Radioactive Nuclear Waste Buried Inside Yucca Mountain May Chill Nevada's economy

You might wonder why the mayor of Las Vegas sued President Bush. Simply put, it had to do with neutrons.

Then-Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham, with the backing of President Bush, ended 20 years of research on how to arrange of the nation's 70,000 tons of nuclear waste by deciding it will be buried deep within the Yucca Mountains of Nevada, 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas. Some population now refer to the site as Yuck-a Mountain.

Nuclear Reactor

If Washington's plans are realized, Yucca Mountain will come to be a geological tomb for radioactive waste from the nation's 131 temporary warehouse sites, most of which sit next to the nuclear power plants that gave birth to them. In addition, all the radioactive materials from the U.S. Nuclear weapons and nuclear submarine programs will also be sent to Nevada.

The Bush supervision had promised to help Russia arrange of its nuclear wastes in an exertion to keep terrorists from obtaining raw materials that could be used to originate nuclear devices for mass destruction. Yucca Mountain, then, may be slated to come to be an international, radioactive-waste dumpster.

Advocates say the plan is safe, due primarily to the carport geology that characterizes the Yucca Mountains. In addition, proponents argue that it will be far great to have all radioactive materials at one central location than to have it spread nearby the country in 39 states, as it is now. Radioactive wastes would probably be immobilized by forming them into some type of glass or ceramic material, then sealed in corrosive-resistant packaging before being stored deep within the bowels of the Nevada mountains.

Many environmentalists have argued that the heat generated by years of continuous radioactive decay may ultimately cause box failures, with subsequent contamination of Nevada's hidden water supplies and geology.

The problem with nuclear energy lies roughly entirely with its by-products, which are themselves radioactive. Typically, the process starts with uranium atoms designated as uranium-235 (235U), which have an atomic mass of 235 amu (atomic mass units). The uranium atoms (held within the fuel rods of a nuclear reactor) are split by a source of slow involving particles called neutrons (designated as 1n) having a mass of 1 amu. One of the results of splitting uranium atoms is the formation of atoms of lower mass. One typical reaction pattern is:

1n + 235U = 142Ba + 91Kr + 3 1n + energy

In this fission reaction, just one of many that unmistakably occur, a neutron collides with a uranium atom, splitting it into a barium atom (142Ba) and a krypton atom (91Kr). Consideration that three added neutrons are created, along with the release of energy. If there is more than just one uranium atom in the sample, the added neutrons created by the traditional splitting will impact more uranium atoms, releasing more neutrons and more energy. In this way, the chain-reaction continues to escalate. If the reaction goes unchecked, and there is sufficient uranium present initially, a nuclear explosion will result.

In a nuclear reactor designed to yield electricity, the chain reaction is controlled such that it does not escalate out of control, but instead produces a steady stream of energy. Unfortunately, as the uranium in the reactor's fuel rods becomes contaminated with fission products like the barium and krypton atoms shown in the above reaction, neutrons begin colliding with them instead of the uranium, manufacture the process less and less efficient with time. As a result, the fuel rods have to be supplanted periodically with new ones that are not contaminated with fission products. Spent fuel rods still comprise some division of unreacted uranium-235 together with the fission products, all of which are radioactive. These spent fuel rods are stored underwater in pools nearby the reactors from where they came, constituting the majority of the nations "nuclear waste" that the Bush supervision has decided to bury in Nevada.

How long will it take for these materials to come to be safe again? The half-life is defined as the estimate of time required for half of the atoms in a radioactive sample to decay. Unreacted uranium-235 (in the discarded fuel rods) has a half-life of 710 million years! Fission by-products such as strontium-90 are more prevalent in spent fuel rods than uranium-235. Although the half-life of strontium-90 is only 29 years, it takes 20 half-life cycles, or 600 years, before such material is safe to biological systems such as human beings.

Perhaps now we can understand why Mayor Oscar Goodman of Las Vegas, along with most of Nevada's politicians, was ready to do battle with Washington. Aside from the possibility of lost income derived from having the nation's nuclear waste repository in their state, they fear that if radioactive materials leaking from packaging inside Yucca Mountain contaminate the state's groundwater, they would be saying good-bye to their casinos and their livelihoods, not to mention their citizens.

Radioactive Nuclear Waste Buried Inside Yucca Mountain May Chill Nevada's economy