On 07/03/2017 13:02, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
On 07/03/17 11:41, Mike Tomlinson wrote:
En el artÃ*culo , Chris Hogg
escribió:

I'm surprised that sludge is easier to deal with than swarf,
radioactive or otherwise

I guess sludge is more pipeable/vacuumable and it reduces the need to
find some way to manipulate (mechanically handle) bits of swarf. Suck
the gloop up along with its radioactivity-shielding water, transfer into
barrels, store in a deep hole in the ground.

I wonder if that's the plan for Sellafield's legacy ponds.

Nope.

Right now nuclear waste is not ready to be disposed of: efforts are
really going into stabilisation in terms of short to medium term storage.

The ponds were just where stuff was dumped. There is nothing special
about the sludge, its just that as in the granny joke, they've cleaned
up all the big bits and sludge is what's left.

Sellafield is having funding it needs provided and is in a slow steady
and measured way sorting out a legacy from the cold war of loads of
waste varying from barely worth a mention to quite hot really.


Since it needs funding anyway to clear up the cold war legacy, we might
as well have a vibrant nuclear industry to leverage a necessary facility
and help pay for it.



I was wondering about this the other day. Long term solutions for energy
seem to require either the fabled fusion or new breeder reactors.

AIUI breeder reactors will potentially produce far less waste and much
of the current waste is potentially usable fuel. We appear to have
enough Uranium and Thorium for thousands of years. Unlike fusion
technology the engineering of such reactors appears to be relatively
achievable at what will probably be a reasonable cost.

Fusion on the other hand seems to be tremendously complex, if even
achievable, and hence likely to be very expensive. So what is the point
of massive funding for ITER as opposed to funding more achievable
fission designs.