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> Mining and transport of uranium ore, processed fuel and nuclear waste. I don’t know how significant those are. Completely and utterly insignificant, to the p

> Mining and transport of uranium ore, processed fuel and nuclear waste. I don’t know how significant those are. Completely and utterly insignificant, to the point where it is downright insulting when they are brought into a discussion about how 10000 people die of coal-related air quality problems every year in Europe. > 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. Sure we have. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Onkalo_spent_nuclear_fuel_repository https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Onkalo_spent_nuclear_fuel_repo...

toyg 6y ago
> Sure we have. Basically we just bury it and hope for the best, it will be someone else's problem anyway. > The Onkalo repository is expected to be large enough to accept canisters [...] until around 2120.[13] At this point, the final encapsulation and burial will take place, and the access tunnel will be backfilled and sealed. We go from "dig it out" to "dig it in". Very sustainable. /s
- annamargot 6y ago
  How much volume are we talking here and how frequently would it need to be disposed of? I recall reading somewhere that it’s a very manageable amount.
  - renaudg 6y ago
    Indeed. For example, the 9TWh required to power France's high speed train fleet for a year produce 200kg of nuclear waste. Since the beginning of the country's nuclear programme, the total cumulative volume is 3650m3 of waste : one olympic swimming pool's worth of it. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21996751 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21996751
    - ShroudedNight 6y ago
      What percentage of potential energy is extracted? My (old, probably out of date) understanding is that (at least in Canada) nuclear facilities limit themselves to extracting some tiny quantity of the potential energy in order to avoid producing material that could be made into nuclear weapons.
      - dodobirdlord 6y ago
        This is the case in most of the world, but I believe that in France spent fuel is reprocessed.
        pfdietz 6y ago
        The French have admitted the reprocessing doesn't save them any money, in fact it's more expensive than not reprocessing. But the cost is still only a very small part of the cost of nuclear power.
      - adrianN 6y ago
        Normal nuclear reactors only extract single-digit percentages of the energy. You want to use breeder reactors to actually burn all the nuclear fuel. The "waste" still contains almost all of its energy. Breeder reactors are of course unpopular politically, because they create raw material for nuclear bombs as part of their normal operation.
        pfdietz 6y ago
        They are unpopular for other reasons. The first is that they are more expensive than burner reactors. With uranium ore being cheap and plentiful, and with the energy cost of enrichment so low now (gas centrifuges using 50x less energy than gaseous diffusion), there's no economic case for reprocessing, let along breeding. The other problem is that fast breeders are inherently dangerous, with the possibility of fast supercriticality lurking in a serious accident. Edward Teller famously pointed this out publicly in 1967: "For the fast breeder to work in its steady-state breeding condition you probably need something like half a ton of plutonium. In order that it should work economically in a sufficiently big power-producing unit, it probably needs quite a bit more than one ton of plutonium. I do not like the hazard involved. I suggested that nuclear reactors are a blessing because they are clean. They are clean as long as they function as planned, but if they malfunction in a massive manner, which can happen in principle, they can release enough fission products to kill a tremendous number of people. […] ...But, if you put together two tons of plutonium in a breeder, one tenth of one percent of this material could become critical. […] I have listened to hundreds of analyses of what course a nuclear accident can take. Although I believe it is possible to analyze the immediate consequences of an accident, I do not believe it is possible to analyze and foresee the secondary consequences. In an accident involving a plutonium reactor, a couple of tons of plutonium can melt. I don't think anybody can foresee where one or two or five percent of this plutonium will find itself and how it will get mixed with some other material. A small fraction of the original charge can become a great hazard."
