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At least we have a plan to turn that off at some point in the future (2038) now. Something which can't be said about storing our nuclear waste for example...

duxup 7y ago
Coal has waste that doesn't just go away too, not the same as nuclear, but way higher volume and it doesn't go anywhere... let alone all that carbon dioxide dumped into the atmosphere.
- Krasnol 7y ago
  The thing is: it doesn't have to go anywhere. You grow nature on it and it's a hill in the end. However nuclear waste HAS to go somewhere. It has to be taken care of ($$$) and probably for millennia to come by people and governments which can do stuff we can't imagine today. Not even mentioning failed storage options we're face with today already like Asse...
  - tialaramex 7y ago
    When they say it's "not the same as nuclear" they really don't mean it's just harmless rocks. Waste from a coal plant is (somewhat) radioactive, it's full of metals and generally very toxic. If you're lucky you can find some actual use for it, e.g. as a constituent for some construction materials that will fix it in place, but you aren't going to get "a hill in the end" in a human lifetime by insisting it doesn't need to go anywhere, you just get a toxic heap of unstable black dust. If you try to grow plants on it, plants that do grow will be extremely toxic, because the heavy metals and other pollutants are drawn up into the plant.
manfredo 7y ago
Nuclear waste is a trivial problem. The amount of waste is incredibly miniscule. The entirety of the US waste generated from nuclear power generation fits into a volume the footprint of a football field and 10 yards high.
- Krasnol 7y ago
  Next year when the last nuclear reactor goes down in Germany we'd have something around 15.000 tons. Since we're not the US of A with a hell lot of space and the fact that we've been looking for a spot for years now, it's not a trivial problem at all. But maybe you can convince your government to take our waste and fix this "trivial" problem? I'm sure we'd be able to pay for it a nice sum and your current president looks like he might be stupid enough to actually do it.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  - manfredo 7y ago
    17,000 tons of uranium is less than a 10x10x10 meter cube of uranium. The US already has a disposal site constructed in the desert, but we're not using it yet. Europe also has a dig in Finland. Most of it stays on site because there's so little of it to store.
    - Krasnol 7y ago
      No, it stays on side because it's either not transportable (see Asse) or, as I said: there is no space for it. FYI: Finland is not like an US state only because it's part of Europe. It's an independent country and they will not take foreign nuclear waste. PS. those 17.000 tons are just the highly radioactive material. All together it will be 280.000 cubic meters when we're finished decommissioning.
      - manfredo 7y ago
        What's hard about transporting it? The US manages to ship these just fine [1]. These casks can be transported via semi truck and shipping container [2]. Maybe Europe doesn't have as good waste container standardization. 1 https://www.energy.gov/ne/articles/5-fast-facts-about-spent-nuclear-fuel https://www.energy.gov/ne/articles/5-fast-facts-about-spent-... 2. http://large.stanford.edu/courses/2015/ph241/avery-w2/images/f1big.jpg http://large.stanford.edu/courses/2015/ph241/avery-w2/images... Replies in comment, since HN is limiting my work VPN or something like that. > Is this a straw man or did you really not understand what I wrote? From your comment: > No, it stays on side because it's either not transportable (see Asse) You explicitly brought up ease of transport. > I also put something in there. This word in the brackets. You might have googled it up where you'd come upon pictures like that: https://media1.faz.net/ppmedia/aktuell/1203828188/1.3595409/.. https://media1.faz.net/ppmedia/aktuell/1203828188/1.3595409/.... Instead, you chose to ignore the complete rest of the comment and all the comments I wrote before and only wrote a completely irrelevant answer to something you did not understand. Congratulations for this derailment. You claimed that transportation was a barrier to storing nuclear waste, by cherry picking one specific failure. And I refuted this claim by pointing out that plenty of the world's largest nuclear operators transport waste just fine. This isn't derailment, quite the opposite. 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Onkalo_spent_nuclear_fuel_repository https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Onkalo_spent_nuclear_fuel_repo... 2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yucca_Mountain_nuclear_waste_repository https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yucca_Mountain_nuclear_waste_r...
mhh__ 7y ago
2038 is diabolically awful - the UK already goes thousands of hours a year without any coal power online, with a right-wing government that has no particular focus on climate issues. Issues with storing nuclear waste are almost entirely (as far as I'm aware) idiot policy from past rushes to generate weapons material and NIMBY-ism. Nuclear waste isn't harmless, but coal power stations kill people every day.
- Krasnol 7y ago
  Good for you! Congratulations! Most of us in Germany would also love to see this happen earlier. Unfortunately the exit date is a political decision based upon the fact that the regions where jobs in coal would be lost are already tending towards a really really right party here and they are very much pro coal. So going faster is not really an option here since you can be sure that them winning, would revert those decisions very fast. > Issues with storing nuclear waste are almost entirely (as far as I'm aware) idiot policy from past rushes to generate weapons material and NIMBY-ism. Well that's not true. As most of the times when downplaying nuclear waste is concerned. The last time we chose a nice salty mine to store the stuff, it started having holes here and there with a nice groundwater inflow that now needs to be pumped out and as always with nuclear power: in the end it's the taxpayer who needs to jump in and pay it all. Isn't that nice? All that money that could be invested into renewable energy, expanding grids and other nice things is now being wasted upon fixing errors from an era where everybody believed nuclear is the way to go. Good we're past that now. PS. that "nuclear vs. coal" story the nuclear lobby is pushing so much lately is an ignorant myth because of the reasons I've outlined above. Not a single coal plant would have been turned off if we'd left nuclear run on and ignored the environmentalists who are against nuclear AND coal in this country so there is absolutely no reason to build arguments based upon this myth.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]

duxup 7y ago

Coal has waste that doesn't just go away too, not the same as nuclear, but way higher volume and it doesn't go anywhere... let alone all that carbon dioxide dumped into the atmosphere.

