NRC (for once) Makes Good Decission – Idiot Reps go Nuts
March 21st, 2009
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Uranium – it’s pretty innocuous stuff. That might come as a shock to anyone who’s bought into the propaganda about uranium being the devil of all materials, but you can hold a chunk of uranium in your hand. No, it won’t hurt you. The metal is mildly toxic and if you ingest very large amounts it could damage your kidneys, but that’s not really something to worry about in any but the most extreme circumstances.
How toxic is uranium? Considerably less so that cadmium, mercury, beryllium and other toxic metals. It’s sometimes compared to lead in terms of toxicity, but based on some studies, it appears it’s actually less toxic than lead. It also doesn’t effect the nervous system as severely as lead, it doesn’t generally bioaccumulate and it’s pretty difficult to absorb. Uranium was used in the past as a treatment for diabetes, with limited success and today it can be found in x-ray machines, counterweights, enamels, dentures, ceramic tiles, green stained glass, older dinnerware and other such products.
You can also find uranium in rocks, nearly everywhere, if you look for it. Uranium is a naturally occuring mineral. It’s far more common than copper, nickle or many other minerals. It’s about as common as zinc or tin. I can go out to my back yard and find rocks containing a vein of uranium ore in them. If you happen to live in Utah, New Mexico or Colorado then you might come across a rock that is more than 50% uranium by weight. If you live in northwesternl Canada or southern Australia then you may very well find that your local bedrock contains a very significant concentration of uranium.
Uranium is radioactive, but only slightly. With a long halflife it’s pretty stable stuff. You could stand next to a block of uranium the size of a house all day and you’d receive a negligible dose of radiation. Shorter lived radioisotopes are far more dangerous. A chunk of cobalt-60 the size of a soup can, for example, could kill you if you sat next to it for several minutes.
Depleted uranium is the same as regular uranium except that it contains less U-235, an isotope of uranium that is fissile and used to generate power. Other than that depleted uranium is chemically identical to natural uranium and physically very nearly identical. It’s just a little bit less radioactive, but even the regular stuff isn’t that radioactive to begin with.
So the fact that the Nuclear Regulatory Committee considers uranium to be of the lowest order of radioactive materials is pretty logical. The fact that they even bother regulating it at all, is a little questionable, but surely they wouldn’t bother classifying this stuff as any kind of high level nuclear materials. After all, doing that would mean that they’d have to send a team of moonsuit-clad hazmat workers to pick up a signifficant proportion of the rocks on the surface of the earth. And if uranium is treated that way, then surely bananas should be too, since they’re also mildly radioactive?
No, that would be silly. Nobody could be enough of a complete moron to think that’s the way to do things. Or maybe not.
NRC decision on depleted uranium draws rebuke on Hill
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s decision classifying depleted uranium as the least hazardous type of radioactive material is “unsupportable,” the chairman of the House Environment and Energy Subcommittee said yesterday.
Chairman Ed Markey (D-Mass.) and subcommittee member Jim Matheson (D-Utah) told the NRC in a letter “The arbitrary and capricious mischaracterization of depleted uranium as Class A waste will undermine public confidence in the waste classification system, may increase risks to public health and safety and raises the possibility that additional, uncharacterized and possibly even more dangerous materials could be similarly treated in the future.”
At issue is a 3-1 NRC vote on Wednesday deciding that depleted uranium be classified as a Class A low-level waste, with the caveat that additional disposal restrictions might be needed for large quantities of it.
Commissioner Gregory Jaczko cast the dissenting vote, saying depleted uranium is low-level waste but not Class A. “I do not believe that it is logical to argue that waste that requires additional requirements for disposal — similar to those required for Class C waste — can still be labeled as Class A waste,” Jaczko said. Class C waste is hazardous for up to 500 years, whereas Class A waste is hazardous for up to 100 years.
Markey and Matheson demand that the NRC explain its decision in writing and provide records and communications that led to the vote. “The subcommittee intends to carefully review the basis for this action,” they wrote.
Depleted uranium is mainly a byproduct from uranium enrichment facilities. It is a unique waste stream as it actually gets more radioactive the longer it sits — unlike most radioactive materials, which become less hazardous as they decay.
…..
