@Tommasta: Just a few half-lives of radioactive isotopes that are involved in nuclear fission:
U(ranium)-238: 4.5 billion years
U-233 - 159000 years
U-234 - 244500 years
# U-235 - 703 million years
PlUtonium-238 - 87.74 years
Pu-239 - 24065 years
Pu-240 - 6537 years
Pu-242 - 376000 years
Pu-244 - 82.6 million years
Radon-226 - 1600 years
even H-3 (or Tritium = super-heavy hydrogen)- 12.35 years

so, if the associated risk with low-level (I wouldn't call Plutonium low-level, anyway) nuclear waste is laughable, try keeping a stable environment for the safekeeping of those wastes for a couple of billion years. That also means that no dictator or other madmen should be able to dig them up in that stretch of time and shove them down somebody's pants; that no earthquakes, asteroids or anything else drops in that area (ok, an asteroid in 10 years seems improbable, but try on 4.5 billion for size). How long do the US exist? How many revolutions, civil wars etc. have they suffered in that time? Very safe environment, hey?
And so what, if the efficiency of photovoltaics is just 30% max, 12% average? Photovoltaics doesn't use anything up, so the sun is going to shine as strong tomorrow as it is today, no matter how much of its light is converted to electricity, whereas with nuclear power, same as with fossil fuels, everything you use IS GONE. Away. Zilch. Nada. Nitchevo.
And alternative energies work _today_ not in some remote future (fusion), nor do we need 'disposal methods ... being researched' while we are already merrily producing the junk we don't know how to dispose of safely (fission).
As for toxicity: try swallowing some exceedingly tasty Plutonium 238. Or Polonium (used to kill that Russian exile in London a few years back).
Just for the privilege of sneering at those long-haired, smelly eco-hipsters you prefer burying stuff somewhere in the earth that's still almost as dangerous in a few million years as it is today, and in some more 200 or so years nobody will remember where you buried it? I mean, people might even forget where it's buried in your lifetime. Cultures, societies, all come and go. The waste will stay.
And not to talk about the risk of one of those things blowing up, or being blown up, or being the target of terrorist 737s. Imagine, instead of WTC it would have been a nuclear reactor. Well protected, you say? Well, if the Pentagon is not well protected, what else is?
Get smarter.

yogibimbi

@grok666: space elevator, FTW!

lpranal

I saw a special on a French nuclear reactor (I don't like them either, but they are at least working with the technology and learning more), and they had actually designed it in a way that allowed them to completely drain the coolant without a meltdown. It seems to me that we should be looking into power plants using that same design.

Waste is still an issue, but if/when we find a more efficient way to launch payloads into space, we can start sending it into the sun and let it absorb the extra material - who knows, it might even extend the sun's life an extra week or two?

grok666

Oh yes, let's all be scared of the very, very, very limited chance of getting radiation exposure... so much more healthier to be breathing in the fumes from burning coal for our electricity *rolls eyes*

keh

@calaverasgrandes: Nuclear power is much more safer than any other source of power. Environazi's want you to believe that nuclear power will kill you, your children, and your childrens children. It wont. Modern nuclear reactors are almost impossible to force into a meltdown, let alone an accidental one. Nuclear power plants dont explode, they arent powered by nuclear bombs.

Until more education on nuclear power, people will hold their illogical fears of it.

Nuclear Power != Nuclear Explosion

Mecharine

@Tommasta: No way! A chemical reaction always involves the motion and re-arranging of electrons to break or form new molecular bonds. Of the four universal forces (gravity, strong, weak, electromagnetic), only the electromagnetic force is at work in a chemical reaction. A nuclear reaction does not entail breaking or forming new molecular bonds--and the strong and/or weak forces are at play (electrons can be involved, but not to make or break molecular bonds)--so the two processes are distinctly different. A nuclear reaction will never deal with molecules, either...just elements/isotopes/subatomic particles (and energy).

scarbrtj

Go for it. Only if they can produce electricity for 1 cent/KWH. Who care what's going to happen tomorrow. We all live in today only? Aren't you? LOL.

