Wasteland: The nuclear graveyard under New Mexico

[Music] whip is the world's first deep geologic repository we ought to see if it can fulfill its mission has received more than 10,000 shipments it has in place more than 80,000 cubic meters of Defense transionic waste so it's accomplished something but it's supposed to accommodate more than twice as much waste as currently there it's supposed to dispose of the waste be decontaminated and decommissioned so that we can demonstrate technically and to the public that we actually can do that never been done anyplace in the world this is the most geologically and scientifically studied piece of real estate in the entire United States the main function is to dispose of transionic defense generated transuranic waste and all of those activities that pertain to that the Carter Administration was trying to figure out what to do with Nick is our waste there was a lot of debate public discussion Congress was trying to pass laws Carter came up with a program of saying we need nuclear power in this country we have nuclear weapons an atomic energy power plant has already proved feasible the future supplying of electric power to entire cities is far from impossible so the Carter Administration said we need multiple geologic disposal sites in multiple geologic regions eventually came on Yucca Mountain experts throughout the world agree that the most feasible and safe method for disposing of highly radioactive materials is to store them deep underground the facilities you see at the surface are only a small fraction of the science going on deep inside the distinctive Ridge we've invested billions of dollars in Yucca Mountain and has been found to be safe we've been preparing and planning for Yucca for disposal since 2002 we have high-level nuclear waste all over this country and we needed in one centralized location it's been our policy that that would be Yucca Mountain an isolated area of Nevada in the desert 90 miles from Las Vegas underneath a mountain in the desert in one of the most arid places in this country this is one of those issues where the federal government then tells a state you're going to take this that doesn't really work very well the state of Nevada said we don't want this because we don't believe that you did this in a consensus-based fashion you didn't ask us you basically just told us and so then you know became a wrangling fight for 25 years we still don't have a safe way to dispose of the nuclear waste until we figure out what we're going to do with the waste and the cost it's very hard to see nuclear as a part of our future but that's where American technology comes in let's figure out what we're going to do what this country needs to understand is there's nuclear waste all over the place and next and major population centers and MIT and next to major water reserves I believe that Yucca Mountain is a suitable place for storage and I know that there's controversy about it in lawsuits and all that it shouldn't America a country as smart as wise we are be able to find a place to store spent fuel when 2008 came around and Senator Reid was Senate Majority lead he basically you know asked to kill this because he didn't think it was science-based and this wasn't consensus and we didn't agree to this and all that kind of thing so it was basically killed this is a wonderful day for Nevada to make sure that this poisonous substance the most poisonous substance known to man isn't going to be hauled through the streets of Las Vegas Reno Boulder City and Henderson that you go just a few miles outside Las Vegas and be a danger to our water systems our way of life including tourism it's wonderful that it's going to be gone for more than 30 years the state of New Mexico has said no to being Yucca Mountain being a high level waste or a commercial spiritual repository so to me when that subject comes up again not for the first time not for the second time not for the third time it's come up lots of times and people have always said no way I kind of say you know or what about know do people not understand New Mexico has as you know been historically a nuclear state you know they're very familiar just from a general base of people in New Mexico of the nuclear industry what it represents in all facets of that right now we have a certain authorization basis that says this is what we are suited for the disposal of defense generated true waste and if called upon through you know the congressional action to look at that although today we are suited for true waste disposal we will go through it with the same rigor we did to ensure the safety and the operational efficiency and the environmentally sound way we would approach it in the same way but it all starts with congressional action they have to give this the authorization and right now with is limited with a kind of waste and with the volume of waste and we can put away right now it's it's limited to defense transuranic waste which is a mouthful for intermediate level waste from you know weapons research and production there are two kinds of transfer and equates to conduit contact handled the kind that's in 55-gallon drum kinds of containers and other containers that you or I or anybody can walk right up to and not get a significant dose of radioactivity because the container provides good shielding for current handling of it and remote handle transuranic waste which as the name implies you and I can't walk up to it without getting a significant dose and in fact in some cases a dose that could kill you pretty quickly so that waste has to be packaged in special lead shielded canisters taken to a separate special facility of the WIPP site so it can be handled remotely without people actually physically