Publicatie Laka-bibliotheek:
Get the Facts on High Level Atomic Waste Storage Casks

AuteurKevin Kamps, NIRS
6-01-5-51-92.pdf
Datumjuni 2001
Classificatie 6.01.5.51/92 (AFVAL - OPSLAG OP LAND (oa ZOUT/KLEI))
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Uit de publicatie:

Get the Facts on High-Level Atomic Waste Storage Casks!
Prepared by Kevin Kamps, Nuclear Waste Specialist, on June 11, 2001.
Nuclear Information & Resource Service, 1424 16th Street, Suite 404,
Washington, D.C. 20036
202.328.0002; fax 202.462.2183; nirsnet@nirs.org; www.nirs.org


The Dangers
Past and Present Storage Techniques
Dry Storage Casks
Problems with Dry Cask Storage Surfaced Immediately:
       A Meltdown of Democracy, a Retreat from Regulation
Cask Fabrication Before Certification:
       Build ‘Em First, Ask Questions Later
Bubble, Bubble, Toil and Trouble: Cracks, Corrosion, and Explosion
Atomic Brinksmanship
When in Doubt, Rush Full Speed Ahead Anyway
The First Rule of Holes: When You’re in One, Stop Digging
So What’s To Be Done?! Leave it in the pools? Ship it away to be buried?
       Stop making it!




The Dangers

“Spent” nuclear fuel is a misleading term. Irradiated nuclear fuel rods discharged from
commercial nuclear power plants are highly radioactive, a million times more so than when
they were first loaded into a reactor core as fresh fuel. If unshielded, irradiated nuclear fuel
just removed from a reactor core could deliver a lethal dose of beta, gamma and neutron
radiation to a person standing three feet away in less than a second. Even after decades of
radioactive decay, a few minutes unshielded exposure time would be enough to deliver a
lethal dose. Certain radioactive elements (alpha emitters such as plutonium-239) in “spent”
fuel will remain hazardous to humans and other living beings for hundreds of thousands of
years. Military high-level radioactive wastes – the highly radioactive liquid and sludge
“leftovers” from reprocessing irradiated fuel rods to extract the uranium and plutonium for
making nuclear bombs – has the same hazardous characteristics as “spent” commercial fuel.
Irradiated fuel rods and high-level nuclear wastes are perhaps the most hazardous poisons
ever created. There is the added danger that fissile materials still present in