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Didn't France, a nuclear power plant "superpower" produce like only a half of Wembley Stadium of waste in like 50 years? If this is a price of clean air and pu
by molszanski 5y ago
Didn't France, a nuclear power plant "superpower" produce like only a half of Wembley Stadium of waste in like 50 years?
If this is a price of clean air and pushing the global warming further into the future we can build a couple of mini pyramids of nuclear doom and call it day.
- betterunix2 5y agoI am pretty sure the reason is that France did not ban nuclear fuel reprocessing for several decades, and thus recycled large amounts of spent fuel elements. In the US reprocessing was banned and power plants built up large piles of spent fuel rods as a result.
- pfdietz 5y agoReprocessing was banned in the US for a few years. Carter banned it, Reagan lifted the ban. But reprocessing didn't pick up again because it's economically absurd. The plutonium separated from spent fuel has negative value -- it costs more to produce fuel rods containing it than you save in enriched uranium. Reprocessing may have made sense in a world where enrichment was expensive, uranium resources becoming limited, and fast reactors practical. We do not live in a world with any of those properties. Enrichment prices crashed with gas centrifuges; uranium resources are ample; and fast reactors have turned out to be difficult to make competitive even with thermal nuclear reactors.
- periheli0n 5y agoStill you have to put that half Wembley stadium somewhere. It's not like you can just put it in landfill with the toxicity levels you get from some of the stuff is in the micrograms.
- Manuel_D 5y agoYou dig a hole into impermeable bedrock, and put the waste there. Or if you're the Soviets, you just dump it into the Arctic ocean.
- molszanski 5y agoI think humanity can build half a wembley stadium somewhere :) I can store some in my basement if that would help