Earth: The Operators' Manual by Richard B. Alley

Author:Richard B. Alley [Alley, Richard B.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Science, Environmental Science
ISBN: 9780393083231
Google: tMu2qegjwu8C
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
Published: 2011-04-18T20:46:50+00:00

Safety Tomorrow

Nuclear power brings up many other safety issues, however. Nuclear reactors break down uranium-235 but build up other radioactive elements including much plutonium. In some countries, some used fuel is or was reprocessed to extract the most useful isotopes for additional power generation. Concern exists because reprocessing can also extract plutonium for atomic bombs that release a terrifying amount of energy, or for “dirty bombs” that could spread poisons far and wide. The most dangerous isotopes might be transmuted to safer things, perhaps using neutron beams, but no commercially mature technology exists yet.21

Dealing with the radioactive waste is probably the most contentious issue for nuclear power. We might someday mine the waste to generate more power. But for now, nations are trying to isolate the waste from terrorists, “rogue states,” and the environment for a long enough time to be safe and politically acceptable, which might be 1000 years22 to more than 100,000 years.23 Ways to do this are generally not in place around the globe, and are not even especially close in many countries, although many technically trained people will tell you that this has much more to do with politics than with technical barriers.

The existence of deposits in Gabon shows that nature has left some radioactive waste in one place for two billion years. Those wastes are bound to certain organic chemicals, clays, and phosphate minerals, providing one line of research for us.24 However, some of the radioactive material in Gabon did migrate, so that natural setting was not a perfect waste-isolation scheme. And it remains possible that geological history has been kind to these deposits but moved other deposits that we will never know about because nature spread them around so well.25

If we think about long times, to beyond 100,000 years, then we may need to worry about volcanoes erupting through the waste, or glaciers cutting into it, or many other issues that will be very hard to predict with confidence.26

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