4 ms·

You seem to be knowledgeable. What do we do with the waste?

arcticbull 7y ago
There is an unbelievably small quantity of nuclear waste produced from traditional power plants as compared to other power sources. Coal plants likely release more total radiation into the environment than nuclear plants -- 100X per unit energy according to [2]. Breeder reactors and Fast Nuclear Reactors (FNRs) produce orders of magnitude less total nuclear waste [1] than traditional plants. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fast-neutron_reactor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fast-neutron_reactor [2] https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/coal-ash-is-more-radioactive-than-nuclear-waste/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/coal-ash-is-more-...
- acidburnNSA 7y ago
  Fast breeder reactors make sense when uranium is expensive or scarce. They and their reprocessing facilities are universally more complex, expensive, and unreliable than their water-cooled brethren. In today's fracking world, we need to bring nuclear costs down. Breeders will make costs go up, almost for sure (I study the history of this, and current efforts, very carefully). Honestly just disposing of nuclear waste in deep geologic repositories is a really pragmatic and relatively cheap approach for now. If we do end up ramping nuclear to 50% of the world energy supply, then breeding will likely become important. With breeders, we can use uranium dissolved in seawater effectively forever (hundreds of millions or even billions of years at 10x world scale consumption, effectively fully renewable).
  - tremon 7y ago
    Breeder reactors are not intended to bring down costs, they are intended to bring down the scale of the waste problem. As someone already said upthread, there is a $40Bn fund for managing said waste, paid for by current-generation nuclear plants. If the breeder reactors reduce waste by 90% (low estimate, most figures predict 99%), that frees up $36Bn to offset the higher cost of breeder reactors.
    - arcticbull 7y ago
      The waste problem is sorely overstated, the waste from the operation of all nuclear reactors in the history of the United States fits on one football field.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
acidburnNSA 7y ago
I just typed out a detailed response to someone else who asked the same thing in this same thread. I hope you'll excuse me just referring you to that: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20817030 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20817030
adrianN 7y ago
We put it in breeder reactors and extract the remaining 98% of the energy it contains.

There is an unbelievably small quantity of nuclear waste produced from traditional power plants as compared to other power sources. Coal plants likely release more total radiation into the environment than nuclear plants -- 100X per unit energy according to [2]. Breeder reactors and Fast Nuclear Reactors (FNRs) produce orders of magnitude less total nuclear waste [1] than traditional plants. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fast-neutron_reactor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fast-neutron_reactor [2] https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/coal-ash-is-more-radioactive-than-nuclear-waste/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/coal-ash-is-more-...

acidburnNSA 7y ago
Fast breeder reactors make sense when uranium is expensive or scarce. They and their reprocessing facilities are universally more complex, expensive, and unreliable than their water-cooled brethren. In today's fracking world, we need to bring nuclear costs down. Breeders will make costs go up, almost for sure (I study the history of this, and current efforts, very carefully). Honestly just disposing of nuclear waste in deep geologic repositories is a really pragmatic and relatively cheap approach for now. If we do end up ramping nuclear to 50% of the world energy supply, then breeding will likely become important. With breeders, we can use uranium dissolved in seawater effectively forever (hundreds of millions or even billions of years at 10x world scale consumption, effectively fully renewable).
- tremon 7y ago
  Breeder reactors are not intended to bring down costs, they are intended to bring down the scale of the waste problem. As someone already said upthread, there is a $40Bn fund for managing said waste, paid for by current-generation nuclear plants. If the breeder reactors reduce waste by 90% (low estimate, most figures predict 99%), that frees up $36Bn to offset the higher cost of breeder reactors.
  - arcticbull 7y ago
    The waste problem is sorely overstated, the waste from the operation of all nuclear reactors in the history of the United States fits on one football field.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]

acidburnNSA 7y ago

I just typed out a detailed response to someone else who asked the same thing in this same thread. I hope you'll excuse me just referring you to that: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20817030 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20817030

adrianN 7y ago

We put it in breeder reactors and extract the remaining 98% of the energy it contains.