美國貯藏廢核燃料棒四倍於池容量

美國貯藏廢核燃料棒四倍於池容量
US stores spent nuclear fuel rods at 4 times pool capacity
Sunday, March 27, 2011
Rady Ananda, Contributing Writer
Activist Post
Translation by Autumnson Blog

Spent fuel pool at the top of a nuclear reactor
廢燃料池在一個核反應堆的頂部

In a recent interview with The Real News Network, Robert Alvarez, a nuclear policy specialist since 1975, reports that spent nuclear fuel in the United States comprises the largest concentration of radioactivity on the planet: 71,000 metric tons. Worse, since the Yucca Mountain waste repository has been scrapped due to its proximity to active faults (see last image), the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission has allowed reactor operators to store four times more waste in the spent fuel pools than they’re designed to handle.
在最近一次與真實新聞網的採訪，一位自1975年以來的核政策專家羅伯特阿爾瓦雷斯，報告美國的核廢燃料包含在地球上最大的放射性物質集中地：71,000公噸。更糟的是，自尤卡山廢物庫已被廢棄由於它鄰近活躍斷層（看最後的圖象），美國核管理委員會已允許反應堆營運商，比它們被設計用來處理的，存放多四倍的廢物在廢燃料池。
Each Fukushima spent fuel pool holds about 100 metric tons, he says, while each US pool holds from 500-700 metric tons. A single pool fire would release catastrophic amounts of radioactivity, rendering 17-22,000 square miles of area uninhabitable. That’s about the size of New Hampshire and Vermont – from one pool fire.
每個福島廢燃料池持有約100公噸，他說，而每個美國池持有從 500至700公噸。一把單池火將釋放災難性數量的放射物質，使17-22,000平方英里的地區無法居住。那是關於新罕布什爾州和佛蒙特州的大小 - 從一把池火。
In a March 25th interview, physician and nuclear activist Dr Helen Caldicott explains that “there’s far more radiation in each of the cooling pools than there is in each reactor itself…. Now the very short-lived isotopes have decayed away to nothing. But the long-lived ones, the very dangerous ones, Cesium, Strontium, Uranium, Plutonium, Americium, Curium, Neptunium, I mean really dangerous ones, the long-lived ones – that’s what the fuel pools hold.”

Nuclear waste, in the form of tiny pellets, are loaded into metal rods, that are then bundled into a “fuel assembly.” The assemblies are stored inside casements that are then submerged in cooling pools that are located at the top of a nuclear reactor, as the following images reveal:

The image at the top of the article shows an entire pool filled with these assemblies. There are millions of these rods around the planet, reports Reuters.
文章頂部的圖像顯示一整個填滿這些裝配的池，有百萬計的這些棒在地球周圍，路透社報導。

As a Senior Scholar at the Institute for Policy Studies, Alvarez was part of a multidisciplinary international team that looked at possible terror attacks on nuclear facilities, focusing on the spent fuel storage pools. In 2003, they released a report, Reducing the Hazards from Stored Spent Power-Reactor Fuel in the United States, which calls for transferring the spent fuel from the pools into dry-cask storage. (Summary here.)

The report recommends that 75% of the spent rods be removed from each of the pools and stored in ultra-thick concrete bunkers capable of withstanding aerial impact. The project would take about ten years and would “reduce the average inventory of 137Cs (radioactive cesium) in U.S. spent-fuel pools by about a factor of four.”

The NRC attempted to suppress the IPC report, Alvarez says. “The response by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and nuclear industry was hostile.” But the National Academy of Sciences agreed that a fire in an overloaded fuel pool would be catastrophic. The NRC attempted to block the Academy’s report, as well.

The NRC serves industry, not the public, and by controlling the purse strings, Congress has forced the NRC to “greatly curtail its regulatory programs,” says Alvarez.

Engineer Keith Harmon Snow couldn’t agree more. He recently lambasted the NRC and mainstream media for downplaying the ongoing catastrophe in Japan. He notes that, “The atomic bomb that exploded at Hiroshima created about 2000 curies of radioactivity. The spent fuel pools at Vermont Yankee Nuclear Plant (U.S.) are said to hold about 75 million curies.” [emphasis added]
And that’s just one US nuclear plant, out of 104, not to ignore the undisclosed number of research sites. Then consider that several nuclear plants sit on geologic faults.

Also see this global map of earthquake activity and nuclear power plant locations.

亦看看這全球地震活動和核電廠地點的地圖

Nuclear waste is a serious, deadly and growing problem that the industry refuses to address, preferring to externalize disposal costs onto the public (even suing the US government to clean up its mess for them, under a 1998 law it no doubt favored).

Unless the radioactive waste is laser-launched toward the sun, we’re stuck with waste that will contaminate the biosphere for thousands of years, for the measly prize of 25-30 years of electricity. The risk far outweighs the benefit; this energy choice exemplifies the insanity of the nuclear industry and its government protectors.

Further Sources:
Chernobyl: Consequences of the Catastrophe for People and the Environment, by Alexey V. Yablokov and Vassily B. Nesterenko and Alexey V. Nesterenko (English publication: 2009), recently reviewed by  toxicologist Janette Sherman on BlipTV, and also reviewed last year by Professor Karl Grossman at Global Research.

Nuclear Reactors in Earthquake Zones around the Globe(TreeHugger, compiling various sources)

US Radiation Monitoring Map in Real Time (Radiation Network)

Video Maps Spread of Radioactivity in Real Time(Central Institute for Meteorology and Geodynamics, Austria)

http://www.activistpost.com/2011/03/us-stores-spent-nuclear-fuel-rods-at-4.html

美國人支付數十億美元在美國內華達州儲存核廢料，但它不在那裡