having to handle the canister this is where the cast is transported into the stores shut and what they do is they're lowering it down you can see that green panel there they'll lift that lid and it's lowered down into a transfer area transport it over and brought into the facility cask in another room over there I think what's the best thing to do is to go we're going to go down the salt shaft and we'll take a cart down there and we'll follow the route that the waste takes to go down to the disposal area which will be down the east 140 drift all the way down into the intake of channel 6 [Music] [Music] when whip was originally conceived there was the idea to actually have two different levels where we are now and one deeper for defense high level waste that was struck from the mission so we're still at only one level we could go deeper we could go higher the sequence itself is three thousand feet you went about two thousand feet here we'll get on this other cart here your buddy in so basically what you're seeing there is salt that's rock you can hit that with a hammer and ring like a bell we're going to go through an airlock here these airlocks the reason we have them is we have four different ventilation splits and in all those areas are kept separate some of it is to control the possibility of if you had a release of some sort controlling that ventilation and that release and some of it is just literally to be able to control the air because you've got a finite amount of air so the waste would turn here this isn't going into an active panel we're headed in into the panel where the waste is disposed this is the panel itself but this is typical these rooms they're 33 feet wide minimal 13 feet high and in the case of a room it's 300 feet long so the are a choices brought down in this room and then these Pistons the rams push it into the hole and there's interlocks and there's shielding associated with that to protect the workers leave the shield in place and they come in and they pull the piston back and they put that shield plug in place and then they push that in also so here's the CH way stack here's your contact handled waste basically we want to emplace this it's not a it's not storage it's disposable permanent disposal I guess you could always think that the folks in the future could be smarter than us and find some some use but they would have to recover it would just not be retrievable they'd have to recover it in some way basically we want to make sure that we communicate with the future what we've stored underground what those dangers may be underground at the end when we close the first 100 years is called active institutional controls and during that first 100 years you have guards ito that are keeping people out and keeping them from jolin after that it's the passive institutional controls the passive institutional controls consist of three elements and one of them is the designs the actual markers that will be left behind after we decommission the site and return it back to public use so during that the first hundred years we would be building the passive institutional controls piece which is the markers the rooms putting on the languages telling a message talking thousands of years here we may not have a United States and three thousand years it may be a hole it may be split up among several countries who's to say I mean all those possibilities have to be considered what do you think is in the future for what do you think it's moving toward high-level waste well I think you know we have the land withdrawal Act and it basically specifies that we're supposed to have you know take true waste it would take a an act of Congress if you will to change that Act I have never seen a scientific or technique as scientifically or technically convincing reason why salt and we could not accommodate high-level waste history has shown that there isn't a quick fix solution to the problem we need geologic repositories that's fine let's start a long process to come up with that but whippin New Mexico just like Nevada should be not considered for that because it doesn't consent New Mexico shouldn't be considered for that because it doesn't consent now you consider out and hope that it's all going to be resolved if the next election breaks right and that's been exactly the hope for 40 years and it hadn't worked now we got a problem we got a problem in this country that is very very difficult to solve we don't know if we got the answers here if you're looking for the best solution you would be on that search for the Holy Grail and you will never get there if you stand around and insist on your yoga which people have been insisting on for a long long time but have not been able to pull it off we think the result of that is an impasse a failure to solve the problem where do you go [Music] you

Channel: The Verge

Views: 658,769

Rating: 4.704133 out of 5

Keywords: journalism, news, reviews, the verge, WIPP, entertainment, science, New Mexico, Yucca Mountain, TheVerge.com, nuclear power, tech, nuclear waste, technology, The Verge, culture, Nuclear energy

Id: zDgBUwhUAVE

Length: 12min 45sec (765 seconds)

Published: Thu Jun 14 2012

Reddit Comments

[u/Nemacolin]

How very interesting. Thank you for posting that.

[u/mattkerle]

Geologic storage of transuranic waste is a solved technical problem, the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in New Mexico has been taking high level waste for years and storing it safely.

The political problem though will never be solved as long as a central authority seeks to impose it on unwilling states.

[u/gousey]

Informative. As things are now, most spent fuel might remain on USA reactor sites for centuries or more after they've been shut down.