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Saying Nuclear waste is not a problem is like saying taking a shit in your neighbors yard is not a problem. Shit can be packed into plastic bags, composted, and

Saying Nuclear waste is not a problem is like saying taking a shit in your neighbors yard is not a problem. Shit can be packed into plastic bags, composted, and eventually stops smelling. Some of us believe that if we can't generate power without creating waste for future generations, we should go without the power. Seriously, we don't need it.

option 6y ago
yes, nuclear waste is like taking a 10x smaller than the grain of rise shit in your neighbor’s yard.
- jay_kyburz 6y ago
  Sure, but even a grain of sand that I can't build on or walk over is still going to be annoying. It's still just rude no matter how small you think the problem is.
  - option 6y ago
    we are in a climate crisis and wind/solar alone are just not going to cut it. And nuclear is the safest power source (measured in deaths/twh) which humans have been using for decades.
  - godelski 6y ago
    I'm pretty sure you also can't build on or walk over a large pile of garbage. At least with the grain of sand there's not much area displaced.
dijit 6y ago
You know what, you’re right- I agree. However our largest energy creation mechanism is absolutely destroying the planet in non-linear and difficult to measure ways. Coal is not a dramatic killer but it kills us in droves, now and long into the future. Nuclear waste, in comparison, is more of a “known” issue, and were scared of what we know. I’m talking about coal because Sweden is displacing its nuclear power draw with mostly coal.
- jay_kyburz 6y ago
  I haven't read that we can't just recapture the carbon by re-planting a bazzilion trees. I'll do some googling now.
  - loeg 6y ago
    The problem with trees-as-carbon capture is: 1. They are only a net store of carbon while they're alive. 2. Because of that, you need to dedicate land to carbon-capture forest, indefinitely. 3. Burning fossil fuels for energy releases more and more carbon into the atmosphere. Like, you get N tons of carbon captured out of a given land area. It's constant per area. So you would need to continually grow the amount of forested land just to follow the amount of carbon released by burning fossil fuels. But: land is finite. The actual worldwide trend has been to deforest land, either for lumber, or slash-and-burn for subsistence farming in poor countries, or just to allow for population growth, or the large land area needed for wind and solar farms. We don't have a huge surplus of not-yet-forest land — can't grow trees in deserts.
    - Chris2048 6y ago
      > They are only a net store of carbon while they're alive. Is wood not a carbon store?
      - Dma54rhs 6y ago
        When or a tree dies, or burns, during the decomposition process it releases the carbon back to atmosphere. Maybe you could bury them somewhere where decomposition it's slower or more difficult but hard to imagine doing it at scale.
        Chris2048 6y ago
        Surely lumber, treated cellulose, contains a high % of the original carbon content (minus water)?
godelski 6y ago
> Saying Nuclear waste is not a problem is like saying taking a shit in your neighbors yard is not a problem. The weird thing is that you're taking a shit in your neighbor's yard. I mean if they do it in their own yard it's weird, but there's nothing wrong with it. I mean this is what we do with dog shit. The problem is that everyone shits. Sure, nuclear shit smells a lot more than solar shit or coal shit, but there's a hell of a lot less of it. We're talking a cat vs herd of rhinos. If I had to clean up one of the two I honestly don't care how much that cat's shit smells, I'm picking that job every single time. And you know what, the researchers seem to agree > The analyses did not reveal any science-based evidence that nuclear energy does more harm to human health or to the environment than other electricity production technologies
- aszantu 6y ago
  The places where uranium is mined is uninhabitable afterwards :(
  - godelski 6y ago
    Yeah, but because there is a giant hole in the ground, but that's not specific to uranium mining. Luckily 1) uranium is extremely energy dense so we don't have to mine as much of it and 2) people usually don't live where mines open up in the first place. If we're talking about uranium mining you may notice that Canada isn't particularly habitable to begin with. Though in situ mining is pretty popular with uranium because it is cheap and results in less contaminants.
    - Klinky 6y ago
      Just because it's energy dense after enrichment, doesn't mean it has high concentrations within mined ore. Most mines operate with only a fraction of a percentage of the ore being uranium, and only a fraction of a percentage of that is U-235, and viable for a nuclear reactor. Some mines use ISL techniques which is similar to fracking. Canada does have Cigar Lake, the highest grade uranium mine in the world (15%), but due to the dangers of high uranium concentrations and the challenging geology, it has not been the easiest to extract. This is to say, you don't just dig up some ore and stuff it in a reactor(it takes a lot of ore to power a reactor), nor is uranium mining a clean process.
biren34 6y ago
I'm sorry to say, but the idea that "we don't need energy" is both false and dangerous. The earth's carrying capacity before fossil fuels was far, far lower than the 7 billion current population, especially with current living standards. The only reason we can support that many is because of a complex web of economics that causes the earth to produce far more food than it otherwise could, and then enables distribution of that food to where the people are. Without fossil fuels, we couldn't even produce the fertilizer needed to support the food. You could argue that there is some alternative set of lifestyles that would enable to eliminate fossil fuels without asking 90% of the population to die, but that would similarly require some sort of top-down totalitarian regime in order to get there and keep us there. At this point, we do need the energy. The only way to maybe not need it would be to somehow put a global version of Stalin in a position of absolute power. Failing to understand just how critical energy is to any sort of non-apocalyptic future is one of the biggest dangers in our current political debate about what should come next.
- jay_kyburz 6y ago
  I would like to do some more reading about this, do you have any links? The wikipedia page is a little light on detail. I agree that we should have food security for everybody, and I agree that if we don't provide everyday people with power for heating and cooking they will just start burning things again which would create a bigger disaster. But when I look around me I see massive amounts of waste in every sector because electricity is so cheap.
  - scatters 6y ago
    Look at your own body. Half of the nitrogen in your body tissue - in particular, in protein - was clawed from the atmosphere by the Haber process. There is simply no replacement for industrial society.
  - michael1999 6y ago
    The world population at the beginning of the 20th c (i.e. before the oil age) was ~1B, which was the highest in all of history. We are currently ~8B, on our way to 10-14 by the end of this century.
dtech 6y ago
There is almost no way to generate energy without waste for future generations, CO2 for fossil fuels, nuclear waste, electronic and heavy-metal waste for solar and batteries. Saying we should only use methods that don't provide waste is saying we should reduce energy consumption to 1-5% of current global and ditch all cars, ships and airplanes. Even if you are 100% morally right you're never going to convince humanity of that.

