Date: Tue, 16 Apr 1996 09:08:55 -0700
From: Patricia Sokol (sokolp@war.wyeth4tag.com)

2)  Another recent article, this one for sure in SCIENCE, concerned
the possibility of radioactive waste reaching critical mass and
causing a "nuclear incident."  This was the concern of researchers
considering storing radioactive waste at at site in Yucca Mountain,
Nevada.  Although they said the scenario is improbable due to all the
factors needed to come together at once, they could not state that it
absolutely couldn't happen if the right things came together.  Life
imitates art.

-PTS.



Date: Tue, 16 Apr 1996 17:06:47 -0700
From: Ronald Dudley (dudleyrd@expert.cc.purdue4tag.edu)

Unfortunately, I have to quote 1999-detractor Ben Bova:
  
"      Radioactive wastes can't explode.  They're WASTES. Most
 of the energy has been taken out of them already.  They are
 radioactive, and therefore dangerous, but no more likely to explode
 than the cooling ashes of a wood fire are apt to spontaneously burst
 into flame. "         



Date: Tue, 16 Apr 1996 21:10:46 -0700
From: Amardeep_Chana@xn.xerox4tag.com (Chana,Amardeep)
Subject: Re: Welcome to Chez Alpha.

When reading material like the above mentioned article in SCIENCE, one
 must keep in mind that they are in the business of selling magazines,
 and sensational articles sell magazines.  It is in their best interest
 to write about things that excite people like the threat of a nuclear
 mishap.  The 'scientists' mentioned above failed to state just how
 improbable reaching critical mass would be...  it's on the order of
 lead turning to gold all by itself.

Of course, it *could* happen.  There is always a finite, non-zero
 possibility that the improbable or even impossible could happen.  For
 instance, the sun could suddenly transpose itself with Jupiter due to
 a freak quantum mechanical incident.  Bad things would happen.  But I
 don't lose any sleep over that possibility.

It really bugs me how journalists distort facts the way they do.
 Usually for some political agenda, no less.  Sorry for ranting on,
 folks.  It's not like there aren't enough real things to worry about in life.

Amardeep



Date: Wed, 17 Apr 1996 06:17:08 -0700
From: Patricia Sokol 
Subject:  Sorry, Amardeep....

Well..... The writers at SCIENCE are not in the business of selling
magazines.  In fact, you will probably never see it on a news stand. 
It's a multidisciplinary journal, not a magazine, and one of the most
highly respected publications in scientific circles.  They employ a
"just the facts" kind of reporting. And the "scientists" were from
the Los Alamos National Laboratory and the engineering department of
Berkley.  Fairly reliable, in my book.
I did misquote - although not on purpose - regarding the waste that
was proposed to be buried.  Part of the study did consider the
burying of enriched uranium and plutonium from dismantled nuclear
weapons, thus not all of it would be spent fuel.
Sorry for any misrepresentation.
-PTS. 



Date: Wed, 17 Apr 1996 06:51:18 -0700
From: David Weis (dweis@indiana4tag.edu)
Subject: Off topic--Nuclear waste & Science

I'm sorry if this is a little off-topic.

Science is one of the most well-respected TECHNICAL journals around, it 
is NOT a "popular" magazine.  The research published in Science is 
peer-reviewed, which means that several experts must approve the article 
prior to its publication.  The research which appears in Science is 
written by scientists, not journalists.  (Sometimes you can tell, because 
journalists on the average write better.)



Date: Wed, 17 Apr 1996 18:43:16 -0700
From: Michael Kent (mskent@uc44davis.edu)
Subject: Re: Welcome to Chez Alpha.

Just a quick note out of lurking-
Science is a scientific journal - up there with nature and the new 
england journal of medicine- it doesn't sell on the newstand and 
publishes research papers and has some news articles.  I didn't see this 
particular article, but science doesn't put articles in for hype....

my thoughts

Michael



Date: Wed, 17 Apr 1996 07:03:52 -0700
From: Amardeep_Chana@xn.xerox4tag.com (Chana,Amardeep)
Subject: RE: Off topic--Nuclear waste & Science

Thanks, David.  Patricia also corrected me on that.  I should never 
 have reacted that way without actually reading the subject material.  
 Please forgive my impetuous behavior.

Amardeep



Date: Wed, 17 Apr 1996 11:56:20 -0700
From: "Stephen M. Arenburg" (arenburg@phobos.astro.uwo4tag.ca)
Subject: Re: your mail

	Somebody mentioned that "nuclear waste can't explode".....

	I wouldn't put money on that.

