Energy Soloutions

Engineering solutions to world energy problems

One of the most important lessons to be learned from the disaster at the Fukushima nuclear power plant in Japan is there is a real need for engineers who understand the technical issues associated with the materials required to build a future deeply challenged by the need for energy.

The initial explosions at the nuclear power facility were hydrogen explosions. The source was the spent fuel rods stored at the plant site in a containment vessel that sat above grade, in the reactors’ “attic.” The fact that the spent fuel was stored is not unusual. Nuclear waste is is frequently stored at nuclear plant sites worldwide. radioactive (hot ) and

What is surprising is that the containment facility was located above grade and when the walls of the facility were breached by the tsunami, the water drained out, exposing the zirconium clad spent fuel rods. The zirconium casings and exposed spent fuel rods which, subsequently reacted with steam, producing hydrogen.

One reason the crisis at Fukushima was not an even greater tragedy is that the inventory of spent fuel in the on-site storage pools was relatively small and was well below capacity. In fact, the amount of waste stored at plant sites is rather low in Japan, particularly in comparison to the United States. Japan routinely transports some of the spent fuel to other parts of the country and even to other countries entirely, such as the United Kingdom and France, for processing. That’s good policy.

The same cannot be said of any nuclear facility in the US. The US produces about 2,000 metric tons of nuclear waste per year and most of it sits on-site because there is no where to put it. The US currently has no policy and stores significantly more waste per individual plant site than do the Japanese. By some estimates, we are currently storing four times more spent fuel than storage pools are designed to accommodate.

As a nation, we need energy and energy solutions that...