wagyl wrote:Yokohammer wrote:wagyl wrote:Coligny wrote:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spent_fuel_pool
Check the topic on risks and criticality.
The biggest take-home from that isWiki, quoting US Nuclear Regulatory Commission wrote:The Nuclear Regulatory Commission estimates that many of the nuclear power plants in the United States will be out of room in their spent fuel pools by 2015, most likely requiring the use of temporary storage of some kind.
Yes. this is one of the big unknowns of nuclear power. There is still no effective means of "neutralising" the spent fuel, other than storing it somewhere for however long it takes the radiation to decay to safe levels (i.e. a very, very long time). Storage takes space, requires constant maintenance (i.e. it costs money ... forever), and it is dangerous.
I'm not asking them to plan for n half-lives in the future, even though I probably should, but I am asking them to plan more than three years in advance.
And on that point we are in total agreement.
The thing about the spent fuel handling, transport, storage and eternal babysitting is that it adds so much to the cost of nuclear power that even without disasters it is considerably more expensive than the pro-nuclear people would like us to believe.