The Chernobyl nuclear meltdown on April 26, 1986 – was beyond a doubt the largest civil nuclear explosion in the world and one still linked to thousands of deaths. More than 20 years after the explosion, tens of kilometers around the reactor is still highly radioactive; and some 30,000 radioactive homes remain buried along with household appliances, food and clothing.
Electrifying Times relays a story from ISRAEL21c reporter, Karin Kloosterman, about removal of one of the significant disadvantages of nuclear energy: radioactive waste.
The problem of radioactive waste is a global one, and getting increasingly worse. All countries in the industrialized world are waking up to the need for safer hazardous waste disposal methods.
Well, when you say “All countries in the industrialized world”, you might want to exclude the position adopted by the United States Department of Energy and the Bush Administration, which is to offer the solutions of more coal and more nuclear power as an answer to concerns about national security jeopardized by our dependency upon imported oil.
Since Israel and the United States have partnered on finding energy solutions, vis a vis United States-Israel Energy Cooperation Act, such an announcement has the markings of Syngas spin. The cost of handling radioactive waste is quite expensive, and bound to increase with the rise in the cost of transporting by fossil fuel powered vehicles.
In the US alone, Research Studies predicts that this year’s market for radioactive waste-management technologies in America will cap $5.5 billion.
Reducing such cost has be tremendous motivation, particularly since nuclear energy is touted as a “too cheap to meter” alternative energy. The lure of “cheap for now” energy and ability to remain oblivious to the problems left for future generations may override other considerations.
In addition to the highly radioactive waste resulting from production of nuclear weapons and nuclear power in the United States, which according to the journal Research Studies (Business Communications, Inc.), “has left a 50-year legacy of unprecedented volumes of radioactive waste and contaminated subsurface media and structures”, there is considerable expense associated with the disposal of low level radioactive waste generated at national laboratories, industrial research facilities, educational and medical institutions, electrical power utilities, medical diagnostics facilities, and with various manufacturing processes, to include the increasing use of radiation to preserve food. So, now we have a way to reduce the cost of disposal by making “clean energy”*.
* Note: Plasma arc gasification produces less pollutants than previous efforts to convert waste into energy although it still increases greenhouse gases and produces toxins.
GCC Illustration
The production of “Syngas” by the gasification of carbon-bearing feedstock does well in an economic analysis and less well environmentally, i.e., in terms of aggregate increases in greenhouse gases or toxins.
EER (Environmental Energy Resources), a firm founded in 2000 and based in Tel Aviv, is promoting a method of converting hazardous waste into “clean energy”. The process uses plasma arc technology, developed at MIT, to break down waste materials into gases.
EER has two facilities, one near Karmiel in the northern Israel and another installation in the Ukraine. The Karmiel facility has a capacity to process 500 to 1,000 kilograms of waste per hour.
“Other industry solutions, the company claims, can only treat as much as 50 kilograms per hour and are much more costly.”
Scientists from Russia’s Kurchatov Institute research center, the Radon Institute in Russia, and Israel’s Technion Institute – EER modified the previously noted, high temperature conversion process that produces Syngas; their method combines high temperatures and low-radioactive energy to transform the waste. “We go up to 7,000 degrees centigrade and end at 1,400 centigrade,” says Moshe Stern, founder and president of the Ramat Gan-based company.
A chunk of black, lava-like rock, the result of the process invented by EER to transform radioactive waste into an inert, safe substance, which was sitting on the table in front of everyone’s coffee cups at a press briefing from Polaris (now Pitango), one of Israel’s most lucrative venture capital funds. The journalists cautiously eyed the shiny dark material, emitted from a pilot waste treatment reactor, as Itschak Shrem, chairman of investment company Shrem, Fudim and Keiner, assured them that it was perfectly safe and to help themselves to the imported dough nuts, fresh from the Chernobyl bakery.
“The remaining vitrified material is inert and can be cast into molds to produce tiles, blocks or plates for the construction industry.” So, this is another example of the public being assured that radioactive, and not just municipal, waste can be used as feedstock. Yet I understood that 1) it was NAGI (Not A Good Idea) to convert radioactive materials to gaseous form and 2) the residual substances from plasma arc conversion of any organic materials could contain toxic heavy metals.
Itschak Shrem, chairman of investment company Shrem, Fudim and Keiner, who led the press conference, assured reporters that “EER’s waste disposal reactor does not harm the environment and leaves no surface water, groundwater, or soil pollution in its wake.”
Back in 2004, the Ukrainian government put out a tender searching for a solution that would provide safer hazardous waste disposal methods. At that time, the country was looking for a way to treat its low radioactive waste zones resulting from the Chernobyl explosion. EER sent in their proposal, and their technology won the bid.
According to Stern, the former Soviet Union was the first to build nuclear plants. Over the years they have generated “huge amounts of low-radioactive waste. They came to us looking for a solution,” he said.
“The European community is afraid of what is happening there,” notes Stern, warning that it is time for the clean up to begin, even if it means making only a small dent in the massive pile. “The low-radioactive waste is slowly contaminating the water and will continue to do so over the 300 years it takes to break down.”
And, since new conventions have been set by The Basel Convention on the Control of Trans Boundary Movements of Hazardous Wastes and their Disposal, first world countries are no longer permitted to traffic their hazardous waste to third world nations – forcing Western countries to drum up immediate and responsible solutions.
To be environment friendly, large scale gasification requires significant investment in hot gas conditioning.
At its Aeblin facility, EER demonstrated proof-of-concept to Israeli and foreign dignitaries and, at the press conference, Shrem emphasized that the process was other than incineration. The hydrogen and carbon monoxide produced under low-oxygen conditions are combined to produce low-grade propane gas and methane. The gas is cleansed, then combusted thus operating turbines that generate electricity. EER estimates that 70% of the power generated goes back to power the reactor leaving 30% that can be sold.
“The cost for treating and burying low-radioactive nuclear waste currently stands at about $30,000 per ton.” EER projects a cost $3,000 per ton, although there may be some fudging as to the 1% per volume solid byproduct. With such a favorable economic analysis, it unfortunately is all too likely the environmental analysis, i.e., aggregate increases in greenhouse gases or toxins, will get put aside.
Kloosterman reports that Energy Solutions, the largest American company in the field with 75% of the US market, recently contracted with EER for conversion of low-radioactive liquid waste. “Based on the financial forecasts,” extols the ISRAEL21c technology reporter, “EER is certainly giving a fresh meaning to the expression – one man’s garbage is another man’s treasure. But, in EER’s case, ones man’s hazardous waste may very well be EER’s goldmine. Speaking of weaving straw into gold, EER may have a potential customer; 40 percent of electrical demand in South Korea currently is supplied by nuclear power.