Until recently, the NRC hasn’t had to regulate depleted uranium. The NRC decided not to classify it along with other wastes in the 1980s because there wasn’t enough volume to regulate it; the only source for it was Department of Energy enrichment facilities.
But the issue arose during 2006 license proceedings for Louisiana Energy Services’ uranium enrichment facility in New Mexico, the first private U.S. facility. The commission determined then that depleted uranium was low-level waste, but it directed staff to study and recommend further actions. There is concern that if depleted uranium is not classified as Class A waste it may become orphaned waste.
….
NRC’s decision on depleted uranium would provide a future revenue stream for EnergySolutions — which can take Class A waste from all states and the government — and two other sites that can take waste only from designated states or the federal government.
NRC staff assumes that between existing stocks and depleted uranium from new plants there will be 1.4 million tons of depleted uranium that will eventually need disposal, the Institute for Energy and Environmental Research said.
Okay, first of all, this article has a few glaring errors in it that are pretty shameful, given that it came from the New York Times, a generally respectable newspaper. First of all, depleted uranium doesn’t really need to be disposed of because it’s not hazardous and only very slightly toxic. Not only does it not need to be disposed of, but it has the potential to be used for a variety of things, including counterweights for things like forklifts, which currently use lead, a less dense and equally toxic material.
The “hundred years” thing is equally bogus because uranium doesn’t pose a hazard now and won’t in 100 years or 500 years. If you wait five billion years then it will have decayed into 50% lead, which is, ironically, just about as hazardous as it is now – in other words, not very.
The only thing that should be debated here is the fact that uranium is being considered nuclear waste at all. The fact that tons of inocuous, relatively harmless stuff that is less radioactive than it was when pulled from the ground is being given any kind of special attention is a waste of money and an affront against sound reasoning and science.
You can read Congressman Ed Markey’s stupid letter to the NRC here. It is apparent that Markey is a complete and utter idiot who is chairing a committee dealing with issues which he hasn’t the first gumption about. The man is such an absolute idiot that it’s really an embarrassment to the educational system of America. Not only that, the fact that Markey serves as a Congressman is a disgrace to the US Congress the United States of America and the traditions this nation was founded on. The idiot sitting on his pompous stupid ass proclaiming how he knows more than any scientist or expert about radiological safety is not only a poor reflection on this great nation, but it should be taken as a personal insult to every man and woman who takes pride in this country and respects the institutions of American government.
Representative Jim Matheson, a complete moron from Utah is also getting all hot and bothered about this issue (which he doesn’t understand.)
U.S. Rep. Jim Matheson is demanding to know what’s behind a decision by federal regulators to put depleted uranium in the lowest-hazard category for radioactive waste.
The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s vote Wednesday sets the stage for large volumes of depleted uranium to come to Utah and be buried at the EnergySolutions Inc. radioactive waste disposal site in Tooele County. While the Salt Lake City nuclear waste company supports the decision as “sound science,” critics say some depleted uranium is too dangerous for the Utah disposal site, which is licensed to accept the lowest-hazard waste, “Class A.”
Ah, so now we have it. Rep. Jim Matheson is so bothered because he’s using this as a political scare issue. Matheson is bothered because declaring uranium “Low level waste” would mean that a Utah company could potentially bring the material into his state and that would be SCARY! Matheson is hoping to score some political brownie points by assuming his constituents are stupid enough to buy the “not in my backyard” argument and fear that uranium in their area might put “the children” in danger.
Well, I’ve got some news for this jackass: There is already uranium on the site in question. There always was. Tooele County has appreciable deposits of uranium and has a long history of being the site of mining for a variety of metalic minerals which can be found in the Northern Rockies of the US.
In the end what we have here is an attempt by two dishonest and not terribly intellegent congressmen to scare people and throw around the scary word “radiation” in the hopes of looking like they’re doing something useful. It’s also an attempt to give another backhanded slap to nuclear energy by attempting to classify the byproduct of enrichment as a waste material, which it is not. I hope their constituents will have the intelegence and self-respect to see this as an insult to their common sense and a very cheap political ploy.