- jeromegv 6y ago
  Isn't carbon offset also someone else problem? Can't we argue that it is a bigger problem?
  - tgsovlerkhgsel 6y ago
    When talking about health effects from coal pollution, it's not about the CO2.
- Tuna-Fish 6y ago
  > Basically we just bury it and hope for the best, it will be someone else's problem anyway. It's rather more involved than that. The short version is that we find a place where the rock has remained undisturbed for more than a billion years, and bury them deep enough that they should remain undisturbed for the next billion years. Then it's no-one's problem.
  - winrid 6y ago
    The idea that we can build something that will last a billion years is mind boggling, and I'll admit I have my doubts. https://www.google.com/amp/s/abcnews.go.com/amp/International/current-model-storing-nuclear-waste-sufficiently-safe-study/story%3fid=68584067 https://www.google.com/amp/s/abcnews.go.com/amp/Internationa... They don't seem to define "specific conditions" in this article. Also, tried to get a non-amp link and failed...
    - 1_player 6y ago
      A recent article about Finland's long term nuclear waste storage: https://www.wsj.com/articles/a-100-000-year-tomb-for-finlands-nuclear-waste-1485253831 https://www.wsj.com/articles/a-100-000-year-tomb-for-finland...
    - manfredo 6y ago
      It doesn't need to last a billion years. Within 10-50 thousand years the uranium is no more radioactive that uranium that was never used in fuel. Sure, uranium is still a toxic heavy metal. But you do understand where this uranium came from before it was used as fuel?
      - winrid 6y ago
        Good clarification, thanks!
Ma8ee 6y ago
> Completely and utterly insignificant Do you have any sources for that? And no sensible person is advocating that we should continue burning coal as we have. So it is not nuclear vs coal, but nuclear vs renewables. The Onkalo repository is still not active. It is projected to begin storing this year, I can't find any more exact status. And that is one site for the whole world. You have to agree that that is a rather meager result considering that they have been trying to find a solution for at least half a century.
- manfredo 6y ago
  Yes. You bury waste underground in an area with no groundwater. No geological event is going to bring a cask from 500 meters below ground to the surface, short of a meteor strike (which would make nuclear waste one of your smaller worries).
  - Ma8ee 6y ago
    Where do you get the idea there’s no ground water at Onkalo? And no, no one is worried that the tubes one day by accident will float up to the surface one way or another.
    - manfredo 6y ago
      I don't know about Onkalo, but the US's proposed disposal site is in a solid rock mountain in a desert. And yes, commenters in this post are saying that the casks will leak and the uranium will float up to the surface: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23477854 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23477854 Re: "underground isn't dry" (HN is rate limiting this thread) Yes, it is. These story facilities are built in bedrock. You seem to be under the impression that these digs are in some random back yard. They're not. They're built in places with no groundwater and no geological activity. The only way this waste is getting out into the environment is through human intervention. I have indeed read through the waste storage plans. I suggest you do the same. Yucca Mountain's cancellation is entirely due to political posturing, not feasibility.

