11 ms·

Really the safest means of disposal is to bury it, but that is fraught with its own problems.

Mauricebranagh 5y ago
I did wonder if dumping waste in subduction zones has been looked at.
bityard 5y ago
Safest or cheapest? And on what time scale? Because the safest long-term means of disposal is to launch it into the sun, but that's prohibitively expensive and is short-term extremely dangerous (e.g. the rocket exploding or crashing shortly after lift-off).
mynameisash 5y ago
If the spent fuel were contained, you could first run it through a breeder reactor[0] to reduce volume by an order of magnitude or two. The remains are still highly radioactive, but now you have much less volume to deal with. I assume that the waste in Chernobyl is largely/entirely distributed and contaminated with sand, dirt, other various debris, and thus probably couldn't benefit from that. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breeder_reactor#Waste_reduction https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breeder_reactor#Waste_reductio...
asdff 5y ago
The best solution is to bury it on land that is already more irradiated than any more added nuclear waste would make it. There is plenty of land like that.
Apocryphon 5y ago
What about launching it into space?
- jandrese 5y ago
  Rockets are not 100% reliable--having one carrying radioactive waste explode on launch would make for a really nasty mess to clean up. Ultimately, the total volume of Radioactive waste ever created is tiny in the grand scheme of things. Burying it is not a technical problem. The problems are entirely political. This is also why breeder reactors don't make sense. They're trying to apply a technical solution to a political problem.
  - merb 5y ago
    > Burying it is not a technical problem. it is. the problem is that it needs to be stored way longer than any human is living. basically there are very few sites which might be able to withstand a timeframe so large without every polluting the environment. you know just burying is not enough, you need to be sure that no water or anything else might break your containments. it's probably impossible to do it and it's also not a good idea to think that burying it and forgetting about it is a good idea either.
    - jandrese 5y ago
      Things that are radioactive for longer than human lifetimes are not very radioactive at all. The danger is more that they are still poisonous. Finding places where you can control the groundwater isn't that hard. We have many candidates. Old salt mines are preferred because the salt slowly flows around the containers and entombs them. This is where the relatively small volume of the radioactive waste is a feature, you don't need a massive number of old mines to handle all of the waste. One or two would be sufficient. Most of the concern about this is people demanding solutions that are grossly more complex and elaborate than the problem really demands. A political problem. Imagine if coal mines had to treat their tailings with the same level of care? They are similarly radioactive after a few years and just as poisonous, but we let them be dumped right into streams. Natural gas is extracted by pumping poisonous chemicals into the ground to break up rocks--greatly increasing the possibility of groundwater contamination. Imagine if they had to extract all of those chemicals back out of the ground and then store them someplace where they could be proven to never leak out again. High level radioactive waste doesn't stay high level for very long by its very nature. This is why nuclear power plants have ponds where they store the hot stuff until it cools down enough for long term storage. After that they just have to be handled like any other nasty industrial chemical, plus some extra shielding to protect the workers from hitting their total yearly exposure limits too quickly.
      - merb 5y ago
        > Things that are radioactive for longer than human lifetimes are not very radioactive at all. The danger is more that they are still poisonous. good, so we take it out after 50 years and place it in your yard than? just kidding, but saying such things is stupid, the stuff is still highly dangerous even after > 1000 years, especially if the shielding gets blown away, people die from that. the fuel NEEDS to be on site for the first 10-20 years, since it's impossible to shield it good enough. after that it needs to be stored 100000 years at a minimum. > Finding places where you can control the groundwater isn't that hard. We have many candidates. Old salt mines are preferred because the salt slowly flows around the containers and entombs them. This is where the relatively small volume of the radioactive waste is a feature, you don't need a massive number of old mines to handle all of the waste. One or two would be sufficient. good idea. in germany we already found a salt mine: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asse_II_mine https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asse_II_mine oh... wait. btw. you can actually recycle some material, but that is expensive and is not done for all material, but it drain more billions of dollar for a single plant, most often it's easier to socialize the storage of the radioactive waste. > High level radioactive waste doesn't stay high level for very long by its very nature spent fuels is radiotoxic over 100000 years? I mean, that is long. of course for more money it can be reprocessed, reducing the long livity waste by a far margin and also not everything needs to be stored that long. it's still problem and down talking it does not help. > Natural gas is extracted by pumping poisonous chemicals into the ground to break up rocks--greatly increasing the possibility of groundwater contamination. Imagine if they had to extract all of those chemicals back out of the ground and then store them someplace where they could be proven to never leak out again. ok, because that's also bad it's ok to use another bad technology? heck coal is also bad it produces flying ash, way way more tones than all reactors in the world will produce over their lifetime. does it make the waste of nuclear better? no. is it good to point fingers on other technologies that are as bad? no. (to make it clear high level waste per 1000MW reactor is like 3m^3 (around a tonne) per reactor. of course it's not a lot compared to stuff that coal, mining (uranium gets mined, too and produces a shit ton of tailings) and gas, etc..., but a lot for the timeframe it needs to be stored)

I did wonder if dumping waste in subduction zones has been looked at.

