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This is IMO a positive for nuclear, not a negative. You're forced to confront the cleanup as opposed to fossil fuels, where you just blow your waste out into th
by RhodesianHunter 6y ago
This is IMO a positive for nuclear, not a negative. You're forced to confront the cleanup as opposed to fossil fuels, where you just blow your waste out into the atmosphere and make it the commons' problem.
- marshray 6y agoIf only a method for permanent disposal of nuclear waste actually existed.
- acidburnNSA 6y agoThere are good permanent disposal methods available. The deep geologic repository under construction in Finland is probably the best example. More info here: https://whataboutthewaste.com https://whataboutthewaste.com People use "what about the waste" as a reason to not use nuclear. Yet, fossil and renewable biofuel waste is (as mentioned) just dumped into the biosphere where it ends and estimated 8 million lives early per year, according to the WHO. https://www.who.int/health-topics/air-pollution https://www.who.int/health-topics/air-pollution
- e12e 6y agoUnfortunately that doesn't quite solve the problem of getting waste from reactor to storage site.
- dodobirdlord 6y agoIt’s not really much of a problem. You leave the waste in a cooling pond at the plant for a couple of decades while you wait for all the really threatening stuff to decay, and then drive it where it needs to go in a truck. It’s a bunch of big metal rods in canisters. It can’t really “spill” and if it does you just pick it up and put it back in the truck. Uranium and plutonium are really not very threatening to human life.
- liability 6y agoBesides the obvious NIMBY problems, are there any problems with sealed casks transported by train?
- cogman10 6y agoNo. These things are tested to a VERY high standard. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1mHtOW-OBO4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1mHtOW-OBO4
- manfredo 6y agoGetting the waste to a storage facility is very easy. You put it on a semi trailer and move it to the storage site: http://large.stanford.edu/courses/2015/ph241/avery-w2/images/f1big.jpg http://large.stanford.edu/courses/2015/ph241/avery-w2/images... Nuclear waste is radioactive, but not so radioactive that it's unsafe to stand next to a container. Most waste is stored on site. It actually doesn't make sense to move nuclear waste to permanent storage because some reactor designs can use this waste as fuel.
- marshray 6y agoThat option doesn't exist in the US. We have no permanent disposal facilities, not even in the planning stage. https://www.gao.gov/key_issues/disposal_of_highlevel_nuclear_waste/issue_summary https://www.gao.gov/key_issues/disposal_of_highlevel_nuclear...
- trothamel 6y agohttps://www.wipp.energy.gov/ https://www.wipp.energy.gov/ is one, though that's for government rather than commercial waste. It's a matter of political will at this point.
- ethbr0 6y agoThe 2012 Blue Ribbon Commission on America's Nuclear Future report [1] literally said that: "Ensuring access to dedicated funding – Current federal budget rules and laws make it impossible for the nuclear waste program to have assured access to the fees being collected from nuclear utilities and ratepayers to finance the commercial share of the waste program’s expenses. We have recommended a partial remedy that should be implemented promptly by the Administration, working with the relevant congressional committees and the Congressional Budget Office. A long-term remedy requires legislation to provide access to the Nuclear Waste Fund and fees independent of the annual appropriations process but subject to rigorous independent financial and managerial oversight." [1] https://web.archive.org/web/20120807061024/http://brc.gov/sites/default/files/documents/brc_finalreport_jan2012.pdf https://web.archive.org/web/20120807061024/http://brc.gov/si...
- manfredo 6y agoWe do have a permanent disposal facility built, but congress chose to forbid its operation. This is a self inflicted problem: we don't have a permanent disposal facility because we refuse to use the permanent disposal facility we built. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yucca_Mountain_nuclear_waste_repository https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yucca_Mountain_nuclear_waste...
- ethbr0 6y ago
- godelski 6y agoNot to mention the waste associated with semi-conductors. Long term waste is not just a problem associated with nuclear. It is also worth mentioning that the major waste issues are associated with DoE weapon sites and not as much power sites. I would also encourage other's to click on acidburnNSA's profile as this is where their expertise lies and they have written extensively (with plenty of links) on the subject.[0] [0] https://whatisnuclear.com/waste.html https://whatisnuclear.com/waste.html
- fsflover 6y agohttps://whatisnuclear.com/waste.html https://whatisnuclear.com/waste.html
- dodobirdlord 6y agoThe world is filled with naturally occurring phenomena far more dangerous than a big pile of low-grade nuclear waste. The really dangerous stuff ceases to exist after a few decades of sitting in a cooling pond, and then what’s left has such a long half life that it’s not particularly threatening. Water is an incredible radiation dampener, and the ocean is already chock full of dissolved uranium. The only reason we don’t just toss our low-grade fission waste into an oceanic trench somewhere is that it’s valuable and wherever we put it we know we’ll probably change our minds and want it back for reprocessing at some point.
- Klinky 6y agoYou're underplaying the danger and overplaying the value. Who exactly is investing in this "green gold"? If it's so valuable why does no one actually want it, and why is the DoE stuck with half a trillion liability?
