6 ms·

Also the nuclear waste problem. Nuclear reprocessing looks nice on paper, but the technical implementation is problematic, it's chemistry but in a radioactive e

Also the nuclear waste problem. Nuclear reprocessing looks nice on paper, but the technical implementation is problematic, it's chemistry but in a radioactive environment. If something catches on fire there's problems.

titzer 6y ago
France has successfully processed 23,000 tons of spent fuel, or 14 years worth. With zero incidents. In fact it works so well, they process other countries' spent fuel, too. https://www.heritage.org/environment/commentary/recycling-nuclear-fuel-the-french-do-it-why-cant-oui https://www.heritage.org/environment/commentary/recycling-nu...
- Retric 6y ago
  That article shows the issue. “The entire process adds about 6 percent in costs for the French.” Reprocessing is simply not cost effective due to how cheap reactor grade Uranium is.
  - titzer 6y ago
    So you are saying the reason a huge problem exists is because money? Hold the phone.
    - Retric 6y ago
      This is mostly just a problem in the minds of the general public. Individual nuclear fuel rods get significantly less radioactive over time as short half life byproducts decay. Which makes both reprocessing and long term sequestration cheaper. Storing them for ~100 years is relatively cheap and can be funded ahead of time, so punting the issue seems quite reasonable IMO.
      - titzer 6y ago
        Well, sure, we are lucky that the waste from nuclear reactors is primarily solid heavy metals rather than fly ash or anything else, so we can just plunk them into pools and forget about them for a while. But eventually it makes sense to do something with all that waste.
        Retric 6y ago
        Reprocessing doesn’t actually get rid of the highly radioactive waste though. You have exactly as much Caesium-137 and all the other nasty fission products before and after reprocessing, all it does is separate the waste you need to store from the useful fuel while contaminating all your reprocessing equipment. As we have plenty of fuel so that not particularly valuable.
- arnoooooo 6y ago
  They have also very successfully "outsourced" part of the reprocessing to eastern Europe… there have been documented reports of storage in huge open vats of fuel officially sent for reprocessing.
- natmaka 6y ago
  Spent-fuel processing isn't sufficient. After ~50 years with running nuclear plants France doesn't have any long-term waste disposal facility, and is actively searching a solution. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meuse/Haute_Marne_Underground_Research_Laboratory https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meuse/Haute_Marne_Underground_...
johnisgood 6y ago
What nuclear waste problem? "Nuclear waste generally is over 90% uranium. Thus, the spent fuel (waste) still contains 90% usable fuel! It can be chemically processed and placed in other reactors to close the fuel cycle. A closed fuel cycle means much less nuclear waste and much more energy extracted from the raw ore. Additionally, this process allows you to convert your waste into chemical forms that are totally immobilized. France currently recycles their spent fuel. They put the remaining good nuclear fuel back in their reactors in the form of MOX fuel and immobilize the remaining waste in vitrified borosilicate glass. The US had a recycling program featuring the use of advanced fast reactors (which have not been deployed on any major scale yet) that was shut down because it created Plutonium, which could be used to make a nuclear weapon. Were some plutonium diverted in the recycling process, a non-nuclear entity could be one step close to building a bomb. However, under programs such as the (now stalled) GNEP [wikipedia], where only countries who already have nuclear weapons recycle, proliferation-free waste recycling can exist. Since the many of the largest energy users are already nuclear weapons states, a massive expansion of nuclear could be done there with no additional proliferation concerns whatsoever. If all the electricity use of the USA was distributed evenly among its population, and all of it came from nuclear power, then the amount of nuclear waste each person would generate per year would be 39.5 grams. That’s the weight of seven U. S. quarters of waste, per year! A detailed description of this result can be found here. If we got all our electricity from coal and natural gas, expect to have over 10,000 kilograms of CO2/yr attributed to each person, not to mention other poisonous emissions directly to the biosphere (based on EIA emissions data). If you want raw numbers: in 2018, there were just over 80,000 metric tonnes of high-level waste in the USA. Between 1971 and 2018, nuclear reactors in the USA generated 3000 GW-years of electricity to make this waste. For comparison, in 2007 alone the US burned 948,000,000 metric tonnes of coal. This means that coal plants made 32 times more waste every single day than the US nuclear fleet has made in the past 45 years! Granted, coal made a higher fraction of the country’s electricity, but the numbers are still crazy impressive for nuclear." Source: https://whatisnuclear.com/waste.html https://whatisnuclear.com/waste.html --- Interesting: "2018 Nobel Prize for Physics-winner Gérard Mourou has proposed using Chirped pulse amplification to generate high-energy and low-duration laser pulses to transmute highly radioactive material (contained in a target) to significantly reduce its half-life, from thousands of years to only a few minutes." --- Aaaand then I have not yet mentioned fusion reactors... Just check it out here: https://www.iter.org/sci/Fusion https://www.iter.org/sci/Fusion

titzer 6y ago

France has successfully processed 23,000 tons of spent fuel, or 14 years worth. With zero incidents. In fact it works so well, they process other countries' spent fuel, too. https://www.heritage.org/environment/commentary/recycling-nuclear-fuel-the-french-do-it-why-cant-oui https://www.heritage.org/environment/commentary/recycling-nu...

