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Yeah man, I dunno either ... I think "poisonous" is understating it somewhat. We're talking about substances that will remain toxic for thousands of years, and

by rusk 7y ago

Yeah man, I dunno either ... I think "poisonous" is understating it somewhat. We're talking about substances that will remain toxic for thousands of years, and are quite happy to go everywhere they can if there is some issue with containment. I appreciate that you have a conviction that this is a problem, but you're coming across a bit hand-wavy in your arguments. I'd prefer to see concrete solutions (and I don't mean nuclear waste encased in concrete) than rhetoric as a means to address my concerns.

roenxi 7y ago
> you're coming across a bit hand-wavy in your arguments. I'd prefer to see concrete solutions It is an order-of-magnitude argument; a bit like arguing whether $1 billion or $1 million is more dollars. The difference between the two figures is almost exactly a billion dollars because there really is no comparison between orders of magnitude. Uranium is something like 6 orders of magnitude more energy dense than fossil fuels (so more of a trillion to a million) - the waste is a lot worse too, but it is nowhere near 6 orders of magnitude more dangerous, because that would suggest it is killing more people than the population of the earth already. Which it is not ^. You can say you want something solved, but the problem you want solved is several orders of magnitude smaller than the problems everyone currently shrugs off as totally normal. The orders of magnitude are so different they do not need to be solved and can be handwaved. The nuclear waste problem is incomparably small compared to the fossil fuel problem which has proven to be tolerable despite 20+ years of resistance by Green groups. It is also probably going to turn out to be smaller than the waste problem fabricating renewable will have by the same order of magnitude issue. ^ The evidence suggests it is actually not that much worse because it is so easy to isolate. It is practically achievable for nuclear waste to do less actual harm unit-to-unit than coal.
- rusk 7y ago
  You're comparing magnitudes there ... but I've a feeling there's a base-rate somewhere, relating to how dangerous just a relatively small amount of nuclear waste can be if it gets into groundwater or something. The real problem with nuclear is that it's a one way only system. The effects of other forms of fuel can in theory be sequestered eventually. Sequestration of nuclear waste is exactly something that yout don't want to happen. As you say, it's a matter of scale. A limited amount of nuclear power is probably fine, and safe. But it can never be the "solution" to our energy problems until the various problems are solved satisfactorily.
  - vidarh 7y ago
    We could grind nuclear waste from current nuclear plants into fine powder and intentionally blow it into the atmosphere and still cause fewer deaths than coal, as well as cause the release of less radioactive material, as the coal industry causes huge amounts of uranium dust to be released in the air. So as it stands, if we look at the real world instead of some hypothetical future, we continue to depend on types of power that causes not just the release of more harmful material, but the release of more radioactive material than nuclear. If we get to a point where we have fully supplanted fossil fuels, and we need to consider whether to continue building nuclear or replace it with alternatives, then the situation may look different, but at the moment anything that slows the replacement of things like coal causes massive amounts of harm, both environmentally and in killing people. We could have a Chernobyl a year, and it'd still cause us less harm than the continued dependence on coal.
    - throw0101a 7y ago
      > We could grind nuclear waste from current nuclear plants into fine powder and intentionally blow it into the atmosphere and still cause fewer deaths than coal, as well as cause the release of less radioactive material, as the coal industry causes huge amounts of uranium dust to be released in the air. How does the math work on this? It seems... hyperbolic.
      - rusk 7y ago
        Yeah there’s a lot of rhetoric at play here. Very little in the realm of hard details.
      - samatman 7y ago
        There exists coal with more fissile energy, in the form of heavy isotopes such as thorium and uranium, than it has chemical energy, in the form of carbon-carbon bonds. This is then burned in power plants, releasing the radioactive material into the atmosphere, and leaching it into groundwater from exposed piles of fly ash.
      - vidarh 7y ago
dsfyu404ed 7y ago
>We're talking about substances that will remain toxic for thousands of years Most substances are toxic forever. If you bury mercury or lead in a hole a dig it up in a few million years it will be just as toxic. Radioactive substances are an anomaly in that they become less toxic over time.
- labawi 7y ago
  To be fair, many substances in the nuclear industry, including the fuel, are quite toxic even chemically.
p_l 7y ago
Fast reactors as well as other specialized designs can burn down fuel that is currently stored as "waste", and just don't produce such long-lived isotopes. For examples, the half-life of output products from uranium-fueled SVBR-100 is ~550 years, and that can be reduced further by several technologies that are now available.
Already__Taken 7y ago
> and are quite happy to go everywhere they can if there is some issue with containment. It's turned into glass as far as I know (which isn't much). It's not like some ooze to leak out.

