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No there isn't. The waste is very limited and quite benign compared to fossil fuel waste. Take these turbine blades. Ok, you have to put them into a landfill af
by hristov 7y ago
No there isn't. The waste is very limited and quite benign compared to fossil fuel waste. Take these turbine blades. Ok, you have to put them into a landfill after 20 years of use, but as far as things you have to put into a landfill, it is the best you can ask for -- it does not pose a danger to the environment, it will not leak poisons into the groundwater. More or less it will just sit there forever.
In comparison, coal and oil produce air pollution that you cannot sequester, that you have to release in the air for people to breather. Oil further produces liquid waste that is very difficult to sequester and regularly destroys the environment, and poisons drinking water. Coal further produces massive amounts of coal ash, that is incredibly dangerous and hard to store and regularly gets released into the air or the drinking water when hit by extreme whether.
Nuclear produces waste that must be continuously cooled at great cost so that it does not set itself on fire and release massive amounts of radioactive gasses. Even then, the complex cooling systems regularly fail, and do occasionally release massive amounts of radioactive gasses.
All of the above not only produce much more waste but their waste is far more dangerous and damaging.
- keanzu 7y ago> Nuclear produces waste that must be continuously cooled at great cost so that it does not set itself on fire and release massive amounts of radioactive gasses. Seems like you are talking about high-level waste (HLW) which is just 0.2% [1] of all radioactive waste by volume. The cooling you are referring to is a passive cooling pond [2], there's no active cooling. There are no radioactive gases escaping from the spent fuel - not small or massive amounts. Spent nuclear fuel is a solid. Liquid waste is from weapons programs, not power generation. [1] https://www.world-nuclear.org/information-library/nuclear-fuel-cycle/nuclear-wastes/radioactive-wastes-myths-and-realities.aspx https://www.world-nuclear.org/information-library/nuclear-fu... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spent_fuel_pool https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spent_fuel_pool Is radioactive fuel wildly more difficult and dangerous to manage than a few thousand inert turbine blades? Absolutely.