Tunnel Vision

The long walk to a nuclear-waste storage facility

By Greg Soltis Posted 12.30.2008 at 11:10 am 6 Comments

Tunnel Vision Karoly Arvai (See it bigger!)

At the end of this tunnel, which snakes as deep as 820 feet below the Hungarian countryside, lies a new long-term nuclear-waste facility, set to open in 2010. Located on the outskirts of the village of Bátaapáti, it will store more than 10.5 million gallons of low- and intermediate-level waste produced at the Paks nuclear power plant, which is 40 miles away. The waste consists of protective clothing and contaminated tools and materials from processing. It collectively accounts for 97 percent of the volume of radioactive waste from the plant. (The high-level waste, including spent fuel rods, is stored at the power plant.) After several hundred years, its radioactivity should decay to the level of the planet’s natural background radiation.

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6 Comments

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Mike Cook

from Kent, WA

01/01/09 at 10:55 am

Eventually, like 10,000 years from now, detectable radiation will seep out. Assiduously collected in a by-valve and then eaten by a really stupid human, it might raise their chance of suffering a tumor by one or two per cent.

Or...humans may be so savvy by then that containing the miniscule trickle will be no big task at all for them. Either way, the proper response to the issue is so what?

Only in America have we been so rich that we could afford to have absolutely stupid worries. But, alas, that is changing....

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Mike Cook

from Kent, WA

01/01/09 at 7:20 pm

Bi-valve, of course. In 10,000 yrs my descendents will be capable of fixing most things with surprising ease and will probably be a lot better looking than me...

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tim416

01/06/09 at 12:38 pm

I think we should be looking for the best possible storage for this type of waste that we have the technology for. Everyone knows that we have alot of this waste laying around, and if we doing deal with it in the safest way possible now, it becomes a greater risk.

If you lived near this plant where would you rather see the waste go? I think I would rather see it placed deep underground where it's secure, rather than stored in a number of short term facilities at surface level.

I'm sure that someday (in 800 years or so) we will be able to launch this waste toward the sun and watch it burn up. :)

Tim

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lifeunmrs

01/21/09 at 9:12 pm

Perhaps, but still launching things into space. I believe we as in Earth should be able to handle our own waste that we created, we shouldn't have to launch it out into space.

I say that we process it into DU(depleted uranium) slugs, and then put it under ground as Tim416 sugested and save it for times of crisis with other planets.

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Lucoss Li

10/10/09 at 1:46 am

The tunnel looks like people's eyes. It is worthy of our attention to nuclear radiation, these substances on the human body would severely hurt, but there is no way, the world needs progress, the world needs development, so some problems can not be avoided, we can do is to minimize such injury
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romaniamac1

10/26/09 at 2:15 am

that is an incredible place.

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