Kurzgesagt – In a Nutshell
Sources – Nuclear Waste
Thanks to our experts —
Gerrit Bruhaug
University of Rochester
Prof. Matthew Caplan
Illinois State University
– Nuclear waste is a fuzzy term and comes in categories which vary from country to country. But in general there are three broad levels:
90% is low level nuclear waste – tools, gloves or trash used at a nuclear facility that could be weakly contaminated, with some short lived radioactivity. This stuff is generally safe for normal disposal.
7% is intermediate level nuclear waste – mostly materials that have been in close proximity to a reactor core long enough to become dangerously radioactive. With proper handling it is either safely buried or melted down and mixed into glass or concrete and stored deep underground.
Different countries have different classifications for nuclear waste but they all have at least two broad categories: low and high level waste.
#U.S. NRC (2019): Backgrounder on Radioactive Waste
https://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/doc-collections/fact-sheets/radwaste.html
Quote: “There are two broad classifications: high-level or low-level waste. High-level waste is primarily spent fuel removed from reactors after producing electricity. Low-level waste comes from reactor operations and from medical, academic, industrial and other commercial uses of radioactive materials”
Some countries add an intermediate level.
#Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission (2021): Low- and intermediate-level radioactive waste
http://nuclearsafety.gc.ca/eng/waste/low-and-intermediate-waste/index.cfm
Quote: “In Canada, low- and intermediate-level radioactive waste refers to all forms of radioactive waste, except used nuclear fuel, limited waste from the production of medical isotopes, and the waste from uranium mining and milling.
[...]
Intermediate-level radioactive waste (ILW) generally contains long-lived radionuclides in concentrations that require isolation and containment for periods greater than several hundred years.”
The following page gives the proportions of each level of nuclear waste:
#IAEA (2022): Status and Trends in Spent Fuel and Radioactive Waste Management. IAEA Nuclear Energy Series, No. NW-T-1.14 (Rev. 1)
https://www-pub.iaea.org/MTCD/Publications/PDF/PUB1963_web.pdf
Quote: “Most of the radioactivity associated with radioactive waste is ILW and HLW. While VLLW and LLW comprise more than 90% of the total volume of the waste (see Fig. 3), ILW and HLW typically comprise more than 95% of the total radioactivity.
[...]
By volume, HLW forms less than 1% of the global volume of radioactive waste, but it consists of about 95% of the total activity of the radioactive waste.”
#World Nuclear Association (retrieved 2022): What is nuclear waste, and what do we do with it?
https://world-nuclear.org/nuclear-essentials/what-is-nuclear-waste-and-what-do-we-do-with-it.aspx
The “melting down” refers to the vitrification process used sometimes to deal with nuclear waste:
#Health Physics Society (2012): Answer to Question #10009 Submitted to "Ask the Experts", Category: Decommissioning and Radioactive Waste Disposal — US High Level Waste Issues (Yucca Mountain)
https://hps.org/publicinformation/ate/q10009.html
Quote: “Vitrification is a process used to stabilize and encapsulate high-level radioactive waste. In the vitrification process, radioactive waste is mixed with a substance that will crystallize when heated (e.g., sugar, sand) and then calcined. Calcination removes water from the waste to enhance the stability of the glass product. The calcinated materials are continuously transferred into a heated furnace and mixed with fragmented glass. Upon mixing, the radioactive waste is bonded to the glass material. The melted product is subsequently poured into an encapsulation container (e.g., stainless steel liner). Once the contents cool down, the melt solidifies into the glass matrix. The encapsulation container is ultimately sealed and the waste stored in disposal repositories. Vitrification allows the immobilization of the waste for thousands of years.”
– So 97% of nuclear waste is similar to toxic byproducts from other industries. Not great, not terrible – we can handle it. The remaining 3% is where our problems begin.
High level nuclear waste is very concentrated spent fuel taken out of a reactor core. Formerly uranium, it is now made of various dangerous and often highly radioactive elements. As a bonus it is also incredibly hot and not easy to handle at all. This is what we want to shoot into space.