	Example: Fast breeder Reactors-
		Fuel: uranium (unenriched)
		Waste product: weapons grade plutonium.

	Where do you think the military get's it's plutonium?

	P.S.  Plutonium does not occur in nature.

      ___
  ___/___\___     **********************************************
 /           \    * Stephen M. Arenburg, B.Sc.(physics)        *
 \     ______/    * arenburg@phobos.astro.uwo.ca               *
  \         /     * SCA: Benjamin Hammerfield : Alphan #114    *
 / \   ----/ \    **********************************************   
/   \     /   \	  * http://phobos.astro.uwo.ca/~arenburg/      *
\___/\___/\___/   **********************************************



Date: Wed, 17 Apr 1996 14:33:05 -0700
From: Ronald Dudley (dudleyrd@expert.cc.purdue4tag.edu)

Physicist Stephen M. Arenburg  wrote:

>	Example: Fast breeder Reactors-
>		Fuel: uranium (unenriched)
>		Waste product: weapons grade plutonium.

Plutonium is definitely a "product" BUT CAN HARDLY BE CALLED "WASTE"!

Waste is what what you throw away or (for those who are
politically-environmentally correct) what you recycle.

The whole point of making plutonium is to get it, not to throw it away.

>       Where do you think the military get's it's plutonium?

Uh, doesn't plutonium come from the Planet Pluto?

Ronald
#122 SDSE



Date: Wed, 17 Apr 1996 15:53:04 -0700
From: "Stephen M. Arenburg" (arenburg@phobos.astro.uwo4tag.ca)
Subject: Re: your mail

> Plutonium is definitely a "product" BUT CAN HARDLY BE CALLED "WASTE"!

	Sure it can! By the same reasoning I can state that nothing that 
comes out of a nuclear power plant is "waste".  Any radio-isotope (aka 
all the daughter particles from the fission process) can be used as an 
energy source, and can be put in radio-isotope batteries.  Thus there is 
no such thing as "nuclear waste".

> Uh, doesn't plutonium come from the Planet Pluto?

	No!  Everbody knows that dogs come from Pluto!



Date: Wed, 17 Apr 1996 17:21:11 -0700
From: jflmgcnp@capital44net.com (John J Fleming @ COLD NORTH Publishing)
Subject: Breakaway Explosion - Waste or something else......

     We have been discussing weather nuke waste can explode. Well, I think
we have decided that it can't. It is just waste, and not realy useful for
anything, except creating the premis for a great TV show :-).

     Getting back to the Evil Koenig idea, what if he was?? Sorta. Lets look
at it for a moment...

     Commander Gorski is relieved of command. To me, it was not the regular
transfer of power after a tour of duty. It seems to me that Gorski was
fired, and Koenig placed in command. Why?? The whole Ultraprobe fiasco.
Gorski was willing to spill the beans on the problem, but Commissioner
Simmonds didn't want that info to get out. So, fire Gorski, and put your own
man in there. While Koenig may not have known all that was going on, he was
niave enough not to suspect that there was some type of cover up about the
waste areas.
     What if they were storing weapons grade nuke stuff there?? That could
explode. Especialy if it was being treated as waste, and stored accordingly,
and not like active nuke that it was. If it is not stored properly, things
can go wrong. And thats what happened. Kaaboooom!!!!!
     We don't know much about Earth history in the 1999 universe, but we can
speculate. Say it was something like we have now. The wall has come down,
Russia has gone the way of the dinosaurs, and the weapons are being
dismantled. What if this is the same in 1999?? So, we have all this weapons
grade material that is suposed to be destroyed or stored away.
     Then you get someone like Buchanan in the Presedential position. He
still doesn't trust the 'Ruskies' and wants to maintain their power of the
rest. So, he says '..we have XX amount stored now...', but all along, he has
been skimming off the top and sending it to the moon as waste to be hidden
from the other superpowers. But, not being able to trust all the people that
would be involved in the cover up, they simple don't tell the people
involved. And they go on their way of improperly storing this material. Why
do you think they upgraded the way they stored 'waste' in "Area 2"?? They
called it safety reasons. What if it was that, not because the waste was the
problem, but the active material. If it worked before, why change the
proceedure???

Just some thoughts....



Date: Thu, 18 Apr 1996 12:06:41 -0700
From: Ronald Dudley (dudleyrd@expert.cc.purdue4tag.edu)

Physicist Arenburg (arenburg@phobos.astro.uwo.ca) wrote

>	P.S.  Physicists are beginning to worry about the nuclear waste 
> site in Utah.

