leaks should decline over time so that the total radiation released by the Fukushima disaster remains close to 10% of what was released in Chernobyl.

But, they also say that it's going to take 3 months to stop the leaks, and 6 to 9 months to get to a fully safe "cold shutdown" state for the troubled reactors. 

Let's hope that nothing else goes seriously wrong (and there are no further earthquakes!) in this time period! 

Read more in this AFP article

russia/Mayak nuclear plant

full 32 min segment

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MbR00_W4gEo

-Alex

Readings for final homework assignment, plus extras

Here are the two required web readings for the final homework (#7):
1) "Fact sheet" on the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT)
http://www.armscontrol.org/factsheets/nptfact
2) New York Times article from last year on the Obama administration's "Nuclear Posture Review." http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/06/world/06arms.html

It really is interesting and worthwhile to read the Nuclear Posture Review itself, or at least the "executive summary" at the beginning.  This document lays out U.S. nuclear policy in fairly clear language, although there is a lot of specialized vocabulary associated with nuclear policy issues.

Find the whole thing at:
http://www.defense.gov/npr/