PHJ

@Redwraithvienna: , @ many others:

The fact of the matter is that even factoring in those accidents, coal and gas plants are more dangerous. The technology used in those plants was outdated, even for the respective times - at chernobyl because of lack of funding & just plain ignorance of risk involved, and at 3 mile island because of the stigma against nuclear technology, which has ironically slowed the progress of safer, cleaner reactors (which, with current technology, makes accidents virtually impossible). The level of sophistication in safety in those reactors can be compared with early human-operated telephone switchboards, vs. today's automated and computer controlled phone circuits. The same kinds of mistakes at chernobyl- which came from human error, just don't happen anymore.

The fact of the matter is that newer reactor technology is available which puts FAR less radioactive waste into the environment than even the cleanest coal plants, the environmental impact (besides at the primitive, moronic timebomb that was chernobyl) pales in insignificance when you factor in climate change and carbon emissions and there is an immediate energy crisis at our doorstep. And yet people are still protesting against a power source based on the limitations and downsides it had over 50 YEARS ago. In my eyes, anyone who calls themselves an environmentalist that opposes nuclear power is a liar.

lpranal

@calaverasgrandes: And all less efficient. Show me a more efficient energy source, please.

As for waste, incredibly small amounts of radioactive high-level waste is produced, and all of the disposal sites are extensively monitored and protected. Other disposal methods are being researched, and the low-level waste from the plants is next to nil for the environment.

You are not going to die a slow painful death unless there's a meltdown. Otherwise, everything is incredibly safe and even the risk of meltdown is laughable.

The only thing that can come CLOSE to power efficiency is hydropower, however even that poses vast negative effects on the environment.

Tommasta

@calaverasgrandes: right. "Obviously a shill for energy concerns". Don't be such a dick.

Sure, spent nuclear fuel is hugely dangerous, but respectively to fossil fuel combustion, there really isn't that much of it. If handled properly, it's disposal can be perfectly safe. As well as the nuclear reaction itself.

The only problem arises when people don't pay to have the expertise and training on hand, and the proper safety procedures followed, and things get fucked up and out of control.

But you know what else is dangerous when out of control? EVERYTHING ELSE IN THE WORLD. Like... fire, for example.

Pope John Peeps II

@Rob C: Technically, an element is a chemical substance. So, technically, Giz is right.

Technically. I can't stress that word enough.

Tommasta

@fightcopyright:

Oh yeah it is that ... as long as nothing goes wrong ... can you say : Tchernobyl ? and Three Mile Island ? And Sellafield ?.

See the thing is ... if something goes wrong you end up with a few thousand sq. miles of uninhabitable property. And next time it might be near some more densly inhabitable area than a small town in the ukraine.

Redwraithvienna

@fightcopyright:
Nuclear power is not "clean" the spent fuel is toxic and deadly for thousands of years, it is not "safe" unlike a simpsons episode you wont grow extra appendages if exposed to high levels of beta and gamma radiation. You will die a painful death instead.
"practical" well anything is more practical than our current fossil fuel centric economy. But nuclear fission based turbine energy has proven tima and again to be expensive to build and even more so to maintain.
you are obviously a shill for some energy concern.
Solar, wind, geothermal, wave generation, bio fuel, hydrogen for chrissakes! All much safer, cleaner and more practical.

calaverasgrandes

As I understand, things like this have been in existence for some time. They have limited use though, built under places like large hospitals, government and military buildings where a reliable power source is required in the event of a natural disaster or national emergency. It's a lor safer than most people think, but I doubt it would ever be economical for residential use.

whiteoak

I agree this could be great, just not in my backyard.

almighty

its good in the sense that we as a country need to diversify our dependence on one source (ie one huge nuclear reactor) if one goes out it will not take out huge swaths of society. In the case of attack etc.

rainfever

Nuclear Power is the cleanest, safest, most practical form of energy available to us today... (for example Coal fired plants release far more nuclear waste into the atmosphere than nuclear plants), and some of these new designs are simpler and safer than even our existing plants.

