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The problem is we don't even know what it means to deal with waste for 10,000 years. If the Romans had used nuclear power, we'd still be guarding their waste. A

by oroup 11y ago

The problem is we don't even know what it means to deal with waste for 10,000 years. If the Romans had used nuclear power, we'd still be guarding their waste. And they likely would have put it somewhere really out of the way - like London. If some of the technologies that can transmute waste intro shorter lived stuff come to fruition, fantastic. But until then nuclear power is just the worst kind of deficit spending, kicking the unknown and huge costs way into the future.

saulrh 11y ago
Cadmium never decays. It isn't dangerous for 10 kiloyears. It's dangerous forever. And I guarantee you that your average barrel of cadmium is worse to deal with than your average nuclear waste flask. Even more than that, a nuke plant generates, amortized, several tons of waste per year. A few flasks. Which can get shoved into a volume the size of your garage. And then you basically forget about it. Unlike, say, a coal plant, which generates a reservoir worth of awful ash a year. Containment isn't even an option there. Even more than that, even if our nuke plants vented directly into the atmosphere every now and then they'd still put out less radioactive waste than coal plants. Seriously, the only reason nuclear waste is dangerous is because it's concentrated. If we held nuclear plants to the same standards we do coal plants, "safe, permanent disposal" would be as simple as dumping it into the ocean and making sure it mixed up.
cjslep 11y ago
> If some of the technologies that can transmute waste intro shorter lived stuff come to fruition, fantastic. Today we could be reducing the volume of HLW if the US deployed pyroprocessing and cadmium distillation. Unfortunately for the USA, those technologies are more mature in Korea.
gwern 11y ago
London wasn't out of the way. Londinium (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Londinium https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Londinium) was the heart of their administration, the provincial capital, and a commercial center as well, which could merit imperial visits. Romans storing nuclear waste there would make about as much sense as Americans storing nuclear waste in Okinawa or Baghdad or Kabul (that is, none). Somewhere out of the way then would be like the Sahara, which not coincidentally, is still out of the way; and desert regions are also where it's usually proposed to store waste.
- jrochkind1 11y ago
  I'm actually pretty sure if the U.S. thought it could get away with shipping it's nuclear waste to Kabul, it would do so.
Turing_Machine 11y ago
"The problem is we don't even know what it means to deal with waste for 10,000 years." After a couple of hundred years it's no more radioactive than the ore from which it came. Anyone who pulls the "long half-life" ploy doesn't know what they're talking about. Long half-life = less radioactive. By definition. I mean, you do know that "half-life of infinity" is the same thing as "not radioactive at all", right?
adrianN 11y ago
We know that we can put the "waste" in breeder reactors and burn up >90% of it for energy, leaving only short lived isotopes. We don't build breeder reactors because they can be used to breed Plutonium, not because they're difficult to build. It's a purely political decision.
sliverstorm 11y ago
But how much waste would we be guarding, really? And how does that compare to all the coal we've burned? At current energy rates & waste production rates etc, if you used only nuclear power, your consumption would result in roughly 7 lbs of nuclear waste over an 80 year lifespan.
burnte 11y ago
We in the US had a plan, store it way deep under Yucca Mountain. The most likely worst case scenario is that there's a seismic event which makes thousands of tons of nuclear waste permanently inaccessible, buried in a mountain. That's concrete encased, sealed steel casks buried in a bloody mountain. That's not a lot to actually worry about. Plus, with reactor designs like fast breeders, you reuse a lot of the waste. And even with old designs, it's STILL less radioactive than coal.

by oroup 11y ago

saulrh 11y ago

Cadmium never decays. It isn't dangerous for 10 kiloyears. It's dangerous forever. And I guarantee you that your average barrel of cadmium is worse to deal with than your average nuclear waste flask. Even more than that, a nuke plant generates, amortized, several tons of waste per year. A few flasks. Which can get shoved into a volume the size of your garage. And then you basically forget about it. Unlike, say, a coal plant, which generates a reservoir worth of awful ash a year. Containment isn't even an option there. Even more than that, even if our nuke plants vented directly into the atmosphere every now and then they'd still put out less radioactive waste than coal plants. Seriously, the only reason nuclear waste is dangerous is because it's concentrated. If we held nuclear plants to the same standards we do coal plants, "safe, permanent disposal" would be as simple as dumping it into the ocean and making sure it mixed up.

cjslep 11y ago

> If some of the technologies that can transmute waste intro shorter lived stuff come to fruition, fantastic. Today we could be reducing the volume of HLW if the US deployed pyroprocessing and cadmium distillation. Unfortunately for the USA, those technologies are more mature in Korea.

gwern 11y ago

London wasn't out of the way. Londinium (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Londinium https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Londinium) was the heart of their administration, the provincial capital, and a commercial center as well, which could merit imperial visits. Romans storing nuclear waste there would make about as much sense as Americans storing nuclear waste in Okinawa or Baghdad or Kabul (that is, none). Somewhere out of the way then would be like the Sahara, which not coincidentally, is still out of the way; and desert regions are also where it's usually proposed to store waste.

jrochkind1 11y ago
I'm actually pretty sure if the U.S. thought it could get away with shipping it's nuclear waste to Kabul, it would do so.

Turing_Machine 11y ago

"The problem is we don't even know what it means to deal with waste for 10,000 years." After a couple of hundred years it's no more radioactive than the ore from which it came. Anyone who pulls the "long half-life" ploy doesn't know what they're talking about. Long half-life = less radioactive. By definition. I mean, you do know that "half-life of infinity" is the same thing as "not radioactive at all", right?

adrianN 11y ago

We know that we can put the "waste" in breeder reactors and burn up >90% of it for energy, leaving only short lived isotopes. We don't build breeder reactors because they can be used to breed Plutonium, not because they're difficult to build. It's a purely political decision.

sliverstorm 11y ago

But how much waste would we be guarding, really? And how does that compare to all the coal we've burned? At current energy rates & waste production rates etc, if you used only nuclear power, your consumption would result in roughly 7 lbs of nuclear waste over an 80 year lifespan.

burnte 11y ago

We in the US had a plan, store it way deep under Yucca Mountain. The most likely worst case scenario is that there's a seismic event which makes thousands of tons of nuclear waste permanently inaccessible, buried in a mountain. That's concrete encased, sealed steel casks buried in a bloody mountain. That's not a lot to actually worry about. Plus, with reactor designs like fast breeders, you reuse a lot of the waste. And even with old designs, it's STILL less radioactive than coal.