This entry was posted on Saturday, March 21st, 2009 at 9:10 pm and is filed under Bad Science, Not Even Wrong, Nuclear, Obfuscation, Politics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
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March 21st, 2009 at 10:20 pm
I think a “chunk of cobalt-60 the size of a soup can” would heat itself red-hot, or thereabouts, and what with much of the gamma-ray output not being absorbed within the chunk, if you tried to sprint past on a straight path that brought you within 1 m, every cell on your near side, and every one on your far side, would probably be dead before momentum carried the thing that once was you through the closest approach.
A fun question — I think the answer is probably “Take it” –: if the only vitamin B-12 you could get was 60-Co-centred vitamin B12, would you be better off to take it, and benefit from those B12 molecules that don’t blow up, or not take it, and benefiting from not getting those rays?
(Internal combustion made continent)
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March 21st, 2009 at 10:30 pm
Can’t uranium, even depleted, be turned into a useful reactor fuel by bombarding it with neutrons? I would hardly consider something like that a waste product.
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March 21st, 2009 at 10:41 pm
My suspicion is that nether of there two guys cares what the truth is – they’re just showing how rigorously they are looking after their constituents interests. In other words, I suspect it is posturing.
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March 22nd, 2009 at 12:33 am
DV82XL said:
Does it really help their constituents interests though? Anything that makes it harder to build nuclear power plants actually hurts just about everyone except perhaps some in the gas buisiness because it leads to more power shortages and more dirty air. Does it help the constituents of Utah to not be importing depleted uranium? if it is disposed of there (or really just warehoused) that’s more money to that buisiness and therefore more local jobs and more local tax base.
Their constituents may think they’re being taken care of but really they’re being hurt by this, plus the excessive and unnecessary costs of this.
They’re just selling a lie to their voters making them think they’re doing something to help them but actually huirting them.
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March 22nd, 2009 at 2:55 am
Oh boy. Mixing science with ignorance and politics is a dangerous combination. Next thing you know, Fiestaware is going to be taken away to a monitored waste dump for radiological waste. I’d ask the question: if uranium isn’t considered “low level” then what in god’s name is low level? You don’t get much lower than uranium and still even have it considered radioactive for most purposes.
I could see isolating it and disposing of it if you had uranium containment soil or something, then it should be treated the same way they would soil contaminated with lead or chromium or something.
now how about this statement by the great NYT:
That’s a load of BS right there. Back during the hayday of the cold war when we had several facilities enriching uranium 24/7 we were cranking out DU faster than today by several times and it was never considered to be a material that required the kind of licensing or handling requirements of things like reactor generated isotopes.
This is really just sad. I really wish the media would call these politicians on their laughably bad science.
By the way: In testing of fuel for nuclear reactors a long while back they created simulated fuel rods identical to the kind used in reactors but made of depleted uranium instead of enriched uranium. (these were for physical integrity tests). I have a piece of an experimental fuel rod assembly made from DU which I kept as a memento. It hasn’t killed me yet.
I think Gregory Jaczko’s statement makes some degree of sense. It is low level waste but it is not class A by the standard that currently applies.
In the past, the government treated it as just misc very low level waste or as non-nuclear waste in some circumstances, but that was back when cooler heads prevailed.
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March 22nd, 2009 at 1:36 pm
On topic – this guy in Utah walked around, picked up some uranium-rich rocks, and leached out U compounds for inorganic chemistry. Entirely natural uranium, a good demonstration of your point. Also it has cool photos.
http://carlwillis.wordpress.com/2008/02/20/uranium-chemistry/
via Physical Insights blog
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March 22nd, 2009 at 2:10 pm
The NRC made a decision based on scientific reality while some of our politicians are criticizing this decision largely based on anti-nuclear mythology. We live in a naturally radioactive world within a naturally radioactive universe. In fact, people and all other plants and animal species on our planet are also– naturally radioactive. There’s no escape from this intrinsic reality.
Natural Radiation
http://newpapyrusmagazine.blogspot.com/2008/10/natural-radiation.html
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March 22nd, 2009 at 2:52 pm
Marcel F. Williams said:
I don’t know who first said it but(paraphrase): “To a romantic we are star dust, to a cynic we are nuclear waste.”
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March 23rd, 2009 at 3:11 am
If uranium does not qualify as ‘low level’ in terms of radioactive waste then what on earth would? You don’t get much less radioactive and still even get considered radioactive. Maybe bismuth or something which is so stable that nobody even knew it was radioactive until recently?
