q

Earlier this year WIRED was given rare access to Sellafield, a sprawling
collection of buildings dating back to the first atom-splitting flash of
the nuclear age. This was where, in the early 1950s, the Windscale
facility produced the Plutonium-239 that would be used in the UK's first
nuclear bomb. In 1956 this stretch of Cumbrian coast witnessed Queen
Elizabeth II opening Calder Hall, the world's first commercial nuclear
power station. Both buildings, for the most part, remain standing to
this day.

The site currently handles nearly all the radioactive waste generated by
the UK's 15 operational nuclear reactors. It also reprocesses spent fuel
from nuclear power plants overseas, mainly in Europe and Japan - 50,000
tonnes of fuel has been reprocessed on the site to date.

/q

http://www.wired.co.uk/article/insid...nuclear-waste-
decommissioning

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On 9/18/2016 12:02 PM, Mike Tomlinson wrote:
http://www.wired.co.uk/article/insid...nuclear-waste-
decommissioning

After only a quick read, it doesn't seem wildly inaccurate, but perhaps
a bit alarmist.

Serious error in description of some of the storage:

"Each two-metre square box weighs up to 50 tonnes and gives off around
100 sieverts of radiation."

Presumably they mean 100 Sv/hour? I could believe that might be the dose
rate at the opening of a "full" box, before the lid is put on. But the
whole point of these boxes, whether cast iron or concrete, is that when
closed they are thick enough to provide substantial shielding, so that
the surface dose rate is very much lower, perhaps 10 microsievert per hour?

I suppose that figure might be right for the basic containers of
vitrified high-active waste, but these are (of course) handled remotely
and stored behind shielding.

While the statements like "No-one knows what is in there" sound a bit
alarming, one point about radioactivity is that it is very easy to
detect when present at effectively harmless levels. There's no real risk
of opening a door and suddenly getting unexpectedly roasted. (In
contrast, for things like old munitions containing poison gas there is a
very real risk, which is why such care is required as shown in the
recent documentary from Porton Down).

The people working there are not complete idiots. The management have
finite resources available, so they need to plan and prioritise. And
their activities are all overseen by the ONR.

On 18/09/16 14:37, newshound wrote:
On 9/18/2016 12:02 PM, Mike Tomlinson wrote:
http://www.wired.co.uk/article/insid...nuclear-waste-
decommissioning

After only a quick read, it doesn't seem wildly inaccurate, but perhaps
a bit alarmist.

Serious error in description of some of the storage:

"Each two-metre square box weighs up to 50 tonnes and gives off around
100 sieverts of radiation."


That's a massively lethal dose

8 SV is a lethal dose.

Even Chernobyl; reactor for firefighters was not that hot. Something is
wrong with those numbers.




Presumably they mean 100 Sv/hour? I could believe that might be the dose
rate at the opening of a "full" box, before the lid is put on. But the
whole point of these boxes, whether cast iron or concrete, is that when
closed they are thick enough to provide substantial shielding, so that
the surface dose rate is very much lower, perhaps 10 microsievert per hour?


I doubt it.

WAY too high.

Maybe 100Sv is the *total* radiation emitted over the next 10,0000 years..


I suppose that figure might be right for the basic containers of
vitrified high-active waste, but these are (of course) handled remotely
and stored behind shielding.

While the statements like "No-one knows what is in there" sound a bit
alarming, one point about radioactivity is that it is very easy to
detect when present at effectively harmless levels. There's no real risk
of opening a door and suddenly getting unexpectedly roasted. (In
contrast, for things like old munitions containing poison gas there is a
very real risk, which is why such care is required as shown in the
recent documentary from Porton Down).

The people working there are not complete idiots. The management have
finite resources available, so they need to plan and prioritise. And
their activities are all overseen by the ONR.


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