We could have been energy independent by now!

For fifty years we have know about this site.  Today, I am exposing the politics and the hypocrisy that our own Politicians have been perpetuating on the American Public.  This country has never had a Nuclear Waste Storage/disposal problem!  Here’s why.

I interviewed Dr. Jim Conca, Director of the Carlsbad Environmental Monitoring and Research Center on Tuesday 2/24/10.  I Spent 58 minutes on the phone with him.  It has to be one of the most fascinating and informative interviews I have ever done.  The following article is from my interview with him.  First let me explain what WIPP is and where it is.  WIPP stands for: Waste Isolation Pilot Program.  To see my previous article on waste storage in Japan, click here.

Note:  I have been invited to an extensive  tour of the plant and view areas that are not normaly accessible to the public.   Click on the following to see an in-depth review of the WIPP facility.     My Second article is entitled Nuclear: What Really Goes On Underground.

 Watch this 2.5 minute video I have obtained from the WIPP site first.

The History

Do you remember during the Cold War with the Soviets?  At some point we agreed to dismantle a huge amount of nuclear missiles.  Ever wonder where all that waste went?  It’s not like we just threw it out with the garbage.  So where has all that nuclear waste been going, all these years?  Enter WIPP.

In 1957 the National Academy of Science reported to Congress, and identified along with leading scientists, a massive a salt deposit under ground 26 miles outside of Carlsbad New Mexico.  The  salt is 600 meters or 2,000 feet feet thick and the most massive is  2,000 feet under ground.  Bedded salt is free of fresh flowing water, easy to mine and is impermeable and geologically stable for hundreds of millions of years.  Why is it so ideal to put nuclear waste there?  Under ground, the pressure on the salt is about 2,000 psi.  Salt closes in on itself at a rate of three inches per year.  Nuclear waste is stored in 55 gallon barrels known as dry storage (The dry cask storage nomenclature really refers to the cement casks for spent nuclear fuel as opposed to the pools of water they are stored in onsite shortly after they come out of the reactor).  The barrels are stored in giant rooms called ‘panels’ that are 300 feet long, 33 feet wide and 13 feet high.  This site will consist of 8 panels total.  It takes ten years for a panel to start to be fully enclosed and entombed by the salt.  

Hard rock sites like Yucca Mountain crack and leak and were never designed to permanently store nuclear waste.  So how did we ever get Yucca Mountain?  It will get to that shortly.

The total available space the existing storage site contains is 16 square miles.  When WIPP is full it will only take up one square mile.  It is expected that by 2034 the 1 square miles parcel will be full.  Why aren’t we using the whole site to handle the entire nuclear waste that our commercials reactors produce?  Read on!

In the 1970′s during the Ford and Carter years the policy of the Government was not to recycle spent fuel rods.  They wanted to find a site that would house the waste for 50 years so it could be dug and dealt with then.  The thinking was that in 50 years technology would have been created to help deal with the nuclear waste issue better than existed at that time. Since they were only looking for a 50 year site, the WIPP site was never considered.  Dumb, dumber and dumbest decision made by the Federal Government in quite some time concerning waste storage.

Yucca Mountain

 In 1987 the vote came up to identify a site to create the 50 year storage facility.  The Speaker of the House then was Jim Wright from Texas.  One of the sites in the final cut was in his state.  The other was in Yucca Mountain where a young junior Senator named Harry Reid, protested against the Yucca Mountain proposal.   It seems many scientists then had warned that Yucca Mountain was a risk, and not suitable for storing nuclear waste.  But politicians determined to go against scientific data  and Yucca Mountain was forced on the country.    This decision is still costing the US economy and its energy program to this day.  

The WIPP site in the past ten years has received more nuclear waste than the Yucca Mountain plant was ever designed to hold.  The Yucca Mountain site was doomed to failure from the start as far as storage.

Remember the WIPP site was identified in the 1950′s  as a perfect site and designated in the 1970′s was designated to be a 10,000 year storage facility.  In 1999  after 17 years of permitting and clearing environmental issues the site opened.  However, it is not approved to handle any commercial reactor’s spent fuel.  

As a result of not using the WIPP site for commercial reactor waste, the US is now behind the rest of the world by 20 – 30 years in developing nuclear technology.

