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So, I've worked in the nuclear industry (just a scaffold builder), so take this with a grain of salt, but there are a few things I think get left out of the con
by industriousthou 11y ago
So, I've worked in the nuclear industry (just a scaffold builder), so take this with a grain of salt, but there are a few things I think get left out of the conversation.
One is how absolutely catastrophic coal fired plants are. People often talk about hypothetical scenarios with nuclear, but tens of thousands of people are dying every year as a direct result of coal power and that doesn't even take into account the long term effects of climate change. We need to be aggressively pursuing _any_ and _all_ alternatives to coal, in my opinion. This might sound a little crazy, but I almost feel the situation is urgent enough to justify the president declaring a national emergency and using the national guard to unilaterally shut down these facilities. I realize that's completely unrealistic, but I hope it conveys my sense of urgency.
Another thing I'd like to touch on is the handling of nuclear waste. It's absolutely problematic, but I'm curious about the marginal cost/risk of additional waste now that we already have to deal with it. We already have to devise a solution to the problem, so it seems like that offsets the cost of dealing with the additional waste of more reactors. Even if we didn't use nuclear power, we would be generating waste from research reactors, nuclear medicine, etc, that we would have to deal with. If you have to figure out how to safely store a ton of material for ten thousand years, does it really cost twice as much to store twice as much material?
- chrisco255 11y agoCan't we just bury the radioactive waste in the desert?
- gratimax 11y agoI don't know of how many completely uninhabited deserts there are in the United States that aren't protected as national or state parks. In addition, how do you transport nuclear waste to the desert, especially from long distances? Nobody wants a truck carrying nuclear waste around. The biggest issue is that I don't think anyone at the federal, state, or congressional representative level would volunteer or accept putting nuclear waste close to their constituencies.
- MRPockets 11y agoI don't have an answer for where to bury it (though recycling it really ought to be an option. Politics prevents that right now) but the movement of the waste is actually a problem that has been largely solved. Nuclear flasks are designed to withstand incredible accidents. For instance, the UK flasks were tested by placing one one a derailed flatbed car & ramming a locomotive into it at >90mph. The flask was situated so that the hinge (weakest point) would be hit. The flask was minimally damaged while the locomotive was destroyed. [1] The US flasks are required to withstand similar catastrophic accidents. [1]http://www.railmagazine.com/trains/heritage/it-s-a-lovely-day-bring-a-flask http://www.railmagazine.com/trains/heritage/it-s-a-lovely-da...
- paavokoya 11y agoIt's not that simple. Check out the documentary "Into Eternity" on the impracticability and difficulty of "burying" nuclear waste which remains deadly for 250,000 years.
- fulafel 11y agoThe burying part is just (materials|nuclear|mining) engineering and it's practical. The forecasting and risk modelling over > 100k years is the uncertain part, even in deep bedrock in very seismically stable areas. IIRC the documentary makes a point about how difficult it is to signal to post apocalyptic stone age generations 100k years in the future not to go there. Though many people think the used fuel will get dug up before then to be reprocessed into fuel...
- erkkie 11y agoThat's because you're burying usable fuel, breeder reactors eliminate the waste problem for all practical purposes, the reason they're not being built has been entirely political. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breeder_reactor#Waste_reduction https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breeder_reactor#Waste_reductio...
- jld89 11y agoLook at the Breeder reactor controversy section of the article you linked. The reasons aren't entirely political. But rather financial. Capitalism is the culprit.
- erkkie 11y agoMost of the financial reasons are political. NIMBYism makes nuclear in general very expensive, even though coal blatantly kills more than even existing nuclear tech, not to mention potential next gen reactors. In case of breeders, the 2nd argument that makes them expensive is that they're an "proliferation risk".
- agumonkey 11y agoThat documentary was the deepest SF thing I ever watched.
- marcoperaza 11y agoWe were going to put it inside a mountain in Nevada—Congress even passed a law authorizing it—but politics ended up killing the project. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yucca_Mountain_nuclear_waste_repository https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yucca_Mountain_nuclear_waste_r...
- foota 11y agoI recall hearing that it wasn't so much politics as the potential for it to poison nearby water?
- marcoperaza 11y agohttp://www.nytimes.com/gwire/2011/05/10/10greenwire-gao-death-of-yucca-mountain-caused-by-politica-36298.html?pagewanted=all http://www.nytimes.com/gwire/2011/05/10/10greenwire-gao-deat...
- kiiski 11y agoIn Finland we have a similiar project[0] under construction. The intention is to store spent nuclear fuel there from 2020-2120 and then seal the facility. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Onkalo_spent_nuclear_fuel_repository https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Onkalo_spent_nuclear_fuel_repo...
- has2k1 11y agoMy cartoon solution is to develop nuclear(or otherwise) powered rockets that send nuclear waste onto a collision course with the sun.
- lern_too_spel 11y agoIt's cheaper to send things out of the solar system than it is to hit the sun. http://www.csicop.org/sb/show/shooting_for_the_sun http://www.csicop.org/sb/show/shooting_for_the_sun
- industriousthou 11y agoWow, this is a great article. I just assumed that the sun's gravity would assist in pulling a payload in, making it less costly than trying to launch out of the solar system. Really, really, interesting. Edit: Just wanted to mention that disposing of nuclear material by trying to launch it into space is absurd, but the orbital mechanics of the problem are pretty interesting.
- has2k1 11y agoThanks for the link. Great break down of the barriers. I did know that the size of the required velocity difference would be that significant.
- legulere 11y agoAll that kind of stuff has already been discussed. Rockets explode way to often and then your nuclear waste would spread all over a region.
- foota 11y agoWhile researching this I read a great quote "Radioactive volcanoes would not be fun to deal with." (https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/2r43nl/why_dont_we_just_shoot_nuclear_waste_of_our/ https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/2r43nl/why_dont...) tl;dr load up KSP and try to send something into the sun.
- whyever 11y agoAnd then your rocket explodes in the atmosphere for maximal fallout distribution?