Retric 6y ago
That article shows the issue. “The entire process adds about 6 percent in costs for the French.” Reprocessing is simply not cost effective due to how cheap reactor grade Uranium is.
- titzer 6y ago
  So you are saying the reason a huge problem exists is because money? Hold the phone.
  - Retric 6y ago
    This is mostly just a problem in the minds of the general public. Individual nuclear fuel rods get significantly less radioactive over time as short half life byproducts decay. Which makes both reprocessing and long term sequestration cheaper. Storing them for ~100 years is relatively cheap and can be funded ahead of time, so punting the issue seems quite reasonable IMO.
    - titzer 6y ago
      Well, sure, we are lucky that the waste from nuclear reactors is primarily solid heavy metals rather than fly ash or anything else, so we can just plunk them into pools and forget about them for a while. But eventually it makes sense to do something with all that waste.
      - Retric 6y ago
        Reprocessing doesn’t actually get rid of the highly radioactive waste though. You have exactly as much Caesium-137 and all the other nasty fission products before and after reprocessing, all it does is separate the waste you need to store from the useful fuel while contaminating all your reprocessing equipment. As we have plenty of fuel so that not particularly valuable.
arnoooooo 6y ago
They have also very successfully "outsourced" part of the reprocessing to eastern Europe… there have been documented reports of storage in huge open vats of fuel officially sent for reprocessing.
natmaka 6y ago
Spent-fuel processing isn't sufficient. After ~50 years with running nuclear plants France doesn't have any long-term waste disposal facility, and is actively searching a solution. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meuse/Haute_Marne_Underground_Research_Laboratory https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meuse/Haute_Marne_Underground_...

johnisgood 6y ago

What nuclear waste problem? "Nuclear waste generally is over 90% uranium. Thus, the spent fuel (waste) still contains 90% usable fuel! It can be chemically processed and placed in other reactors to close the fuel cycle. A closed fuel cycle means much less nuclear waste and much more energy extracted from the raw ore. Additionally, this process allows you to convert your waste into chemical forms that are totally immobilized. France currently recycles their spent fuel. They put the remaining good nuclear fuel back in their reactors in the form of MOX fuel and immobilize the remaining waste in vitrified borosilicate glass. The US had a recycling program featuring the use of advanced fast reactors (which have not been deployed on any major scale yet) that was shut down because it created Plutonium, which could be used to make a nuclear weapon. Were some plutonium diverted in the recycling process, a non-nuclear entity could be one step close to building a bomb. However, under programs such as the (now stalled) GNEP [wikipedia], where only countries who already have nuclear weapons recycle, proliferation-free waste recycling can exist. Since the many of the largest energy users are already nuclear weapons states, a massive expansion of nuclear could be done there with no additional proliferation concerns whatsoever. If all the electricity use of the USA was distributed evenly among its population, and all of it came from nuclear power, then the amount of nuclear waste each person would generate per year would be 39.5 grams. That’s the weight of seven U. S. quarters of waste, per year! A detailed description of this result can be found here. If we got all our electricity from coal and natural gas, expect to have over 10,000 kilograms of CO2/yr attributed to each person, not to mention other poisonous emissions directly to the biosphere (based on EIA emissions data). If you want raw numbers: in 2018, there were just over 80,000 metric tonnes of high-level waste in the USA. Between 1971 and 2018, nuclear reactors in the USA generated 3000 GW-years of electricity to make this waste. For comparison, in 2007 alone the US burned 948,000,000 metric tonnes of coal. This means that coal plants made 32 times more waste every single day than the US nuclear fleet has made in the past 45 years! Granted, coal made a higher fraction of the country’s electricity, but the numbers are still crazy impressive for nuclear." Source: https://whatisnuclear.com/waste.html https://whatisnuclear.com/waste.html --- Interesting: "2018 Nobel Prize for Physics-winner Gérard Mourou has proposed using Chirped pulse amplification to generate high-energy and low-duration laser pulses to transmute highly radioactive material (contained in a target) to significantly reduce its half-life, from thousands of years to only a few minutes." --- Aaaand then I have not yet mentioned fusion reactors... Just check it out here: https://www.iter.org/sci/Fusion https://www.iter.org/sci/Fusion