Facts

• Currently in the US has 103 light-water reactors.  They are of a 2nd generation design that require the same amounts of water for as a coal power plant.  Ergo the tall cooling towers and the need for a continual water source;
• Spent fuel rods are currently stored at the various nuclear generating sites with no problems.  It is easy and safe to store them on site for 40 years or more as the cool off.  China is working on building 400 nuclear reactors and will pull ahead of the US very quickly; and this is addition to the 400 coal fired plants they are building;
• 3th generation reactors are being built everywhere but in the US; and 4th are on the way;
• WIPP currently takes in 1,000 barrels of military waste per week;
• The estimated nuclear waste from all the commercial nuclear plants is estimated to be 50 barrels per year!;
• One ounce of Uranium produces the equivalent amount of energy that 75 tons of coal does.

How far is the US behind?

Currently, there are three different processes for producing electric power:

• Baseload is electricity, that is always there. It is produced by coal, oil and nuclear.
• Intermittent is powered by water, wind and solar.
• Backup is power you can be accessed on in a pinch to produce electricity at a great cost. Like a gas fired electricity plant.

There have been no new reactors built in the US for over thirty years.  The designs that should be approved in 2014  are only for third generation nuclear plants.  Why not bring up 3rd and 4th  generation reactors fast?  Let me explain what fuel a fourth generation nuclear plant requires that will take advantage a bevy of new third generation reactors first.

A fourth generation nuclear plant, also called a fast-reactor, is cooled by molten salt.  The newest salt used is fluoride salt that has none of the dangers of the old sodium salt.    It melts at 1,600 degrees and cools the rods because of the heat it absorbs.  But, in the US, we can’t jump to this technology yet but when we do they will run on spent fuel rods from third generation nuclear plants.   This illustrates how far behind the rest of the world the US is, because we don’t have even one third generation plant!     We need to build 200 third generation reactors in the US, in the next 40 years, and then build the fourth generation plants to take us into the distant future.   When we get to fourth generation plants we will have fuel for 30,000 years.   If we start now we will have enough capacity to completely power all the electricity needs in the US for the next 1,000 years.

Safety 

Chernobyl was not a commercial reactor.  It was a poorly designed weapons grade reactor.  Not many folks know that.  A fuel rod bundle is fifteen feet high and about two feet around.  In a third generation plant, that will last about five years before it is spent.  Then it is sent onto the fourth generation plant where that bundle will last almost 50 years.  

By building fourth generation plants, which use spent fuel rods for power, we will greatly reduce the amount of high level nuclear waste needed to be disposed.  This use of spent fuel rods in generation4 plants, greatly reduces the ultimate amount of nuclear waste after it is used.

  The design of third and fourth generation plants are vastly more safe than the one we currently operate.  Today we have 18 year olds running nuclear subs and aircraft destroyers.  It is safe to say we have figured it out.

Three Mile Island.  No one was injured in this industrial accident.  Even the amount of radiation released to the environment was below background radiation.  This plant was not computerized and has no sensors to detect malfunctions in any of the valve that was stuck open.   This was a 2nd generation plant and with today’s technology, could not occur with modern designs.  But the memory lives on and has prevented any real advancement in nuclear power plant building since then.  Think about it.  How many people have died in auto crashes, airplane crashes, or hooligans at a soccer match?   Did we prevent the advancement of those industries or cancel soccer games forever?  We can and  must allow the new technology to be used in the construction of these sites and start creating consistent and predictable electricity.

Why have we not been told about this place?

In a nutshell its politics.  No politician wants to be known as a pro-nuclear guy in fear he or she won’t be elected or re-elected.  The yell “not in my state!’ has been used as a  battle cry to get elected.  It has been driven by sheer ignorance and the failure of politicians to study and learn about the issue.  The fact is, we have been storing military grade nuclear waste at WIPP since 1999.   Have you seen any mobs of people lined up protesting?  And don’t forget this site was identified in 1957 as the optimal place for storing nuclear waste!  Congress has not yet allowed the site to be used as a commercial waste disposal  facility.    Congress did not want to tout its success.   So for 50 years the public has had no idea how easily and well we can dispose of nuclear waste.    Great… we can store military waste, but we cripple our own ability to make electricity by not allowing commercial waste to be stored in the most efficient suitable geologic formation which exists in America, today.  How are we serving the general good by hampering our ability to store waste?

