(March 14, 2013 at 6:40 am)pocaracas Wrote: TGAC, the half-life of plutonium is something of he order of 10000 years, not a million.
And current state of the art fission power plants, as well as the future ones, are capable of burning these old wastes, so as to return as little as possible radioactivity to waste facilities.
Fusion is an alternative, but the reactor's inner walls become activated and need to be replaced every 10 or so years, while their activation takes some 100 years to dissipate (radioactive half-life of about 100 years), and then can be put back into the reactor. Studies are underway to develop new materials which yield lower activation thus requiring less downtime, but it's going at "research pace".
You did raise an interesting point, there... perhaps unknowingly.
Transport of radioactive material from reactor to waste processing facility is probably the most hazardous moment for these materials.
Leaks are more probable, because mobile containers are less efficient than buildings with tons and tons of concrete.
Theft is a possibility, that's why these transport vessels have a lot of police escort.... but even so, they're still a juicy target.
Ol'fashioned terrorism - it's much simpler to blow up a truck on the road than a heavily guarded building.
10 000 years is still a long ass time and a technology which is being researched is still a technology not commonly available.
Other than that one thing you havent adressed is the super gau scenario and the risk of nuclear catastrophy.
In the end, I have to say that it no longer matters to me since the "energy change" - the change from nuclear and fossil fuels to clean energy has been amended to our constitution and is more or less unavoidable since only the liberterians opose it and they will never get enought votes to have it cut out.