But if you want to see a real environmental disaster, check out the factories that make the batteries for our "hybrids".

fightcopyright

hm, Giz... It would be a nuclear reaction...not a chemical reaction. Get it right will ya?

Rob C

Maybe great for space flight or a colony on Mars... but I don't want that buried under my house!

scrag

I wouldn't mind having a few extra arms or fingers... I'd be the greatest pianist that lived.

christophski

Safe? Of course it is. As EL_GORDO pointed out ...look at all that "earth" around it. Stainless steel AND concrete...solid!

It's the septic system concept. I could fuel that thing with some of the "heaters" i've flushed over the years.

xXxRHINOxXx

Sure, it's a neat idea. Still, is anyone else bothered by the fact that the name of the company producing this is "Grave Risk To National Security, Inc."???

frigg

@Townie: Right. Because there wouldn't be any shielding on it, nope.

And what happens if this stops working? You you have to wait a week for them to dig it up, another week for the proper teams to be flown in, and then another week for it to be reactivated?

Moonshadow101

ahh... reactors getting smaller and smaller... soon we will have nuclear cars!!

buy one pellet of uranium and pop it in... powers your car for the rest of your life...

warning should you be involved in a crash you may grow a third eye or third arm or leg... we at exelon take no liability for these events.

alin0steglinski

Looks like a reversed purpose ice creammaker.

curses

so let me get this right, this thing is 'safe' underground? So if it explodes we aren't' exposed to radiation for the next 5 years.

But our soil is radioactive (aka people eating tomato plants) and our ground water makes you grow a new arm? Very nice, very expert

Townie

I like how the diagram labels earth in four places.

el_gordo

"[could] provide maintenance-free power to 25,000 homes for 5-years"

...and assuming everything goes right, contaminate the disposal area for 25,000 years after its 5-year life-span is over.

pmx

@yogibimbi: umm, where did the highly radioactive fuel come from in the first place.... oh yeah, the environment. Granted that the waste is more radio active, but lets just keep in mind that we live in a slightly radioactive environment, and safe disposal is a reality.

jkr

People who call others "idiots" "environazis" and "eco-hipsters" are only adding unnecessary vitriol to the debate. Those same people that you're calling names are the ones who have been beating the drum about environmental problems for years that the rest of the world is finally recognizing. Whether you agree with them or not, there's no reason to turn a debate about nuclear power into a personal attack. It makes you look irrational, not smarter than them.

That said I think there are safe ways to use nuclear power and I think we need to pursue them because they are one of the few sources of power that we could use immediately and that scales to meet existing needs. I'm not saying the "hot tub reactor" is the solution, but there are a lot of technologies that might be.

weatherman

@yogibimbi:
"Just for the privilege of sneering at those long-haired, smelly eco-hipsters"

sneering at long-haired, smelly eco-hipsters is a right, not a privilege.

anyway, where to put the stuff is a problem, and i would never deny that.
i do like the idea of flinging it all into the sun
maybe stage it on the moon until we figure out the details. doesnt seem to be a big rush to do anything there, and it would be out of reach of the crazies most likely to be cruising for old atomic waste

m-o-o-n, that spells tom cullen

godwhacker

If the nuclear waste is such a big deal, throw it into space. What's the shuttle capable of carrying? 10 tons? 50 tons? Yeah, okay, they'd be rather expensive launches, as they all are, so you just factor that into the cost of electricity. Spread out the costs over 300 million people and maybe it costs each person two dollars a year to just toss all our nuclear waste into orbit. (Checks pockets.) Yep, I can afford that.

Don't get me wrong. I'm not anti-solar power, or hydro-power, or any other alternative. But none of them can be ramped up capacity-wise as fast as a bunch of modern nuclear plants. And while solving our energy needs in 50 years would be fine, what we really need to do is start producing gigawatts of power from nuclear reactors right *now* (or as close to now as humanly possible).