I think it’s just a symantics and ignorance issue. People fear ‘radiation’ so anything that is ‘radioactive’ or ‘nuclear’ must be super dangerous so how could it be only low level? Something scary must be at least ‘high level’ right?
So then if uranium is high level we will need new catagories for other things. We’ll need ones like super high and ultra high and super ultra mega high?
Off topic, but this is like a gas station near where I used to live: they didn’t have a small soft drink size. The smallest they had was “large” and then they had “extra large” and then something like “Super XL” or something. Therefore, the reality was that the ‘large’ was really the small.
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March 23rd, 2009 at 6:40 am
Gordon said:
It’s sad but that is exactly what this will lead to if politicians have their way. What would be really bad is I could foresee it being legislated that longer half life elements are more dangerous, forcing absurd precautions for relatively safe materials. Perhaps the whole industry needs to hire some marketing and PR people and completely rename everything. Uranium is now patriot metal, plutonium is freedom metal, radiation is liberty energy, and nuclear ___ is anti-terror ___.
I also never understood that drink size thing. It would seem that people who wanted the largest size and said large would get the smallest size, which wouldn’t be good for the person or company. On the other hand if they did mini, tiny and small, then people who only wanted a small size would get the 108oz jumbo bucket.
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March 23rd, 2009 at 7:42 am
From the NYT: “It is a unique waste stream as it actually gets more radioactive the longer it sits — unlike most radioactive materials, which become less hazardous as they decay.”
Can anyone explain to me how the venerable NYT came to say this? Is there a basis for this claim?
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March 23rd, 2009 at 9:17 am
Burya Rubenstein said:
Neutron activation of U-238 produces Pu-239 which is a fissionable material. The concept of using Pu-239 produced in this way has been around for a while. It is the principal behind ‘breeder reactors’ and was one of the selling points of the CANDU reactor design. CANDU reactors burn unenriched uranium fuel. Therefore, the spent fuel from these reactors contains a large quantity of Pu-239. When the design was being sold to the Canadian government in the 60’s, the plan was to reprocess spent Uranium fuel into Plutonium fuel which could be burned in the same CANDU reactor core. My understanding is that these plans were halted due to issues with non-proliferation agreements. Modern assessments of reprocessing cycles, particularly from the UK and France, indicate that it is not economically viable, particularly considering the large quantities of readily available uranium in Canada.
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March 23rd, 2009 at 10:54 am
MedPhys Wannabe said:
Not quite. In CANDU reactors, the spent fuel contains depleted uranium on par with the tails from enrichment plants (~0.2%). Therefore, there was never any incentive to recycle uranium from spent CANDU fuel. Of course it is also filled with other fission products as well and needs to be handled as such.
However CANDUs produce plutonium more efficiently than any other reactor except the breeder. It is often referred to as a “near-breeder, the difference being that the reactor grade Pu thus produced is immediately burned producing the bulk of the reactor’s power.
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March 23rd, 2009 at 11:17 am
Brad F said:
Yeah, there is, but it’s a bit desceptive because it never becomes all that radioactive and never more than it started out as before it was processed.
In uranium ore, the majority of the radioacivity comes not from the uranium itself but from the daughter products of the decay of uranium. Depleted uranium would not contain these because it has been refined and the daughter products like radium-226, lead-210, bismuth-214, polonium-210 etc have been seperated out leaving the uranium much less radioactive than the ore it came from.
It will take some time for the depleted uranium to decay enough to produce signifficant amounts of these daughter products. I’m not sure how long and it’s complicated by the fact that radon is one of the daughters and radon is a gas, so the physical form of the depleted uranium comes into play because that can affect whether the radon outgasses or not.
The term is fractional equilibrium – the point at which the daughters and the original material reach equilibrium so that it is no longer creating a net increase in daughter products. In uranium, it decays so slowly it would be at least hundreds if not thousands of years.
This is pretty deceptive though, because it never actually gets all that radioactive. Eventually it basically reverts back to the amount of radioactivity that high grade ore has – minus the U-235 and daughter products that is.
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March 23rd, 2009 at 11:25 am
Maybe he is over-reacting, but I think caution is called for with depleted uranium, and unfortunately we haven’t taken a serious look at its risk, since Republicans in power have blocked a close look at all of its effects.
http://www.prx.org/pieces/4779-democratic-u-s-congressman-jim-mcdermott-talks-a
http://www.michaelmoore.com/words/the06fix/index.php?id=359
You make all these claims about Depleted uranium not being dangerous but, the studies i have seen, seem to indicate, quite the opposite.