#IAEA (retrieved 2022): Getting to the Core of Radioactive Waste. Managing the by-products of nuclear technologies to protect people and the environment
https://www.iaea.org/sites/default/files/18/10/radioactivewaste.pdf
Quote: “High level waste consists mostly of spent fuel from reactors. Some countries also reprocess spent fuel, which gives rise to additional types of high level waste. All of this high level waste and spent fuel, when declared as waste, poses a sufficiently high enough radiological risk that a high degree of isolation from the biosphere is required for a long period of time. Because of the radioactivity and heat generated, this waste has to be shielded and cooled.”
Radioactive material is called ‘hot’ by scientists and engineers even if it is not actually at a high temperature.
- All in all, around 440 active nuclear reactors create about 11,000 tonnes of high level nuclear waste each year. Since 1954, we have accumulated 400,000 tonnes of dangerous radioactive waste. Most countries are dealing with it by not dealing with it and kicking the can towards the future.
The number of active reactors worldwide changes with every month, so we are rounding to 440.
#IAEA (2021): Nuclear Power Reactors in the World. Reference Data Series No. 2
https://www-pub.iaea.org/MTCD/Publications/PDF/RDS-2-41_web.pdf
Every year, the reactors produce about 11,000 tons of spent fuel.
#Stimson Center (2020): Spent Nuclear Fuel Storage and Disposal. An examination of spent nuclear fuel storage and disposal around the world
https://www.stimson.org/2020/spent-nuclear-fuel-storage-and-disposal/
Quote: “Since the 1950s, hundreds of nuclear reactors in scores of countries have been producing spent nuclear fuel – some 400,000 metric tons of it. The amount of spent fuel in storage is expected to continue to grow for decades to come.
[...]
On average, the global SNF stockpile increases by 11,300 tHM annually. This will increase 2 – 5% in the short term as 59 nuclear power reactors are anticipated to be shut down by 2025 – intensifying the need for countries to make decisions on storage and final disposal.”
Since 1954, there’s been roughly 400,000 tons of spent fuel produced.
#IAEA (2022): New IAEA Report Presents Global Overview of Radioactive Waste and Spent Fuel Management
Quote: “Since the start of nuclear electricity production in 1954 to the end of 2016, some 390,000 tonnes of spent fuel were generated. About two-thirds is in storage while the other third was reprocessed.”
– Even though spaceflight is getting more affordable, it’s still extremely expensive. Just to get something into low earth orbit costs on average about $4,000 per kilogram. For perspective, it costs about $1600 to mine, separate, and fabricate one kilogram of nuclear fuel, so launching waste into space has suddenly made nuclear fuel for reactors way more expensive and greatly increased the cost of the electricity they produce.
The average cost of putting 1 kg into Low Earth Orbit is difficult to estimate as launch prices are not fixed, secret or have to be calculated from different mission types. Even within the category of frequently-flying modern rockets, there are price variations between $73,100 per kg (the Minotaur 1) to $1500 per kg (the Falcon Heavy). However, the rocket that flew the most often and launched the most payloads was the Falcon 9. Its nominal cost to launch into Low Earth orbit is $4000 per kg.
This figure is calculated by dividing its launch cost, which has recently increased to $67 million, by the payload it manages to launch into orbit while recovering and landing its booster, which is about 16 tonnes.
#CNBC (2022): SpaceX raises prices for rocket launches and Starlink satellite internet as inflation hits raw materials
https://www.cnbc.com/2022/03/23/spacex-raises-prices-for-launches-and-starlink-due-to-inflation.html
Quote: “The starting prices for a Falcon 9 or Falcon Heavy rocket will each increase by about 8%. A Falcon 9 launch will cost $67 million, up from $62 million”
#NASASpaceflight.com (2019): SpaceX and Cape Canaveral Return to Action with First Operational Starlink Mission
https://www.nasaspaceflight.com/2019/11/spacex-cape-return-first-operational-starlink-mission/
Quote: “Each satellite has a liftoff mass of 260 kilograms, which amounts to 15,600 kilograms of payload total. This is heavier than the first dedicated Starlink mission of 60 satellites massing 227 kilograms each, for a total of 13,620 kilograms. This makes the Starlink L1 mission the heaviest payload SpaceX has ever launched.”