Does it really matter if a couple of square miles of Arizona or Nevada wasteland are rendered uninhabitable forever when the alternative is to let the whole *planet* be rendered uninhabitable in a century or two? I lived in Arizona and Nevada for a year or two and while I liked it well enough, I'm totally willing to sacrifice a couple of square miles of pristine desert wasteland in order to keep the world habitable by humans.

jamstigator

Wow, this is quite the interesting debate going on here. I have to agree that nuclear power is an excellent source of energy as long as nothing happens to it, so a nuclear reactor that's monitored and properly regulated by a full staff in a facility somewhere where it's not going to fuck up and if, in the unlikely situation it does. It's not going to explode and kill a noticeable percentage of the population. So a nice safe KANDU 2 reactor I can live with, but tiny reactors buried in the ground, not so much. Perhaps if it were in a facility well outside any population(which I imagine it would be). But I think a tiny reactor like that would probably be lacking in fail safes compared to current full size facilities.

As far as all the waste goes, yes we have no way to dispose of it yet, but at least we can contain it until we develop a method to do so and in the meantime, we're not pumping waste into the environment as with fossil fuels and such.

I love the idea of solar, geothermal an wind powered means but unfortunately they're just not efficient enough at this time to support our power infrastructure. I mean I'd be happy if they built alternative sources anyway to supplement our current resources. maybe we could shut down a few fossil fuel based plants and clean some air. But other than that, those technologies need to be developed too, just like the means to dispose of nuclear waste.

So yeah, nuclear power good, waste bad, tiny reactors buried in the ground... Well that's just asking for trouble.

P.S. Gears Of War for the PC takes forever to decompress files at the end of the installation..

jackfrost132

Okay... Minus the soon to be decomm'd Kitty Hawk

ph0tic

@yogibimbi: I know I'm just keeping the flames alive but... Nuclear Power Plants are already created to withstand a direct hit with an aircraft (or missile) to the core. No WTC there (sorry)...

@pmx: Haven't read any of the comments above, huh?

We have had enough experience to make nuclear power safe all the way around. Every submarine in our Navy is nuclear. All of our carrier's are nuclear. And all of them are maintained by kids out of highschool! (ok little exaggeration but you get my point). I wonder how much prices on everything from Oil to Housing would change if we went all nuclear.

ph0tic

@Yogibimbi: I wouldn't worry about asteroid impacts. Let's say that you bury some radioactive waste a kilometre or two under the Nevada desert; any asteroid capable of hitting that waste depot is going to be a mass-extinction level event anyways. Secondly, the heat generated by the impact would completely burn up the waste.
As far as everyone forgetting where the waste is buried, hey that's great! The crazy people won't be able to find it!

Radioactive waste is as much an opportunity as it is a problem: the fact that it's radioactive means it's emitting energy. What we need to develop are stepdown reactors that can harness the energy in waste produced in conventional reactors.

I'm all in favour of investing in alternative/clean energy, but it will be a long time before we can meet our current energy needs with wind, solar, tidal, geothermal, etc. Nuclear energy is an important and necessary part of our energy mix during the transition from a carbon-fueled society to a sustainable society.

@Lpranal: "space elevator, FTW!" Damn right!

whiteoak

So... My power plant is going to die before my toaster will?

FAIL!

dragonphyre

You all are missing the more important point: this thing only powers 25,000 "homes." So a medium sized city like Denver, with let's say roughly 1,000,000 homes (and that's excluding all commercial and industrial power users), would need 40 of these things scattered around town. Where would they go? You can't even put up a cell phone tower anymore without people bitching- try burying a nuclear reactor on someone's block.

superbad

@jamstigator: Have you ever been to NM or AZ? Uninhabitable.

oo0cyst0oo

@lpranal: thank you. FTW indeed.

@Redwraithvienna: can you say : Tchernobyl ? I think so. That must be some meskin word. I'll try later.

With !!4!! count them- FOUR EARTHS around it what could go wrong.

oo0cyst0oo

JAMSTIGATOR, sneding waste into space is a great idea because it creates the potential for a rocket disaster with a massive radioactive payload. Any other ideas you working on?