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March 23rd, 2009 at 12:29 pm
Bruce said:
Bruce, science is not politics. Science is not based on opinion and it is not based on consensus (not at least at the level of determining this sort of thing)
One can physically measure the amount of radiation emitted by this material, and one can then use standard methods to calculate dose rates from exposure. Comparing this data to well established standards for human and environmental exposure, the conclusion can be drawn that this material is not a radiological hazard.
No one is disputing that uranium and uranium compounds are toxic, and if you look at the literature this is the primary concern with DU exposure. In fact all but the most hysterical of the anti depleted uranium activists assert that it is the toxic effects that they are most worried about.
What is happening here is that the NRC is making a radiological classification, which based on the physical data, and some politicians are complaining without reason, or proof that the Commission’s decision to classify this material a the lowest level radiological hazard is wrong. That is what this thread is about.
The two articles that you linked to did not establish any good reason why this classification should not stand.
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March 23rd, 2009 at 12:39 pm
DV82XL said:
Well, above Buzz says that you would probably need to ingest, “large amounts” of depleted uranium to cause damage. Based on the evidence I’ve seen it’s much more toxic and rather than using this uranium we should probably leave it in the ground. And if classifying Depleted Uranium this way means it will be handeled more safely, then I can’t say I’m against it.
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March 23rd, 2009 at 12:56 pm
Bruce said:
Large acute doses of uranium can produce death from chemical toxicity in rats, guinea pigs, and other small experimental animals, with variation in sensitivity among species. However, there has never been a death attributable to uranium poisoning in humans, and humans seem to be less sensitive to both acute and chronic toxic effects of uranium than other mammalian species studied.
Based on the experience of persons administered large doses of uranium for therapy of diabetes one can conclude that acute exposure of soluble uranium compounds exceeds several grams of uranium. This makes it less toxic than a large number of heavy metal elements (like lead) that are in wide use today.
Are you suggesting that ALL elements and compounds greater than this level be sequestered forever and not mined and exploited? Because if you are, you would be mandating the shutdown of our civilization.
REF:ACUTE CHEMICAL TOXICITY OF URANIUM
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March 23rd, 2009 at 1:11 pm
Bruce, you are consistently an ass-clown. If you can’t tell the difference between Michael Moore and reality, then you are ineducable. You can make a hat out of depleted uranium and wear it your entire life without risk.
There are many real dangers in life that need serious consideration. Worrying about uranium, depleted or otherwise, is thousands of places down an ordered list of world dangers. The only reason to worry about uranium is that you find the world so scary that thinking about uranium allows you to not think about real problems.
If you want to worry about health risks, think about heart disease from poor eating habits, skin cancer from sun exposure, and traffic accidents. For example.
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March 23rd, 2009 at 2:14 pm
Bruce said:
I have some information links on the bottom of this page: http://depletedcranium.com/?page_id=3
I also own depleted and natural uranium. I own several uranium ore samples. They look like regular rocks with black streaks or green crust on them. They are regular rocks. I have found chunks of granite in the town I live in with signifficant uranium veins in them. I’ve found even more with thorium in them.
I own some depleted uranium metal (two small samples) plus uranium glass and uranium glazed dinnerware (that I have eaten off of) as well as uranyl acetate and uranium nitrate. I also have a small button of natural uranium metal that came as a test source for a prospecting geiger counter sold in the earlyb 1950’s.
Bruce said:
Okay, first of all – it’s not just in the ground. It’s on the ground as well, in rocks. It’s found in signifficant amounts in phosphate fertalizer, which means we spread it on the ground. We also blow huge amounts of it out of coal fired smoke stacks (can’t say I approve of coal but considering what coal smoke has in it, uranium is not the thing to really7 worry about).
Now as for “large amounts:”
In animal studies they generally have given uranium to animals in the form of uranyl acetate or occasionally uranyl nitrate. This is how it has to be done to get some kind of noticable effects. If you fed a rat uranium metal or uranium oxide, they’d excrete more than 90% of it in their feces and thus would have a hard time absorbing enough to cause noticable effects.
