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The only reason reactors are dangerous is because everyone was still using the disaster plan from the 1960s. Cooling a melting reactor can be done very safely n
by rootVIII 5y ago
The only reason reactors are dangerous is because everyone was still using the disaster plan from the 1960s. Cooling a melting reactor can be done very safely now if people put the effort in. This is a much cleaner solution than solar; wtf are we supposed to do with all of the solar cells every 10 years or so... landfill?
I completely agree with you
- Angostura 5y agoI assume you are being ironic suggesting that putting solar cells into landfill is more problematic than disposing of spent nuclear fuel - and decommissioning old, radioactive installations.
- jchook 5y agoSolar panels have a relatively short lifespan, require and enormous amount of material compared to the energy they generate, and contain toxic elements that never break down. In contrast, all the nuclear waste generated by the world since the invention of nuclear energy can fit into a single Highschool auditorium. For perspective, a giant freight ship that burns two tons of crude fuel per hour could run on 5g of plutonium per year.
- lwhi 5y agoI'm sorry, but comparing the nuclear waste to the waste provided by solar panels is absolute lunacy.
- PaulHoule 5y agoNuclear waste isn't really waste. That's part of the reason why projects like Yucca Mountain haven't been completed. Natural uranium is a mixture of U235 and U238, an LWR consumes U235 and a small amount of the U238. It gets maybe 2% of the energy out of the uranium and most of the long-lived radioactivity is Pu239 and related actinides that have value as fuel. (In a reprocessing cycle almost all of the waste decays in 500 years.) Reprocessing nuclear fuel to produce uranium and plutonium powder is a straightforward technology. What's not straightforward is fabricating fuel out of that powder. The most practical way to alloy oxides of U and Pu is to put them through a high-energy ball mill that fuses together nanoparticles of U and Pu. The HEBM can make something like Silica into a deadly poison, so just think what it can do with Plutonium! It seems impossible to run a Pu fuel fab that is a safe place to work without using a respirator full time. The French seem cool with it, but it violates the labor laws in every other country. To make it worse, fuel fabrication is a labor intensive process which involves somebody putting pellets into a fuel rod with gloved hands. There are alternatives (co-precipitation, liquid fuel reactors, robotics) but they have to be developed to close the fuel cycle.
- lwhi 5y ago> Nuclear waste isn't really waste. In which case why are a number of other proponents in this thread suggesting the best solution is to bury it?
- jabl 5y agoBecause currently fresh uranium is cheaper than reprocessing spent fuel. Further, to really close the fuel cycle and get the full benefits of reprocessing you need breeder reactors, another technology that exists and is proven to work, but with current Uranium prices isn't yet competitive with thermal reactors and a once-through fuel cycle.
- lwhi 5y agoSo for now, it actually is waste.
- PaulHoule 5y agoNone of the cost estimates on this subject really make sense because of the period of time involved. For instance "no nukes" think it is a scandal that we could spend $100 billion on Yucca mountain, but the average nuclear plant makes about $500 million per year in electricity so that is about 2 years of energy production. It's significant, but it's not crazy. A reprocessing cycle could easily take a century to fully burn U238 so "what it costs" is influenced by what you think interest rates will be (or should) be for next 100 years. Fuel cycle costs are nearly zero compared to the cost of the steam turbine at an LWR. If the price of uranium tripled, it would make little different in the basebar price of electricity.
- fsh 5y agoWhat "certain toxic elements than never break down" would that be? Typical lifespans are estimated to be 25-30 years. I doubt that any other power plant will run that long without requiring major maintenance.
- pepperberg 5y ago" all the nuclear waste generated by the world since the invention of nuclear energy can fit into a single Highschool auditorium" Source?
- jchook 5y agoIt’s an inexact measurement to give you an idea of how little waste is actually produced. I used to feel very anti-nuclear, mostly out of fear and lack of information. Then I read more about it and learned that taking point. Other sources I find from a quick google use different comparisons, like this one[1]: > In fact, the U.S. has produced roughly 83,000 metrics tons of used fuel since the 1950s—and all of it could fit on a single football field at a depth of less than 10 yards. > Used fuel can be recycled. > More than 90% of its potential energy still remains in the fuel, even after five years of operation in a reactor. Or this measurement[2]: > a typical 1,000-megawatt nuclear power station, which would supply the needs of more than a million people, produces only three cubic metres of vitrified high-level waste per year, 1. https://www.energy.gov/ne/articles/5-fast-facts-about-spent-nuclear-fuel https://www.energy.gov/ne/articles/5-fast-facts-about-spent-... 2. https://world-nuclear.org/nuclear-essentials/what-is-nuclear-waste-and-what-do-we-do-with-it.aspx https://world-nuclear.org/nuclear-essentials/what-is-nuclear...
- NineStarPoint 5y agoWell, optimistically, there’s about 250,000 tons of high level nuclear waste worldwide, which represents about 13,000 cubic meters of waste. Auditoriums tend to max out at 5000 cubic meters, so, it’s fair to say it would take a few auditoriums. Best way to put it that can be understood visually is that it’s about 5-6 olympic sized swimming pools worth of waste. And generally the high level stuff is mixed in with other waste people don’t bother to separate, so could be considered a few times more than that.
