X-Message-Number: 20272
From: 
Date: Wed, 9 Oct 2002 16:37:58 EDT
Subject: Re: CryoNet #20253 nuclear energy

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From Tim Freedman:

>The important thing is how much damage the disintegrations do, not how
>many there are.  Your 150,000 number is meaningless without this 
information.

Fission by-products are neutron rich nuclei, so they disintegrate with the 
beta - process (high energy electrons). This form of radiation is the most 
noxious. Many daughter nuclei are in an excited state are decay with a gamma 
ray release. That gamma radiation comes in addition to the beta one. 


> >The outputs from the IFR are either stable or have a short (~30 year)
> half-life, so the 1000 year half-life is avoidable.  The highly
> radioactive isotopes get sorted out and put back into the reactor
> until they transmute again.

I disagree. Fission is a random process, so you can't tell what isotope of 
which element will be produced or not. You get a full spectrum with some 
products having an half life in the microseconds range and other beyond 
millions of years. The firsts disintegrate before reprocessing and the lasts 
are not much active so that some microgrammes lost in the environment would 
not be a big problem. I have choosen 1000 years as an example because that 
value implies a strong activity and a time too long to manage in a simple 
way. The reactor technology will do nothing for that problem. I state it 
again: to sort out radioactive products you must reprocess the spent fuel and 
that can't be done without some leak in the environment. Yes, the noxious 
products will be destroyed in an IFR, even if 99.9999 per cent is recycled 
that way, the problem remains with the one part per million released. (the 
value taken into account in my first calculation).

> There's an article in there somewhere where the chief IFR guy admits
> that nuclear power is not economically necessary yet, since
> conventional means of producing power are presently somewhat cheaper.
> I'm more afraid of global warming than nuclear power, so I hope
> economics forces the shift soon.

CO2 remains in the atmosphere for one century or so. This is not a "large" 
problem put against the scale of nuclear wastes. (even if this "not so large" 
problem can destroy the current society).

Yvan Bozzonetti.

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