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I live in Idaho, and something that comes up fairly regularly is whether to accept more nuclear waste shipments to be stored at the https://www.inl.gov https://

I live in Idaho, and something that comes up fairly regularly is whether to accept more nuclear waste shipments to be stored at the https://www.inl.gov https://www.inl.gov indefinitely. To me, nuclear power is not good or bad (it just is), but I have a very low level of confidence that humans can manage it over the long term. Power companies don't seem to be willing to spend the money needed to encapsulate waste for thousands of years. That would basically mean revisiting all the waste that is currently stored and freeze it in glass or whatever. If the industry did that for all existing waste and proved their expertise in that area, then I think more people would entertain the notion of more reactors.

mikeash 9y ago
Meanwhile we have people fighting for coal power plants even though their waste disposal plan for things like mercury and arsenic is basically "dump it into the air and hope it doesn't kill too many people." And that stuff stays dangerous until the heat death of the universe, not merely thousands of years.
flubert 9y ago
> Power companies don't seem to be willing to spend the money needed to encapsulate waste for thousands of years. The "Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1982" charged utilities a 0.1 cent/kwh fee for disposal of nuclear waste, and the DOE was supposed to take receipt of that waste. There is $31 billion in reserve for waste disposal... https://www.eenews.net/stories/1059999730 https://www.eenews.net/stories/1059999730