There have been studies that showed birth defects, reproductive problems, metabolism issues, hormonal problems etc in laboratory animals, but the amount of uranium that they had to expose them to in order to observe these effects was truly enormous.
Here is a study where rats were exposed to 40 to 80 mg per kg of uranium acetate per day before giving birth and although there were some problems observed in a portion of the offspring most were relatively healthy. The effects appeared to be significant but small.
Now lets consider how much uranium it took to get these results: 40 to 80 mg per kg – a 200 pound human is about 90 kilograms so that would mean they would be getting around seven kilograms PER DAY of the stuff to have the equivalent dosage. That’s per day for a month!
Rats are not perfect analogs for humans, but it just goes to show how ridiculous the volumes we’re talking about are.
Humans, on the other hand, there’s little good evidence about how much is needed for observable effects on most body systems because the dose would be so gargantuan that no humans have ever been exposed to it that are known of.
The only proven, observed effect of uranium in humans is kidney damage. As it turns out the kidneys are quite good at dealing with uranium and if it’s not an unusually high concentration they flush it out just fine. If the acute dose is high enough then it can cause renal tube damage. This is temporary and it will heal pretty quickly. Stress on the kidneys can inflame the renal tubes.
It seems based on what has been observed that the only time that the kidneys are permanently damaged is when there is a very large exposure to the system which is ongoing. If you ate a large amount of uranyl acetate every day for several months, for example, the kidneys would be damaged and the damage would get worse and worse without having a chance to heal. In that case you could end up with kidney failure.
That would seem to be the biggest danger to humans from uranium. It doesn’t tend to attack the nervous system as much as other toxic heavy metals (which is good, because that system does not heal). if inhaled it can cause inflamation, irritation of the lung tissue – which is true of almost any kind of dust. There may be a very weak link between inhaling lots and lots of uranium and lung cancer, but that would only be a significant problem with ongoing exposure to ridiculously high amounts of dust – the body actually absorbs it from the lung tissue pretty well within months at the most and once in the blood stream the kidneys filter it out pretty decently.
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March 23rd, 2009 at 2:33 pm
What about Gulf War syndrome and Bush/Republican (the original) covering up of that? Could that be linked to depleted uranium use?
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March 23rd, 2009 at 2:40 pm
I don’t know anything else about these animal studies, but I do know:
80 mg/kg * 90 kg = 7200 mg or 7.2 grams, not kilos
say a quarter ounce.
Sorry, but “QA” is in my blood, due to years of working in the nuclear bizness.
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March 23rd, 2009 at 2:44 pm
Bruce said:
Hey Bruce, maybe you could go find those links and bring them here for all to see? And by links I mean peer-reviewed medical journals, not internet crackpots.
Thanks
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March 23rd, 2009 at 2:45 pm
The World Health Organization agrees that DU is not a great health risk. Its 2003 fact sheet on the topic declares that “because DU is only weakly radioactive, very large amounts of dust (on the order of grams) would have to be inhaled for the additional risk of lung cancer to be detectable in an exposed group. Risks for other radiation-induced cancers, including leukaemia, are considered to be very much lower than for lung cancer.” Another WHO report found, “The radiological hazard is likely to be very small. No increase of leukemia or other cancers has been established following exposure to uranium or DU.”
http://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs257/en/
http://www.who.int/ionizing_radiation/pub_meet/Depluranium4.pdf
There is no credible link between Gulf War syndrome and DU. AS I have said in the past, an active military theater is not an OSHA compliant workplace. Trying to single out one insult from all the other crap someone fighting there might be exposed to is almost imposible.
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March 23rd, 2009 at 2:54 pm
Bruce said:
No not really the slightest chance of it. There where plenty of other things going on including really nasty toxic smoke from burning oil wells that could easily have contributed to it. Depleted uranium probably ranks just about dead last as a possible cause of it behind water toxicity.
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March 23rd, 2009 at 3:07 pm
DV82XL said:
I think you misread my post: “Therefore, the spent fuel from these reactors contains a large quantity of Pu-239… the plan was to reprocess spent Uranium fuel into Plutonium fuel which could be burned in the same CANDU reactor core.”
