7 ms·

Plus, you know, storing the waste for thousands of years without a good place to do so. Payed for by the public.

jcfrei 5y ago
A lot of the fuel can be recycled and doesn't need to be stored for thousands of years. Storing the remainder underground is mostly a one-off cost except for some monitoring. It's a solved problem and only public misconceptions about tectonics and radioactivity are holding it back.
- perlgeek 5y ago
  > A lot of the fuel can be recycled and doesn't need to be stored for thousands of years. But is it, actually? The amount of nuclear waste in interim storage speaks against it. > It's a solved problem It is certainly not. For example in Germany there's only one terminal storage facility, and it's already showing problems, less than half a century in. And we thought/hoped it could last for tens of thousands of years. Maybe a case could be made that in ideal conditions, technical solutions exist, but I'm not aware of any actually viable solutions. (Note that a solution isn't viable from a public relations POV, it's NOT an actually viable solution).
  - jcfrei 5y ago
    > But is it, actually? The amount of nuclear waste in interim storage speaks against it. No, there aren't a lot of breeder reactors running. But that's just because there hasn't been any pressure to develop them commercially. > but I'm not aware of any actually viable solutions. Check out the Onkalo fuel repository: https://www.posiva.fi/en/index.html https://www.posiva.fi/en/index.html
xyzzyz 5y ago
We have good places to do so, it’s just they never are good enough to antinuclear activists.
- avmich 5y ago
  When antinuclear activists constitute 90% of the population, the other people start to be called differently :( . Despite attempts on HN to help me, I still don't see a good way to deal with nuclear waste, which would be well explained.
  - BitwiseFool 5y ago
    Why not store the waste in Pripyat? Chernobyl already has dedicated personnel and monitoring equipment for radiation control. The area is off limits to settlement and it's not like there are NIMBY concerns. Nuclear plants already store their waste on-site, which means the footprint of the waste is small. The exclusion zone is large.
  - jcfrei 5y ago
    It's all well explained - at this point you don't want to understand the solution: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deep_geological_repository https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deep_geological_repository I've cited this quote before: "Despite a long-standing agreement among many experts that geological disposal can be safe, technologically feasible and environmentally sound, a large part of the general public in many countries remains skeptical as result of anti-nuclear campaigns and lack of knowledge." It's unfortunately the case that large parts of the public (in some countries at least) prefer banning a reliable and sustainable energy source rather than risking that some guy in 10'000 years gets cancer because he recklessly trespassed into an old fuel depot.
    - xyzzyz 5y ago
      > rather than risking that some guy in 10'000 years gets cancer because he recklessly trespassed into an old fuel depot. The way I see it is that if human civilization degenerates so much that it loses track of where and what are nuclear waste deposits, there will be much bigger sources of death and misery than occasional radiation induced cancer.
    - avmich 5y ago
      A good explanation is something different than repeating that experts agree on a particular page on the Internet. For question this controversial, I'd prefer to see a list of arguments for and contra, with best points from either side, which would cover all reasonable arguments and some unreasonable ones, with the decision left to the reader - otherwise expert opinion may seem not enough grounded. For me, I believe I have enough basic knowledge to decide, I just don't see a good analysis anywhere. I've talked with an expert too, a friend - and while he's for nuclear power, some questions he couldn't answer well. So, Wikipedia page doesn't seem enough - and I don't think I don't want to understand the solution.
fsflover 5y ago
