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And again the question which decides the future of every nuclear power plant. Where to put the fuel after usage? No one wants it, tax payers have to pay for the
by myspy 7y ago
And again the question which decides the future of every nuclear power plant. Where to put the fuel after usage? No one wants it, tax payers have to pay for the disposal.
- isostatic 7y agoThe externalities should be covered by the cost of the electricity it generates - same as the externalities of solar or coal production.
- numlock86 7y agoWe have working solutions for storage and disposal. Yes, no one wants those, they cost a lot of money and are at best temporary. But they are practical. The same isn't true for carbon, or rather the "fuel after usage" when it comes to gas or coal power plants. I don't much like the situation or nuclear power plants either, but considering the time we have to fix this (climate change) it seems like a valid solution.
- cujo 7y ago> Yes, no one wants those, they cost a lot of money and are at best temporary. But they are practical. I don't understand this, and would love if someone could point me to a resource on it. How is it practical to essentially "kick the can" on storage/disposal? As I understand it, the plan o more or less bury the stuff and hope we figure it out in the future. I read this as "just let some future generation deal with a catastrophic failure". That sounds awfully similar to how we've dealt with the climate/environment in general.
- krageon 7y agoYou're exactly right about the current stance on long-term storage of radioactive waste.
- viraptor 7y agoWhat do you mean by "deal with a catastrophic failure" in this case? Yes, we pretty much bury the stuff. That doesn't sound like a catastrophy to me.
- numlock86 7y agoOk, storing carbon in the air and oceans is much more practical as it basically comes for free. Well, not counting in the cost of climate change of course. Burying atomic waste on the other hand requires laughable amounts of space if you want to compare atomic waste vs carbon for let's say 100 years of global energy production. We already have to deal with the "catastrophic failure" of carbon storage as a "future generation" as you already mentioned. I know a lot of people like to imagine that getting rid of atomic waste is basically some people with shovels digging holes for some hazardous yellow barrels, hoping in a thousand years no one will find them. Well, no. Atomic waste is much more manageable. And to be honest: If we had a way to say efficiently compact/solidify/whatever carbon then we would do the same with that stuff today already, just with the difference that we would leave much much much more waste behind for future generations.
- TeMPOraL 7y agoAlso, I think people keep underestimating just how little actual radioactive fuel goes into a powerplant and how little actual waste goes out.
- tomp 7y agoCan you clarify this statement? Do people (in your opinion) overestimate the amount of fuel needed, or underestimate it?
- TeMPOraL 7y agoOverestimate the amount of fuel needed and the waste generated. People seem to believe nuclear waste is a huge problem by volume, whereas in reality, it's a small and only somewhat tricky problem.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- Tomte 7y agoIf nobody wants those solutions (in other words: they are politically impossible), they are not practical at all.
- Agustus 7y agoThe United States of America already solved this issue with the perfect Mojave desert option. Unfortunately, politics caused mayhem to the program.
- TheHypnotist 7y agoTypically kept on site in concrete casks. The spent fuel takes up shockingly little space. At least around where I am, "tax payers" don't foot the bill.
- logfromblammo 7y agoAlso, the "spent" fuel can still be used as fuel in a different type of reactor (fast-neutron), or reprocessed to recover the unused fuel back into slow-neutron light-water reactor fuel. The reason why it sits in on-site storage is because on-site storage is about the only option in the US, due to anti-proliferation regulation, and the politicization of Yucca Mountain. France's 55+ reactors send their spent fuel to a single facility in La Hague, where it only consumes half the facility's capacity. The remaining capacity is resold to other countries' nuclear plants, inasmuch as other countries still operate nuclear plants after Chernobyl and Fukushima disasters. Reprocessing is about 6% the cost of their entire nuclear program. The program in turn can supply about 1/6th of the program's nuclear fuel. But they stockpile it, unenriched, whenever original processing of mined uranium ores would be cheaper. The non-Pu, non-U radioactives still have to be extracted in a separate step or be buried somewhere for their 100-year cooling-off period, but the volume is much lower than it would otherwise be without reprocessing. If Yucca Mtn were ever fully opened, and if it took only post-reprocessing waste, it could bury all the world's vitrified waste until it becomes cooler than the average parking lot, much more safely than the current status quo.
- acidburnNSA 7y agoFinland chose to solve the problem. The US could do the same. Anti-nuclear activists who claim to be worried about nuclear waste used politics to shut down our attempt at yucca mountain with the cynical goal of just making it expensive. Ironically doing so made everyone at least a little less safe. Also, tax payers don't pay for nuclear waste. Rate payers do. It's factored into the sale price of nuclear electricity via the Nuclear Waste Fund. https://psmag.com/ideas/the-hiding-place-inside-the-worlds-first-long-term-storage-facility-for-highly-radioactive-nuclear-waste https://psmag.com/ideas/the-hiding-place-inside-the-worlds-f...
- beobab 7y agoSome varieties of Gen IV can use the nuclear waste from previous generations as fuel.