Nuclear Power Plant Waste, Case Study Example

Nuclear power plants can be seen as dangerous especially since there are over 436 nuclear power plants currently up and running in the world, and they spread over 30 countries. They can be seen this way because when a nuclear power plant malfunctions to the point of evacuation, this means that a major leak or breach in the system has occurred. Such a deleterious outcome usually signifiers a plutonium leak. A plutonium leak is dangerous because it amounts to large quantities of radioactive material being dumped into the immediate environment of the nuclear power plant. This occurred when Chernobyl in Ukraine. Chernobyl’s reactor failed in shutting and this lead to many deaths and an inimical environment full of radioactivity. Leaders at the time decided that enclosing the malfunctioning reactor in a sarcophagus composed of thick concrete for years would be the best way to handle the accident. This was in 1980’s and since then the world’s reaction to nuclear efficacy as well as problems has gotten better. This paper will focus on nuclear power plant waste clean up, what can be done about it, what is being done about it, and the risks of clean up.

While a giant sarcophagus may be thought of as a solution from the Stone Age, it was the best that scientists could come up with at the time after the safety mechanisms, and back up generators failed at Chernobyl. The sarcophagus was only intended to last a few decades and so new forms of nuclear waste clean up are being implemented for the modern age so that plutonium doesn’t leak into the environment. The United States has a nuclear-waste repository and questions about the safety of this repository in concerns with radiation leaking into the nearby environment, have been given voice (Tollefson para. 1). The U.S. repository stores nuclear waste underground.

There has yet to be enough scientific research done on the potential detrimental effects of such a repository. In fact, in February 2014 “radioactive plutonium and americium leaked out of the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) near Carlsbad, New Mexico” (Tollefson para. 2) where there were thousands of contaminated drums full of radioactive material from previous United States weapons programs. The drums were located half a kilometer below ground in salt beds. Of the damage done, it was reported that 13 employees tested positive for contamination, albeit low level.

This incident makes it clear that there is a problem. The WIPP is just one of many stockpiles of nuclear waste left over from commercial reactors. It seems like policy makers cannot find a better way to store nuclear waste except to store it in underground repositories such as the one in Yucca Mountain, Nevada that since 1987 has been reserved as a future site to store nuclear waste (Tollefson para. 3). One step in the right direction of nuclear waste clean up is to revise the Nuclear Waste Policy Act that doesn’t allow for proper investigations of sites outside of certain jurisdiction thereby inhibiting any proper assessment of nuclear waste in repositories.

The Department of Energy (DOE) wants to find out whether or not salt beds “at the WIPP could store radioactive waste that is hotter than the material they currently hold. In 2011, the team began developing a $31-million experiment that would have tested how the salt deforms when it is heated, and how water moves through it” (Tollefson para. 5). Other researchers have been investigating whether or not “dropping cylinders of nuclear waste into 5-kilometer-deep boreholes in hard rock such as granite” (Tollefson para. 6) will create any positive way to get rid of nuclear waste. Even in Europe scientists are trying to find new ways to curtail the problems associated with nuclear waste clean up. Finland and France have zeroed in on the idea of underground repositories as a means to enclose nuclear waste – repositories that encased in granite and shale, which is similar to the sarcophagus put over Chernobyl. One of the problems with choosing repository sites is that any knowledge gained about the efficacy of these sites is purely local geographical knowledge. The same repository schematic that works in France will not work in New Mexico because their horizon C layers are composed of entirely different bedrock. Bedrock in turn has different effects on containing nuclear waste (Tollefson para. 8).

When researchers choose a repository site they then study the bedrock for density and porosity and whether or not the site has any heat conductance (Tollefson para. 9). The heat conductance is one of the more important factors in this experiment as it helps researchers gage how well the area will respond to nuclear waste. These experiments are ways in which to contain nuclear waste and address a small fraction of the concern of how to clean up nuclear waste. The question then becomes not where or how do we store what we clean up, but how do we begin to clean it up in the first place.

A new crystalline compound has been engineered that can potentially answer this questions. The compound holds the possibility of absorbing nuclear waste (Gilroy para. 1). This potentiality would negate the need for more boreholes and bedrock testing, not to mention the high cost in funding something that has a declining potential to pan out. The way the compound works is that it functions as a sponge for ions that are radioactive and “once captured, the radioactive ions can then be exchanged for higher-charged species of a similar size, recycling the material for re-use” (Gilroy para. 2). The article goes on to state that the engineering of such a compound could have come just at the right time as currently there are approximately 305 metric tons of 99Tc were generated from nuclear reactors and weapons testing from 1943 through 2010” (Gilroy para. 3) and the safe storage of this waste has been the topic of many debates for many decades.