#CSIS (2022): Space Launch to Low Earth Orbit: How Much Does It Cost?
https://aerospace.csis.org/data/space-launch-to-low-earth-orbit-how-much-does-it-cost/
#GAO (2017): Surplus Missile Motors. Sale Price Drives Potential Effects on DOD and Commercial Launch Providers
It currently costs $1663 to create 1kg of uranium fuel ready for a reactor. If we add a $4,000 ‘shooting into space’ fee, the cost will rise to $5,663 which is 3.4 times more than before.
#World Nuclear Association (2022): Economics of Nuclear Power
https://world-nuclear.org/information-library/economic-aspects/economics-of-nuclear-power.aspx
Electricity from nuclear reactors is produced for about $70 per MWh, which is 7 cents per kWh. The fuel costs represent just 0.46 cents per kWh or 6.5% of the total cost.
If we had to get rid of nuclear waste by putting it on rockets, causing fuel costs to rise 3.4 times to 1.57 cents per kWh, the total cost would be increased to 8.1 cents per kWh. This means the total cost becomes 16% higher.
– To launch one reactor’s worth of nuclear waste would cost at least $100 million per year. To deal with all the 440 operational nuclear power plants’ high level nuclear waste, would cost some $44 billion per year for space launch before packaging, transport and security costs are added.
A 1GW nuclear reactor produces about 25 tonnes of used fuel per year.
#World Nuclear Association (2022): Radioactive Waste – Myths and Realities
Quote: “The amount of HLW produced (including used fuel when this is considered as waste) during nuclear production is small; a typical large reactor (1 GWe) produces about 25-30 tonnes of used fuel per year.”
A single reactor would need to handle 25 tons per year which would create a space disposal fee ($4000 per kg) of 25,000 x 4,000 = $100 million. All the reactors around the world have to handle 11,300 tons per year in total, which adds up to 11,300,000 x 4,000 = $45.2 billion.
– There just aren’t enough rockets. In 2021, we saw a record 135 launches into space. If we repurposed each of those rockets and filled them all with nuclear waste, the total amount that could be lifted into a Low Earth Orbit, which is the closest orbit above the atmosphere, is nearly 800 tonnes.
There were 135 confirmed launches in 2021, averaging 5.85 metric tons each.
#McDowell, J. (2022): Space Activities in 2021
https://planet4589.org/space/papers/space21.pdf
Quote: “During 2021 there were 146 orbital launch attempts from Earth, with 136 reaching orbit. This includes one unacknowledged marginally orbital flight by China reported by the UK Financial Times citing US intelligence sources.”
– We’d need at least 14 times more rockets to handle just today’s nuclear waste, let alone get rid of the hundreds of thousands of tonnes in temporary storage. We would need to create entire new space industries to keep up with the demand for giant, toxic space trash trucks.
We want to get rid of 11,300 tons of nuclear waste per year. All the rockets in the world in 2021 only managed to put 790 tons in space. We therefore need at least 11300/790 = 14.3 times more rockets.
– We only made the calculation for low earth orbit, where we send most of our rockets and satellites. Littering the space around earth with thousands of casks of spent nuclear fuel would be a nightmare for space junk management and satellite collision avoidance. Worse still, at this altitude there still is a little bit of atmosphere causing a tiny bit of drag, so we might have nuclear waste raining down from space within just a few years. Experts would call this a huge problem.
The lifetime of an object in a low orbit may be only a few days. The higher you go, the longer the lifetime. Thus, at an altitude of about 900 km, it can last several hundred years to a thousand years. In order to keep objects in orbit nevertheless, one must counteract.