toyg 6y ago

> Sure we have. Basically we just bury it and hope for the best, it will be someone else's problem anyway. > The Onkalo repository is expected to be large enough to accept canisters [...] until around 2120.[13] At this point, the final encapsulation and burial will take place, and the access tunnel will be backfilled and sealed. We go from "dig it out" to "dig it in". Very sustainable. /s

annamargot 6y ago
How much volume are we talking here and how frequently would it need to be disposed of? I recall reading somewhere that it’s a very manageable amount.
- renaudg 6y ago
  Indeed. For example, the 9TWh required to power France's high speed train fleet for a year produce 200kg of nuclear waste. Since the beginning of the country's nuclear programme, the total cumulative volume is 3650m3 of waste : one olympic swimming pool's worth of it. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21996751 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21996751
  - ShroudedNight 6y ago
    What percentage of potential energy is extracted? My (old, probably out of date) understanding is that (at least in Canada) nuclear facilities limit themselves to extracting some tiny quantity of the potential energy in order to avoid producing material that could be made into nuclear weapons.
    - dodobirdlord 6y ago
      This is the case in most of the world, but I believe that in France spent fuel is reprocessed.
      - pfdietz 6y ago
        The French have admitted the reprocessing doesn't save them any money, in fact it's more expensive than not reprocessing. But the cost is still only a very small part of the cost of nuclear power.
    - adrianN 6y ago
      Normal nuclear reactors only extract single-digit percentages of the energy. You want to use breeder reactors to actually burn all the nuclear fuel. The "waste" still contains almost all of its energy. Breeder reactors are of course unpopular politically, because they create raw material for nuclear bombs as part of their normal operation.
      - pfdietz 6y ago
        They are unpopular for other reasons. The first is that they are more expensive than burner reactors. With uranium ore being cheap and plentiful, and with the energy cost of enrichment so low now (gas centrifuges using 50x less energy than gaseous diffusion), there's no economic case for reprocessing, let along breeding. The other problem is that fast breeders are inherently dangerous, with the possibility of fast supercriticality lurking in a serious accident. Edward Teller famously pointed this out publicly in 1967: "For the fast breeder to work in its steady-state breeding condition you probably need something like half a ton of plutonium. In order that it should work economically in a sufficiently big power-producing unit, it probably needs quite a bit more than one ton of plutonium. I do not like the hazard involved. I suggested that nuclear reactors are a blessing because they are clean. They are clean as long as they function as planned, but if they malfunction in a massive manner, which can happen in principle, they can release enough fission products to kill a tremendous number of people. […] ...But, if you put together two tons of plutonium in a breeder, one tenth of one percent of this material could become critical. […] I have listened to hundreds of analyses of what course a nuclear accident can take. Although I believe it is possible to analyze the immediate consequences of an accident, I do not believe it is possible to analyze and foresee the secondary consequences. In an accident involving a plutonium reactor, a couple of tons of plutonium can melt. I don't think anybody can foresee where one or two or five percent of this plutonium will find itself and how it will get mixed with some other material. A small fraction of the original charge can become a great hazard."
jeromegv 6y ago
Isn't carbon offset also someone else problem? Can't we argue that it is a bigger problem?
- tgsovlerkhgsel 6y ago
  When talking about health effects from coal pollution, it's not about the CO2.
Tuna-Fish 6y ago
> Basically we just bury it and hope for the best, it will be someone else's problem anyway. It's rather more involved than that. The short version is that we find a place where the rock has remained undisturbed for more than a billion years, and bury them deep enough that they should remain undisturbed for the next billion years. Then it's no-one's problem.
- winrid 6y ago
  The idea that we can build something that will last a billion years is mind boggling, and I'll admit I have my doubts. https://www.google.com/amp/s/abcnews.go.com/amp/International/current-model-storing-nuclear-waste-sufficiently-safe-study/story%3fid=68584067 https://www.google.com/amp/s/abcnews.go.com/amp/Internationa... They don't seem to define "specific conditions" in this article. Also, tried to get a non-amp link and failed...
  - 1_player 6y ago
    A recent article about Finland's long term nuclear waste storage: https://www.wsj.com/articles/a-100-000-year-tomb-for-finlands-nuclear-waste-1485253831 https://www.wsj.com/articles/a-100-000-year-tomb-for-finland...
  - manfredo 6y ago
    It doesn't need to last a billion years. Within 10-50 thousand years the uranium is no more radioactive that uranium that was never used in fuel. Sure, uranium is still a toxic heavy metal. But you do understand where this uranium came from before it was used as fuel?
    - winrid 6y ago
      Good clarification, thanks!

Ma8ee 6y ago

> Completely and utterly insignificant Do you have any sources for that? And no sensible person is advocating that we should continue burning coal as we have. So it is not nuclear vs coal, but nuclear vs renewables. The Onkalo repository is still not active. It is projected to begin storing this year, I can't find any more exact status. And that is one site for the whole world. You have to agree that that is a rather meager result considering that they have been trying to find a solution for at least half a century.

manfredo 6y ago
Yes. You bury waste underground in an area with no groundwater. No geological event is going to bring a cask from 500 meters below ground to the surface, short of a meteor strike (which would make nuclear waste one of your smaller worries).
- Ma8ee 6y ago
  Where do you get the idea there’s no ground water at Onkalo? And no, no one is worried that the tubes one day by accident will float up to the surface one way or another.
  - manfredo 6y ago
    I don't know about Onkalo, but the US's proposed disposal site is in a solid rock mountain in a desert. And yes, commenters in this post are saying that the casks will leak and the uranium will float up to the surface: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23477854 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23477854 Re: "underground isn't dry" (HN is rate limiting this thread) Yes, it is. These story facilities are built in bedrock. You seem to be under the impression that these digs are in some random back yard. They're not. They're built in places with no groundwater and no geological activity. The only way this waste is getting out into the environment is through human intervention. I have indeed read through the waste storage plans. I suggest you do the same. Yucca Mountain's cancellation is entirely due to political posturing, not feasibility.