chapter 19 nuclear waste disposal apes

1. Aditya G, Robin H, Anthony S

2.  One of the most difficult problems
 Could be a deciding factor in future energy
usage

3.  United States, Britain, and France disposed of
radioactive wastes in the ocean until 1970
 Soviet Union dumped 2.5 million curies of
radioactive waste
 Can contaminate far away sources

4.  Opposition to past disposal techniques
 High-level waste depository
 Yucca Mountain, Nevada
 Billions of dollars have already been spent on
this project
 Russia has offered to store other countries’
nuclear waste

5.  Experts believe that monitored, retrievable
storage is the better option
 Holding wastes in underground mines or
secure surface facilities
 Energy Department has performed crash
tests on nuclear holding facilities and has
determined that they are safe

6.  How would you feel if trains were coming
through your city carrying radioactive waste?
 Do you think it is better to keep the waste at
100 separate locations as it is now?

7. 1. What is a high-level waste repository?
2. What was the previous method of nuclear
waste disposal before new techniques were
discovered in the 1970’s? Which country was
the main contributor?
3. What is monitored, retrievable storage? Why
is it effective?

8.  Nuclear plants are usually designed to be in
use for 30 years
 Lots of work has to go in to preparing an old
plant to no longer be used
 It’s too dangerous to just walk away from it
 The radioactive pieces have to be stored just
as the other wastes is stored.

9.  Operated 24 years, shut down in 1992
 Took a decade to dismantle the reactor and
shell and to pack them in a 950 ton shipping
assembly
 Scheduled to be shipped all the way around
South America to South Carolina for
permanent storage.

10.  The active 103 reactors will cost somewhere
from $200 billion to $1 trillion to
decommission
 Decommissioning plants generally cost 2 to
10 times more than building them

11. • At first this power was thought to have been the gateway to a
brighter, more efficient future.
• Over the course of time we realized that the energy may have
been a good idea, but our current technologies do not seem to
hold up to the test. We spend more money manufacturing,
sustaining, and dismantling the facilities where it is housed than
we gain from its out put.

12. • After the events of World War II, Three Mile island, and Chernobyl,
many people began to fear this energy more than they loved it.
• Even more recently however, more and more people are saying
that they think that nuclear power is a good thing, and would not
mind having a plant near by.

13. In conclusion, it seems as though the fate of the concept and our
actions involving nuclear power in our everyday lives, is left up to
the people of the time to decide. Its future could be either bright,
or desolate.

14. 1. What happened to Chernobyl? Three Mile Island? Fukushima
(Japan)?
2. What do you know about Nuclear Power?
3. Would you be comfortable with a nuclear power plant near by?
Why, or why not?