So you care about a thousand-year problem but forget about the 50-year problem (climate change).
- bryanlarsen 5y ago
  50 year problem? Climate change is an 8 year problem. That's the main reason that nuclear is infeasible, we can't do it in 8 years. We should have started building 100s of nuclear reactors 20 years ago. Doing it now is too late. Wind & solar + batteries can be built much quicker.
  - an9n 5y ago
    What are you going to make the batteries from - lithium? That comes with its own host of terrible impacts that people seem to be keen to brush under the carpet.
    - daneel_w 5y ago
      The majority of lithium is extracted through passive evaporation of brine, not from ore mining. The impact is far less horrible than mining copper, gold, silver, platinum and so on. I'd wager that you have conveniently forgotten about these metals in your environmental argument.
    - bryanlarsen 5y ago
      Lithium, yes. I am very comfortable trading the existential threat of climate change, the local environmental damage caused by fossil fuel particulates, and the massive damage done by fossil fuel extraction for the damage caused by lithium extraction. The quantities of lithium required are a couple of orders of magnitude less than the quantities of oil we extract annually. There are a good half dozen viable methods of extracting lithium. Some are substantially cleaner than others, which are the ones we should use.
  - p_l 5y ago
    And still won't work in 8 year timescale because of their intermittence and that batteries are a bit like fusion.
andbberger 5y ago
Waste is not a problem, you bury it in a deep hole and don't mark it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Onkalo_spent_nuclear_fuel_repository https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Onkalo_spent_nuclear_fuel_repo...
daneel_w 5y ago
What do you mean "without a good place to do so"? Many European countries have had dedicated facilities for this for decades, some of which even manage hosting agreements for storing other European countries' spent fuel. You say this as if you think spent fuel rods are just being tossed with other metal scrap.
oceanplexian 5y ago
Why do the same debunked arguments against nuclear come up? Even if we didn't reprocess the waste (Making the issue completely irrelevant) and had to store it, this is a solved problem. Primitive ancient civilizations were able to build structures that lasted thousands of years, I think we can handle burying some rocks in the desert in 2021.
belorn 5y ago
They could have looked at the fossil fuel industry and released the waste into the air. Spread it out over a large enough area and people don't seem to mind as much, and living near such plant would possible be safer than living near a coal plant. The problem is that they stockpiled it, having the public pay the storage cost with taxes rather than with their health.
- nullsmack 5y ago
  WTF No, this is how you kill a huge population with cancer at best and radiation sickness is still far more likely. What is wrong with you?
  - belorn 5y ago
    We should tell this to coal plants as that what they are doing right now. Coal waste product called coal ash release more radiation per energy produced than the waste product from nuclear reactors. People who live around coal plants have a higher risk of cancer. People die because of it. Some coal power plants filter and collect their waste product. They then have to manage the waste. It either end up in landfills for toxic waste, bury it in the ground, or they dump it in the ocean. Hundred of tons of coal ash is created every year in the US alone. Nuclear plants don't have the luxury to just dump it in the air, ocean, or bury it in the ground. The law require them to collect and store it, and so in contrast to fossil fuels it builds up and is visible. Nuclear plants create less total waste, and they don't contribute to climate change, and yet people are worried about nuclear waste while consuming enormous amount of fossil fuel energy. The nuclear industry need better PR, while governments need to stop playing favorites. Force fossil fueled power plants to have the same requirements that we put on nuclear plants, and make both pay for waste management.

