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Discoblog
« Taste, Hear, and Smell the Future: “Virtual Vacations” Coming Soon
Weird Science Roundup: News From Around the World…And Space »

LOLScienz: nukular waste

nuclear cat

Heavens to Betsy, it’s the inaugural LOLScienz cat! Check Discoblog every Friday for a new installment.

Get the full story with the 80beats post: Yucca Mountain Ruled Out for Storing Nuke Waste. Now What?

Photo: flickr / DaynaR

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March 6th, 2009 4:56 PM Tags: LOLScienz
by Eliza Strickland in The Wide (& Strange) World of Animals | 2 comments | RSS feed | Trackback >

  • http://www.mazepath.com/uncleal/ Uncle Al

    15-18 g/cm^3 solid fuel pellets fissioning to ~8 g/cm^3 products plus trapped helium (alpha decay) will swell starting around a couple percent burn. Get them out! Stupid. Fuel recycle should separate a clean beta-decay stream from alpha-decay and transuranics. Beta goes into modest term storage plus heat dump. Transuranics contaminated with beta (lots of gamma to discourage theft) go back in as fuel. We separate and store the opppsite way. Stupid. Transuranics storage decay into fissionables. Stupid. Aircraft carriers and submarines put a premium on minimum volume reactors. Building military on acres of land is stupid.

    An advocate makes virtue of failure. The worse the cure the better the treatment – and the more that is required. More studies!

  • Rachel

    Uncle Al needs to calm down.





    • About the Blog

      Discoblog is DISCOVER's compendium of quirky, funny, and surprising science news from the edge of the known universe. It's written by Veronique Greenwood and Valerie Ross. Email tips and suggestions to vgreenwood [at] discovermagazine [dot] com.

      Discoblog also includes the daily feature NCBI ROFL, in which two prone-to-distraction grad students post real scientific articles with funny subjects. Email your tips to ncbirofl [at] gmail.com. Follow the ROFL feed here.

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