Krasnol 7y ago
The thing is: it doesn't have to go anywhere. You grow nature on it and it's a hill in the end. However nuclear waste HAS to go somewhere. It has to be taken care of ($$$) and probably for millennia to come by people and governments which can do stuff we can't imagine today. Not even mentioning failed storage options we're face with today already like Asse...
- tialaramex 7y ago
  When they say it's "not the same as nuclear" they really don't mean it's just harmless rocks. Waste from a coal plant is (somewhat) radioactive, it's full of metals and generally very toxic. If you're lucky you can find some actual use for it, e.g. as a constituent for some construction materials that will fix it in place, but you aren't going to get "a hill in the end" in a human lifetime by insisting it doesn't need to go anywhere, you just get a toxic heap of unstable black dust. If you try to grow plants on it, plants that do grow will be extremely toxic, because the heavy metals and other pollutants are drawn up into the plant.

manfredo 7y ago

Nuclear waste is a trivial problem. The amount of waste is incredibly miniscule. The entirety of the US waste generated from nuclear power generation fits into a volume the footprint of a football field and 10 yards high.

Krasnol 7y ago
Next year when the last nuclear reactor goes down in Germany we'd have something around 15.000 tons. Since we're not the US of A with a hell lot of space and the fact that we've been looking for a spot for years now, it's not a trivial problem at all. But maybe you can convince your government to take our waste and fix this "trivial" problem? I'm sure we'd be able to pay for it a nice sum and your current president looks like he might be stupid enough to actually do it.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- manfredo 7y ago
  17,000 tons of uranium is less than a 10x10x10 meter cube of uranium. The US already has a disposal site constructed in the desert, but we're not using it yet. Europe also has a dig in Finland. Most of it stays on site because there's so little of it to store.
  - Krasnol 7y ago
    No, it stays on side because it's either not transportable (see Asse) or, as I said: there is no space for it. FYI: Finland is not like an US state only because it's part of Europe. It's an independent country and they will not take foreign nuclear waste. PS. those 17.000 tons are just the highly radioactive material. All together it will be 280.000 cubic meters when we're finished decommissioning.
    - manfredo 7y ago
      What's hard about transporting it? The US manages to ship these just fine [1]. These casks can be transported via semi truck and shipping container [2]. Maybe Europe doesn't have as good waste container standardization. 1 https://www.energy.gov/ne/articles/5-fast-facts-about-spent-nuclear-fuel https://www.energy.gov/ne/articles/5-fast-facts-about-spent-... 2. http://large.stanford.edu/courses/2015/ph241/avery-w2/images/f1big.jpg http://large.stanford.edu/courses/2015/ph241/avery-w2/images... Replies in comment, since HN is limiting my work VPN or something like that. > Is this a straw man or did you really not understand what I wrote? From your comment: > No, it stays on side because it's either not transportable (see Asse) You explicitly brought up ease of transport. > I also put something in there. This word in the brackets. You might have googled it up where you'd come upon pictures like that: https://media1.faz.net/ppmedia/aktuell/1203828188/1.3595409/.. https://media1.faz.net/ppmedia/aktuell/1203828188/1.3595409/.... Instead, you chose to ignore the complete rest of the comment and all the comments I wrote before and only wrote a completely irrelevant answer to something you did not understand. Congratulations for this derailment. You claimed that transportation was a barrier to storing nuclear waste, by cherry picking one specific failure. And I refuted this claim by pointing out that plenty of the world's largest nuclear operators transport waste just fine. This isn't derailment, quite the opposite. 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Onkalo_spent_nuclear_fuel_repository https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Onkalo_spent_nuclear_fuel_repo... 2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yucca_Mountain_nuclear_waste_repository https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yucca_Mountain_nuclear_waste_r...

mhh__ 7y ago

2038 is diabolically awful - the UK already goes thousands of hours a year without any coal power online, with a right-wing government that has no particular focus on climate issues. Issues with storing nuclear waste are almost entirely (as far as I'm aware) idiot policy from past rushes to generate weapons material and NIMBY-ism. Nuclear waste isn't harmless, but coal power stations kill people every day.

Krasnol 7y ago
Good for you! Congratulations! Most of us in Germany would also love to see this happen earlier. Unfortunately the exit date is a political decision based upon the fact that the regions where jobs in coal would be lost are already tending towards a really really right party here and they are very much pro coal. So going faster is not really an option here since you can be sure that them winning, would revert those decisions very fast. > Issues with storing nuclear waste are almost entirely (as far as I'm aware) idiot policy from past rushes to generate weapons material and NIMBY-ism. Well that's not true. As most of the times when downplaying nuclear waste is concerned. The last time we chose a nice salty mine to store the stuff, it started having holes here and there with a nice groundwater inflow that now needs to be pumped out and as always with nuclear power: in the end it's the taxpayer who needs to jump in and pay it all. Isn't that nice? All that money that could be invested into renewable energy, expanding grids and other nice things is now being wasted upon fixing errors from an era where everybody believed nuclear is the way to go. Good we're past that now. PS. that "nuclear vs. coal" story the nuclear lobby is pushing so much lately is an ignorant myth because of the reasons I've outlined above. Not a single coal plant would have been turned off if we'd left nuclear run on and ignored the environmentalists who are against nuclear AND coal in this country so there is absolutely no reason to build arguments based upon this myth.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]