A lot of the fuel can be recycled and doesn't need to be stored for thousands of years. Storing the remainder underground is mostly a one-off cost except for some monitoring. It's a solved problem and only public misconceptions about tectonics and radioactivity are holding it back.

perlgeek 5y ago
> A lot of the fuel can be recycled and doesn't need to be stored for thousands of years. But is it, actually? The amount of nuclear waste in interim storage speaks against it. > It's a solved problem It is certainly not. For example in Germany there's only one terminal storage facility, and it's already showing problems, less than half a century in. And we thought/hoped it could last for tens of thousands of years. Maybe a case could be made that in ideal conditions, technical solutions exist, but I'm not aware of any actually viable solutions. (Note that a solution isn't viable from a public relations POV, it's NOT an actually viable solution).
- jcfrei 5y ago
  > But is it, actually? The amount of nuclear waste in interim storage speaks against it. No, there aren't a lot of breeder reactors running. But that's just because there hasn't been any pressure to develop them commercially. > but I'm not aware of any actually viable solutions. Check out the Onkalo fuel repository: https://www.posiva.fi/en/index.html https://www.posiva.fi/en/index.html

xyzzyz 5y ago

We have good places to do so, it’s just they never are good enough to antinuclear activists.

avmich 5y ago
When antinuclear activists constitute 90% of the population, the other people start to be called differently :( . Despite attempts on HN to help me, I still don't see a good way to deal with nuclear waste, which would be well explained.
- BitwiseFool 5y ago
  Why not store the waste in Pripyat? Chernobyl already has dedicated personnel and monitoring equipment for radiation control. The area is off limits to settlement and it's not like there are NIMBY concerns. Nuclear plants already store their waste on-site, which means the footprint of the waste is small. The exclusion zone is large.
- jcfrei 5y ago
  It's all well explained - at this point you don't want to understand the solution: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deep_geological_repository https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deep_geological_repository I've cited this quote before: "Despite a long-standing agreement among many experts that geological disposal can be safe, technologically feasible and environmentally sound, a large part of the general public in many countries remains skeptical as result of anti-nuclear campaigns and lack of knowledge." It's unfortunately the case that large parts of the public (in some countries at least) prefer banning a reliable and sustainable energy source rather than risking that some guy in 10'000 years gets cancer because he recklessly trespassed into an old fuel depot.
  - xyzzyz 5y ago
    > rather than risking that some guy in 10'000 years gets cancer because he recklessly trespassed into an old fuel depot. The way I see it is that if human civilization degenerates so much that it loses track of where and what are nuclear waste deposits, there will be much bigger sources of death and misery than occasional radiation induced cancer.
  - avmich 5y ago
    A good explanation is something different than repeating that experts agree on a particular page on the Internet. For question this controversial, I'd prefer to see a list of arguments for and contra, with best points from either side, which would cover all reasonable arguments and some unreasonable ones, with the decision left to the reader - otherwise expert opinion may seem not enough grounded. For me, I believe I have enough basic knowledge to decide, I just don't see a good analysis anywhere. I've talked with an expert too, a friend - and while he's for nuclear power, some questions he couldn't answer well. So, Wikipedia page doesn't seem enough - and I don't think I don't want to understand the solution.

fsflover 5y ago

So you care about a thousand-year problem but forget about the 50-year problem (climate change).

bryanlarsen 5y ago
50 year problem? Climate change is an 8 year problem. That's the main reason that nuclear is infeasible, we can't do it in 8 years. We should have started building 100s of nuclear reactors 20 years ago. Doing it now is too late. Wind & solar + batteries can be built much quicker.
- an9n 5y ago
  What are you going to make the batteries from - lithium? That comes with its own host of terrible impacts that people seem to be keen to brush under the carpet.
  - daneel_w 5y ago
    The majority of lithium is extracted through passive evaporation of brine, not from ore mining. The impact is far less horrible than mining copper, gold, silver, platinum and so on. I'd wager that you have conveniently forgotten about these metals in your environmental argument.
  - bryanlarsen 5y ago
    Lithium, yes. I am very comfortable trading the existential threat of climate change, the local environmental damage caused by fossil fuel particulates, and the massive damage done by fossil fuel extraction for the damage caused by lithium extraction. The quantities of lithium required are a couple of orders of magnitude less than the quantities of oil we extract annually. There are a good half dozen viable methods of extracting lithium. Some are substantially cleaner than others, which are the ones we should use.
- p_l 5y ago
  And still won't work in 8 year timescale because of their intermittence and that batteries are a bit like fusion.

andbberger 5y ago

Waste is not a problem, you bury it in a deep hole and don't mark it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Onkalo_spent_nuclear_fuel_repository https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Onkalo_spent_nuclear_fuel_repo...

daneel_w 5y ago

What do you mean "without a good place to do so"? Many European countries have had dedicated facilities for this for decades, some of which even manage hosting agreements for storing other European countries' spent fuel. You say this as if you think spent fuel rods are just being tossed with other metal scrap.

oceanplexian 5y ago

Why do the same debunked arguments against nuclear come up? Even if we didn't reprocess the waste (Making the issue completely irrelevant) and had to store it, this is a solved problem. Primitive ancient civilizations were able to build structures that lasted thousands of years, I think we can handle burying some rocks in the desert in 2021.

belorn 5y ago

They could have looked at the fossil fuel industry and released the waste into the air. Spread it out over a large enough area and people don't seem to mind as much, and living near such plant would possible be safer than living near a coal plant. The problem is that they stockpiled it, having the public pay the storage cost with taxes rather than with their health.

nullsmack 5y ago
WTF No, this is how you kill a huge population with cancer at best and radiation sickness is still far more likely. What is wrong with you?
- belorn 5y ago
  We should tell this to coal plants as that what they are doing right now. Coal waste product called coal ash release more radiation per energy produced than the waste product from nuclear reactors. People who live around coal plants have a higher risk of cancer. People die because of it. Some coal power plants filter and collect their waste product. They then have to manage the waste. It either end up in landfills for toxic waste, bury it in the ground, or they dump it in the ocean. Hundred of tons of coal ash is created every year in the US alone. Nuclear plants don't have the luxury to just dump it in the air, ocean, or bury it in the ground. The law require them to collect and store it, and so in contrast to fossil fuels it builds up and is visible. Nuclear plants create less total waste, and they don't contribute to climate change, and yet people are worried about nuclear waste while consuming enormous amount of fossil fuel energy. The nuclear industry need better PR, while governments need to stop playing favorites. Force fossil fueled power plants to have the same requirements that we put on nuclear plants, and make both pay for waste management.