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Right now nuclear waste can and should be recycled which would reduce the amount of waste: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radioactive_waste https://en.wikipedia.

by opo 8y ago

Right now nuclear waste can and should be recycled which would reduce the amount of waste: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radioactive_waste https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radioactive_waste Soon it will be possible to use most of the waste as fuel: "...Fast reactors can "burn" long lasting nuclear transuranic waste (TRU) waste components (actinides: reactor-grade plutonium and minor actinides), turning liabilities into assets. Another major waste component, fission products (FP), would stabilize at a lower level of radioactivity than the original natural uranium ore it was attained from in two to four centuries, rather than tens of thousands of years" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Integral_fast_reactor http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Integral_fast_reactor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generation_IV_reactor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generation_IV_reactor While there are issues with nuclear power, the worry people have about nuclear waste is greatly overblown to say the least. The amounts generated are manageable and in a relatively short amount of time we can use most of this "waste" to generate electricity. (The same can't be said for coal waste - like just about everything else associated with burning coal, coal waste is an environmental diaster.)

craftyguy 8y ago
> can and should be recycled Well, it's not, and there doesn't seem to be much focus by the DoE to do so. Therefore storage of waste is still a major problem if you want to generate electricity with nuclear power plants in the US.
- SllX 8y ago
  The limiting factor is politics not technology. The politics around nuclear waste are preventing the construction of reactor designs which exist today which could take waste that exists today and use it with an output with a much more manageable half-life than the waste we have just sitting around right now.
  - craftyguy 8y ago
    > The limiting factor is politics not technology. Right... The only technical problem, how to store waste indefinitely, is only a problem because there's a larger political problem that prevents the waste from being recycled/reused. Since the political problem is highly unlikely to be resolved within a few decades, that leaves us with the technical problem of how to deal with the waste as we are currently generating/storing it.
    - nickik 8y ago
      There is already a place to store it in Finland that is going active soon. The is a great place that has been identified, tested and evaluated in the US. Most experts agree that it is a site that would work perfectly fine. But guess what, its insane political battles that stopped this from being used and that is still the case. Even so, without a end solution, there is no problem with storing it in a different place for a couple 100 years as it has a tiny volume.
- opo 8y ago
  The amounts of hi-level waste generated are manageable and no one is claiming we are in danger of imminently running out of space. Long before this becomes a problem we will either recycle the waste or use most of this "waste" to generate electricity. While there are issues with nuclear power, the worry some people have about nuclear waste is greatly overblown to say the least.

by opo 8y ago

craftyguy 8y ago

> can and should be recycled Well, it's not, and there doesn't seem to be much focus by the DoE to do so. Therefore storage of waste is still a major problem if you want to generate electricity with nuclear power plants in the US.

SllX 8y ago
The limiting factor is politics not technology. The politics around nuclear waste are preventing the construction of reactor designs which exist today which could take waste that exists today and use it with an output with a much more manageable half-life than the waste we have just sitting around right now.
- craftyguy 8y ago
  > The limiting factor is politics not technology. Right... The only technical problem, how to store waste indefinitely, is only a problem because there's a larger political problem that prevents the waste from being recycled/reused. Since the political problem is highly unlikely to be resolved within a few decades, that leaves us with the technical problem of how to deal with the waste as we are currently generating/storing it.
  - nickik 8y ago
    There is already a place to store it in Finland that is going active soon. The is a great place that has been identified, tested and evaluated in the US. Most experts agree that it is a site that would work perfectly fine. But guess what, its insane political battles that stopped this from being used and that is still the case. Even so, without a end solution, there is no problem with storing it in a different place for a couple 100 years as it has a tiny volume.
opo 8y ago
The amounts of hi-level waste generated are manageable and no one is claiming we are in danger of imminently running out of space. Long before this becomes a problem we will either recycle the waste or use most of this "waste" to generate electricity. While there are issues with nuclear power, the worry some people have about nuclear waste is greatly overblown to say the least.