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What about all the nuclear waste that is already building up and has no where to go? All of it is sitting in water pools outside of the reactor because there is
by downrightmike 8y ago
What about all the nuclear waste that is already building up and has no where to go? All of it is sitting in water pools outside of the reactor because there is no where to put it so that it can decay safely. And there are all the issues with the companies who make the fuel rods. There was a incident where a employee thought it would be a cool picture if they put the rods next to each other. They were literally lucky that it didn't cause an uncontrolled reaction. Those companies have a long track record of lax policies and being behind schedule on making the fuel in the first place. It is a extremely deadly and long lived threat, and that is before we put people into the equation.
- yostrovs 8y agoRead up on Yucca Mountain. It was a reasonable proposal for storage.
- downrightmike 8y agoThe project has been basically on hold since 1987. https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2018/06/03/yucca-mountain-congress-works-revive-dormant-nuclear-waste-dump/664153002/ https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2018/06/03/yucc...
- davidf18 8y agoTrump has resumed preparing Yucca mountain asking for $120 million after Obama halted it in 2011 for political reasons (according to the GAO). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yucca_Mountain_nuclear_waste_repository https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yucca_Mountain_nuclear_waste_r...
- credit_guy 8y ago>What about all the nuclear waste that is already building up and has no where to go? The design that Bill Gates advocates would use this exact waste as fuel [1], or more precisely the long-lived isotopes in the waste. The remaining isotopes decay by themselves in relatively short time (years, decades, at most a few centuries). > There was a incident where a employee thought it would be a cool picture if they put the rods next to each other. They were literally lucky that it didn't cause an uncontrolled reaction. I remember reading about some incident like this. I don't believe the stuff though. If it was that easy to create an "uncontrolled chain reaction" it would be very easy to build a bomb. You wouldn't need an entire Manhattan project to do that. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traveling_wave_reactor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traveling_wave_reactor
- slededit 8y agoCriticality events don’t end up as massive explosions without careful design to keep the parts close enough for enough time to release the energy. Otherwise the force of the reaction will move the material away from each other and “snuff out” the reaction. They can still release substantial amounts of radiation though, and one such event caused the death of Louis Slotin during the project.
- credit_guy 8y agoFair enough. Criticality accidents happen, and wikipedia has an entry [1], stating that there were at least 60 recorded cases causing 21 deaths. > They were literally lucky that it didn't cause an uncontrolled reaction. Well, they were literally lucky in this case and not so lucky in some other cases. Not the end of the world either way. [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticality_accident#Recorded_incidents https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticality_accident#Recorded_...
- miemo 8y ago> What about all the nuclear waste that is already building up and has no where to go? If only it could disappear into the atmosphere like coal waste does, right? Storing the waste in solid form is a good thing