by DCN » September 4, 2010, 11:13 pm
Clearly people have concerns over shipments like this and rightly so. Radioactive pollution isn’t like other kinds that we are all more familiar with. We could all see the oil in the Gulf of Mexico but the radioactive waste that has been dumped into the oceans is much harder to see. There is no stereotypical barrel of glowing green ooze. And to think of radioactive waste ending up in the Great Lakes is a very unpleasant thought indeed.
To keep this in perspective lets think about the cargo. Sixteen steam generators, which are large pressure vessels not unlike some of the refinery equipment that is shipped into the lakes. The steam generators are going to be radioactive because they made up part of the primary coolant loop of the reactor, but the radioactivity is going to be the metal itself, not material that can be dislodged from them and spread into the wider environment. If a steam generator were to be lost into a lake it is likely built so strong that it would survive intact and be recoverable. The level of radioactivity from these vessels is going to be low enough that any time spent transiting a lock or passing a city will have no impact on people on shore, in fact the crew of the vessel will probably be fine unless they decide to spend all their time in physical contact with the cargo. Remember, these steam generators are being stored someplace right now and people are working around them every day. Of course the NIMBYs will be out in their boats protesting the ship passing their city and in doing so causing the ship to slow or stop and spend more time right where they don’t want it to be.
In the grand scheme of nuclear pollution this cargo is a minor risk. The plutonium production reactors at Hanford, Washington operated for years as single pass reactors. That is their cooling water was pulled from the Columbia River, passed through the core of the reactor, and was discharged directly back into the river highly radioactive to flow past every town and city on to the Pacific Ocean. In comparison, if this entire shipment were to be lost in the lakes and never recovered, in all the years it would take for the pressure vessels to rust away and be lost to time, they would probably release less radioactivity into the environment than ten minutes of Hanford in the 1950s.
I don’t want the Great Lakes polluted, I wish they were cleaner than they are now, and I surely don’t want radioactive waste to end up in them. But unless the NIMBYs want these steam generators buried in their back yards, load them on a boat and let them go get recycled.
Clearly people have concerns over shipments like this and rightly so. Radioactive pollution isn’t like other kinds that we are all more familiar with. We could all see the oil in the Gulf of Mexico but the radioactive waste that has been dumped into the oceans is much harder to see. There is no stereotypical barrel of glowing green ooze. And to think of radioactive waste ending up in the Great Lakes is a very unpleasant thought indeed.
To keep this in perspective lets think about the cargo. Sixteen steam generators, which are large pressure vessels not unlike some of the refinery equipment that is shipped into the lakes. The steam generators are going to be radioactive because they made up part of the primary coolant loop of the reactor, but the radioactivity is going to be the metal itself, not material that can be dislodged from them and spread into the wider environment. If a steam generator were to be lost into a lake it is likely built so strong that it would survive intact and be recoverable. The level of radioactivity from these vessels is going to be low enough that any time spent transiting a lock or passing a city will have no impact on people on shore, in fact the crew of the vessel will probably be fine unless they decide to spend all their time in physical contact with the cargo. Remember, these steam generators are being stored someplace right now and people are working around them every day. Of course the NIMBYs will be out in their boats protesting the ship passing their city and in doing so causing the ship to slow or stop and spend more time right where they don’t want it to be.
In the grand scheme of nuclear pollution this cargo is a minor risk. The plutonium production reactors at Hanford, Washington operated for years as single pass reactors. That is their cooling water was pulled from the Columbia River, passed through the core of the reactor, and was discharged directly back into the river highly radioactive to flow past every town and city on to the Pacific Ocean. In comparison, if this entire shipment were to be lost in the lakes and never recovered, in all the years it would take for the pressure vessels to rust away and be lost to time, they would probably release less radioactivity into the environment than ten minutes of Hanford in the 1950s.
I don’t want the Great Lakes polluted, I wish they were cleaner than they are now, and I surely don’t want radioactive waste to end up in them. But unless the NIMBYs want these steam generators buried in their back yards, load them on a boat and let them go get recycled.