Sandia National Laboratories
Founded in 2016 and headquartered in California, Deep Isolation launched the Deep Borehole Demonstration Center on February 27th. It aims to demonstrate that deep borehole disposal of nuclear waste is a safe and practical alternative to mined tunnels. Most of today’s nuclear waste repository designs.
But while the launch has nominated its first board members and announced high-level plans, the startup still has no permanent location and no funding to complete its planned drilling and testing program. Not guaranteed.
The idea of using deep boreholes for nuclear waste disposal is not new, but no one has yet proven that it works. The Deep Borehole Demonstration Center tests everything from the safe handling, disposal and retrievability of waste canisters at the surface, and finally to their permanent sealing deep underground, to create a full-scale end-to-end operation. We aim to demonstrate the end. We also rehearse techniques to ensure that eventual underground leaks do not contaminate the surface environment.
But it does everything without actual nuclear waste.”For clarity, this site will never be used for the disposal of radioactive waste.
“What this is meant to do is really bring people together to understand what the main issues need to be resolved before moving forward,” said Ted Garrish, the center’s launch executive director. “There’s nothing really new here when it comes to the actual technology. We’re just getting them married and doing it in a nuclear environment.”
universal canister
At the time of this announcement, the Center’s first exercises to “combine” standard oil drilling and nuclear technology had already begun. In February, a technical demonstration was held at the Borehole Equipment Proving Ground near Cameron, Texas. “We need a mounting mechanism to attach this nuclear-designed canister to standard oil and gas rigging,” Muller explained.
They used a newly designed canister large enough to hold a 14-foot long spent fuel assembly from a pressurized water reactor (PWR). They used standard oilfield equipment to latch it and lower it off the floor of the drill rig, where they unlatched it. They later hooked it back up and caught it again.
Funded by the U.S. Department of Energy’s ARPA-E program, Deep Isolation has designed a new universal canister that can fit in the borehole and capture waste produced by a variety of reactor designs, not just PWRs. I’m here. What form will the reactor company’s waste take, and can it be designed to fit in this universal canister?” I mentioned that I believe everything should fit in the same size canister as the canister.
decentralized disposal
A universal canister should create a deep borehole suitable for different nuclear wastes, but the borehole depth should be suitable for different locations.
The depths at which mined nuclear waste depots are built (approximately 400 meters deep) typically carry a great deal of groundwater that can bring contaminants to the surface. Mined nuclear waste storage sites must therefore find unusual places where the rock is tight and the water is still so that leaks in storage sites do not travel far after thousands of years. . However, Muller argues that digging deeper presents far fewer restrictions on suitable locations, as waste can be placed at depths where groundwater flow is typically minimal. “Geology is a lot more flexible than when you’re looking at mined repositories,” Müller said. We have a lot.”
This means that deep well disposal facilities may exist almost anywhere nuclear waste is generated, necessitating transportation of nuclear waste to centralized facilities such as the failed Yucca Mountain site in Nevada. reduce sex. “We expect the first iteration of deep isolation technology to take place at an existing waste facility,” Muller said.
“I think we’ve learned something from our attempts to consolidate and move bases. [nuclear waste] Statewide, I think the big lesson, the very important take-home lesson, is don’t do it!” Mueller said. The shipment of nuclear waste is cited as one of his objections to the Yucca Mountain disposal site by the State of Nevada to this day.