option 6y ago

yes, nuclear waste is like taking a 10x smaller than the grain of rise shit in your neighbor’s yard.

jay_kyburz 6y ago
Sure, but even a grain of sand that I can't build on or walk over is still going to be annoying. It's still just rude no matter how small you think the problem is.
- option 6y ago
  we are in a climate crisis and wind/solar alone are just not going to cut it. And nuclear is the safest power source (measured in deaths/twh) which humans have been using for decades.
- godelski 6y ago
  I'm pretty sure you also can't build on or walk over a large pile of garbage. At least with the grain of sand there's not much area displaced.

dijit 6y ago

You know what, you’re right- I agree. However our largest energy creation mechanism is absolutely destroying the planet in non-linear and difficult to measure ways. Coal is not a dramatic killer but it kills us in droves, now and long into the future. Nuclear waste, in comparison, is more of a “known” issue, and were scared of what we know. I’m talking about coal because Sweden is displacing its nuclear power draw with mostly coal.

jay_kyburz 6y ago
I haven't read that we can't just recapture the carbon by re-planting a bazzilion trees. I'll do some googling now.
- loeg 6y ago
  The problem with trees-as-carbon capture is: 1. They are only a net store of carbon while they're alive. 2. Because of that, you need to dedicate land to carbon-capture forest, indefinitely. 3. Burning fossil fuels for energy releases more and more carbon into the atmosphere. Like, you get N tons of carbon captured out of a given land area. It's constant per area. So you would need to continually grow the amount of forested land just to follow the amount of carbon released by burning fossil fuels. But: land is finite. The actual worldwide trend has been to deforest land, either for lumber, or slash-and-burn for subsistence farming in poor countries, or just to allow for population growth, or the large land area needed for wind and solar farms. We don't have a huge surplus of not-yet-forest land — can't grow trees in deserts.
  - Chris2048 6y ago
    > They are only a net store of carbon while they're alive. Is wood not a carbon store?
    - Dma54rhs 6y ago
      When or a tree dies, or burns, during the decomposition process it releases the carbon back to atmosphere. Maybe you could bury them somewhere where decomposition it's slower or more difficult but hard to imagine doing it at scale.
      - Chris2048 6y ago
        Surely lumber, treated cellulose, contains a high % of the original carbon content (minus water)?