#Janovsky, R. et al. (2002): End-Of-Life De-Orbiting Strategies for Satellites. Conference Paper. Deutscher Luft- und Raumfahrtkongress, Stuttgart, 23. - 26. September 2002
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/224789858_End-Of-Life_De-Orbiting_Strategies_for_Satellites
Quote: “Figure 2 shows the remaining orbit life-time of spacecraft as a function of the Area-to-Mass ratio and the altitude. The main influencing factor for the orbital lifetime is the initial orbital altitude. In the shown range of Area-to-Mass-ratios, the lifetime varies from a few days to a few months for an initial orbital altitude of 300 km to several hundred or even thousand years at 900 km initial altitude.”
– Clearly, we have to launch our waste farther. If we wanted to send it to, perhaps, the moon, we either need way more rockets or we need to build much bigger ones. Making it even more expensive. A single Saturn V, the rocket used by the Apollo program, which cost about $1.5 billion adjusted for inflation per launch, could get about 43.5 tonnes from the earth to the moon. So we would need about 260 Saturn V rocket launches every year. And of course, using the moon as target practice for nuclear-waste tipped rockets kind of makes a huge mess.
The Saturn V was able to get 43.5 (metric) tons to the Moon and it cost $185 million to launch in 1969. That’s $1.5 billion in today’s US dollars. We would need 11300/43.5=259.7 or about 260 of them every year to get rid of our nuclear waste.
#NASA (2011): Saturn V
https://www.nasa.gov/centers/johnson/rocketpark/saturn_v.html
Quote: “The Saturn V could launch about 43,500 kilograms (50 tons) to the moon.”
#Heppenheimer, T. A. (1999): The Space Shuttle Decision. Chapter 6:
Economics And The Shuttle
https://history.nasa.gov/SP-4221/ch6.htm
Quote: “At that time, when the 50,000-pound payload was still the standard, Mueller's cost goal represented a cost per flight of from $1 million to $2.5 million. This would not allow ordinary citizens to buy tickets into space, and was somewhat higher than Max Hunter's figure of $350,000. Regardless, if realized, it would be a long leap downward from the $185 million of a Saturn V."
– Ok. But how about we shoot it into the sun?!
Ironically, the Sun is pretty hard to hit. While the Sun has very strong gravity, everything on Earth is moving with respect to the sun, including the rockets that we launch, meaning a rocket would have to ‘cancel out’ all the orbital motion it has around the Sun so it can stop orbiting and fall in.
Because of this it is actually easier to launch a rocket entirely out of the Solar System than it is to launch it into the Sun. But to do either of these things we need even bigger rockets, probably the biggest we’ve ever built.
The surface gravity on the Sun is 28 times higher than on Earth.
#Hyperphysics (retrieved 2022): Sun
http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/Solar/sun.html
Quote: “The radius of the sun at 696,000 km is 109 times the Earth's radius. Its surface gravity is 274 m/s2 or 28.0 times that of the Earth. Its mean density is 1410 kg/m3 or 0.255 times the mean density of Earth.”
The escape velocity from a body you are orbiting can be calculated using this equation:
Escape Velocity = (G x Mass / Radius) ^ 0.5
Escape Velocity will come out in meters per second.
G is the gravitational constant equal to 6.67 x 10^-11 N/m^2/kg^3
M is the mass of the object we’re orbiting in kg
R is the orbital distance in meters
The mass of the Sun is 1.99 x 10^30 kg. Our initial position is 150 million km from the Sun, so R = 1.5 x 10^11 m.
This gives us a result of Escape Velocity = 42,068 m/s
#Vanderbilt (retrieved 2022): Escape Velocity
https://www.vanderbilt.edu/AnS/physics/astrocourses/AST101/readings/escape_velocity.html
Thankfully, we are already orbiting with the Earth at 29,800 m/s around the Sun, so we only need to make up the difference (42068 - 29800) = 12,268 m/s.
#NASA (2021): Planetary Fact Sheet
Doing the reverse, which is falling into the Sun, basically means cancelling out most of that orbital velocity. That means a velocity change of almost 30,000 m/s, which is much harder to achieve than 12,000 m/s.