Second, most posting here don't need to worry about growing another arm from nuclear waste. Mutations will express predominantly in future offspring. Given the crowd, even if procreation is acheived, who would notice a difference?

pacalis

Money has a funny way of changing people's minds about things. Let's assume (and it is just an assumption), for a moment, that we have already hit peak oil. Let's also assume that 10 per cent of India's one billion people buy a car in the next few years. What is that going to do to the price of oil? The resulting shortage will drive the price of other non-renewable sources up as well.

Solar cells sound great, but there are some very serious limitations. First, the manufacture of silicon-based cells requires pure silicon which has been going up in price. Second, solar cells have a limited lifespan and as they age, their power output declines. Finally, they only generate power during the day which is a serious limitation. Don't get me wrong, I'm all in favor of them and have until recently been involved in a number of projects where they have been installed. But they are not going to solve the problems themselves.

Like it or not, it is cost that is the driving force defining our means of producing and consuming energy. If small self-contained nuclear plants can be built at a price that both undercuts the current and forseeable prices of fossill-based fuels, they will be built somewhere.

There are quite a few different types of fission reactors. One displays one's ignorance when making statements equating any type of of nuclear plant with Chernobyl, a plant with no containment vessel, a design that is not allowed in the U.S.

Finally there's the issue of nuclear waste. Yes, it's nasty stuff. But, again, the type of waste produced is a function of the type of reactor and there are some technologies that are being developed to not only deal with the problem, but to extract even more energy from the waste that already exists. I'm talking about fuel reprocessing.

Like it or not, we are heading for an energy crisis of unimaginable proportions. We can either drop the tired rhetoric and make the hard fact-based choices that will minimize the crisis or we can look forward to an ugly future where our children and grandchildren will curse us for having argued while we should have been planning and doing.

Nuclear power is a viable option that has great promise. In the end, we may abandon it as other technologies mature or are newly-created. But from our current perspective, it is my opinion that not to consider it is exceptionally dangerous.

pgh

@whiteoak: I couldn't have said it better myself.

People need to stop using invalid reasons against nuke power. It is an irrational fear when facing the actual safety records of modern power plants.

nospamsam

This would be better than paying those damn idiots like Exxon,That creep in South America,u know,those A__Holes(includeing those morons like Hila_y n Bama in Congress.OR,would you rather pay 5-10 buks a galon for fuel??Get with it people.You can get killed going across a street faster than a Nuke Reactor blowing up.

rosslv

Look into Thorium based reactors. They seem to be a much better deal nuke waste wise.

SidV

Captain Planet, he's our hero
Gonna take pollution down to zero

He's our powers magnified
And he's fighting on the planet's side

Captain Planet, he's our hero
Gonna take pollution down to zero

Gonna help him put asunder
Bad guys who like to loot and plunder

"You'll pay for this Captain Planet!"

We're the Planeteers
You can be one too
'Cause saving our planet is the thing to do!

Looting and polluting is not the way
Hear what Captain Planet has to say!

"The Power is Yours!"

kvstud

EARTH! EARTH! EARTH! EARTH!(FIRE! WIND! WATER! HEART! Go Planet!)

youngfiles

@calaverasgrandes:
You should read Scientific American.
There ARE very safe nuclear reactors. They are called fast breathers. Developed here in the Good'ol USA.
Some designs call for thousands of carbide balls (about 3" diameter) encasing uranium. Put the more or less ball together, and they heat up to the level you want producing steam without control rods like the old design.
Drop balls from the top, take them out from the bottom, inspect the ones you take out to see if they are spent and replace as needed.
Run away nuclear meltdown situation...? No problem, go and open the trap at the bottom of the reactor and let all the balls fall out and spread out to cool down on a big containment pool.
Fix problem, close bottom hatch and re-load the balls.

Unfortunatelly, we will not see this design for years thanks in part to our wondelful energy department and congress....

So what if anything is a Nuclear US scientist to do?

Give the plans to China so they can experiment with a 1/4 scale model (operating by now most likely) BEFORE they build their own the full scale unit in CHINA.

Mark my words: We WILL be buying electricity from China before we can put all these wonderful ideas to work. Forget about trincket toys and imports... Electricity is the game. And we are loosing.

