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As long as Nevada is a 50/50 purple state, I don't think things will change much. The nuclear waste site is very unpopular there. Neither party wants to be blam

As long as Nevada is a 50/50 purple state, I don't think things will change much. The nuclear waste site is very unpopular there. Neither party wants to be blamed for imposing such an unpopular plan, and cause 2 Senate seats to become out of reach for them. With regards to them being "incredibly safe", how do we know? There are countless examples of chemical waste sites around the country which were promised to be leak proof and safe, but the chemical industry was totally lying. Many of those sites are leaching poisons and carcinogens into the environment and we are spending billions of dollars to clean up those super fund sites, and will be spending billions of dollars into the foreseeable future. Does the nuclear industry have more credibility than the chemical industry? I don't trust people who are so sure of themselves when they forecast 100's or 1000's of years into the future. Lastly, it's not clear to me that spreading nuclear fuel across multiples sites across the country is actually less safe. It does increase the chance of something going wrong among all those sites, but the impact of one of those incidents will be far smaller than concentrating all the spent fuel in one place. After all, it's the concentration of nuclear material that makes them dangerous, since all that material originally came from various mines on earth.

gunapologist99 5y ago
Agreed, and to add to that, Nevada is quite seismically active. Of course, most locations with mountains usually are (or were).
newsclues 5y ago
Nuclear safety ought to be a bipartisan issue!
- pm90 5y ago
  So should protecting the public from a virus…
- animal_spirits 5y ago
  It is bipartisan; both parties agree they do not want to be responsible for failures in the storage of nuclear waste
mlyle 5y ago
> After all, it's the concentration of nuclear material that makes them dangerous, since all that material originally came from various mines on earth. Spent fuel is a lot hotter than what came out of mines on earth-- for a few decades. All the other waste isn't very concentrated in absolute terms, but putting it in one place can make sense.
- bxparks 5y ago
  That's true, neutron bombardment and nuclear fission probably produce a lot of short-lived isotopes, which are much hotter than the U235 or U238 that we mined out of the earth. But after the short-lived isotopes decay, we are left with less hot, but longer life isotopes. Would it be more safe to distribute those widely instead of concentrating them? Anyway, I don't have enough knowledge to make an informed judgement on that particular topic, so I will try to keep an open mind. Though I seem to have a strong distrust for "experts" in certain fields, such as the petroleum industry, the chemical industry, and the nuclear industry. These are industries which tend to privatize the profits and socialize the costs, so I don't trust these "experts" to prioritize the welfare of the general public.
  - mlyle 5y ago
    > That's true, neutron bombardment and nuclear fission probably produce a lot of short-lived isotopes, which are much hotter than the U235 or U238 that we mined out of the earth. But after the short-lived isotopes decay, we are left with less hot, but longer life isotopes. Would it be more safe to distribute those widely instead of concentrating them? Anyway, I don't have enough knowledge to make an informed judgement on that particular topic, so I will try to keep an open mind. The thing that's particularly annoying is you don't want to get groundwater leeching stuff, and you need to keep cooling fans running for sure so that the fuel doesn't get hot and smoke. After that, it's a pretty boring pile of heavy metal waste. > These are industries which tend to privatize the profits and socialize the costs, Note that fairly generous costs for disposal have been collected from the whole industry. There's just a question of how we actually spend them to dispose stuff.
    - 5y ago
ch4s3 5y ago
> There are countless examples of chemical waste sites around the country which were promised to be leak proof and safe, but the chemical industry was totally lying The CSB has only been around since like 1998 vs the much older NRC. The NRC is also much more safety oriented. There's only been 1 civilian nuclear death in the US and it was in 1964. The nuclear navy has never had a serious incident. I think in total there have been 7 total civilian nuclear incidents in the US, ever, and most have been minor, hurt no one, and were a long time ago. > After all, it's the concentration of nuclear material that makes them dangerous That's not exactly true. Exposure to high does of ionizing radiation makes it dangerous. That can be mitigated by securing material, which can be done by keeping it in one place. The NRC is very much in favor of long term storage solutions, as are all nuclear safety experts. Most favor deep underground salt formations vs. the Nevada site though.

gunapologist99 5y ago

Agreed, and to add to that, Nevada is quite seismically active. Of course, most locations with mountains usually are (or were).

newsclues 5y ago

Nuclear safety ought to be a bipartisan issue!

pm90 5y ago
So should protecting the public from a virus…
animal_spirits 5y ago
It is bipartisan; both parties agree they do not want to be responsible for failures in the storage of nuclear waste

mlyle 5y ago

> After all, it's the concentration of nuclear material that makes them dangerous, since all that material originally came from various mines on earth. Spent fuel is a lot hotter than what came out of mines on earth-- for a few decades. All the other waste isn't very concentrated in absolute terms, but putting it in one place can make sense.

bxparks 5y ago
That's true, neutron bombardment and nuclear fission probably produce a lot of short-lived isotopes, which are much hotter than the U235 or U238 that we mined out of the earth. But after the short-lived isotopes decay, we are left with less hot, but longer life isotopes. Would it be more safe to distribute those widely instead of concentrating them? Anyway, I don't have enough knowledge to make an informed judgement on that particular topic, so I will try to keep an open mind. Though I seem to have a strong distrust for "experts" in certain fields, such as the petroleum industry, the chemical industry, and the nuclear industry. These are industries which tend to privatize the profits and socialize the costs, so I don't trust these "experts" to prioritize the welfare of the general public.
- mlyle 5y ago
  > That's true, neutron bombardment and nuclear fission probably produce a lot of short-lived isotopes, which are much hotter than the U235 or U238 that we mined out of the earth. But after the short-lived isotopes decay, we are left with less hot, but longer life isotopes. Would it be more safe to distribute those widely instead of concentrating them? Anyway, I don't have enough knowledge to make an informed judgement on that particular topic, so I will try to keep an open mind. The thing that's particularly annoying is you don't want to get groundwater leeching stuff, and you need to keep cooling fans running for sure so that the fuel doesn't get hot and smoke. After that, it's a pretty boring pile of heavy metal waste. > These are industries which tend to privatize the profits and socialize the costs, Note that fairly generous costs for disposal have been collected from the whole industry. There's just a question of how we actually spend them to dispose stuff.
  - 5y ago

ch4s3 5y ago

> There are countless examples of chemical waste sites around the country which were promised to be leak proof and safe, but the chemical industry was totally lying The CSB has only been around since like 1998 vs the much older NRC. The NRC is also much more safety oriented. There's only been 1 civilian nuclear death in the US and it was in 1964. The nuclear navy has never had a serious incident. I think in total there have been 7 total civilian nuclear incidents in the US, ever, and most have been minor, hurt no one, and were a long time ago. > After all, it's the concentration of nuclear material that makes them dangerous That's not exactly true. Exposure to high does of ionizing radiation makes it dangerous. That can be mitigated by securing material, which can be done by keeping it in one place. The NRC is very much in favor of long term storage solutions, as are all nuclear safety experts. Most favor deep underground salt formations vs. the Nevada site though.