by rusk 7y ago

roenxi 7y ago

> you're coming across a bit hand-wavy in your arguments. I'd prefer to see concrete solutions It is an order-of-magnitude argument; a bit like arguing whether $1 billion or $1 million is more dollars. The difference between the two figures is almost exactly a billion dollars because there really is no comparison between orders of magnitude. Uranium is something like 6 orders of magnitude more energy dense than fossil fuels (so more of a trillion to a million) - the waste is a lot worse too, but it is nowhere near 6 orders of magnitude more dangerous, because that would suggest it is killing more people than the population of the earth already. Which it is not ^. You can say you want something solved, but the problem you want solved is several orders of magnitude smaller than the problems everyone currently shrugs off as totally normal. The orders of magnitude are so different they do not need to be solved and can be handwaved. The nuclear waste problem is incomparably small compared to the fossil fuel problem which has proven to be tolerable despite 20+ years of resistance by Green groups. It is also probably going to turn out to be smaller than the waste problem fabricating renewable will have by the same order of magnitude issue. ^ The evidence suggests it is actually not that much worse because it is so easy to isolate. It is practically achievable for nuclear waste to do less actual harm unit-to-unit than coal.

rusk 7y ago
You're comparing magnitudes there ... but I've a feeling there's a base-rate somewhere, relating to how dangerous just a relatively small amount of nuclear waste can be if it gets into groundwater or something. The real problem with nuclear is that it's a one way only system. The effects of other forms of fuel can in theory be sequestered eventually. Sequestration of nuclear waste is exactly something that yout don't want to happen. As you say, it's a matter of scale. A limited amount of nuclear power is probably fine, and safe. But it can never be the "solution" to our energy problems until the various problems are solved satisfactorily.
- vidarh 7y ago
  We could grind nuclear waste from current nuclear plants into fine powder and intentionally blow it into the atmosphere and still cause fewer deaths than coal, as well as cause the release of less radioactive material, as the coal industry causes huge amounts of uranium dust to be released in the air. So as it stands, if we look at the real world instead of some hypothetical future, we continue to depend on types of power that causes not just the release of more harmful material, but the release of more radioactive material than nuclear. If we get to a point where we have fully supplanted fossil fuels, and we need to consider whether to continue building nuclear or replace it with alternatives, then the situation may look different, but at the moment anything that slows the replacement of things like coal causes massive amounts of harm, both environmentally and in killing people. We could have a Chernobyl a year, and it'd still cause us less harm than the continued dependence on coal.
  - throw0101a 7y ago
    > We could grind nuclear waste from current nuclear plants into fine powder and intentionally blow it into the atmosphere and still cause fewer deaths than coal, as well as cause the release of less radioactive material, as the coal industry causes huge amounts of uranium dust to be released in the air. How does the math work on this? It seems... hyperbolic.
    - rusk 7y ago
      Yeah there’s a lot of rhetoric at play here. Very little in the realm of hard details.
    - samatman 7y ago
      There exists coal with more fissile energy, in the form of heavy isotopes such as thorium and uranium, than it has chemical energy, in the form of carbon-carbon bonds. This is then burned in power plants, releasing the radioactive material into the atmosphere, and leaching it into groundwater from exposed piles of fly ash.
    - vidarh 7y ago

dsfyu404ed 7y ago

>We're talking about substances that will remain toxic for thousands of years Most substances are toxic forever. If you bury mercury or lead in a hole a dig it up in a few million years it will be just as toxic. Radioactive substances are an anomaly in that they become less toxic over time.

labawi 7y ago
To be fair, many substances in the nuclear industry, including the fuel, are quite toxic even chemically.

p_l 7y ago

Fast reactors as well as other specialized designs can burn down fuel that is currently stored as "waste", and just don't produce such long-lived isotopes. For examples, the half-life of output products from uranium-fueled SVBR-100 is ~550 years, and that can be reduced further by several technologies that are now available.

Already__Taken 7y ago

> and are quite happy to go everywhere they can if there is some issue with containment. It's turned into glass as far as I know (which isn't much). It's not like some ooze to leak out.