Folks we could have been building fourth generation nuclear plants by now and leading the world, instead of wondering what the heck happened.  Do you realize that Westinghouse used to be an American company until last year?  It was bought out by foreigners and is now one of the dominant Nuclear Reactor builders in the World.  That would be no jobs for Americans either.  Our own Government has perpetuated the myth that we don’t have the ability to store waste.   Various environmental groups have been screaming about an issue that was solved in the 1950′s.   This has led to the US to slip to a second rate energy player in a nuclear world.

 This country needs electricity that is stable and predictable.  If we end up having 100 million electric cars someday, we need, somehow, provide electricity to them, in the evening after the sun sets or if the wind doesn’t blow to charge them up.  Hanging our hats on the intermittent power source is dangerous. 

Nuclear Power is by far the cheapest per kilowatt hour of any power source that exists and 100% reliable.  If oil prices fluctuate, who cares?   Although we need as much solar and wind power we can achieve we will never replace the need to have a constant stream of electricity.

What do you need to do?

Educate yourself on the technology.  Send this link to every person  you know.  Don’t let those that want to cry wolf get away with misrepresenting the facts about Nuclear Energy.  Educate your Congressperson!  Send them this article and get them to allow commercial storage.  Start pushing for Nuclear Power in every opportunity you can.  Invite me to speak at your meeting.  And support my campaign.

 

Visit my website and help me make the change to return Congress to the people. www.PaulSmithforCongress.org

The following is an article I found regarding Nuclear energy.  Well worth the read.

For decades, pioneering environmentalist Stewart Brand, the founder and editor of the Whole Earth Catalog, opposed the use of nuclear power. Now he sees it as vital to efforts to combat climate change.

Earlier this month, Brand made the case for nuclear power in a debate with Stanford University professor Mark Jacobson at the TED Conference in Long Beach, California. (TED is a nonprofit that took its name from the subjects of technology, information and design and is dedicated to “Ideas worth spreading.” 

His outspoken support for nuclear power comes as the White House has been pushing for the first new nuclear plants in the United States in three decades. Last week, President Obama announced $8.3 billion in loan guarantees for adding two nuclear reactors at an existing plant in Burke County, Georgia, near Augusta.

Mark Jacobson says nuclear power is too risky

Brand says his turnabout began in 2002, when the Global Business Network, a consulting organization he co-founded, did a project on climate change for the U.S. Secretary of Defense. In an interview with CNN.com, Brand said the project showed him that the globe’s climate can change abruptly: “It goes over some tipping point and suddenly you’re in a situation that you don’t like and you can’t go back. That got me way more concerned about climate as a clear and present danger than I had been.”

Looking for a surefire way to cut greenhouse gases, Brand said the alternative to burning coal became clear: “We already had a very good supplier of …electricity. It worked like mad and was as clean as it could be — and that was nuclear.

“Looking at nuclear more closely made me look at coal more closely and I got to realizing what a horror it was across the board, and as I learned more about nuclear, I started learning all this stuff that my fellow environmentalists had been careful not to let me know about.”

Brand spoke to CNN.com Wednesday. Here is an edited transcript:

CNN: What did your fellow environmentalists get wrong about nuclear power?

Stewart Brand: Well, things like, nuclear radiation is a terrible thing that we must all fear at any scale, and nuclear waste a thing that we must be horrified about, with it lasting hundreds of thousands of years and how dare we burden future generations with that. I started looking at the basic scientific and engineering lore on both those subjects. …

They are interesting engineering problems that are mostly solved already.

CNN: How have they been solved?

Brand: Anti-nuclear people have been saying, since Yucca Mountain [a proposed nuclear waste repository in Nevada] won’t work or can’t work, then you can’t have nuclear. But then you think we do have nuclear, so nuclear waste must be coming out of these reactors … so where’s it going? It’s going right there on the site in these dry cask storage containers where it doesn’t seem to bother anybody. You can go out and look at them, stand next to them, no bad things happen.

So it’s already de-demonized as you see it as not this huge intractable problem. It’s actually quite tractable and on a local level. And carting the stuff around is treated as such a terrible thing and “My God, what if there’s an accident?”

