Dounreay nuclear waste to be stored in 'big holes'

Tarrel · Post by **Tarrel** » 06 Jul 2012, 10:27

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-h ... s-18728165

What have been described as the two biggest man-made holes in Caithness are being dug to store tonnes of low-level radioactive waste from Dounreay.

The larger of the two vaults involves the excavation of about 200,000 cubic metres of rock.

All part of the "Energy Invested" part of the EROEI equation for nuclear power. I wonder where the energy for excavation those 200,000 cubic metres of rock comes from? Could you imagine what it would take to excavate just ONE cubic metre of rock by hand?

biffvernon · Post by **biffvernon** » 06 Jul 2012, 15:46

Remind me, how much electricity did that power station feed into the grid?

mobbsey · Post by **mobbsey** » 06 Jul 2012, 16:16

biffvernon wrote:Remind me, how much electricity did that power station feed into the grid?

Like the JET reactor, it was a power sink not a source.

Actually, if you want and exemplar of nuclear idiocy, try the Dounreay Shaft. I helped an anti-nuclear campaigner dig up records about the shaft in the late 80s (one of a number of UKAEA scandals I unearthed), which brought it to its present notoriety and multi-million pound clean-up cost. I would say my work helped opened a can of worms, but they'd long-since died of radiation poisoning.

Tarrel · Post by **Tarrel** » 06 Jul 2012, 19:57

Actually, if you want and exemplar of nuclear idiocy, try the Dounreay Shaft

Not the sort of thing you'd want to fall into.

Hey, perhaps they could use it for disposal of LLDB (low level dishonest bankers)

revdode · Post by **revdode** » 06 Jul 2012, 21:58

One of my ex colleagues worked in Dounreay for a time as an engineer. He described the management of waste as a game, no one took most of it particularly seriously. The standard practice was out of sight out of mind, a hole, the sea or under something else was enough.

The size of the hole seems to have changed.