- Angostura 5y ago> In contrast, all the nuclear waste generated by the world since the invention of nuclear energy can fit into a single Highschool auditorium. Even a cursory glance at the amount of storage in a singe UK site, Sellafield would tell you that you are wrong. Unless, this is a rether exceptional high school https://www.wired.co.uk/article/inside-sellafield-nuclear-waste-decommissioning https://www.wired.co.uk/article/inside-sellafield-nuclear-wa...
- falcolas 5y agoYou're right and wrong. The waste amount is rather small, but the steel, concrete, and water required to contain that amount is several orders of magnitude larger. The parent is ignoring those containment requirements (or relying heavily on technologies that are still in the research phase).
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- falcolas 5y agoBut that 5g requires years of storage in a reasonably large body of water to cool it down, and then several tons of steel and concrete to store it safely. https://www.nrc.gov/waste/spent-fuel-storage/faqs.html https://www.nrc.gov/waste/spent-fuel-storage/faqs.html
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- NineStarPoint 5y agoThe scale of the waste created matters. Nuclear energy is about 20% of the US load, and in the entirety of the last 50 years has generated about 100,000 tons of waste. By 2050, the US is estimated to have about 10% of its electricity come from solar panels, and for 78 million tons of waste to have been created by this. We’re essentially talking two orders of magnitude more waste being created, so even if the waste involved is less of a problem it’s far from trivial. And solar panels have plenty of toxic materials in them, so it’s not like just dumping them in a landfill is safe for the surroundings either. If we figure out a good way to recycle solar panels, then it won’t be an issue. If we do just throw them into landfills, the waste issue with solar is only marginally better than nuclear.
- est31 5y agoIf it's so easy then why did Fukushima happen? It happened only 10 years ago, and with an american designed reactor.
- tmccrary55 5y agoIt was a reactor from the 1960s or older.
- lwhi 5y agoIn 2080 people will be saying the same thing about reactors built now. I'm certain of it.
- tmccrary55 5y agoYeah but newer designs like GE's newer ESBWR are designed to passively shutdown if there's a failure. The reactor used at Fukushima and many other places go haywire in a worst case failure scenario (like a massive earthquake and tsunami). There still isn't anything that can provide the power we will need better than nuclear.
- lwhi 5y ago> There still isn't anything that can provide the power we will need better than nuclear. It ultimately feels like a deal with the Devil. -- I'm also certain we will find something better. Why take so many risks unnecessarily now.
- tmccrary55 5y agoThe entire universe runs on nuclear power. I'd be surprised if we found something much better, but who knows what the future brings.
- lwhi 5y agoIf we're emulating the universe, we should be situating the nuclear plant at least a million km away.
- PaulHoule 5y agoSpecifically, the "design basis" accident in the 1970s was a "double guillotine" failure of the coolant intake at the bottom of the reactor. In real life people are scrupulously careful in designing pressure vessels and pressure vessels just don't break like that -- not the way that people suck in storage tanks every day. In the 1980s it was realized that the real "most likely" accident is that the power runs out at the plant and they are unable to manage the heat output -- if you can swirl some water around it is not that bad, but if you can't, you get Fukushima. Modern (post-1990) designs keep enough water around that the reactor can stay cooled for two weeks without power. Had Fukushima kept a few spare diesel generators at a site above the flood waters we'd probably never have heard about trouble there on the news. Solar cell recycling is a thing, it is easy to melt them down to get the silicon, they are even expecting to recycle the CdTe cells from First Solar. Solar cells are more like beer cans, cars and airplanes (recycle almost 100% of the steel and aluminum) and less like houses (landfill.)
- p1mrx 5y ago> Modern (post-1990) designs keep enough water around that the reactor can stay cooled for two weeks without power. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AP1000 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AP1000 says 72 hours, which is much less than 2 weeks.
- tmccrary55 5y agoI'd say the scary thing is that Westinghouse (who designed and built that reactor) is now owned by private equity.
- lwhi 5y ago> Cooling a melting reactor can be done very safely now if people put the effort in. Cooling a reactor built when??? What do we do with the old reactors? How are you so sure we won't make mistakes of a similar magnitude to the 1960s reactors, now? -- Edit: So no answers, only downvotes. Is this the best you can do?
- garden_hermit 5y agoI think the problem is that doing it right requires "putting in the effort". Unless there is a 100% idiot-proof reactor is made, mistakes and crises will still happen, maybe less often, but still sometimes, and it will kill the PR of nuclear.
- nico_h 5y agoWell, the efficiency warranty is usually at least 80% until 25 years, so 10 years seems a bit short. If there are enough of them, recycling can be made efficient, and disposing of them would in any case be easier than for the spent yet radioactive materials. If we wanted to we could even enclose in glass container the nasty stuff, and it would not decay its container at nearly the same rate as the radioactive stuff.
- addicted 5y agoI'm sure the world will let countries freely access nuclear material, when it took the US years and a whole lot of political capital to sell nuclear raw material to a country like India.
- bryanlarsen 5y agoThe recycling argument against renewables is usually a strawman. Very few things can be recycled economically, so its an easy argument to trot out against something you don't like. OTOH, if we decided that it was a priority to recycle more stuff and minimally subsidized it, suddenly a lot of stuff would become viable to recycle, including wind turbine blades and solar panels. Solar panels are mostly silicon in two different forms: glass and substrate. Both can be recycled if it is a priority.