godelski 6y ago

> Saying Nuclear waste is not a problem is like saying taking a shit in your neighbors yard is not a problem. The weird thing is that you're taking a shit in your neighbor's yard. I mean if they do it in their own yard it's weird, but there's nothing wrong with it. I mean this is what we do with dog shit. The problem is that everyone shits. Sure, nuclear shit smells a lot more than solar shit or coal shit, but there's a hell of a lot less of it. We're talking a cat vs herd of rhinos. If I had to clean up one of the two I honestly don't care how much that cat's shit smells, I'm picking that job every single time. And you know what, the researchers seem to agree > The analyses did not reveal any science-based evidence that nuclear energy does more harm to human health or to the environment than other electricity production technologies

aszantu 6y ago
The places where uranium is mined is uninhabitable afterwards :(
- godelski 6y ago
  Yeah, but because there is a giant hole in the ground, but that's not specific to uranium mining. Luckily 1) uranium is extremely energy dense so we don't have to mine as much of it and 2) people usually don't live where mines open up in the first place. If we're talking about uranium mining you may notice that Canada isn't particularly habitable to begin with. Though in situ mining is pretty popular with uranium because it is cheap and results in less contaminants.
  - Klinky 6y ago
    Just because it's energy dense after enrichment, doesn't mean it has high concentrations within mined ore. Most mines operate with only a fraction of a percentage of the ore being uranium, and only a fraction of a percentage of that is U-235, and viable for a nuclear reactor. Some mines use ISL techniques which is similar to fracking. Canada does have Cigar Lake, the highest grade uranium mine in the world (15%), but due to the dangers of high uranium concentrations and the challenging geology, it has not been the easiest to extract. This is to say, you don't just dig up some ore and stuff it in a reactor(it takes a lot of ore to power a reactor), nor is uranium mining a clean process.

biren34 6y ago

I'm sorry to say, but the idea that "we don't need energy" is both false and dangerous. The earth's carrying capacity before fossil fuels was far, far lower than the 7 billion current population, especially with current living standards. The only reason we can support that many is because of a complex web of economics that causes the earth to produce far more food than it otherwise could, and then enables distribution of that food to where the people are. Without fossil fuels, we couldn't even produce the fertilizer needed to support the food. You could argue that there is some alternative set of lifestyles that would enable to eliminate fossil fuels without asking 90% of the population to die, but that would similarly require some sort of top-down totalitarian regime in order to get there and keep us there. At this point, we do need the energy. The only way to maybe not need it would be to somehow put a global version of Stalin in a position of absolute power. Failing to understand just how critical energy is to any sort of non-apocalyptic future is one of the biggest dangers in our current political debate about what should come next.

jay_kyburz 6y ago
I would like to do some more reading about this, do you have any links? The wikipedia page is a little light on detail. I agree that we should have food security for everybody, and I agree that if we don't provide everyday people with power for heating and cooking they will just start burning things again which would create a bigger disaster. But when I look around me I see massive amounts of waste in every sector because electricity is so cheap.
- scatters 6y ago
  Look at your own body. Half of the nitrogen in your body tissue - in particular, in protein - was clawed from the atmosphere by the Haber process. There is simply no replacement for industrial society.
- michael1999 6y ago
  The world population at the beginning of the 20th c (i.e. before the oil age) was ~1B, which was the highest in all of history. We are currently ~8B, on our way to 10-14 by the end of this century.

dtech 6y ago

There is almost no way to generate energy without waste for future generations, CO2 for fossil fuels, nuclear waste, electronic and heavy-metal waste for solar and batteries. Saying we should only use methods that don't provide waste is saying we should reduce energy consumption to 1-5% of current global and ditch all cars, ships and airplanes. Even if you are 100% morally right you're never going to convince humanity of that.