5 ms·

How is that?

roenxi 8y ago
We burn a tiny amount of fuel to get a lot of nuclear energy, and we burn a huge amount of coal to get a lot of thermal energy. You need to consume orders of magnitude more coal than atomic fuel to get the same amount of energy; so the trace elements in coal become a big deal. The radiation from coal isn't even the worst contaminant, you get all sorts of trace elements. Sulphur (causes acid rain around the power plant) leaps to mind, and there are other really nasty impurities. It is hard to understate the tiny, tiny nature of the nuclear waste 'problem'. Storm in a teacup stuff. It is barely an industrial quantity of dangerous material, and the energetic bits are Very Likely to be recyclable as diluted fuel for a more advanced reactor.
- michaelmrose 8y ago
  Pretending nuclear waste isn't an actual problem basically means your entire analysis is disastrously wrong. Consider contributing after doing further analysis.
  - roenxi 8y ago
    It means my analysis is informed by a working knowledge of how we treat existing risk factors that affect human society. Everything I've seen suggests that in practice the macro-scale threat posed by radioactive material is similar to that posed by lead, but easier to deal with because the volumes are so tiny we can afford to isolate it completely from the biosphere. We produce tiny amounts of waste, I can't find a great source but the numbers seem to be of the order of 10,000 to 100,000 m^3 of material that needs special handling and a much larger quantity that can be scientifically measured to have come from a nuclear plant if you have the right equipment. Those are tiny numbers compared to what industrial processes working with waste have to deal with (for scale, 1 small mine open pit coal mine would move that much material a week). People are trying to protect the world from smaller risks than the environment already faces. It isn't rational, and it isn't very clever either. The volume of the problem is truly tiny compared to stuff we just walk on by as a society.
    - Faark 8y ago
      Your numbers seem way off. My first google results [0] mentions a single plant producing more than 100,000m³ waste requiring special treatment. Most of it on the less bad end, though. Or are you just talking about fuel waste and conveniently ignore everything else? [1] compares solid waste from different power sources. Little info for solar/wind. Both nuclear and coal seem bad. But none of us wants to build coal plants anyway. But i sure as hell also don't want lots of public resources spend for new nuclear that is decommissioned a few years later once more environmentally friendly alternatives go online. Especially if those resources could accelerate renewables in the first place. I have no problem with keeping existing nuclear plants running as long as they are safe. I'd love read better concise summaries from official sources, if you can recommend some. [0] https://inis.iaea.org/collection/NCLCollectionStore/_Public/46/062/46062902.pdf https://inis.iaea.org/collection/NCLCollectionStore/_Public/... [1] https://www.energy.gov/sites/prod/files/2017/01/f34/Environment%20Baseline%20Vol.%203--Solid%20Waste%20from%20the%20Operation%20and%20Decommissioning%20of%20Power%20Plants.pdf https://www.energy.gov/sites/prod/files/2017/01/f34/Environm...
      - roenxi 8y ago
        I don't have any decent sources on waste. I wasn't ignoring decommissioning, but what I was trying to and failing to communicate was per-annum figures (comparing per annum production vs. the storage required over the same time period). From a volumetric perspective compared to what we know how to handle industrially the numbers are tiny. I strongly suspect the only reason we treat the waste with such care is because there is so little of it that that sort of care is feasible. I've seen a big lead mine in operation. I wouldn't live anywhere near to one of them, containing the waste is basically impossible. With nuclear waste, there is so little we could literally ship worldwide waste production to the middle of the Sahara and just dump it there. 100,000m³ just isn't that big a number - I mean, we wouldn't because it is a silly idea, not because we can't. It isn't a very responsible approach, but in practice it would work. The volumes are small enough that in my view world-wide nuclear waste storage crosses the boundary from a technical issue to an economic and political issue. There are lots of uninhabitable wastelands that have been created here and there by industrial processes. One more in a location chosen to be remote would make literally no difference given the scale of the benefits. There are a lot of deserts out there.
  - loup-vaillant 8y ago
    > Your conclusion is different than mine, therefore you are talking nonesense. Consider coming back when you get closer to my level of knowledge. Be careful about how you know what you think you know. How informed are you about these matters? Have you taken a good look at the numbers? I know I haven't. How trustworthy are your sources? Why do you trust your sources? Are they expert or something, or do they happen to appeal to you emotionally? This is a problem at the global scale we're talking about. We need good solid numbers. The number of articles in the newspaper for instance is not a good solid number. Emotion is not a good number.
  - ci5er 8y ago
    It's a huge issue that I work with an international team on. It's also almost politically impossible to address in the us. Technology (for safe isolation of waste) is not the problem. Democracy is. So, it collects in aging leaky dams around each plant because it can not be moved and can not be centrally disposed of.
- godelski 8y ago
  > the energetic bits are Very Likely to be recyclable as diluted fuel for a more advanced reactor. ~17% of France's electricity comes from recycled nuclear[0]. Just the recycled part (75% is from total nuclear). [0] https://www.world-nuclear.org/information-library/country-profiles/countries-a-f/france.aspx https://www.world-nuclear.org/information-library/country-pr...

