Well, it looks like the Obama administration is going to pull the plug on Yucca Mountain.

Well, there will be no Yucca Mountain facility opening in the US any time soon. But is that a big deal? No. There never was any urgent need for Yucca Mountain. The used nuclear fuel at the civilian power reactors is quite safe where it is, and it isn’t hurting anybody. The current on-site storage can be maintained for many years to come, and it’s just not a problem that requires any pressing intractable attention.

It will be interesting to see what happens in relation to the Nuclear Waste Policy Act – obviously they will have to change the law.
I suppose that money will be put back into the hands of the nuclear utilities, or used by the government to implement recycling of fuel.
I’d be happy to see the money used by the government to implement recycling infrastructure, and/or used by the nuclear generation utilities to implement dry cask storage for all the on-site storage capacity for their fuel that they need and that they’re going to need, until reprocessing and/or central storage is implemented.

It’s worth remembering that we’re not abandoning Yucca Mountain, we’re not “wasting” billions of dollars – the Obama government is not going to backfill it with concrete and burn all the research data. We’re just putting Yucca Mountain on the back burner for a little while, that’s all. If, in 10 years, we decide that Yucca Mountain wasn’t such a bad idea after all, we can always go straight back to it where we left off.

I think that’s not actually all that bad, because it gives us time to step back, breathe, and realise that taking this used LWR fuel, which is 96% unchanged uranium, declaring it to be so-called “waste”, and throwing it in Yucca Mountain really is a little stupid.

Off the top of my head I can’t remember how deep the Yucca tunnels are, but perhaps the facility will be useful for particle physics experiments (neutrino physics, dark matter detection and the like) just like the WIPP site in New Mexico.

As much as I fully support sensible recycling of nuclear fuel, and I hate to see good useful material “wasted”, I think, yes, it’s worth ultimately having a geological repository, although it’s certainly not needed urgently.

Even with the efficient use of uranium and actinides, and the extraction of useful fission products, I think we’re going to be producing medium-lifetime radioactive fission products (such as Cs-137, Tc-99, Sr-90, or what-have-you) at a rate which will exceed their consumption for useful applications, and therefore, we will have surplus material that will probably be best going to deep geological storage. Add in the transuranic-contaminated waste from the Cold War and the weapons facilities, and industrial and scientific radioactive waste, and yes, it really doesn’t hurt to have a deep geological repository such as Yucca mountain.

A roundup of some interesting things.

A few interesting things I’ve come across this week:

i) In pure water, (and in particular in ice, which has a much greater density of hydrogen bonds) electric charge is primarily carried not by electrons, but by a flow of mobile protons. (Or deuterons, in D₂O.)

Further reading here and here.

ii) A compendium of water-related pseudoscience and quackery. From magical quantum water purification, to “water memory”, to converting your car to run on water, it’s all discussed here.

iii) Neodymium-iron-boron magnets are dangerous!

Super-strong neodymium-iron-boron permanent magnets are very cool. They’re fun to play with, and they’re also extremely useful for many technological applications.

But they should be treated with a great deal of respect, and not toyed around with, especially not if they’re large – anything bigger than a few cubic centimetres.
A pair of these magnets the size of cigarette packets are not novelties and they’re not toys – they will take off your hand quite easily if they’re not treated with respect.

Do not want!

Finally:
To Mars by A-bomb: The Secret History of Project Orion.
I think I’ve posted little bits from this before, but I was delighted to find that someone’s posted the entire one-hour series on YouTube. Very, very cool.

Here’s the first part, the next five parts are at the above page.

Watching the start of this program, I was actually a little surprised to see that there actually exists video footage (indeed, colour video footage) of the assembly of the Gadget for the Trinity test in 1945.

‘Dirty bomb’ parts found in slain man’s home?

The Bangor Daily News reports that one James G. Cummings, who police say was shot to death by his wife two months ago, “allegedly had a cache of radioactive materials in his home suitable for building a “dirty bomb.””

According to an FBI field intelligence report from the Washington Regional Threat and Analysis Center posted online by WikiLeaks, an organization that posts leaked documents, an investigation into the case revealed that radioactive materials were removed from Cummings’ home after his shooting death on Dec. 9.

The report posted on the WikiLeaks Web site states that “On 9 December 2008, radiological dispersal device components and literature, and radioactive materials, were discovered at the Maine residence of an identified deceased [person] James Cummings.”

It says that four 1-gallon containers of 35 percent hydrogen peroxide, uranium, thorium, lithium metal, thermite, aluminum powder, beryllium, boron, black iron oxide and magnesium ribbon were found in the home.

Also found was literature on how to build “dirty bombs” and information about cesium-137, strontium-90 and cobalt-60, radioactive materials. The FBI report also stated there was evidence linking James Cummings to white supremacist groups. This would seem to confirm observations by local tradesmen who worked at the Cummings home that he was an ardent admirer of Adolf Hitler and had a collection of Nazi memorabilia around the house, including a prominently displayed flag with swastika. Cummings claimed to have pieces of Hitler’s personal silverware and place settings, painter Mike Robbins said a few days after the shooting.

Now, of course, this seems like a bit of a beat-up – but I’m not sure who’s to blame here, the newspaper, or the perhaps overly dramatic (internal) FBI report.

The memo leaked on WikiLeaks reports that:

“State authorities detected radiation emissions in four small jars in the residence labelled ‘uranium metal’, as well as one jar labelled ‘thorium’. The four jars of uranium carried the label of an identified US company.”

“Further preliminary analysis on 30 december 2008 indicated an unlabeled jar to be a second jar of thorium. Each bottle of uranium contained depleted uranium-238. Analysis also indicated the two jars of thorium held thorium-232.”

Now, regarding this US company. I have a pretty good suspicion who this company is – there aren’t too many companies that sell small samples of depleted uranium to the public – but I’m not going to mention the company by name, simply because they do not deserve to be unfairly tarnished or persecuted in relation to this incident.

This company provides quite a few products which are very interesting and very useful in scientific teaching, education and research, including some items which are extremely difficult to find on the market anywhere else, and they already cop enough persecution and flak as it is. Nothing they sell poses any special danger to the community at large, and small samples of uranium metal are, personally, one of the least dangerous things they sell.

The company in question, from what I recall, sells (depleted) uranium metal samples in 5 gram bottles, and used to sell thorium as one-gram samples.

If these samples were what these bottles possessed by this person were, then you’re talking about approximately 20 g of depleted uranium metal, and approximately 2 g of thorium metal. That’s about 10 microcuries of uranium, and about 0.22 microcuries of thorium.

There’s nothing that constitutes any radiological hazard to anybody. A bucket full of uranium-bearing rock picked up out of the ground would contain more radioactivity than this. Uranium-238 and thorium-232 are some of the least radioactive substances you can find that can still actually be called radioactive. They’re completely, utterly irrelevant to any threat of a radiological weapon, at all.

That said, however, I’m sure it is within the limits plausibility that this person was intent on trying to build a radiological weapon, he simply didn’t go about it in a particularly effective fashion.