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> My main concern with nuclear power is that they still haven’t managed to create any active long term storage of the nuclear waste. And before that, we don’t k
by glogla 6y ago
> My main concern with nuclear power is that they still haven’t managed to create any active long term storage of the nuclear waste. And before that, we don’t know the full actual cost of the energy.
That's a red herring. The "waste" has a lot of energy remaining (otherwise, it would not be radioactive [1]). There are reactor designs that can use "waste" from current reactors as fuel.
Only, we're not building them. Because coal is better or whatever.
[1]: that's bit of a shortcut, but elements that undergo radioactive decay on timescales that make them dangerous are unstable enough, you can put them in a reactor and poke them to undergo that decay faster and get you electricity.
- alex_young 6y ago> That's a red herring. The "waste" has a lot of energy remaining (otherwise, it would not be radioactive [1]). There are reactor designs that can use "waste" from current reactors as fuel. Don't these reactors produce nuclear weapons products? Seems like that may be a reason we don't want a lot of them around.
- dodobirdlord 6y agoRather, their fuel is plutonium. There's lots of plutonium in spent reactor fuel that can be extracted into more pure plutonium and used as fuel, but also to build nuclear weapons.
- pfdietz 6y ago> Only, we're not building them. Because coal is better or whatever. No, we're not building them because they are more expensive than ordinary LWRs, uranium is cheap, and separated plutonium from spent fuel has negative value.
- Ma8ee 6y agoNo, it is not a red herring. It doesn't matter that it in theory has a lot of energy remaining if there isn't any cost-efficient and safe way to extract it. And the reason we aren't building them is because other forms of energy, including wind, water and sun, are cheaper.