We will never learn.

aec007

@calaverasgrandes: All brilliant alternatives to nuclear power... in theory. Problem is there isnt enough wind, geothermal energy, sunlight, etc. to actually give everyone power. Even today, if we had to power the Earth using solar power we would have to cover more than 50% of the Earth's surface with solar panels. That means ALL of our landmass, and a good portion of the oceans as well. And power-sources such as windmills destroy landscapes, and it's not like they dont require any real-estate either. I agree that an alternative to nuclear fission power would be nice, but in today's world we really need to resort to nuclear power. Besides, nuclear fusion should (I doubt that it will be done in such a small timescale) be available in 20-30 years, at which time there will not be many arguments against the utilization of nuclear power (in the form of fusion).

That being said, this device seems a little dangerous. It doesn't seem like the same safety and control devices used in large nuclear reactors could ever be implemented in these small ones.

wvv

@Tommasta: There is a difference between chemical and nuclear change. In a chemical change, atoms rearrange, break old chemical bonds and form new chemical bonds chemical bonds through the sharing or transfer of valence electrons. This is accomplished obeying the Laws of Conservation of Mass and Energy. The energy lost or gained is contained within chemical bonds.

In a nuclear reaction, the electrons are not involved at all. Instead, in the case of fission, a large atom's nucleus is split into two smaller nuclei, releasing binding energy. This comes from the destruction of a tiny bit of mass (E=mc2) that is converted into far more energy per mole than can be derived from chemical reactions. The fission releases neutrons, which can be used to split apart more nuclei. This is called a chain reaction. The reactor contains control rods to absorb excess neutrons, so the rate of fission can be controlled within strict tolerances.

Nuclear reactors usually contain only about 3% fissionable nuclei, that is all that is needed to sustain a chain reaction for about 6 years (rotating the rods every two years to maximize efficiency). This is insufficient to create a thermonuclear explosion. For that to occur, the fuel must be enriched much, much further.

Fission reactors have been used to good effect on nuclear submarines and aircraft carriers, and provide the majority of electricity to countries like France and Japan. The oil industry does not want us seeking these alternatives. Though not foolproof or perfect, fission is a good alternative source of energy. While there is some air pollution that occurs due to the mining of uranium, it pales in comparison to the environmental effects of large oil spills and coal mining.

They have been telling us for half a century that nuclear fusion power generation is only 20 years away. The problem is the way we currently create fusion, in a tokamak. Not enough heat reaches the surface to generate electricity the old-fashioned way (pressurized water reactor), so a new paradigm must be found if we want to get more energy out of fission that is put in to initiate and maintain it. Fission has no temperature or pressure requirements. Fusion has extremely difficult requirements (such as heating the deuterium nuclei up to plasma temperatures and beyond, trapping the plasma in a magnetic field so that it does not vaporize the vicinity)

Until we come up with a new way to generate electricity for our increasingly power-hungry world, we need to refine our existing alternatives. Solar is becoming more efficient all the time. It's just a matter of time before new homes are built standard with solar roofing tiles. Using small fission reactors to power small communities is an excellent idea. The one hurdle we must overcome in order to truly make this breakthrough is deciding once and for all what to do with spent fission fuel rods. Where can we put the highly radioactive byproducts of fission? Once we solve that problem, we remove a large hurdle to the wider implementation of nuclear fission power.

gadjitfreek

"If things go wrong" with nuclear?
Well "things" have allready gone badly wrong with coal

Rustydog

I can't wait till we have this stuff, also can't wait till we get those nuclear batteries for laptops, the ones they estimated could give thirty years of power. I'd settle for a few months if it was cheap.

WCD_Thor

I think we need to concentrate on a number of technologies where those alternatives are reasonable/efficient. Solar is very efficient in some areas and less so in others, same with wind power, wave action generators, etc.

There are also safer ways to dispose of hazardous materials than the current plans of burying it at Yucca Mt., but alas by the time that is an issue the largest life form left on the planet will likely be our friend the cockroach.

