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Yucca mountain isn't a great solution... more of a stopgap really. Besides, how do you convince the fine citizens of Nevada to go along with having the nation's

Yucca mountain isn't a great solution... more of a stopgap really. Besides, how do you convince the fine citizens of Nevada to go along with having the nation's nuclear waste buried under their water table? We're not talking about Native Americans defending a river here, these are actual Americans we're talking about.

sjwright 8y ago
Low level waste (medical, scientific, etc) is such trivial matter that worrying about the water table is paranoid ignorant bunkum. As for high level "waste" — it should be reprocessed and reused or burned as fuel in breeder reactors. Burying it underground is a criminal waste of productive resources.
- MertsA 8y ago
  This is what I dislike about current US policy on nuclear waste, there are no plans to store nuclear waste in a form suitable for reprocessing later on. If nuclear waste is vitrified or buried way underground I fear that digging it up, crushing it, and reprocessing it decades later will be economically prohibitive compared to just using fresh ore like we do today. The French already reprocess their waste and nuclear power provides the majority of electricity in France.
  - french1234 8y ago
    We have the same issues in France, or Yucca mountain is called "Bure" in eastern France, and the project is already a political mess.
    - MertsA 8y ago
      Yes but you have way less waste to dispose of. In America, the Uranium and Plutonium that makes up the vast majority of spent nuclear fuel is not separated out from the fission products, we just get rid of it all. IIRC reprocessing is actually slightly more expensive than just mining fresh Uranium as now you need to re-enrich the fuel anyways and Uranium is plentiful enough at least for now. By separating out the spent fuel you isolate the most radioactive components and now you can avoid having to store the majority of the fuel for extremely long periods of time. Reprocessing does not eliminate all nuclear waste, it just minimizes it to only storing the highly radioactive portions instead of the inert components. It also is a prerequisite for any of the proposals that I know about for actually eliminating the nuclear waste instead of just burying it. The long lived radioactive waste could be used as a blanket around a fusion reactor that is used as a neutron source to fission the waste and generate more energy from it.

sjwright 8y ago

Low level waste (medical, scientific, etc) is such trivial matter that worrying about the water table is paranoid ignorant bunkum. As for high level "waste" — it should be reprocessed and reused or burned as fuel in breeder reactors. Burying it underground is a criminal waste of productive resources.

MertsA 8y ago
This is what I dislike about current US policy on nuclear waste, there are no plans to store nuclear waste in a form suitable for reprocessing later on. If nuclear waste is vitrified or buried way underground I fear that digging it up, crushing it, and reprocessing it decades later will be economically prohibitive compared to just using fresh ore like we do today. The French already reprocess their waste and nuclear power provides the majority of electricity in France.
- french1234 8y ago
  We have the same issues in France, or Yucca mountain is called "Bure" in eastern France, and the project is already a political mess.
  - MertsA 8y ago
    Yes but you have way less waste to dispose of. In America, the Uranium and Plutonium that makes up the vast majority of spent nuclear fuel is not separated out from the fission products, we just get rid of it all. IIRC reprocessing is actually slightly more expensive than just mining fresh Uranium as now you need to re-enrich the fuel anyways and Uranium is plentiful enough at least for now. By separating out the spent fuel you isolate the most radioactive components and now you can avoid having to store the majority of the fuel for extremely long periods of time. Reprocessing does not eliminate all nuclear waste, it just minimizes it to only storing the highly radioactive portions instead of the inert components. It also is a prerequisite for any of the proposals that I know about for actually eliminating the nuclear waste instead of just burying it. The long lived radioactive waste could be used as a blanket around a fusion reactor that is used as a neutron source to fission the waste and generate more energy from it.