Why don't they just put the waste back into the uranium mines from
whence it originally came?

Since the uranium that was down there was not causing anybody any problems,
then isn't a uranium mine a good container for radioactive material?
  
Why can't our brilliant bureaucrats come up with simple solutions?
Simmons and Dixon are alive, well, and at work right now, in 1996, ready
to mess up our lives.

Are these "Physicists" demanding a containment system that will protect us from doled
waste long after natural uranium already in the ground has already killed us?

Aren't these "Physicists" just looking for more government funded research,
doled out by political nincompoops like Simmons?

Ronald



Date: Thu, 18 Apr 1996 13:19:13 -0700
From: Amardeep_Chana@xn.xerox4tag.com (Chana,Amardeep)
Subject: What do you do with nuclear waste?

>Why don't they just put the waste back into the uranium mines from
>whence it originally came?

I certainly hope you're not serious...  but here's one possible reason.

It's not Uranium Ore anymore.  It's a concentrate of many different 
 isotopes that's far more radioactive.  I have heard stories that a 
 very unpleasant thing happens if you just throw the stuff into a hole 
 in the ground:  diffusion purification.  Some of the isotopes are more 
 motile through the soil than others.  Over time you build up layers of 
  isotopes that can theoretically get concentrated enough to chain 
 fission.  This has apparently happened at least once in the country 
 once known as the Soviet Union.

Amardeep



Date: Thu, 18 Apr 1996 14:49:24 -0700
From: atomicpossum@usa.pipe44line.com (mr. wonderful)
Subject: Re: What do you do with nuclear waste?

     Isn't uranium enriched for nuclear power, into heavier nuclei, or is
that just for bombs? 
 
     All this discussion beggarrs one point--with the resources of Alpha, Eagles, etc.,  
why just bury it on the moon at all?  Why not use a disposeable booster to send it all 
into the sun, where it would be broken down into its constituent protons, neutrons, and 
electrons?? 
 
     Not that this helps the issue of today's waste, short of developing some sort of fusion-reactor/ 
disposal system, but why would the theoretical S:1999 world just keep the stuff around?? 
 
     (Because then there would be no series, maybe? <G>) 
-- 
 
Jon "Mr. Wonderful" Stadter 



Date: Thu, 18 Apr 1996 16:25:53 -0700
From: jflmgcnp@capital44net.com (John J Fleming @ COLD NORTH Publishing)
Subject: Bill tried that - Not good :( (was: 'Re: What do you do ...')

     Bill, from "Bill, The Galactic Hero", had to fix this problem with
cafeteria trays. They sent them all into the sun, and then it went NOVA!!!
Oops!!!

     Bill's solution was to radomly mail trays to people around the galaxy,
and let them dispose of it. Hey! It worked.

(I think I'm going to move now. I don't want any mail that glows!!!)



Date: Thu, 18 Apr 1996 18:50:16 -0700
From: Ronald Dudley (dudleyrd@expert.cc.purdue4tag.edu)

Chief Engineer Amardeep writes:

> It's not Uranium Ore anymore.  It's a concentrate of many different 
> isotopes that's far more radioactive.  I have heard stories that a 
> very unpleasant thing happens if you just throw the stuff into a hole 
> in the ground:  diffusion purification.  Some of the isotopes are more 
> motile through the soil than others.  Over time you build up layers of 
> isotopes that can theoretically get concentrated enough to chain 
> fission.  This has apparently happened at least once in the country 
> once known as the Soviet Union.

Well I didn't say "just throw it in the ground".  Yes, the communists
in the USSR were in a hurry to build their bomb in time for Stalin's 70th
birthday, and just dumped wastes in mines near Chelyabinsk.  Later they did
explode, around 1956, but the reaction was a chemical one, not chain fission.
Government bureaucrats caused that problem by being careless, just as they
are now causing a problem by being overly zealous.
 
I have read in Scientific American that natural uranium deposits somewhere
in Africa (Ghana? Gabon?) did achieve criticality millions of years ago.
That is, they became a natural reactor, but not a bomb.  And the waste
products aren't seeping up, creating mutant africans, or killing them.