Safest or cheapest? And on what time scale? Because the safest long-term means of disposal is to launch it into the sun, but that's prohibitively expensive and is short-term extremely dangerous (e.g. the rocket exploding or crashing shortly after lift-off).

mynameisash 5y ago

If the spent fuel were contained, you could first run it through a breeder reactor[0] to reduce volume by an order of magnitude or two. The remains are still highly radioactive, but now you have much less volume to deal with. I assume that the waste in Chernobyl is largely/entirely distributed and contaminated with sand, dirt, other various debris, and thus probably couldn't benefit from that. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breeder_reactor#Waste_reduction https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breeder_reactor#Waste_reductio...

asdff 5y ago

The best solution is to bury it on land that is already more irradiated than any more added nuclear waste would make it. There is plenty of land like that.

Apocryphon 5y ago

What about launching it into space?

jandrese 5y ago
Rockets are not 100% reliable--having one carrying radioactive waste explode on launch would make for a really nasty mess to clean up. Ultimately, the total volume of Radioactive waste ever created is tiny in the grand scheme of things. Burying it is not a technical problem. The problems are entirely political. This is also why breeder reactors don't make sense. They're trying to apply a technical solution to a political problem.
- merb 5y ago
  > Burying it is not a technical problem. it is. the problem is that it needs to be stored way longer than any human is living. basically there are very few sites which might be able to withstand a timeframe so large without every polluting the environment. you know just burying is not enough, you need to be sure that no water or anything else might break your containments. it's probably impossible to do it and it's also not a good idea to think that burying it and forgetting about it is a good idea either.
  - jandrese 5y ago
    Things that are radioactive for longer than human lifetimes are not very radioactive at all. The danger is more that they are still poisonous. Finding places where you can control the groundwater isn't that hard. We have many candidates. Old salt mines are preferred because the salt slowly flows around the containers and entombs them. This is where the relatively small volume of the radioactive waste is a feature, you don't need a massive number of old mines to handle all of the waste. One or two would be sufficient. Most of the concern about this is people demanding solutions that are grossly more complex and elaborate than the problem really demands. A political problem. Imagine if coal mines had to treat their tailings with the same level of care? They are similarly radioactive after a few years and just as poisonous, but we let them be dumped right into streams. Natural gas is extracted by pumping poisonous chemicals into the ground to break up rocks--greatly increasing the possibility of groundwater contamination. Imagine if they had to extract all of those chemicals back out of the ground and then store them someplace where they could be proven to never leak out again. High level radioactive waste doesn't stay high level for very long by its very nature. This is why nuclear power plants have ponds where they store the hot stuff until it cools down enough for long term storage. After that they just have to be handled like any other nasty industrial chemical, plus some extra shielding to protect the workers from hitting their total yearly exposure limits too quickly.
    - merb 5y ago
      > Things that are radioactive for longer than human lifetimes are not very radioactive at all. The danger is more that they are still poisonous. good, so we take it out after 50 years and place it in your yard than? just kidding, but saying such things is stupid, the stuff is still highly dangerous even after > 1000 years, especially if the shielding gets blown away, people die from that. the fuel NEEDS to be on site for the first 10-20 years, since it's impossible to shield it good enough. after that it needs to be stored 100000 years at a minimum. > Finding places where you can control the groundwater isn't that hard. We have many candidates. Old salt mines are preferred because the salt slowly flows around the containers and entombs them. This is where the relatively small volume of the radioactive waste is a feature, you don't need a massive number of old mines to handle all of the waste. One or two would be sufficient. good idea. in germany we already found a salt mine: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asse_II_mine https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asse_II_mine oh... wait. btw. you can actually recycle some material, but that is expensive and is not done for all material, but it drain more billions of dollar for a single plant, most often it's easier to socialize the storage of the radioactive waste. > High level radioactive waste doesn't stay high level for very long by its very nature spent fuels is radiotoxic over 100000 years? I mean, that is long. of course for more money it can be reprocessed, reducing the long livity waste by a far margin and also not everything needs to be stored that long. it's still problem and down talking it does not help. > Natural gas is extracted by pumping poisonous chemicals into the ground to break up rocks--greatly increasing the possibility of groundwater contamination. Imagine if they had to extract all of those chemicals back out of the ground and then store them someplace where they could be proven to never leak out again. ok, because that's also bad it's ok to use another bad technology? heck coal is also bad it produces flying ash, way way more tones than all reactors in the world will produce over their lifetime. does it make the waste of nuclear better? no. is it good to point fingers on other technologies that are as bad? no. (to make it clear high level waste per 1000MW reactor is like 3m^3 (around a tonne) per reactor. of course it's not a lot compared to stuff that coal, mining (uranium gets mined, too and produces a shit ton of tailings) and gas, etc..., but a lot for the timeframe it needs to be stored)