{"id":43634,"date":"2019-02-08T07:07:32","date_gmt":"2019-02-08T12:07:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=43634"},"modified":"2019-02-08T07:07:34","modified_gmt":"2019-02-08T12:07:34","slug":"growing-nuclear-waste-legacy-defies-disposal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=43634","title":{"rendered":"Growing nuclear waste legacy defies disposal"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Growing nuclear waste legacy defies disposal<\/a><\/h3>\n\n\n\n
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Spent nuclear fuel stored under water. Image: By US Dept. of Energy, via Wikimedia Commons<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Supporters say more nuclear power will combat climate change, but the industry is still failing to tackle its nuclear waste legacy.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

LONDON, 7 February, 2019 \u2212<\/em> The nuclear industry, and governments across the world, have yet to find a solution to the nuclear waste legacy, the highly dangerous radioactive remains that are piling up<\/a> in unsafe stores in many countries.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A report commissioned by Greenpeace France<\/a> says there is now a serious threat of a major accident or terrorist attack in several of the countries most heavily reliant on nuclear power, including the US, France and the UK.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The report fears for what may be to come: \u201cWhen the stability of nations is measured in years and perhaps decades into the future, what will be the viability of states over the thousands-of-year timeframes required to manage nuclear waste?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Hundreds of ageing nuclear power stations now have dry stores or deep ponds full of old used fuel, known as spent fuel, from decades of refuelling reactors.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The old fuel has to be cooled for 30 years or more to prevent it spontaneously catching fire and sending a deadly plume of radioactivity hundreds of miles downwind.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Some idea of the dangerous radiation involved is the fact that standing one metre away from a spent fuel assembly removed from a reactor a year previously could kill you in about one minute, the Greenpeace report says.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Official guesswork<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The estimates of costs<\/a> for dealing with the waste in the future are compiled by government experts but vary widely from country to country, and all figures are just official guesswork<\/a>. All are measured in billions of dollars.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 \u2026click on the above link to read the rest of the article\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Growing nuclear waste legacy defies disposal Spent nuclear fuel stored under water. Image: By US Dept. of Energy, via Wikimedia Commons Supporters say more nuclear power will combat climate change, but the industry is still failing to tackle its nuclear waste legacy. LONDON, 7 February, 2019 \u2212 The nuclear industry, and governments across the world, have yet […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[9245,24344,579,580,11911],"class_list":["post-43634","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-environment","tag-climate-news-network","tag-nuclear-fuel-waste","tag-nuclear-power","tag-nuclear-radiation","tag-paul-brown"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43634","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=43634"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43634\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":43635,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43634\/revisions\/43635"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=43634"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=43634"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=43634"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}