– Rocket engineering has taken huge steps since the Apollo era. We have made them relatively safe. We’ve mostly replaced the toxic explosive cancer fuels of the past decades with much saner mixes of liquid oxygen and hydrogen or kerosene. The newest designs even land themselves so that they can be reused.
Even if such so-called hypergolic bipropellants have advantages (they are technically relatively simple), they have some disadvantages: they are carcinogenic, toxic and require complex treatment before launch.
#Swami, U. et al. (2022): Green Hypergolic Ionic Liquids: Future Rocket Propellants. Journal of Ionic Liquids, Vol. 2 (2)
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2772422022000234
Quote: “Hypergolic bipropellants are typically fuel-oxidizer pairs that ignite spontaneously when brought into contact with each other, thus rendering other ignition systems redundant and simplifying the engine design and operation (Sutton and Biblarz 2001). The engines running on hypergolic bipropellants are widely used in orbital maneuvering, attitude control, and reaction control systems in various spacecraft and satellites (Dennis E. Morris and Little 2014). The commonly used hypergolic bipropellants include hydrazine, monomethylhydrazine (MMH), and unsymmetrical dimethylhydrazine (UDMH), with dinitrogen tetroxide as the oxidizer (Edwards 2003). Hydrazine and its derivatives are highly volatile, carcinogenic, and toxic, therefore increasing the cost and complexity of transportation, fueling, testing, handling, and launch preparation. The research community is constantly looking for new propellants (Michele 2015; Negri et al., 2018) with low vapor pressure, less toxicity, comparable ignition delays, and better performance than the hydrazine family, which may be satisfied by ionic liquids (ILs).”
Today’s spacecraft prefer to use very cold fuels like liquid oxygen and liquid hydrogen. They are safer to handle and usually don’t explode if you spill them. A big performance boost can be gained with rocket engines that can use them reliably. However, they need more sophisticated storage and pumping equipment.
#NASA (2010): Liquid Hydrogen--the Fuel of Choice for Space Exploration
https://www.nasa.gov/topics/technology/hydrogen/hydrogen_fuel_of_choice.html
Quote: “Despite criticism and early technical failures, the taming of liquid hydrogen proved to be one of NASA's most significant technical accomplishments. . . . Hydrogen -- a light and extremely powerful rocket propellant -- has the lowest molecular weight of any known substance and burns with extreme intensity (5,500°F). In combination with an oxidizer such as liquid oxygen, liquid hydrogen yields the highest specific impulse, or efficiency in relation to the amount of propellant consumed, of any known rocket propellant.
Because liquid oxygen and liquid hydrogen are both cryogenic -- gases that can be liquefied only at extremely low temperatures -- they pose enormous technical challenges. Liquid hydrogen must be stored at minus 423°F and handled with extreme care. To keep it from evaporating or boiling off, rockets fuelled with liquid hydrogen must be carefully insulated from all sources of heat, such as rocket engine exhaust and air friction during flight through the atmosphere. Once the vehicle reaches space, it must be protected from the radiant heat of the Sun. When liquid hydrogen absorbs heat, it expands rapidly; thus, venting is necessary to prevent the tank from exploding. Metals exposed to the extreme cold of liquid hydrogen become brittle. Moreover, liquid hydrogen can leak through minute pores in welded seams. Solving all these problems required an enormous amount of technical expertise in rocket and aircraft fuels cultivated over a decade by researchers at the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA) Lewis Flight Propulsion Laboratory in Cleveland.”
Here is a comparison of many orbital rocket engines. The designs with the highest performance (measured in seconds of specific impulse) all use cryogenic mixes of liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen:
#Wikipedia (retrieved 2022): Comparison of orbital rocket engines
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_orbital_rocket_engines
Many space launch companies today are developing or envision working on reusable rockets after watching the success of SpaceX’s Falcon 9 design. Reusing a rocket is like deciding not to throw away a 21-storey house after living in it for 10 minutes, and then having to build a new one out of aerospace materials for the next launch.
