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General Science / Nuclear Power Calculations
« on: 15/05/2007 06:33:13 »
Sorry if this ia a bit out of date but I've only recently found out about the Naked Scientists and have been playing catch-up with the podcasts.
However, the Nuclear Power episode on 11th February got me thinking. If some of the elements in the spent fuel is dangerously radioactive for around 300,000 years and we currently don't have a permanent way of disposing it, would the energy used in continually repackaging and storing it eventually exceed the amount of energy produced by the power stations during its active life?
Although it's possible that something will be developed in the future that will deal with this satisfactorily, if we make a pessimistic assumption and assume that what we have now is as good as it gets, how much energy would be consumed by reprocessing, repackaging and guarding all this material for 300,000 years?
However, the Nuclear Power episode on 11th February got me thinking. If some of the elements in the spent fuel is dangerously radioactive for around 300,000 years and we currently don't have a permanent way of disposing it, would the energy used in continually repackaging and storing it eventually exceed the amount of energy produced by the power stations during its active life?
Although it's possible that something will be developed in the future that will deal with this satisfactorily, if we make a pessimistic assumption and assume that what we have now is as good as it gets, how much energy would be consumed by reprocessing, repackaging and guarding all this material for 300,000 years?