5 ms·

It was for decades, there simply isn't anything new to discuss. We still have no solution a) where to put nuclear waste, and b) how to communicate to civilizat

It was for decades, there simply isn't anything new to discuss. We still have no solution a) where to put nuclear waste, and b) how to communicate to civilizations for the next 25000-50000 years what kind of waste that is. In Germany, the ongoing search for a permanent waste repository is going on for decades now. Funnily enough, this taxpayer's money is never calculated into the total cost of operating nuclear plants. It only makes sense if you subsidize cost by taxes of current and future generations.

fsflover 5y ago
> a) where to put nuclear waste https://whatisnuclear.com/waste.html https://whatisnuclear.com/waste.html > b) how to communicate to civilizations for the next 25000-50000 years what kind of waste that is. I would solve the climate change problem first, otherwise all problems appearing in 25000 years are moot.
adrianN 5y ago
You'd put your waste in a breeder reactor until it has turned into short-lived isotopes that you only have to worry about for a few hundred years. Without breeder reactors we probably wouldn't have enough fuel anyway.
- purerandomness 5y ago
  1. there are no working production-grade breeder reactors 2. you can't convert ALL of the waste into short-lived isotopes, just a fraction of it. Sure, we can invest time and money into researching these topics, why not. But why not put the same energy into researching renewables?
  - jsmith45 5y ago
    Actually the goal is to have no medium lived isotopes. Long lived isotopes are simply not a problem, as their level of radioactivity can easily be low enough to be safer than the original uranium ore. Short lived half lives, will decay down to nothing in more manageable time frames. Like if we had no medium half life isotopes, we may only need to keep waste safe for a few hundred years, perhaps 1000 at most, before remaining short lived isotopes contribute negligible radiation, leaving just the long half life isotopes. If those are long enough we have waste not meaningfully more dangerous than the original uranium ore, and can simply bury it. A lot of this does depend on the specifics of input fuel and breeding cycles used, but there have been designs that would be able to reprocess any medium lived half-life outputs, leaving only reasonably short lived, and very long lived outputs. The real question is what is the overall effect of such reprocessing on the cost efficiency. Presumably, breeder reprocessing entails some level of cost (additional equipment, additional monitoring, etc), and we may end up with some not completely optimal components in the fuel after reprocessing, which would mean lower operating efficiency. But by how much? How much less cost efficient doing the right thing here makes the plants is a critically important concern.
andbberger 5y ago
that was never really a problem worth worrying about on the timescale of our lifetime and has now been definitively solved anyway https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Onkalo_spent_nuclear_fuel_repository https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Onkalo_spent_nuclear_fuel_repo...
OscarCunningham 5y ago
> b) how to communicate to civilizations for the next 25000-50000 years what kind of waste that is. People care about this way more than it actually matters. If going near a certain area kills you, people are going to learn that after the first few deaths. The casualties are never going to anywhere near the stakes of global warming. And besides that, the whole worry only applies in the narrow range of futures where humanity neither drives itself extinct nor retains advanced technology. It occurs to me that in that kind of future, society might actually be helped overall by the scientific advancement driven by having access to radioactive sources.

fsflover 5y ago

> a) where to put nuclear waste https://whatisnuclear.com/waste.html https://whatisnuclear.com/waste.html > b) how to communicate to civilizations for the next 25000-50000 years what kind of waste that is. I would solve the climate change problem first, otherwise all problems appearing in 25000 years are moot.

adrianN 5y ago

You'd put your waste in a breeder reactor until it has turned into short-lived isotopes that you only have to worry about for a few hundred years. Without breeder reactors we probably wouldn't have enough fuel anyway.

purerandomness 5y ago
1. there are no working production-grade breeder reactors 2. you can't convert ALL of the waste into short-lived isotopes, just a fraction of it. Sure, we can invest time and money into researching these topics, why not. But why not put the same energy into researching renewables?
- jsmith45 5y ago
  Actually the goal is to have no medium lived isotopes. Long lived isotopes are simply not a problem, as their level of radioactivity can easily be low enough to be safer than the original uranium ore. Short lived half lives, will decay down to nothing in more manageable time frames. Like if we had no medium half life isotopes, we may only need to keep waste safe for a few hundred years, perhaps 1000 at most, before remaining short lived isotopes contribute negligible radiation, leaving just the long half life isotopes. If those are long enough we have waste not meaningfully more dangerous than the original uranium ore, and can simply bury it. A lot of this does depend on the specifics of input fuel and breeding cycles used, but there have been designs that would be able to reprocess any medium lived half-life outputs, leaving only reasonably short lived, and very long lived outputs. The real question is what is the overall effect of such reprocessing on the cost efficiency. Presumably, breeder reprocessing entails some level of cost (additional equipment, additional monitoring, etc), and we may end up with some not completely optimal components in the fuel after reprocessing, which would mean lower operating efficiency. But by how much? How much less cost efficient doing the right thing here makes the plants is a critically important concern.

andbberger 5y ago

that was never really a problem worth worrying about on the timescale of our lifetime and has now been definitively solved anyway https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Onkalo_spent_nuclear_fuel_repository https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Onkalo_spent_nuclear_fuel_repo...

OscarCunningham 5y ago

> b) how to communicate to civilizations for the next 25000-50000 years what kind of waste that is. People care about this way more than it actually matters. If going near a certain area kills you, people are going to learn that after the first few deaths. The casualties are never going to anywhere near the stakes of global warming. And besides that, the whole worry only applies in the narrow range of futures where humanity neither drives itself extinct nor retains advanced technology. It occurs to me that in that kind of future, society might actually be helped overall by the scientific advancement driven by having access to radioactive sources.