#SpaceX (retrieved 2022):Reusability
https://www.spacex.com/mission/
Quote: SpaceX believes a fully and rapidly reusable rocket is the pivotal breakthrough needed to substantially reduce the cost of space access. The majority of the launch cost comes from building the rocket, which historically has flown only once.
Compare that to a commercial airliner – each new plane costs about the same as Falcon 9 but can fly multiple times per day and conduct tens of thousands of flights over its lifetime. Following the commercial model, a rapidly reusable space launch vehicle could reduce the cost of traveling to space by a hundredfold.
While most rockets are designed to burn up on reentry, SpaceX rockets can not only withstand reentry but can also successfully land back on Earth and refly again.”
#Orbital Today (2022): Reusable Launch Vehicles Today & Tomorrow
https://orbitaltoday.com/2022/03/28/reusable-launch-vehicles-today-tomorrow/
– And yet, out of the 146 launches in 2021, there were 11 failures. Which means that a sizable number of our rockets carrying high level radioactive waste would be exploding on the launch pad or in the worst case: disassembling at high altitude or crashing from hypersonic speeds.
146 launch attempts were made but only 135 succeeded in placing their payload into orbit. That is a failure rate of 7.5%. You would not entrust people, let alone nuclear waste, to the average rocket today.
You can see from the launch statistics of recent years that the failure rate has ranged from 2.3% to 7.9%.
#McDowell, J. (2022): Space Activities in 2021
Rockets can reach tremendous speeds a few minutes after launch while still travelling through the atmosphere. If they fail at that point, and release radioactive material, then it could be effectively dispersed at high altitude or after crashing.
– Each failure would be at least equivalent to a mini-Chernobyl – but instead of being contained under a slab of concrete, spread throughout the atmosphere.
If we assume that the failure rate is 7.5%, then multiplying the number of space launches by 14 so that we can launch all of the world’s nuclear waste would lead to 2044 launches with 153 failures per year.
Each of those launches would carry 5.5 tonnes of nuclear waste on average. 153 failures means the loss of 847.5 tonnes of nuclear waste.
For comparison, the Chernobyl nuclear incident caused the release of 9.6 tonnes of reactor fuel. This is based on estimates that 5% of the 192 tonnes of fuel were dispersed by an explosion.
A rocket failure that disperses 5.5 tonnes of nuclear waste would be similar in many ways so we could call it a ‘Mini-Chernobyl’ event.
We can say that in the worst case, this space launch plan for nuclear waste would be the equivalent of 847.5/9.6 = 88.28 full Chernobyl-level disasters every year.
#World Nuclear Association (2022): Chernobyl Accident 1986
Quote: “The resulting steam explosion and fires released at least 5% of the radioactive reactor core into the environment, with the deposition of radioactive materials in many parts of Europe.
[...]
It is estimated that all of the xenon gas, about half of the iodine and caesium, and at least 5% of the remaining radioactive material in the Chernobyl 4 reactor core (which had 192 tonnes of fuel) was released in the accident.”
– Radioactive particles could make their way to far away places by riding on the winds. Most would fall in the ocean but some would land on the inhabited parts of the world. They could cover farmlands and get concentrated into our food, or enter our water supply. Which is, well, bad. Imagine regular large scale nuclear disasters happen. People would not be happy.
The worst type of accident for a space launch with nuclear waste is a supersonic breakup at high altitude. This does happen from time to time, such as the SpaceX CRS-7 mission or the Soyuz MS-10. It has the potential to disperse the nuclear waste far and wide, with the potential to reach cities and other inhabited areas despite precautions to launch over the sea.
#Space News (2018): Roscosmos to complete Soyuz accident investigation this month
https://spacenews.com/roscosmos-to-complete-soyuz-accident-investigation-this-month/
Quote: “While the Roscosmos statement didn't discuss the cause of the failure, speculation has focused on a problem during the separation of four side boosters from the Soyuz rocket, which did not fall away cleanly from the core stage as seen from the ground.”