What I see none of in the above comments is anything about CONSERVATION. Why can't we get our heads out of our asses and start using the mass transit systems already in place. Subsidize ridership and development on those vice oil/gas. Buy stuff that is produced locally where possible to reduce the amount of stuff we ship back and forth, Insulate our homes adequately, etc. One tenth of one percent reduction in heating oil use in the U.S. would save millions of gallons of oil annually. Conservation of Gasoline would have an even bigger impact since it takes the lions share of all the U.S.'s refined oil. In 2003 we consumed 476 GIGALITERS!! of gasoline. Consumption for 2006 was roughly 400 Million gallons DAILY.

Alternative fuels like E85 may contribute a little less CO2 into the atmosphere, but not considerably so. Their attraction is primarily the fact that we can produce them locally and their addition to the energy picture will reduce the cost of moving us around. While some of that is true the real cost will be offset by the increased cost of food sources that currently enjoy relatively cheap feeder supplies (all animal products except wild fish).

With some conservation, some technology advancement, and a little luck we may be able to delay the wild weather ride for a couple hundred years.

jdorwart

@YOGIBIMBI half life is inversely proportional to activity you buffoon, heed your own advice and take a basic physics course.

Abe-Lincoln

two writers (at least) have expressed concerns that launching nuclear waste payloads into space (beyond orbit distances) would lead to the inevitable launch failure & potentially contaminate the atmosphere. this concern can be ameliorated by first processing the waste into a glass form, & launching from a pacific atoll. the launch failure payloads would simply fall to the ocean floor where they would be covered by decay & in this manner incapsulated, furthermore, studies show the ocean currents require in excess of 600 yrs to travel from ocean floor to shoreline, this would suggest it may be more than adequate to simply glassify, then encase (lead/ reinforced concrete) in canisters the waste material & dump it in the deepest trenches reaching nearly six miles below surface. between being covered by detruis & the glassification process & length of time of ocean currents, as well as the diluting abilities of the very oceans themselves, this problem is SOLVED.

ian.johnson

Hearing "Nuclear Reactor" immediately invokes fear, and waste disposal is definately a concern (if this is truely a nuclear device). One thing to keep in mind is that radioactive materials are MINED from dirt - the material is not MADE radioactive, it is just sorted to keep the most potent material. There is not an increase in the total amount of radioactive material on the Earth. And in its natural form, there is no natural shielding of the radioactivity. So really, by keeping the amount of radioactive material in small batches and with some shielding (like in these little canisters), it is less dangerous than the large amounts used in large reactors, or having it scattered, unshielded buried in the terra-firma.

Another point is that a meltdown occurs when a critical AMOUNT of the radioactive material is placed in very close proximity. You have to have the right AMOUNT of material to sustain a reaction for a meltdown. The bombs are so powerful because the materials are purified so much (refined/sorted over and over). So there does not seem to be enough material in one of these to create a meltdown.

The interesting thing is that they are only saying it will last 5 years. I wonder if the cost of making and installing the canister(monetary as well as CO2 and Oil), of digging the thing up every 5 years (more often than I buy a new car), and the disposal of the waste is worth the electricity savings over 5 years.

One thing to remember about shooting the waste into the sun - rockets blow up all the time. The chance of an accidental large scale exposure due to a rocket mis-hap might outwiegh anything gained in getting several batches sucessfully to the sun. Sometimes it is better to keep it all together so you know where it is.

eck000

The idea of spreading the risk of one, large nuclear power plant across many smaller, decentralized units has merit. I'd like to see even smaller units.

CaliforniaKid

The size of this reactor implies that it might be administered/maintained by the local power utility. This is not a good idea. My local power utility (city of 20,000) decided to run optical fiber to all the houses and offer CATV and internet. Problem is, they simply don't have the expertise or experience to effectively administer such a service. I would be very, very nervous about these yokels trying to run a nuclear reactor.

cheaploser

This is like a shipstone envisioned in Robert Heinlien's Sci-Fi writing

In his books the Shipstone Corporation went on to eventually own Coca-Cola and 50% of all business on Earth.

wtongen