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March 23rd, 2009 at 3:43 pm
MedPhys Wannabe said:
No never. Canada did not want to enrich fuel or reprocess. We had enough uranium reserves that this was never considered as an option. At any rate you don’t need to reprocess ex-CANDU fuel in the normal sense of the word. Technically after a five year cooling you can re-sheath the same fuel and send it back in. Burnup limit has nothing to do with whether the fuel is used up. Its all about the durability of the fuel pin sheath in a CANDU type design.
Now it’s true that AECL pitched reprocessing to the Canadian government in 1977 (as did they push for an enrichment plant a few years ago) but the government studied the proposal and came to the conclusion that the reprocessing of spent fuel, even on a demonstration basis, should be deferred as a matter of national policy, until it is clearly necessary on a national scale. Their primary reason was that there was no economic benifit in doing so.
But 1977 was way past the CANDU initial design period as you seem to be suggesting
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March 23rd, 2009 at 3:43 pm
gman said:
Damn, You’re right. UG. How could I make such a stupid mistake! Still, it’s a hell of a lot of uranium. That’s 201.6 grams of the stuff over the course of 28 days.
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March 23rd, 2009 at 3:56 pm
Bruce said:
Man, you’re really hung up on this idea that republicans are the root of all evil, eh?
First of all, I’ve yet to be convinced that there is even a “Gulf War Syndrom” certainly, there are troops who were in the first Gulf War who have come back and had health problems, but the health problems do not seem to fit a well defined and consistent pattern.
Some have claimed there is just a higher rate of health issues in general and this has been ascribed in some “Studies” to chromosome damage but that’s far from proven because there has been no large sample taken.
Nearly half a million US troops served in the Gulf war so there would be an expectation that thousands would have severe health problems just based on dumb luck in such a large population.
There’s one thing to bare in mind which is the fact that every war or military action subjects the troops to extreme physical and psycological stress: lack of sleep, overworking, stress over the dangers of war, inconsistent diet. Now, this might seem incidental but a battlefield is something most can’t even imagine until you get there.
Now assuming that there are higher than average health issues in Gulf War Vets (the evidence of this is dubious at best), then there are plenty of reasons this might be the case, and it might not even be the same for all the veterans – some might have different problems from different causes:
1. Smog and respiratory irritants from oil well fires.
2. Exposure to low levels of chemical agents from when Saddam’s chemical weapons bunkers were destroyed
3. various chemicals, which when used during the heat of battle may not have been used with all the precautions normally afforded, for example solvents, cleaners, lubricants – if you are repairing a helicopter that is about to go out to provide urgently needed fire support, you might be in such a hurry as to not put on all the protection and take all the precautions, for example.
4. Battle fattigue
5. Insecticides and repellents
6. Anti-chemical weapons drugs and chemicals
It could also simply be that being sent to war has a long term effect on general health. For example, you go off and come back to find your job is no longer avaiable. You have fattigue and it’s harder to get another job, thus you don’t have the same level of health coverage. or perhaps the stress of military service causes you to drink etc. This kind of thing can’t be discounted as an influence on the overall health of a population.
But lets assume for one second that there is a consistant health problem (which is a big assumption)
not only is this entirely inconsistant with depleted uranium, but most troops never even touched the stuff. It’s not used in general purpose or anti-personel munitions. The only ones who would have come in contact with it would be the gunners on M1A1 tanks and the amo loaders of the A-10 and perhaps some other weapons systems. It’s not even like they touch the DU, it’s in a shell which is jacketed. If the uranium were exposed it would oxidize, so it has a thin metal jacket around it. By the time that stuff peals off the round is hundreds of yards downrange and if you’re in the ****pit of an aircraft or a tank commander’s seat them there’s not so much to be concerned about, even if uranium were highly toxic (which it isn’t)
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March 23rd, 2009 at 4:12 pm
Bruce said:
How could Bush I have covered up this alleged syndrome? The gulf war was in 1991 and Bush Sr. was not reelected in 1992. A year is hardly enough time to do any kind of real study on a new condition and if troops came home sick, how would you even know it was a long term thing? How would you know it would have long term, debilitating effects (if it does)? you can’t. It would be at least a few years before it became apparent that there was any health issue and before anyone could start to figure things out.