It is very difficult to estimate the effects of such an accident, but we can compare it to the contamination caused by the Chernobyl accident. In that event, radioactive particles were carried by winds over very large areas, and they infiltrated food and water supplies to varying degrees.
#IAEA (2006): Environmental Consequences of the Chernobyl Accident and their Remediation: Twenty Years of Experience. Report of the Chernobyl Forum Expert Group ‘Environment’
https://www-pub.iaea.org/mtcd/publications/pdf/pub1239_web.pdf
Quote: “In the early phase, direct surface deposition of many different radionuclides dominated the contamination of agricultural plants and the animals consuming them. The release and deposition of radioiodine isotopes caused the most immediate concern, but the problem was confined to the first two months, because of the short physical half-life (eight days) of the most important iodine isotope, 131I. The radioiodine was rapidly transferred to milk at a high rate in Belarus, the Russian Federation and Ukraine, leading to significant thyroid doses to those consuming milk, especially children. In the rest of Europe the consequences of the accident varied; increased levels of radioiodine in milk were observed in some contaminated southern areas where dairy animals were already outdoors.
Different crop types, in particular green leafy vegetables, were also contaminated with radionuclides to varying degrees, depending on the deposition levels and the stage of the growing season. Direct deposition on to plant surfaces was of concern for about two months.”
#Møller, A. P. et al. (2016): Ionizing radiation from Chernobyl and the fraction of viable pollen. International Journal of Plant & Soil Science, Vol. 177 (9): pp. 727-735
– Nuclear waste is scary. But the fear of it and horrible ideas like shooting it into space reveals how bad we are at understanding risk. Because the largest amounts of radioactive elements like uranium and radon are actually released by coal. Burning millions of tonnes of coal each year leaves ashes as a waste product, that include about 36,000 tonnes of radioactive materials. Less radioactive than high level nuclear waste, but there is also a lot more of it and it is handled way less carefully.
#Ahmed, U. A. Q. et al. (2020): Quantification of U, Th and specific radionuclides in coal from selected coal fired power plants in South Africa. PLOS ONE, Vol. 15 (5)
https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0229452#pone-0229452-t003
Quote: “The U concentration and Th concentrations for the coal used in all the power plants was above the world average of 1.9 mg/kg and 3.2 mg/kg respectively.”
In addition to toxic heavy metals, there are damaging radioactive particles concentrated in coal ash waste.
#Duke Surgery (2018): Despite Studies, Health Effects of Coal-Burning Power Plants Remain Unknown
Quote: “Kravchenko and co-author H. Kim Lyerly, MD, director of the Environmental Health Scholars Program at Duke, highlighted the pollution sources of health hazards identified in their review.
Air pollution: Burning coal produces particles called fly ash, which lodge predominantly in the lungs, causing irritation and inflammation. Exposures to additional emissions of sulfur dioxide, nitrogen dioxide and heavy metals are also harmful; these are associated with worse respiratory and cardiovascular health and higher death rates for people living near and around the coal-burning power plants.
Water and soil pollution: Fly ash is stored in wet form and can contaminate ground and nearby surface water with leaking toxins, including mercury, arsenic and other heavy metals known to damage the neurological and gastrointestinal systems, kidneys and other organs.
Radioactive contaminants: Burning coal also releases uranium, thorium, and ruthenium and other radioactive isotopes in concentrated form. Even at low levels, these isotopes can accumulate in the human body and form life-long deposits in bones and teeth.”
Despite these known health effects, we continue to burn huge quantities of coal each year.
#IEA (2020): Coal 2020. Analysis and forecast to 2025
The average uranium and thorium content per kilogram of coal burnt in powerplants adds up to 5.1 milligrams. If we multiply this amount by the roughly 7 billion tons of coal burnt in the year, we obtain a total uranium and thorium content of 35,700 tons, which we’ll round up to 36,000 tons.
– Some of this ash is caught by filters, but most is simply pushed back into leaky mines, shoved into piles exposed to the wind or poured into ponds that regularly spill into rivers and lakes. Living within 1.6 km of an ash pile increases your cancer risk up to 2000 times over the acceptable limit. And this is on top of other toxic chemicals like heavy metals, and of course their massive CO2 emissions.