- rstupek 6y agoIsn't the "green gold" as you state it what the traveling wave reactor folks https://www.terrapower.com/our-work/traveling-wave-reactor-technology/ https://www.terrapower.com/our-work/traveling-wave-reactor-t... hoping to use to generate their power?
- Klinky 6y agoA nuclear concept product. It's probably eternally "10 years from commercialization".
- briffle 6y agoThey are stuck with the liability, because President Carter Banned reprocessing of Uranium in 1977, and nobody has changed it. If we reprocessed Uranium, we would end up with much less low level waste, and some very, very small amounts of more radioactive materials (that can be burned in some other types of reactors)
- 6y ago
- manigandham 6y agoWe could dump it into the ocean and not worry about it. There's so much cooling capacity and radiation shielding in the oceans alone that we'd never run out of space, so all of the current disposal strategies are way above and beyond what's needed. Containment is solved problem. It's important to note that other energy types also produce waste. For example, coal ash is incredibly toxic and hard to dispose of, and we create much more of it every year.
- gambiting 6y agoAnother option which is completely safe and permanent* is drilling a borehole few km down and dumping the waste there. It's not coming back no matter what. The research done into it shows that "only" 800 boreholes would be required to store literally all nuclear waste ever produced. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deep_borehole_disposal https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deep_borehole_disposal *to a point where it was actually brought up as a negative, because if we ever wanted to recycle that waste into something else, it's literally impossible this way.
- moneytide1 6y agoThere's one in Finland: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Onkalo_spent_nuclear_fuel_repository https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Onkalo_spent_nuclear_fuel_re... They have thought thousands of years ahead and set up many different types of warning signs and symbols in case a future civilization discovers it.
- gambiting 6y agoI think the difference is that the one in Finland can still be entered like a normal tunnel. The deep borehole is literally just a vertical shaft that goes 5-6km down, you put the waste on the bottom and fill it back up. No geological process is bringing the waste back up in any conceivable timescale, and even if the entire civilization collapsed no primitive society can dig to 5km depth, so there's no need for much long lasting signage, no one is going to stumble upon it by accident.
- 6y ago
- omginternets 6y agoIf only a method for permanent disposal of carbon dioxide emissions from gas plants actually existed.
- IncRnd 6y agoSigh... If only a method for converting carbon dioxide emissions into another gas actually existed in nature.
- omginternets 6y agoPlant trees and burn coal? That’s your plan?
- asdfman123 6y agoLots of methods exist, but they're too expensive or don't scale well.
- gxon 6y agoExactly. Scalable solutions to deal with the waste don't exist.
- crusty 6y agoI think the modern (3rd generation?) Reactors have been designed to use much more of the fuel, leaving considerably less as waste, and actually potentially using preciously used spent fuel as fuel, which of course would be cleanup. The problem is approval and building of anything new.
- philwelch 6y agoIt does. The long-lived wastes can be recycled into fuel in breeder reactors.
- garmaine 6y agoIt does. It’s called a breeder reactor.
- natmaka 6y agoBreeder reactors research was quite huge (one of the first breeder was built in the US in 1951). Then this technology has been, for all practical purposes, abandoned by nearly all countries that were researching and developing it. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breeder_reactor#Future_plants https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breeder_reactor#Future_plants One of the most (if not the most) ambitious project was Superphénix, costed billions and failed flat. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superph%C3%A9nix https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superph%C3%A9nix The sole officially actively pursued pertinent design, BREST-OD-300 ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BREST_(reactor) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BREST_(reactor) ), was planned to be built in 2020 ( https://www.world-nuclear-news.org/NN_Fast_moves_for_nuclear_development_in_Siberia_0410121.html https://www.world-nuclear-news.org/NN_Fast_moves_for_nuclear... ) and real work didn't even began ( https://www.world-nuclear-news.org/Articles/Russia-awards-contract-to-build-BREST-reactor https://www.world-nuclear-news.org/Articles/Russia-awards-co... ). Moreover it will only (when built, if ever, but not before 2026) be a demonstrator (low power).
- Pelic4n 6y agoSuperphénix was politically killed. The technology was promising.
- X6S1x6Okd1st 6y agoIf only a method for permanent disposal of excess CO2 was viable.
- pvaldes 6y agoDo you mean, like coral reefs?
- Aeolun 6y agoSpaceX can launch it into space?
- 0-_-0 6y agoAnd if something goes wrong at launch spread it over a nice big area
- Aeolun 6y agoHmm, that’s a point. But I believe we haven’t had any unexpected falcon disassemblies in a while. Alternatively, maybe we can railgun it into space.
- liamwire 6y agoPhenomenal plan, until the next rapid unscheduled disassembly peppers the landscape with radioactive isotopes like a poor man’s dirty bomb.
- BurningFrog 6y agoMany such methods exist. There are no methods that have 100% answers for every "what if 5 things go wrong at once?" question. That's true for everything, but those questions only get asked for nuclear energy.
- dylan604 6y agoWhat happens if the power goes out? Use a UPS. What happens if the PSU goes out? Use dual PSUs. What happens if the network goes out? Use dual NICs. I'm stuck on the 4th&5th. You're right. Only nuclear has 5 questions asked.
