Inside the country's biggest nuclear power plant tear-down
At the San Onofre atomic power plant, specialists exchange 2,668 fuel congregations—holding 1,109 metric huge amounts of radioactive uranium-235—to 17-foot-tall stainless-steel compartments. These sit inside a profound, steel-lined cooling pool for quite a long while, chilling at temperatures around 68 degrees Fahrenheit, until the point when laborers can move them to capacity.
2. Bury it
After the fuel cools, specialists fit the canisters into 20-foot-profound solid barrels inserted in the ground. The solid helps trap the fuel's radiation inside, while vents flow air to keep it cool. These barrels, which will be checked and protected day and night, are sufficiently solid to withstand tremors, tidal waves, even the effect of a fly crash.
3. Tear it
Remotely controlled devices cut up the very polluted gear (under .04 percent of the flotsam and jetsam). Other mechanical machines will expel the most spoiled waste. At that point laborers—utilizing water powered sledges, saws, and bulldozers—tear separated the structures. Unremarkable office materials like racking, furniture, and protection round out the garbage heap.
4. Ship it
Decimation delivers more than 25 million cubic feet of flotsam and jetsam—rebar, cement, and funneling—enough to fill a not too bad size school football stadium. The San Onofre site has up to 60 rail autos at once, holding up to haul away the low-level radiation garbage. Trucks pull the nontainted stuff—75 percent of the aggregate—to landfills in Texas and Arizona.
5. Cover it
Cargo autos convey the low-level radioactive flotsam and jetsam—now stuffed in drums, packs, and extensive compartments—to an atomic waste landfill in the Utah leave. Specialists there check and report radiation levels, at that point cover the stuff in "dikes," from 8 feet beneath grade to 38 feet above review, in sedimentary shake and shrouded in mud and shake.
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