Coal ash contains many toxic elements and they can leak into the environment when improperly managed.
#PSR (2018): Coal Ash Toxics: Damaging to Human Health https://www.psr.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/coal-ash-toxics.pdf
Quote: “The toxic substances found in coal ash can inflict grave damage to the human body and the environment. These substances have been shown to escape from some coal ash disposal sites, contaminating the air, land, surface waters, and/or underground aquifers that feed drinking water wells.”
Quote: “The toxic metals in coal ash can leach out of ash disposal sites, especially from wet
storage, and contaminate surface waters and underground aquifers, where they can
cause cancer and neurological harm in humans and can poison fish.”
#Sierra Club (2014): Dangerous Waters: America’s Coal Ash Crisis
https://coal.sierraclub.org/sites/nat-coal/files/report-dangerous-water-coal-ash-crisis.pdf
Quote: “People who live near an unlined coal ash pond where ash is co-disposed with coal refuse and whose drinking water source is groundwater have a 1 in 50 chance of getting cancer from water contaminated by arsenic— a risk 2,000 times greater than the EPA’s goal for reducing cancer risk to 1 in 100,000”
The 1.6 km and the limits mentioned above refer to an EPA study that measured health effects of groundwater wells at distances of up to one mile from the coal ashes (CCW = coal combustion waste and WMU = waste management unit). The 1 in 100,000 cancer risk was defined in the same EPA study as the limit above which a given chemical needs “consideration” due to possible health hazards.
#EPA (2010): Human and Ecological Risk Assessment of Coal Combustion Wastes
Quote: “1.3.3 Risk Levels
To evaluate the significance of the estimated risks from the pathways assessed in this assessment, EPA compared the risk estimates to a risk range (for carcinogens) or to a specific risk criterion (for noncarcinogens) that are protective of human health and the environment:
An estimate of the excess lifetime cancer risk for individuals exposed to carcinogenic (cancer-causing) contaminants ranging from 1 chance in 1,000,000 (10-6 excess cancer risk) to 1 chance in 10,000 (10-4 excess cancer risk). For decisions made to screen out certain constituents from further consideration, a 1 in 100,000 (10-5) excess lifetime cancer risk was used.2
(...)
The residential scenario for the CCW groundwater pathway analysis calculates exposure through use of well water as drinking water. During the Monte Carlo analysis, the receptor well was placed at a distance of up to 1 mile from the edge of the WMU, by sampling a nationwide distribution of nearest downgradient residential well distances taken from a survey of municipal solid waste landfills (U.S. EPA, 1988).
(...)
The maximum radial distance in this survey was 1 mile. EPA believes that this distribution is protective of CCW WMUs.”
– Nuclear waste and the lack of willingness to deal with it are a real issue. It's not insurmountable though. There are good methods to handle it, like burying it deep underground or reprocessing some of it into new fuel. But however we will deal with this issue in the end, we hope one thing is clear: shooting nuclear waste into space is one of the worst ideas ever.
There have been many solutions proposed for getting rid of nuclear waste, and implemented to various degrees over the years.
The most popular today is deep geological storage.
#World Nuclear Association (2021): Storage and Disposal of Radioactive Waste
Quote: “Deep geological disposal is the preferred option for nuclear waste management in most countries, including Argentina, Australia, Belgium, Canada, Czech Republic, Finland, France, Japan, the Netherlands, Republic of Korea, Russia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, the UK, and the USA. Hence, there is much information available on different disposal concepts; a few examples are given here. The only purpose-built deep geological repository that is currently licensed for disposal of nuclear material is the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) in the USA, but it does not have a licence for disposal of used fuel or HLW. Plans for disposal of spent fuel are particularly well advanced in Finland, as well as Sweden, France, and the USA, though in the USA there have been political delays. In Canada and the UK, deep disposal has been selected and the site selection processes have commenced.”