How is that?

We burn a tiny amount of fuel to get a lot of nuclear energy, and we burn a huge amount of coal to get a lot of thermal energy. You need to consume orders of magnitude more coal than atomic fuel to get the same amount of energy; so the trace elements in coal become a big deal. The radiation from coal isn't even the worst contaminant, you get all sorts of trace elements. Sulphur (causes acid rain around the power plant) leaps to mind, and there are other really nasty impurities. It is hard to understate the tiny, tiny nature of the nuclear waste 'problem'. Storm in a teacup stuff. It is barely an industrial quantity of dangerous material, and the energetic bits are Very Likely to be recyclable as diluted fuel for a more advanced reactor.

michaelmrose 8y ago
Pretending nuclear waste isn't an actual problem basically means your entire analysis is disastrously wrong. Consider contributing after doing further analysis.
- roenxi 8y ago
  It means my analysis is informed by a working knowledge of how we treat existing risk factors that affect human society. Everything I've seen suggests that in practice the macro-scale threat posed by radioactive material is similar to that posed by lead, but easier to deal with because the volumes are so tiny we can afford to isolate it completely from the biosphere. We produce tiny amounts of waste, I can't find a great source but the numbers seem to be of the order of 10,000 to 100,000 m^3 of material that needs special handling and a much larger quantity that can be scientifically measured to have come from a nuclear plant if you have the right equipment. Those are tiny numbers compared to what industrial processes working with waste have to deal with (for scale, 1 small mine open pit coal mine would move that much material a week). People are trying to protect the world from smaller risks than the environment already faces. It isn't rational, and it isn't very clever either. The volume of the problem is truly tiny compared to stuff we just walk on by as a society.
  - Faark 8y ago
    Your numbers seem way off. My first google results [0] mentions a single plant producing more than 100,000m³ waste requiring special treatment. Most of it on the less bad end, though. Or are you just talking about fuel waste and conveniently ignore everything else? [1] compares solid waste from different power sources. Little info for solar/wind. Both nuclear and coal seem bad. But none of us wants to build coal plants anyway. But i sure as hell also don't want lots of public resources spend for new nuclear that is decommissioned a few years later once more environmentally friendly alternatives go online. Especially if those resources could accelerate renewables in the first place. I have no problem with keeping existing nuclear plants running as long as they are safe. I'd love read better concise summaries from official sources, if you can recommend some. [0] https://inis.iaea.org/collection/NCLCollectionStore/_Public/46/062/46062902.pdf https://inis.iaea.org/collection/NCLCollectionStore/_Public/... [1] https://www.energy.gov/sites/prod/files/2017/01/f34/Environment%20Baseline%20Vol.%203--Solid%20Waste%20from%20the%20Operation%20and%20Decommissioning%20of%20Power%20Plants.pdf https://www.energy.gov/sites/prod/files/2017/01/f34/Environm...
    - roenxi 8y ago
      I don't have any decent sources on waste. I wasn't ignoring decommissioning, but what I was trying to and failing to communicate was per-annum figures (comparing per annum production vs. the storage required over the same time period). From a volumetric perspective compared to what we know how to handle industrially the numbers are tiny. I strongly suspect the only reason we treat the waste with such care is because there is so little of it that that sort of care is feasible. I've seen a big lead mine in operation. I wouldn't live anywhere near to one of them, containing the waste is basically impossible. With nuclear waste, there is so little we could literally ship worldwide waste production to the middle of the Sahara and just dump it there. 100,000m³ just isn't that big a number - I mean, we wouldn't because it is a silly idea, not because we can't. It isn't a very responsible approach, but in practice it would work. The volumes are small enough that in my view world-wide nuclear waste storage crosses the boundary from a technical issue to an economic and political issue. There are lots of uninhabitable wastelands that have been created here and there by industrial processes. One more in a location chosen to be remote would make literally no difference given the scale of the benefits. There are a lot of deserts out there.
- loup-vaillant 8y ago
  > Your conclusion is different than mine, therefore you are talking nonesense. Consider coming back when you get closer to my level of knowledge. Be careful about how you know what you think you know. How informed are you about these matters? Have you taken a good look at the numbers? I know I haven't. How trustworthy are your sources? Why do you trust your sources? Are they expert or something, or do they happen to appeal to you emotionally? This is a problem at the global scale we're talking about. We need good solid numbers. The number of articles in the newspaper for instance is not a good solid number. Emotion is not a good number.
- ci5er 8y ago
  It's a huge issue that I work with an international team on. It's also almost politically impossible to address in the us. Technology (for safe isolation of waste) is not the problem. Democracy is. So, it collects in aging leaky dams around each plant because it can not be moved and can not be centrally disposed of.
godelski 8y ago
> the energetic bits are Very Likely to be recyclable as diluted fuel for a more advanced reactor. ~17% of France's electricity comes from recycled nuclear[0]. Just the recycled part (75% is from total nuclear). [0] https://www.world-nuclear.org/information-library/country-profiles/countries-a-f/france.aspx https://www.world-nuclear.org/information-library/country-pr...