That puts it on the Clinton DOD. Bush was out too fast to be much of an issue, but Clinton had the exec branch for a good solid 8 years. He couldn’t have lied, right? He ran under the little picture of the donkey and not the elephant and that makes alllll the difference, because Republicans have a monopoly on corruption, right Bruce?
So explain why Clinton apparently carried this on
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March 23rd, 2009 at 4:28 pm
drbuzz0 said:
Thanks for the response, Doc. I kinda figured that’s what it might be. But to someone reading the NYT article who isn’t familiar with the concept of equilibrium, it suggests that DU just gets more and more dangerous, ad infinitum. They don’t point out that it never gets more radioactive than the original ore; that there is an upper limit.
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March 23rd, 2009 at 11:55 pm
Bruce said:
Advice Bruce – Don’t aruge about this and turn it into an ideology thing. DU is not very toxic at all and doesn’t cause the health problems many have claimed. That’s the way it is. It’s fact, not opinion. This isn’t one of those science issues where there is some debate and things could go either way or the data is incomplete. This is totally in the bag and settled. We know how it is. There’s no denying it given the data we have.
You can go around in circles arguing politics and everything but not with this. This is cut and dry and falsifiable. There’s only one right answer.
You can still think the war in Iraq is crap and Bush lied and caused harm to the people there, but if you start saying things that aren’t scientifically true then you lose your credibility.
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March 24th, 2009 at 3:33 am
Isn’t it more likely that Gulf War Syndrome was caused either by pollution from the Kuwaiti oil wells that Saddam torched, or from mishandled preparations for chemical warfare (that fortunately turned out to be unnecessary)?
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March 28th, 2009 at 1:17 am
Chuck said:
Would a uranium foil hat work better than tinfoil (or aluminum foil) at blocking the Evil Mind Control Rays?
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March 28th, 2009 at 2:58 am
drbuzz0 said:
Try this link:
http://www.wise-uranium.org/rup.html#UF6DEP
There are a number of diagrams with fairly good explanations that show how the radioactivity increase as the daughter products build up. There is also a lot of other good info about uranium. I use the site when training new employees and explain why the “evil” DU we work with is probably less likely to hurt you than the Big Mac you had for lunch. Not that I have any problems with Big Macs, although I prefer Wendy’s.
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March 28th, 2009 at 10:43 am
Burya Rubenstein said:
Er… well it might also strain your neck pretty badly unless the foil was extremely thin.
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March 30th, 2009 at 11:31 am
“radiation” ohhhh scary. not like we have microwaves, and cancer treatment. but uranium ohhh ****, man keep that stuff away from my pizza pop eating kids!!!
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May 16th, 2009 at 1:38 am
The debockle around depleted uranium reminds me of some of the big scares in the past like silicone breast implants. I don’t know how many billions were paid off on that one and how many good reputations and companies dragged through the mud before that was all over. Some trial lawyers got very rich and politicians were calling for the heads of corporations on a platter because of how they were so greedy to allow this products that caused all kinds of health problems.
It took a good ten years before we looked back and realized that there was no evidence of anything and that at the same time that the medical conditions allegedly associated with it were all unrelated and not even consistent.
Tell that to Dow and the massive loss. CEO’s lost a lot of money, and that’s what made people feel like they had gotten the big bad guy. Thousands of low level workers lost their jobs and retirement savings too. A lot of lawyers made off good. Surely they won’t pay that back.
The moral of the story should be to let the safety experts and the experienced people deal with these issues and keep them out of the hands of the politicians and the panic-inducing media
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October 8th, 2010 at 7:06 am
Yeah, politicians don’t know what they’re talking about and would lie if they did.
However, I found one error in your article: “given that it came from the New York Times, a generally respectable newspaper.”
The New York Times may be respected, but it is not respectable. It’s one of the most biased and politically loaded papers I’ve ever read. It’s worse than Mother Goose sometimes, and I can’t wait until it goes out of business.
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January 13th, 2012 at 10:58 am
Hi-
I have a client who is very interested in purchasing link advertising from your website.
I would like to place a seamless text link of a couple of words within an existing sentence on a sub-page of your website?
Does Depleted Cranium.com accept link advertising?
Thanks I look Forward to Hearing From You-
Ed Bassett
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January 13th, 2012 at 11:19 am
Ed Bassett said:
Pretty disgusting form of advertising.
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