- pdonis 6y agoIt does exist: reprocessing. Every other nuclear-using country besides the US does it. The only reason the US doesn't is stupid politics.
- thallium205 6y agoSpaceX rocket to the sun.
- tandr 6y agoThank you. I don't get why this is not considered as an option anywhere.
- samoa42 6y agocost per mass and risk of spreading the waste over a large area in case of missile failure
- mnw21cam 6y agoBecause it's a really really bad idea, for several reasons. 1. If your rocket has a failure during launch, you're likely to spread the nuclear waste over a large land area. 2. Even though we really haven't generated that much nuclear waste, it's still many many rocket-launches-worth. That gets expensive. Much more expensive than sticking it in a hole in the side of a mountain. 3. Launching something into the sun takes a huge amount of rocket fuel. It takes a Falcon-9 with a mass of ~550Mg to get a payload of ~22.8Mg into low earth orbit with a velocity of ~8km/s. The Earth is moving around the Sun at ~30km/s, so to launch into the Sun, you need to depart from the Earth at (at distance) ~30km/s. Earth's escape velocity is ~11km/s, which means that from low earth orbit, you need to get up to ~32km/s (sqrt(30^2 + 11^2)). So your ~22.8Mg payload in low earth orbit needs to include a rocket that can add ~24km/s to its velocity. If we assume a rocket with a fairly decent engine, with an Isp of 4km/s, then we can plug that into the Tsiolkovsky rocket equation. The remaining payload that can be flung into the Sun is a grand total of 57kg. All the rest of that ~22.8Mg is rocket fuel. Per SpaceX Falcon-9 launch. This is not an effective way to get rid of nuclear waste. (Note, it may be possible to increase efficiency by making use of gravity assists from other planets, but you still need to actually get to other planets first, so a pretty hard limit on the payload-into-the-Sun is the payload-to-Mars, which is ~4Mg. Still not very much.)
- tandr 6y ago
- adrianN 6y agoYou can get rid of almost all of the really dangerous stuff by putting it in a breeder reactor and turning it into electricity and short-lived nucleotides.
- ascar 6y agoI always have the feeling many people greatly overestimate the amount of nuclear waste that was actually produced. So far we have produced an estimated 370000 tonnes of nuclear waste globally, which can be stored in about 22.000m³. [1] This would fit in a 5m high storage facility the size of an American football field (which is even smaller than a European football field). As an additional comparison, the small Amazon fulfillment centers have about 40000m² of area [2] . Assuming the same 5m height, a small fullfillment center is nearly 10 times bigger than necessary to store all globally produced high-level nuclear waste. Sure, the waste is hard to dispose and dangerous. But it really isn't much. [1] https://www.world-nuclear.org/information-library/nuclear-fuel-cycle/nuclear-wastes/radioactive-waste-management.aspx https://www.world-nuclear.org/information-library/nuclear-fu... [2] https://www.aboutamazon.com/amazon-fulfillment#how-big-are-fulfillment-centers https://www.aboutamazon.com/amazon-fulfillment#how-big-are-f...
- mnw21cam 6y agoPlease don't put it all in a "5m high storage facility the size of an American football field". Google for "nuclear favourable geometry" for why.
- beders 6y agoIt's tax payers paying for outdated technology. Invest that money into renewables: end of story
- tombert 6y agoI'm all for renewables becoming the standard, but I really doubt that nuclear as a concept is "outdated technology". There's a lot of room for improvement, and they can help a lot in the short-term for reducing the ever-growing threat of climate change.
- freeopinion 6y agoWe don't have a good track record of confronting the cleanup of nuclear waste. The US federal government recently shipped a secret load of waste into Nevada. Nevada was very unhappy about that and claimed it was done in secrecy because it was illegal. After a bit of a fight, the feds caved and have agreed to remove the waste. There is no plan for this stuff. The repository that was built in Nevada was never actually approved and it is not legal to use. So everyone that was planning on sending stuff there has just been piling it in the side yard waiting for something. New Mexico is now trying to open up a waste site. But if you operate a reactor in Tennessee, right now you have no idea where to store the waste so you just keep piling it higher and deeper on site. Source: rumour and gossip
- curiousllama 6y agoThe only proper source
- mayama 6y agoHow can a multi million dollar construction start without necessary approvals?
- freeopinion 6y agoDOE and NRC have requested something approaching $200 million over the last two years for Yucca Mountain even though it has been killed and revived and killed again. It's been dead for years, but it never really dies. They continue to pour money into it. But, as previously stated, they aren't allowed to use it. Nevada has fought hard against it. But people outside Nevada (and some inside Nevada) keep trying to jam it down Nevada's throat. The illegal midnight run was just one example. There had been some $10 billion sunk into the project 10 years ago. You can guess who has the incentive to keep pouring 100s of millions more into a supposedly cancelled project. If the whole point is to funnel giant money into somebodies' pockets, the legal status of the facility has nothing to do with the money allocated for it.
- gonational 6y agoInstead we will burn 700,000,000 quadrillion gigatons of rocket fuel to send all this poison to the sun. Or just use wind and solar?