Cumbria County Council rejects waste depository

emordnilap · Post by **emordnilap** » Wed Feb 13, 2013 10:12 am

Filter Feeder wrote:West Cumbria has mass unemployment and are not at all squeamish about the nuclear industry. It employs a lot of people already.

Hmmph. I've known three workers there who aren't from the area, so it wouldn't be surprising if the percentage of outsiders in the workforce is high.

Filter Feeder · Post by **Filter Feeder** » Wed Feb 13, 2013 9:15 pm

emordnilap wrote:
Filter Feeder wrote:West Cumbria has mass unemployment and are not at all squeamish about the nuclear industry. It employs a lot of people already.
Hmmph. I've known three workers there who aren't from the area, so it wouldn't be surprising if the percentage of outsiders in the workforce is high.

A lot of the kids I went to school have worked there at one time or another - Sallafield is probably the biggest single employer in the area.

Post by **clv101** » Thu Feb 14, 2013 3:24 pm

biffvernon wrote:...the geology is not ideal.

Don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good. Under hundreds of metres of imperfect geology is immeasurably better than being under 6 inches of water when the lights go out.

biffvernon · Post by **biffvernon** » Thu Feb 14, 2013 6:00 pm

Yes, but better geology exists in other parts of Britain and not in National Parks.

A short boat ride from Sellafield to Dalbeatie might be in order.

Filter Feeder · Post by **Filter Feeder** » Thu Feb 14, 2013 6:13 pm

What about Lincolnshire? As good a place as any...

biffvernon · Post by **biffvernon** » Thu Feb 14, 2013 7:12 pm

Not a lot of granite in Lincolnshire - it's just layers of sedimentaries for a very long way down. Of course we might have fracking to look forward to.

Post by **clv101** » Thu Feb 14, 2013 7:37 pm

biffvernon wrote:Yes, but better geology exists in other parts of Britain and not in National Parks.

A short boat ride from Sellafield to Dalbeatie might be in order.

Sure - I'm not saying the geology in Cumbria is ideal, nor that better rocks exist elsewhere.

What I'm saying is that this negative decision has extended the length of time - probably by at least a decade - before the nuclear waste is moved from being under six inches of water to being under hundreds of metres of rock.

Couple this delay to the current 'active' management requirements of the waste and my low confidence in grid reliability over multi-decade timescales and I see this decision as significantly increasing the chance the waste will go up in smoke.

Totally_Baffled · Post by **Totally_Baffled** » Thu Feb 14, 2013 8:13 pm

Chris - educate me here.

Currently this waste material is under 6 inches of water - is this for cooling old nuclear material/waste (spent rods?)

If the waste went under rock , would it still need to be in water to be cooled? Would that still require an electricity supply to circulate/cool? If the electricity goes out whilst the waste is under ground - what happens? Would it be a contained explosion?

Apologies if I am way off here or have misunderstood

Filter Feeder · Post by **Filter Feeder** » Thu Feb 14, 2013 9:20 pm

At least British spent fuel rods aren't stored on top of the reactors as they were at Fukushima, and several other places who still run the same design. The logic of it defies belief.

biffvernon · Post by **biffvernon** » Thu Feb 14, 2013 9:32 pm

The idea of deep geological disposal is that the waste material is put in a very deep place in very strong, impermeable, unfractured rock. The entrance in then blocked with a tremendous amount of very strong, impermeable, unfractured concrete and the whole affair can then be utterly and completely forgotten with absolutely no human intervention for tens of thousands of years (plutonium-239, half-life 24,100 years).

Of course it begs questions about whether such a depository can be constructed which cannot be opened by inquisitive future civilisations that have no knowledge of the hazards within, or whether natural processes such as glaciers could expose the depository.

clv101 is right to be concerned about getting the stuff locked away now, while our economy can still cope, but I don't see that a change from Cumbria to Dumfries & Galloway should cause much delay. Some of us told them to do it this way many years ago and it's high time the government took geology more seriously than the convenience of local employment politics.

biffvernon · Post by **biffvernon** » Thu Feb 14, 2013 9:37 pm

Filter Feeder wrote:The logic of it defies belief.

The logic of it comes from the ability to get the rods out of the reactor and into the initial storage pond without ever, not even for a moment, lifting them out of the water. There's a continuous water tank connecting the reactor top to the storage pond.

It is, as we've seen, one of the inherent dangers in this sort of nuclear power station. Good job we are not going to build any more of them.

Snail · Post by **Snail** » Thu Feb 14, 2013 9:39 pm

but I don't see that a change from Cumbria to Dumfries & Galloway should cause much delay. Some of us told them to do it this way many years ago and it's high time the government took geology more seriously than the convenience of local employment politics.

Nah. Civ is right. Get it in the ground asap (in cumbria).

biffvernon · Post by **biffvernon** » Thu Feb 14, 2013 9:45 pm

Snail wrote: (in cumbria).

Why?

Snail · Post by **Snail** » Thu Feb 14, 2013 9:49 pm

I can't deny it. I'm a nimby in d&g!

I suppose it has to go somewhere tho.

Filter Feeder · Post by **Filter Feeder** » Thu Feb 14, 2013 9:54 pm

It's not employment politics which made Cumbria the prime choice, it was the belief that this was the most likely site which would avoid NIMBYism. Plans to site a huge underground nuclear depository in West Cumbria have been circulating for more than 20 years. The NIREX plan was rejected in 1997, mostly on grounds of geology.

The rocks haven't changed.