OT Nuclear waste

Just for S&G, thinking about this green stuff, I was wondering, "just
how much nuclear waste _is_ there?" And I did a quick google and
came up with an interesting page:
http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/ene_nuc_was_gen-energy-nuclear-waste-generated#definition

They say their units of measure are "cubic meters". But they don't say if
that's per year, or total forever, or what. But still! If you add up all
of the numbers. which I'm far too lazy to do, so I'll estimate, it looks
like less than a dozen cubic meters of waste. Whether that's per year or
since ever, it's not a great huge amount of stuff. You could plop it down
in the middle of area 51 and it'd be self-guarding. >:->

Cheers!
Rich

 

The problem with 'nuclear waste' is not so much storing used fuel rods but *reprocessing* it
that creates more (typically liquid) waste that needs to be dealt with.. BNFL knows how to f**k
it up really well. Their site has had many leaks and they've flushed plenty into the Irish Sea
too.

Graham

 

Can't be cubic meters; the numbers are way, way too low.

John

 

um, it clearly says z-scores so all the information is relative unless they
where to give you the mean and standard deviation.

i.e., a z = (x - u)/s where u is the mean and s the standard deviation.

notice that z is also a unitless quanity since u and s is measured in the
same units as x.

In no way can we recover the absolute data from just the z-scores alone(that
is x) unless we know u and s which is convieniently not given(how hard would
it be to post those two numbers?) or atleast its not obvious where there at.

 

Well..... a cubic metre of uranium weights 19.1 tonnes.

76 tonnes of power reactor waste a year doesn't sound totally unreasonable for the UK.

Graham