JimmyA programme on BBC2 on Tuesday was most enlightening but concluded that we need more nuclear power to avoid CO2 emissions that cause climate change in the future, but did not see any solution to the waste problem.
Is the requirement for such low Sievert levels really necessary.?? Japan I believe were allowed to empty slightly radiated water into the sea with no problem?
Are we over specifying and wasting tax payers money for no benefit at all?
There are two problems here:
What is nuclear waste?
How dangerous is it?
Used reactor fuel is not nuclear waste. It is a valuable resource containing reusable fissionable materials and various medically useful isotopes.
After the used reactor fuel has been reprocessed there will be some highly active isotopes that do not have a current use. As highly active materials have a short half life (basic physics) they can be allowed to decay in suitable shielding for some 10s of years.
What is left to be radioactive waste? Building waste, Used protective clothing? At what level does it need to be classified as radioactive waste?
The amounts of material are quite small. Nuclear power and nuclear weapons manufacture have been around for quite a few decades and there is no shortage of storage space in the current facilities.
How dangerous is radiation?
Sievert levels of radiation delivered in a short space of time are dangerous/fatal. That is generally agreed. Below that level there is huge uncertainty and limited real data. This chart displays the situation quite well:
www.hko.gov.hk/.../00298-variations-in-the-environmental-radiation-levels-around-the-world.html
No health effects have been demonstrated for doses below around 100 mSv.
The current legislative framework (LNT Linear No Threshold) assumes ,without any data, that all doses are hazardous and uses collective dose to generate fatalities from large numbers of people receiving low doses. It also takes no account of the rate of delivery of the dose.
Most of the scary predicted numbers of deaths from radiation that appear in the media are effectively made up. The Green Activist George Monbiot challenged a couple of anti-nuclear campaigners a few years ago and found there was no basis to their claims and no actual data to back it up.
There are two problems here:
What is nuclear waste?
How dangerous is it?
Used reactor fuel is not nuclear waste. It is a valuable resource containing reusable fissionable materials and various medically useful isotopes.
After the used reactor fuel has been reprocessed there will be some highly active isotopes that do not have a current use. As highly active materials have a short half life (basic physics) they can be allowed to decay in suitable shielding for some 10s of years.
What is left to be radioactive waste? Building waste, Used protective clothing? At what level does it need to be classified as radioactive waste?
The amounts of material are quite small. Nuclear power and nuclear weapons manufacture have been around for quite a few decades and there is no shortage of storage space in the current facilities.
How dangerous is radiation?
Sievert levels of radiation delivered in a short space of time are dangerous/fatal. That is generally agreed. Below that level there is huge uncertainty and limited real data. This chart displays the situation quite well:
www.hko.gov.hk/.../00298-variations-in-the-environmental-radiation-levels-around-the-world.html
No health effects have been demonstrated for doses below around 100 mSv.
The current legislative framework (LNT Linear No Threshold) assumes ,without any data, that all doses are hazardous and uses collective dose to generate fatalities from large numbers of people receiving low doses. It also takes no account of the rate of delivery of the dose.
Most of the scary predicted numbers of deaths from radiation that appear in the media are effectively made up. The Green Activist George Monbiot challenged a couple of anti-nuclear campaigners a few years ago and found there was no basis to their claims and no actual data to back it up.
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