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If you did that, you would end up with unbelievably expensive nuclear power plants, which is exactly what is happening (see Hinkley Point C). And that still doe

by tpm 8y ago

If you did that, you would end up with unbelievably expensive nuclear power plants, which is exactly what is happening (see Hinkley Point C). And that still does not solve the dismantling and long-term safe storage after the plants end of life, so you are pushing additional expenses to the future.

pm90 8y ago
> so you are pushing additional expenses to the future. Is that a necessarily bad thing? Serious question. The nuclear waste that we generate is concentrated in the Nuclear Reactors and thus can be tracked and managed (I'm assuming a reasonable amount of competency and lack of natural disasters etc.). We could just store it locked away in concrete containers far from any human population centers. Perhaps in the future we discover a use for all that waste. Or perhaps space travel becomes cheap enough that we start jettisoning the waste to the Sun, or any other low-cost orbital trajectory. Right now, the CO2 generate from fossil fuels is just dumped into the environment and we know that is causing climate change and is a clear, immediate and existential threat to humanity. Is the decision really that hard to make?
- caf 8y ago
  We could just store it locked away in concrete containers far from any human population centers. No, we can't, because the spent fuel waste continuously generates heat. It has to be actively cooled to stop it from catching fire and emitting all those decay products into the atmosphere.
  - jabl 8y ago
    Immediately after being removed from the reactor, the spent fuel is stored in water tanks, in order to cool them enough to prevent the fuel rods from melting. After a few years, however, the radioactivity has decayed enough that the fuel can be stored in "dry casks", essentially big concrete containers, with no water or otherwise active cooling necessary. A lot of commercial spent nuclear fuel is sitting around in such dry casks. They are expected to last 100 years or so; if we haven't figured out a better plan by then we can just shift the spent fuel into fresh dry casks.
- tpm 8y ago
  Yes, I think that's a bad thing. Once you discover a better/cheaper way of generating electrical energy, you can stop a coal plant (this is happening right now). You can't do that with a nuclear plant. My understanding is that renewable energy is curently cheaper than that from new nuclear power stations. Also if you stop fossil fuel power plants, there are still many other sources of atmospheric CO2 and methane.

by tpm 8y ago

pm90 8y ago

> so you are pushing additional expenses to the future. Is that a necessarily bad thing? Serious question. The nuclear waste that we generate is concentrated in the Nuclear Reactors and thus can be tracked and managed (I'm assuming a reasonable amount of competency and lack of natural disasters etc.). We could just store it locked away in concrete containers far from any human population centers. Perhaps in the future we discover a use for all that waste. Or perhaps space travel becomes cheap enough that we start jettisoning the waste to the Sun, or any other low-cost orbital trajectory. Right now, the CO2 generate from fossil fuels is just dumped into the environment and we know that is causing climate change and is a clear, immediate and existential threat to humanity. Is the decision really that hard to make?

caf 8y ago
We could just store it locked away in concrete containers far from any human population centers. No, we can't, because the spent fuel waste continuously generates heat. It has to be actively cooled to stop it from catching fire and emitting all those decay products into the atmosphere.
- jabl 8y ago
  Immediately after being removed from the reactor, the spent fuel is stored in water tanks, in order to cool them enough to prevent the fuel rods from melting. After a few years, however, the radioactivity has decayed enough that the fuel can be stored in "dry casks", essentially big concrete containers, with no water or otherwise active cooling necessary. A lot of commercial spent nuclear fuel is sitting around in such dry casks. They are expected to last 100 years or so; if we haven't figured out a better plan by then we can just shift the spent fuel into fresh dry casks.
tpm 8y ago
Yes, I think that's a bad thing. Once you discover a better/cheaper way of generating electrical energy, you can stop a coal plant (this is happening right now). You can't do that with a nuclear plant. My understanding is that renewable energy is curently cheaper than that from new nuclear power stations. Also if you stop fossil fuel power plants, there are still many other sources of atmospheric CO2 and methane.