By 1985 data, 63.5% of LLW comes from reactors and the nuclear fuel cycle; the rest (36.5%) from industry and institutions, which largely means the pharmaceutical industry and medical institutions including hospitals; the total is 80,200 cubic meters. (The breakup for the total activity of 553,000 Ci is similar: 70% and 30%, respectively.)
It is typical of the antinuclear propaganda machine that the LLW due to hospitals and the medical industry, about 1/3 of the total, is invariably covered up; for the gamma rays emerging from hospital waste deliver a smiling and lovable dose, whereas the microrems from cooling water are truly diabolic.
LLW is first processed to reduce its volume by mechanical com-pacting and other methods. In evaporation, the non-active water is boiled away, leaving a concentrated remnant. In combustion most of the activity remains in the ashes, while the gaseous fraction is diluted to safe levels. In solidification, the wastes are mixed with solid substances that resist water
¾most often concrete or asphalt. This, incidentally, is also done with some chemical wastes. When the EPA arsonists forced utilities to replace allegedly car-cinogenic PCB with combustible mineral oil as the cooling liquid [AtE Mar, Nov 85], Canada followed suit, but developed a kiln that would incinerate PCB with the ash absorbed in cement for making concrete (Fraser Forum Nov. 88)--until the alarmists found out, so that the utilities (i.e., the rate payers) had to pay the additional cost of disposal by special kilns. Sure it was expensive; but think of all the lives saved among the concrete-gnawing citizenry!The actual dumping is done in various ways described by Mur-ray below; the most common is putting the LLW in 55-gallon drums and burying them in a shallow dump with a ground cover of 3 to 6 feet, some 45 feet above the ground water table. Just under-neath the dump is a monitor which would sound the alarm if the ground water rose to that level.
AU of this lacks the thing that makes thrillers interesting: the ele-ment of danger. What would be much more interesting is to see a student of history, a few centuries hence, trying to make out the mentality of people who consider seceding from the USA rather than have one of these boringly innocuous dumps in their state. If he is thorough, he will note that they fought like lions for any government project because of the jobs and revenue it would bring in. He will note that with the Soviet Empire in disarray, their elected representatives lobbied like crazy to keep utterly useless military bases in their states, accepting ammunition dumps and napalm stores rather than a few gloves and glass splinters buried under 6 feet of earth. More fantastic still, they clamored for these bases while rejecting a space shield against the thousands of Soviet nuclear missiles still in place, and against the nuclear or poison-gas missiles that could soon be launched by demented dictators in Libya, Syria or Iraq. He will search for evidence of civil defense, but will find only rare evidence of anger and ridicule provoked by the idea. If he is thorough enough, he will have to conclude that the news media, the pols, and a few housewives with Xerox machines were able to brainwash the population into total irrationality.
But his professor will flunk him, because anybody who thinks that incomprehensible puzzles of this kind have such simple solu-tions is clearly not fit to study history.
[More: R. L. Murray, Understanding Radioactive Waste, 3rd ed., Battelle Press, Columbus, Ohio, 1989.]
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Vol. 17, No. 8
Newsletter: Access to Energy Newsletter Archive Volume: Issues Issue/No.: Vol. 17, No. 8 Date: December 01, 2004 03:33 PM Title: The High Holy Heathen Holiday
Copyright © 2004 - Access to Energy Newsletter Archive
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