Quote:
Originally Posted by finnbow
While this may be true, it's certainly news to me, having been to Hanford bunches of times. Only the N Reactor was dual use (military/civilian), but I doubt that a small portion of the mixed waste in the underground tanks has been specifically deemed Yucca Mountain waste. Perhaps the spent fuel is, but the spent fuel has absolutely nothing to do with the leaky tanks.
In any event, using Hanford to make an argument against the use of modern nuclear reactor designs is silly. The use of single walls underground tanks to accommodate 100 million gallons of mixed waste was due to war time exigencies (beating Hitler to the bomb and keeping ahead of the Russians). These exigencies don't exist in the civilian nuclear power industry. If anything kills nuclear, it will be the price of natural gas lowered by virtue of fracking.
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It is true. That's what happens when you retire. And pointing to the permanent risks associated with nuclear waste storage, however it was generated, is not "silly". Or do you maintain that this is a soluble problem?
And there are indications that there are now some double wall tanks, those not built under wartime exigencies, that are leaking. Tanks that are 400 yards from the second largest river in the US.