The ground would be the last line of defense in containing waste, and the
people in Africa who live above and around that natural reactor waste aren't
mutants or dying.  Glass is a cheap and incredibly inert, and sealing
the wastes in tiny glass beads is very reasonable.  This would be the first
line of defense against release. Other layers would be lead tanks and
concrete walls, then a mile or so of rock.   The world's natural sources
of radioactive solids aren't contained by engineered glass, lead, or concrete,
and aren't poisoning people.  The biggest sources of harmful radiation are
radon seeping into your basement, and exposure to sunlight.  That money-
hungry bureaucrats are more concerned about buried nuclear waste poisoning
people than radon or beaches is so typical of these stupid Simmons.  If 
they were really concerned, they would close all the beaches and outlaw
tanning beds.  Instead they focus on a gnat (nuclear waste) while letting
everybody swallow camel loads of radon and ultraviolet.

Ronald



Date: Sun, 21 Apr 1996 00:57:25 -0700
From: zarf@cml4tag.com (Zarf Vreex)
Subject: Re: What do you do with nuclear waste?

Which brings up another point, bury enough highly enriched nuclear material
and you will exceed the elemant's critical mass (which is what happened on
Alpha).



Date: Sun, 21 Apr 1996 05:21:51 -0700
From: agirton@accs4tag.net (Alan Girton)
Subject: RE: What do you do with nuclear waste?

>All this discussion beggarrs one point--with the resources of Alpha, Eagles, etc., 
>why just bury it on the moon at all?  Why not use a disposeable booster to
>send it all into the sun, where it would be broken down into its constituent protons,
>neutrons, and electrons??

This is something I've often wondered about. Is it currently cost
prohibitive to shoot our current stockpile of radioactive waste to the
sun in a disposable booster instead of reburying it in "protective"
dumps? In light of the inherent dangers of storing the waste on Earth,
it seems to me somebody could make a lot of money shooting it off to the
sun.

Alan



Date: Sun, 21 Apr 1996 08:28:50 -0700
From: jflmgcnp@capital44net.com (John J Fleming @ COLD NORTH Publishing)
Subject: RE: What do you do with nuclear waste?

Hey Alen, all,

     What about the dangers of shooting it off planet??

     Can you say "Challanger"!!

     Just a thought. I think some science guys discussed this on TV, and
that was their main concern.

Later...



Date: Sun, 21 Apr 1996 07:13:35 -0700
From: Ronald Dudley (dudleyrd@expert.cc.purdue4tag.edu)

"Uranium Enrichment" is a refining process, in which atoms are separated, by
their nuclear weight.  It is not the altering of the nuclei of the atoms.

Sending waste into the Sun can work, but to be pedantic, the surface of the
sun is not hot enough break heavy elements down into light ones.  Economics
precludes this because of the energy needed to shoot dozens of rockets
into the Sun, or even the cheap way by shooting them to Jupiter, and letting
Jupiter's gravity whip the waste around onto a collision course with the Sun.

The "danger" of storing it on Earth is relative. Radon gas is a dangerous source
of radiation, and seeps into people's basement, and accumulates due to poor
ventillation, but the government doesn't have to impoverish us to save us 
from Radon gas.  It is absolutely crazy that the government is going to dump
a trillion into protecting us from nuclear waste, while letting everybody go
to the beach and get zapped by cancer-causing ultraviolet radiation. The Sun
is the biggest nuclear explosion for light years around, yet people take off
their clothes so as to get a good unhealthy dose of its rays, while worring
about waste a mile underground.  Simply Crazy!  Why not worry about all the
natural uranium ore that is already down there?  Its an anti-technology
prejudice to have nuclear waste as such a high priority, yet be unconcerned
about natural sources of even more harmful radiation.  Luddites! Unabombers!

To achieve "critical mass", you not only have to have a certain ammount of
mass, but also the atoms must achieve a certain density, so that neutrons
given off have sufficient probability of hitting other atoms.  Nuclear fuel
is engineered so as achieve criticality.  Nuclear waste has lots of junk atoms
in it, which interferes with the chain reaction in such a way that no
ammount of it won't achieve the chain reaction because the target atoms are
too separated and shielded from eachother by junk atoms.  Fission explosions
are engineered events, and do not happen in nature.  Chemical explosions, like
swamp gas igniting, can happen naturally.  Accidental chemical explosions
happen often, particularly because our atmosphere is 20% oxygen, but 
accidential fission explosions are as imaginary as a book being written
accidentally by 100 monkeys typing on 100 typewriters, or by an explosion
in a printing factory.  Perhaps on an imaginary world with lakes of liquid
uranium might you observe a spontaneous fission explosion. Fission explosions
are engineered processes, and even then require a chemical explosion to
ignite them, so as to compress the uranium/plutonium into a small enough
space so that it goes critical.  Expecting waste to explode by fission is like
expecting the silicon in beach sand to accidentally turn into a microchip on
a sunny day.

Ronald
#122 SDSE