And you look at the videos that were made at Sandia [National Laboratory] years ago where they ran a locomotive into one of the containers, and no bad thing happened, and then they burned it in jet fuel, and no bad thing happened, dropped it from a great height, no bad thing happened. You start to realize this is actually pretty well in hand.

And the rest of the story on that is the next generation of reactors, the so-called fourth-generation reactors, most of them use what we now call nuclear waste as fuel. … So a lot of the waste issue goes away when you realize that a very good thing to do is to just park it somewhere while we think about whether we do want to stick it in the ground or use it in these fourth generation reactors.

One of the things I learned is that we’ve already been burying nuclear waste in New Mexico at the waste isolation pilot plant for 10 years now. Works fine. It’s a salt formation 3,000 foot thick — you go half a mile down and that salt formation has been there for 250 million years. It’s not going anywhere. … It’s a perfectly good place to stash this stuff if you want to get rid of it.

Environmentalists will say there’s no working nuclear repository anywhere in the world and you look and actuallythere’s one being built in Finland.

CNN: What about the potential for a release of radiation?

Brand: The requirement is that no more than 15 millirems of radiation gets out to the public a year, and when a lady goes to get a mammogram she gets twice that. When you move from Connecticut to Colorado, the background radiation goes up five times that. And in medicine, we routinely use radioactive isotopes for a whole manner of diagnostic procedures, for x-rays and CT scans. …

Then you look at the medical studies, the epidemiology. People have been looking for human harm from radiation for a long time, ever since Hiroshima and Nagasaki. And it came as a surprise to me to learn, there were no birth defects in children born to exposed parents in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. When the U.N. went to study the Chernobyl area after the accident there, there were no birth defects turning up in the women who had been pregnant during that exposure.

Meanwhile, some anti-nuclear organizations have been using horrifying photographs of deformed babies with gross birth defects and saying these were caused by Chernobyl. It’s just a lie, so that’s a little alarming to see scare tactics like that based on non science.

Obviously you do not want to go and get close to nuclear fuel. On the other hand, when you take the fuel out of the reactor and put it in storage, 175 years, seven generations later, the radioactivity of that fuel is one billionth of what it is when you took it out of the reactors. This stuff actually has a half-life that is good. …

Mercury doesn’t have a half life, when mercury gets into the system, it bioconcentrates to the point where we tell pregnant women not to eat wild fish and shellfish because the mercury has accumulated, mostly from coal burning. …

CNN: What about nuclear proliferation, the potential for spread of nuclear weapons due to greater use of nuclear power?

Brand: First of all you want to separate out nations where that’s a worry and where it’s not a worry. China and India we really need to have stop burning coal. … Now is there a proliferation issue there? Not really — China and India have nuclear weapons.

The figure I quoted at TED was that 21 nations have nuclear power, only seven have nuclear weapons, and in every case they got the nuclear weapons first, then the nuclear power. Sweden has nuclear power — 40 percent of their power is from nuclear. Do we worry about them having nuclear weapons? Probably not.

So then that leaves a few countries that we are concerned about. Iran is one. Venezuela would like to be one. That’s where Obama’s programfor fuel banking, which was actually started in a very intelligent way by the Bush administration, is the classic work-around. It’s a thing which lets you know basically where all the fissile material is going in the countries that join the program.

…The great thing about nuclear weapons is when you downgrade the weapons-grade uranium, you get very good nuclear fuel. That’s what the U.S. has been doing for 10 years with Russian nuclear weapons.

I love the symmetry of that. The very warheads that used to be targeted at American cities to blow them up are now being used to light them.

CNN: Some critics of nuclear power say that it takes so long to license and build nuclear power plants it’s not really a practical alternative?

Brand: …Things can be accelerated a lot. So one of the things the U.S. is doing is separately licensing — going through the whole approval process — reactor designs before they have to be figured out in context of a particular site. …

Then there used to be this long delay of getting site approval, but as it happened, when we slowed down and stopped our reactor building in the mid-1970s and early 1980s, most of the reactor sites already had permission for additional reactors, so that part has already been done. …

Look, you’re not going to cure greenhouse gases with nuclear, but curing greenhouse gases without nuclear is approximately impossible.