Thus, the compound would be greatly salubrious for the environment not just on a local United States scale for the rest of the 29 countries who have nuclear power plants and are emitting tons of nuclear waste a year, a waste product that stays harmful for decades and whose impact has certainly proven its potential for destruction.

The compound “contains a framework of channels and cages featuring billions of tiny pores, which allow for the interchange of anions with a variety of environmental contaminants, especially those used in the nuclear industry” (Gilroy para. 5). The compound has been put against a battery of tests and laboratory studies and has successfully removed almost 99 percent of the 99Tc’s in nuclear waste ions and “exhibits positive exchange selectivity for greater efficiency” (Gilroy para. 5).

Despite these positive steps in nuclear waste clean up there is still the problem of risks involved in that clean up. Risks may involve human exposure to radiation levels, or even environmental factors as seen in Chernobyl. A chief potential risk of nuclear cleanup is rod explosion. Rods are the part of the reactor that hold all of the juice and in a nuclear clean up it is necessary to carefully remove rods from the reactor. Removing these rods poses a threat because if the rods are exposed to oxygen or break in any other way then the radioactive material inside the rods is set loose and poses a potential atmospheric hazard (Sheldrick para. 3).

A second potential risk in nuclear clean up is “extracting spent fuel from the plant’s other reactors where radiation levels are much higher because of core meltdowns” (Sheldrick para. 4). If a nuclear power plant has the misfortune to house their reactor and rods at a staggering height then removal of the rods and other clean up activities are given an added risk because of fear of those rods dropping from the building collapsing or buckling (Sheldrick para. 6).

The reactor and rods are housed within a type of cooling chamber or pool and therefore if the pool that houses these items is punctured or damaged in such a way as to release water working as cooling agents, then a clean up crew runs the risk of the rods exponentially getting hotter and therefore fire becomes a factor. When Chernobyl happened fire was a big problem because helicopters were dumping lead and sand on the reactors but this proved to just ignite a blaze. A fire is a danger in and of itself but fires also enable the release of more radiation.

The time and money spent in cleaning up nuclear waste is consuming. Some clean up lasts for days while others can last upwards to decades (as with Chernobyl). People handling hazardous material are at great risk as well. They are risking their lives in order to maintain a sense of organization in a disaster. The clean up crew runs the risk of people exposed to radiation through faulting pools, plutonium leaks, and even problems with their HAZMAT suits. If a HAZMAT suit has a tear in it, then the person inside the suit is immediately exposed to radiation and the effects of radiation are debilitating, severe, and often lead to death.

Clean up crews run the risk of exposure to radiation. Leaks from rods, reactors, and in general the clean up involved in nuclear waste is not something that comes lightly. Crews run the risk of exposure and long term effects from radiation that don’t lead immediately to death, lead to other physiological problems. These problems run the gambit of cancer, tumors, blindness, etc. Radiation exposure also detrimental effects on the next generation as people exposed to radiation experience infancy death rate and even birth defects that can be anything from missing limbs, extra limbs, blindness, or born with any multitude of defects.

Nuclear waste clean up has a variety of ways to go about cleaning up. Some nationals have repositories underground that depend on various bedrock and salt deposits to curtail overheating (something that nuclear waste does intrinsically). There is also more innovative ways to deal with nuclear waste clean up with emerging compounds that absorb nuclear ionic waste. There is also the tried method of creating a large concrete dome as a sarcophagus to contain nuclear waste, but this device has proven to only last two or three decades. The risk factor involved in nuclear waste clean up paints a debilitating picture. Anywhere from plutonium leaks, to cooling pools malfunctioning and thus creating widespread fire that ignites the release of radioactivity into the atmosphere are simply some of the things that occur as potential risks during clean up. There is no “no risk” with nuclear waste clean up. There are simply different possibilities of risks.

Works Cited

Gilroy, William. “New Method for Cleaning up Nuclear Waste.” Science Daily (20 March 2012). Web. 21 May 2014.

Sheldrick, Aaron. “Next Phase of Fukushima Nuclear Cleanup Fraught with Risk.” MSN. (12 November 2013). Web. 21 May 2014.

Tollefson, Jeff. “U.S. Seeks Nuclear Waste Research Revival.” Scientific American. (4 March 2014). Web. 21 May 2014.